Continents Drifting Film Work

 

For best experience listen on headphones, or play on large screen with good speakers, preferably at head height.

In 2022 April, I participated in a collaborative project at the Ceramic House Brighton, with ceramics artist Juss Heinsalu, exploring the concept of Edges and Peripheries. This was supported by funding from Creative Scotland and iPortunus. Through a series of experimental conversations, and text-based communication, we began to ask, ‘what constituted life’, ‘intelligence’, who defined that, and how anthropocentric were our definitions? This was shaped by my own research into using genetic editing, with the Non Random Collective, as an adaptation response to climate change and the ethical implications of that.
What emerged was an idea about how we might take an experimental leap to create new definitions of life, explore new modes of communication, think about how life might have formed many hundreds of thousands of years ago, hybrid forms of life connected to stone, soil, rock, plant, and animal. In response to the theme, I created the film Continents Drifting and Juss, a large scale ceramic work created.

These works are the first in a set or series of works that we will continue to examine going forward, but here is a sample of the works we developed for the Brighton Festival Open House exhibition.

Evolving Ourselves with Natural Selection

So thrilled that I received a funding grant from Creative Scotland to develop an R&D project with two collaborators, Tony Doyle and Ashley James Brown, we have become the collective known as Non-Random (website to come soon). We have been awarded £33000 to spend a year undertaking research and development for a body of early stage art works in response to the gene editing technology CRISPR. This is an incredible opportunity to develop an idea we’ve been working on for 2 years. See below for info on our project idea. We will be creating a number of events, talks and and interactice online art works for experimentation going forward. We will be sharing on our new social networks soon.

Evolving Ourselves

Evolving Ourselves with Unnatural Selection is a new collaborative project between artists and researchers that will explore and present some of the ethics and future implications of gene editing through a digital multi-arts approach.

Presented primarily via an online digital platform incorporating machine learning techniques and a variety of cutting edge digital arts tools, the project looks at bringing together research, data science, visual arts, sound and language into an experimental toolkit and set of frameworks that presents the project findings to a wider public audience in the shape of playful online interactive interventions. The project fosters an open dialogue between artists, disabled voices in the community and researchers that seeks to navigate the ethical, empirical and creative challenges around the sensitive topics, while bringing the artistic concepts and thoughts into a general public audience’s hands for investigation and conversation.Through a participatory approach, the project gives a focus on giving underrepresented voices in the community a chance to shape and share their experiences through creative artistic expression.

The project will serve as a springboard for future creative arts investigations into how the arts and cultural collectivity can be vital in helping share some of the world’s most complex scientific problems.

Performing in Walney

IMG_3515 IMG_3517

 

As part of world Dawn Chorus Day myself and the composer Tony Doyle created a day long workshop for attendees of the Sound Camp at South Walney Nature Reserve, organised by Octopus Collective.

In the evening we performed a new work generated by text performed by the attendees of the sound camp and collected objects.

After a brief introduction to acoustic ecology and listening methods each participant was given a listening meditation (meditation and composition). They brought this on their walks through the reserve. Later, we recorded their texts and a series of sound performances they created with materials they collected as part of the listening meditation and object collection. These were incorporated into a live coded and 3d graphic score performance, see image above.

This performance was broadcast online and performed at the London sound camp. We will have sound and images of the evenings performance to follow.

Composing the Singapore Soundscape at NUS

I was invited by Prof Mark Joyce, a great teacher from my undergrad of many years ago, to work with a collection of amazing students for the Urban Studies Conference at NUS Yale University Singapore. Over three days we explored listening to the urban, acoustic ecology, class and gender in sound, recording, composing and performing the soundscape of place and creating a combination graphic score and sound map. The workshop culminated in their performing a graphic score, through voice, then bringing their voices into a granular synthesis application on an iPad and improvising together. So chuffed at what they accomplished over such a short period. I have a sample of their performance and images below for listening. If your browser won’t access the Soundcloud file just link directly to Soundcloud from the window below.

 

IMG_0840 IMG_2516 IMG_2515 IMG_0850 IMG_2208

Final Performance

 

WISWOS 2016 educating girls in sound

WOSWIS%204-6

 

The next wiswos event is happening and I am very excited about it. This time we hope to generate real ideas concerning women’s visibility in sound technology and sound studies. If anybody is interested in having a look at what it is about this time and who will be there then go to the website here, I am so glad I started this organisation and that a whole bunch of vastly interesting people came on board to help, it has been so rewarding.