Containment Project

Looks like this new project of mine will be going ahead in January 2011. I will be curating an exhibition at the London College of Communication where I study, entitled Containment.
I will be looking for sound artists from the college Sound Art department to sonically represent the concept of containment within a metal cargo container for 5 hours.
I have just set up a blog, Containment Project. Please keep looking for updates.

Cassettes

I'm looking forward to getting my cassette tape piece fine tuned. I had a great evening a couple of days ago with Jonny Hill where we moved to a more leisurely-paced cassette and vinyl based duo piece. It was interesting how we have concurrently, both learned to do less.
I used a selection of cassettes I had recorded in the summer and I was really pleased with the way they worked with Jonny's sounds. I used quite a bit more processing that usual and was happy also with this experiment. I managed to dig up some really deep bass tones

Framing

I was just thinking about framing again as I looked at the cover of Badlands, (see below).
I wonder if that arresting image would have had the same impact if one had been there. Because of the tree's exposed roots and low branches, the effect of the photograph is of an explosion. Full of energy.
Without the frame, would that energy have been so noticeable? Does the limitations of the media have an effect on the subject?

Pilgrim's Way

Pilgrims' Way got the thumbs up today and so I am full steam ahead with it. An appropriate term as this Sunday I will be recording on the Watercress Line. (see below).
I have to now select and appraise six to ten suitable locations along the pilgrims' route for my work.
I want each piece to be able to relate to those next to it in some sonic capacity so will have to think of interesting and pertinent ways to do this.
My intention with this piece is that it will be documented on a CD, so needless to say, the whole work will be 70 minutes or so maximum length.

Neo-Romanticism

Just a few lines to define what I mean when referring to Neo-Romantic.
All information here is from The Spirit Of Place by Malcolm Yorke. A wonderful book.
One of, if not the first use of the term Neo-Romantic came from reviewer, Raymond Mortimer. Writing in the New Statesman, 28th March 1942, when describing the various groups of artists working in Britain at that time.
"He thought them more traditional in outlook than the Surrealists and Abstractionists insofar as they admitted the claims of both the senses and the intellect". The Neo-Romantics of the late 30's were seen by many to be rebelling "against the Francophiliac preachings of Roger Fry", yet never venturing as far as "geometrical abstraction" of Rouault or Cherico.
Two important exhibitions have helped to secure this movement's place in art history, "The British NeoRomantics 1935-1950" (Fisher Fine Art) and 'A Paradise Lost - The Neo-Romantic imagination in Britain 1935 - 1955" (Barbican Art gallery).

Major Project 3

I think the cards finally fell in to place this evening.
I have spent hours on this, reading, referring, cross-referencing and relying on luck and it all comes down to The Pilgrims' Way.
The Pilgrims' Way starts at Winchester Cathedral , and, as the character, Mr Culpepper says in A Canterbury Tale; "These Pilgrims came to Canterbury to ask for a blessing or to do penance".
Winchester Cathedral has works by Graham Sutherland.
St Swithun, a former bishop of Winchester Cathedral has his festival day on the 15th of July. My birthday!
Alton, where I will be recording this weekend is on the route.
These coincidences, plus many properly researched connections have given me at last the core for my project.

Edmund Burke

I came across Burke through researching the Powell and Pressburger films.
This quote from George P Landow serves to describe the aesthetics and philosophy behind some commentator's explanation of Neo-Romanticism's ideals.
"In addition to the emphasis which he places on terror, Burke is important because he explained the opposition of beauty and sublimity by a physiological theory. He made the opposition of pleasure and pain the source of the two aesthetic categories, deriving beauty from pleasure and sublimity from pain. According to Burke, the pleasure of beauty has a relaxing effect on the fibers of the body, whereas sublimity, in contrast, tightens these fibers. Burke's use of this physiological theory of beauty and sublimity makes him the first English writer to offer a purely aesthetic explanation of these effects; that is, Burke was the first to explain beauty and sublimity purely in terms of the process of perception and its effect upon the perceiver."
I like the notion of the energy generated from two opposites bound together and will seriously consider this in my work.

John Cage

I should have revisited this sooner, really. The title, Imaginary Landscapes says it all as far as my project is concerned.
What Cage is doing here that I will not be doing is creating sounds for an imagined place not a physical place, but I very much admire his wide use of instruments and sound objects.
I like the idea that some of the final works could be enhanced by imagined, improvised parts.

David Tudor

Rainforest is much closer to the aesthetic I am looking for. In this piece, Tudor has created the impression of a rainforest through the playing of sounds through ceiling-mounted cables into objects that then reverberate. The listener can move in and around these sound objects.
I am also attracted to the visual element of the piece and the involvement of the audience.
Whilst differing in sound source from me, the idea of sounds played randomly and those sounds then affecting the whole to give an impression of a place 'resonates' with me.

Annea Lockwood

As I write this I am listening to Lockwood's CD, A Sound Map Of The Hudson River. It is an "aural journey" from the source of the river downstream to the Atlantic.
This is the type of representation of place that I wish to avoid. People like Lockwood have made these interesting and representational works already, and even though she talks about recording rivers because they create a "special state of mind and body", it is more document than art work.
What is interesting however are the many non-river sounds on the CD. I find that more appealing actually as I have to listen harder to imagine their source.

Watercress Line

One of the towns on the Pilgrims Way, as they travelled to Canterbury was Alton in Hampshire.
I thought about this pilgrim homage and wondered if this could be something to intertwine into my project.
To further my research, I am going to Alton this weekend and will be recording in and around the town.
As a particularly English thing, I shall be going on and recording on the steam railway that runs from Alton to Arlesford. This railway line, when it used to run to London was, and is called The Watercress Line.

Powell and Pressburger

I took delivery today of the 11 DVD Powell and Pressburger collection.
I have been dipping in and out of Neo-Romantic Landscapes. An aesthetic approach to the films of Powell and Pressburger, by Stella Huckenhall in which she comments upon the landscape aesthetic of these writer/producer/directors and I really wanted to have them to reference my landscape project.
I think I'm going to start with A Canterbury Tale and see what happens.

Badlands

I found this book today. It is a rather interesting overview of contemporary landscape representation. There are some essays in there and features on the work of about a score of artists.
As is usual, this book is concerned with the visual, but does include works using digital media as well as installation and intervention.

Hawksmoor

My recent dalliances with English romanticism have brought me to a point where I have the sirings of an idea. Hawksmoor.
There are a seven churches in the East End of London designed or part-designed by Nicolas Hawksmoor. The sonic edge I have been seeking is evinced in these magnificent buildings.
Today the kernel of an idea flourished when I thought to ask a colleague of mine, Robin Higgins to improvise a vocal work around which I will construct a sound piece centered in a Hawksmoor church.
Happily for me, Robin was very interested in the project.
I need to buy a copy of Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and re-read it as soon as possible!

Conor Kelly

The DVD that accompanied and formed the catalogue to Conor Kelly's two exhibitions in 2004 pertain directly to my idea of the sound of place.
In his work Sound and Music, Kelly has taken a film of a music shop on a London High Street and added a rather gauche yet strangely seductive and melancholy sound to it.
I highly recommend you that a look if you can find a copy.

John Betjeman

Just looked through a DVD, Betjeman Revisited. There are some really inspiring scenes and quotes in this great video. Betjeman sometimes come across as a bit of an anachronism these days, but having his obvious love of Britain, British towns and landscape to the fore, I can see a lot to be learned in the coming months from this quintessential Englishman.

Kinetics

I need to be doing a bit of research into this area. It struck me the other day that I should be looking at sculpture more attentively with a view to considering the sonic qualities of structures that have moving parts.
I first got this idea from Barbara Hepworth's Oval Form, (above) and then looked at other English sculptors and then to Force Fields, a catalogue from a kinetic art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a decade or so ago.
I need to look further into Max Eastley's work and it will probably be useful to reference Harry Partch too as I ponder the idea of sound, sculpture and place.

Major Project 2

Well, it is all systems go now. I had a good tutorial today and encouragement about the project.
I'm concentrating on four main areas, performance, phonography, collage and improvisation. My immediate work will be at an improvisation workshop this weekend. This will not only be a bloody good experience, but will inform my dissertation and practical project.
the workshop will be in rural Wales, so that will give me a great opportunity to get into and amongst the landscape.
I will be recording audio of course, but also am interested in camera recording and sketching as a documentary tool.

Major Project

I presented the ideas I had about this project today to my peers and tutors. I have no idea yet how the tutors received it, and actually precious little peer feedback, but I have more confidence now having talked about it.
Through years of exposure to this genre, I am more certain that I am working in the right direction.
Note to self: Remember to reread The Englishness of English Art.

Magritte

Another genre I believe will yield some interesting finds is surrealism. In particular, I have been considering Magritte thanks to a chapter in Landscape In Western Art, by Malcolm Andrews where he considers the framing of a painting of a landscape. I was drawn to this idea of the artist already framing the work visually as well as practically.
I like the triple-bluff that Magritte calls when he paints a canvas, in front of a window and then the whole is framed. It is in a way the beginning of a kind of vortex where the end is never quite known.
I think sonically that would be a rather interesting concept. To try and discover a way for the sound to frame itself or in some way be enveloped by itself.
Magritte said of this "The simultaneous existence in two different spaces is like living simultaneously in the past and in the present, as in cases of deja vu".

Peter Lanyon

I have been dipping into a new book I just bought about Peter Lanyon. There are loads of pictures of his work and also his sculpture which one sees less of. Lanyon's work is almost exclusively landscape and the style of his work describes well the attitude I have about The Sound Of Place.

Fauna

I was thinking today about the lack of fauna in much of the art I like. This is particularly true of human beings. I am attracted to spaces and places that relate to human design, their intervention and construction as well as those which flora has either repelled or embraced, or indeed those places of the extreme, such as deserts and vast oceans. Yet the absence of fauna seems to add to, rather than subtract from to the gravitas of the work for me.
Like the Romantics that precede me, the vastness, the sheer and unforgiving power of nature has me in its thrawl. But, in order for me to participate rather than to observe, I wish to distill this tempestuousness into a delicious, yet modest Englishness.
It is with this parochial ideal that I shall set about my project.

Commencement

Here is the first in as series of blogs that will chart the research and practice of creating the sounds of place. To anoint this blog, I add a beautiful painting by John Craxton, typical of the imagery that inspires this project.