Songs Of The Arc Angel

Finally...Illuminata at Caerphilly Castle

2011-11-21T00:45:00.008Z

'Illuminata' is a son et lumiere created specifically for Caerphilly Castle to tell its history. It is returning for a second time to the Castle in December 2011.
I was commissioned to provide the sound piece for it and to also program the media server system for the video content.

After examining site plans and geography, I decided on a layout which is somewhat unconventional but worked well in the space. As a heritage site, there were a number of restrictions on what could and couldn't be physically achieved for a temporary system and I allowed for both variation in position and height in speakers in a way which would normally be considered slightly unbalanced but was taken into consideration with the content to create interesting textures. This resulted in six output channels plus additional bass.
The major creative decision was that the sound would contain no narrative. I incorporated a lot of soundscaping with the use of space and also music. As much of the history focusses on the medieval era, I was very happy to be working with recordings from different medieval manuscripts of music from that era. I chose all this very carefully and added in additional music of my own to provide links which were deliberately flavoured in a cinematic score style to juxtapose and add weight to the cartoon animations forming part of the medieval section of the story. This additional music to the period instrumentation was based on the medieval melodies or Welsh melodies. Once again, I explored the sounds of my lyre, as the forerunner of the harp, to create extra instrumental timbres alongside the medieval instruments.
The journey through from natural 'music' sounds to early music sounds and onwards through formal music of the 17th century, romantic harp playing of the 19th century into the radio and cinema footage of the twentieth, it has a lot of breadth and the combination of visuals and sound speak a great deal about the texture of history without a single word being spoken!
It also gave me the opportunity to express within a sound piece my knowledge of music and instrument history.

Contours at Illuminating York

2011-11-19T13:29:00.005Z

I was very pleased to be given the opportunity to re-exhibit 'Contours' at such a rich historic site. Many thanks to everybody who came to experience 'Contours' in the Dean's Park. I am told by worthy statisticians that Contours welcomed 50,000 people into its circle of light over the four days of the Festival and those of you who were kind enough to offer your thoughts at the onsite surveys said how much you enjoyed engaging with it.

I would like to thank everybody who came, including those who I spoke with during the artist one-on-one sessions at the Park. This Festival has always been a pleasure to be involved with and the level of organiser support to facilitate what I have needed to do has always been impressive and efficient, so thank you also to everybody who worked with me on re-shaping Contours for York. Special thanks has to go to Nev Milson, the lighting designer who worked to make the Contours circle structure a reality and to the production manager Ben Pugh for all the onsite technical arrangements and negotiations for the work.

Contours In York - The Weekend

2011-11-02T10:18:00.009Z

As part of the event, over the final two days, I set up a spot in the information tent where I showed some of the instruments I used for the piece, as well as my research work and the numerous scripts in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, English and Icelandic. I was also able to show images of the original texts of the Poetic Edda and Beowulf.
As part of the these conversations, certain questions came up regularly. The first one was where the idea came from for 'Contours' originally. As well as showing the original site, I was able to explain how I had decided to adapt it for the Dean's Park and why.

Night In The Dean's Park

Those of you who have read my notes before will notice that the piece originally was in a field and had a strong relationship with the rural landscape there. For the Dean's Park, I felt it was more appropriate to work within a circle of light, where people could enter the circle and essentially walk into a sound world which was filled with sounds known to the Viking and Saxon population, the shapes of music and words.
The circle made it clear where to stand and that you could enter and exit this world.

Late Evening: Friday Night

Most importantly, I wanted to embrace the idea of oral tradition. This poetry is powerful and very vivid in its imagery. It was a conscious decision to have the words be the strongest element, that translation into English was part of the piece and that visuals should contribute atmosphere but not dominate. For some people, this was a very new experience. We are now a very visual society, we expect our information to come via visual form. This was not always the case. Hearing was the sense that alerted us to what we could not see when lighting was poor or non-existent. For some people in certain parts of the world that is still the case. I was aware that the power of storytelling for earlier communities really relied on our ability to listen and to allow the words to paint pictures inside our heads. I wanted to combine this early style of storytelling and entertainment with technology to surround us with those words and music, to help those pictures form without dictating what those pictures are.

I knew this would make the piece challenging and very different. I was pleased then to see how many people contacted me who found it moving and entirely new and exciting to experience.

First Playback: Friday Night - 400 people present

I'm very grateful to the Illuminating York Festival for seeing how this piece illuminated York's history by combining modern technology with older techniques of storytelling and inviting myself to the Festival to restage the installation by the Minster.

Contours In York - First Night

2011-10-27T12:08:00.005+01:00

The Illuminating York festival successfully got underway last night with reports from the public of a bending building down at the Eye of York and ethereal Viking presence at the Dean's Park by the Minster.

The atmosphere in the Park was quite wonderful - the piece invites the listener to stand within a circle of light to hear the languages and the poetry, to experience the sounds of early medieval instruments and even older instruments, such as the bullroarer and bone flute.
The idea of the circle on this site for me opens up all the ideas associated with the passing on of stories via oral tradition, the way you gather around a fire to be entertained and informed by those who have committed to memory both myths and how one should approach the gods.

The Contours site early evening, prior to opening...

For Contours in York, this knowledge, this experience, comes to you as you stand in the centre of the sound moving around you, the Viking and Anglo-Saxon ancestors come to you. There is also the unity of experience offered to everyone in the circle.
Usually we all look to a specific given point for visual stimulus. Inside the circle, there is no fixed point, you can move round the circle and hear it differently wherever you stand, the circle changes its atmosphere through the supporting lighting and 'woodsmoke'.
My experience of the site has been quite powerful when the weather actually gets going and the wind is whipping through the trees. It was originally conceived to work within and fuse with a rural environment so instead of the weather detracting from the experience, in the Dean's Park it positively enhances it. So, if it is windy, definitely come down! The sounds of the rustling trees with the kulning, the raven cries, the music and the whispered poetry is a unique and very positive experience.
If anybody out there is particularly drawn by ideas of Viking history, epic poetry and the Edda, talk of the Nordic gods in a suggestive atmosphere, one which spreads over the Park and seems to just enhance the peaceful mysticism of the space next to the Minster, then this is the place for you! (Between 6.30pm and 10pm every evening, last night Saturday.)

I must also say a word here about my companion here on lighting, Nev Milson. He has done a wonderful job of supporting this installation and working with me on creating an overall feel in the unpredictable outdoors. The lighting and effects are being manipulated live in response to the audience throughout the evening.

Here are some pictures from the circle last night. Some are a little soft due to low light conditions, but they give an interesting impression of what it going on:

Contours Installation in York

2011-10-25T12:07:00.008+01:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day onsite at York Minster, atmospheric and evocative.

Here are some pictures of activity yesterday:

After dark, the Park was transformed:

Looking forward to seeing how it looks tonight.

'Contours' at Illuminating York 2011

2011-09-28T16:38:00.005+01:00

I am absolutely delighted to announce that 'Contours', my piece exploring the poetic, religious and musical culture of the Viking settlers and Anglo-Saxons, is to be part of the Illuminating York Festival this year.
I have been part of the Festival twice before, collaborating with Ross Ashton on both occasions for twin-site installation 'Accendo' in 2008 and last year with 'Rose', a son et lumiere at York Minster. This year though is a entirely fresh approach from the Festival to continue to explore new interpretations of what 'illuminating York' means, and understanding that includes an expansion of ideas and perceptions of York as a place. Already famous for its Viking heritage, to be able to take in Contours as a new expression of what that heritage means is quite meaningful. As a sound creator, this development for the Festival is very exciting and I am pleased to be part of it, and supply the "early" history portion of this year's public art to juxtapose with the more modern history of "Envisions" at the Castle Museum.

In the meantime, here is a link to the Festival brochure. i plan to be onsite throughout the Festival. As usual, I like to make myself available for anyone who wants to talk about 'Contours' or anything else!

The Diespeker Wharf Project

2011-09-27T19:44:00.005+01:00

This project offered the opportunity for me to do something a little more different. The initial concept was to create a narrative free soundtrack which would reflect the long history of the site. The commissioning company supplied some history research and we used that as our springboard to create our more detailed storyboard and develop the visual style it was to have along with the sound styles and genres that would integrate with it.
I worked in collaboration with The Projection Studio using the pattern of working and exchange which we have always found to work well in the past and I was given some freedom around timings which allowed for some variations in sound texture to really be effective. That said, the stereo soundtrack forms a continually shifting and changing series of beats, sounds and musical phrases which blend some of the elements of soundscaping with musical rhythms.
The most gratifying element of this for me was that it focussed on London history and as a Londoner, and still London-based, it was really satisfying to create a piece based around history that I know first hand. I've always felt very strong roots here, a love for the history and being in Islington, around the corner from where a good friend of mine was raised had a personal resonance.

The footage embedded here was actually filmed in 16:9 but for some reason is on Vimeo in 4:3. The piece was shown once live, and then once more by special request as an encore.

Autumn 2011 Update

2011-09-12T10:19:00.003+01:00

It may appear that not a lot has been happening over the past few months as I haven't posted.
I find that many projects go through certain stages and at the earliest stages I prefer to focus on the work at hand rather than create posts about it.
I have been a little behind as some projects have completed in the interim so in this post I will give a brief round-up of what has been happening and speak about the individual projects in their turn.
So, here's the update:

EARLIER THIS YEAR: A son et lumiere I programmed last year has won an industry award. I programmed the historical piece for the Purana Quila in Delhi to form part of the cultural programme for the Commonwealth Games in India last year.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo took a new step forward as the new stands allowed for better positioning of technology and new inclusion of lighting technology. Very pleasing and exciting from a projecting point of view.

THIS MONTH: The Diespeker Wharf Project son et lumiere, a private commission, went live and was hugely successful. I created the soundtrack for that work, which covered 2000 years of history of the site.

COMING SOON: I have been invited back to the Illuminating York Festival this October to re-exhibit my sound work, 'Contours'. This is very exciting for me to be part of exploring a new interpretation of York's heritage and history after 'Accendo' in 2008 and 'Rose' in 2010.

Pavilion Of Dreams

2011-01-26T21:55:00.031Z

This piece is another collaboration between Ross Ashton and myself. It was commissioned for Enchanted Parks 2010 in Gateshead.
The piece is a short projection and sound installation which focussed on transforming a bowling pavilion into a series of fantasy structures, palaces and locations taken from six different fairy and popular tales from different parts of the world.
I decided that the sound for each different story-world would contain hints of their origin as well as the take itself. Aladdin for example, contains a combination of Chinese and Middle Eastern instrumentation, The Snow Queen contains rhythms and instruments that hints at Northern shamanic traditions, The Little Mermaid speaks in Danish and expresses something of her longing to go beyond the waves - the central tenet of the story. (People who know my work will also spot this as a deliberate quote from an earlier piece of mine, "Contours".)
We also decided to have some irreverent fun along the way!
The biggest challenge was dealing with snow and sub-zero temperatures. The snow altered the building layout which impacted on the mapping. From a personal perspective, I spent much of my time up to my knees in snow when installing and lining up the projector and installing the sound equipment required a certain amount of exposing park structures by digging with gloved hands, but it was all worth it!

The video below of the piece was our archive footage taken onsite. The temperatures meant our standard camera failed to work so we had to use a different lower quality camera to shoot it for our reference. This is the footage we share with you now.

"Rose" - The Flower of Flowers

2010-10-30T10:08:00.008+01:00

"Ut Rosa Flos Florum, sic est Domus Ista Domorum"
(As the rose is the flower of flowers, so is this the house of houses)

Inscription at the entrance of the Chapter House, York Minster.

Currently live at York Minster, “Rose” is a son et lumière installation for the Illuminating York Festival. A collaborative work by myself and Ross Ashton, we had such a positive experience creating “Accendo” for the Festival in 2008 that we decided to put forward “Rose” as a project idea for the Minster this year.

The piece is an exploration of the rose, within the central focus of the whole piece being the Rose Window in the Minster. The window gave us our initial inspiration and we found the rose itself to be a very deep and powerful symbol, not least because it is the symbol of Yorkshire and the city of York.

The piece follows a journey from earth to sky, and I wanted to make it one seamless growing flow of sound. It begins with a section which moves through Yorkshire. From a sound perspective, this includes sounds of birds native to Yorkshire and includes recordings of woodland birds and samples of others, including birds of prey, and one of my favourites, the red kite, with recordings by Helen Olive of redkites.net. (Many thanks Helen).
This part is also quite sensual, blending wild nature with other human and more industrial sounds.
This section transforms into the Rose Garden, where spoken poetry speaks of love, emotion, and the rose as a symbol of love. I very much wanted to fuse the sounds of a living thriving natural world with the emotional capacity we have for deep feeling and response.
The voices in this section give way to a recording of the Magnificat by the York Minster choir (permission kindly granted by Regent Records) which takes us to another Rose, that of the Virgin Mary, that ideal of selfless womanhood. This connects strongly to the Minster itself. I wanted to use a Renaissance piece for this section as that contains the polyphony that I could hear in my head, a natural progression from the Rose Garden, from spoken poetry to layers of song.
The final section builds out of the Magnificat chanting. Perfection is symbolised by tones played on glasses with additional sounds of glass as visually we see images of the mathematical significance of the five petalled flower change to vibrant colours and the architectural shape of the building is reimagined in lifesize stained glass.

All my volunteer speakers for “Rose” are local to York and they are:

Sue Casson
Rob Jeffs
Lindsay Ibbotson
Nick Ibbotson
Jill Pratt
Graham Sanderson
Sue Skirrow
Gweno Williams
Tony Wright
Paul Yardley

The recording sessions were a joy and their enthusiasm for the project tremendous, so many thanks indeed to them.

Those of a medieval bent may be interested to know that the medieval carol "There Is no Rose" also appears as musical quotes within each section with a variety of additional harmonies.

If anyone has found themselves intrigued by the compositions of Lassus from listening to "Rose", the Magnificat I chose can be found on this disc along with other compositions of his. Lassus was one of the first Renaissance composers I studied and so I have always had a special resonance for me personally.

Lassus - Great Choral Works

I’ve found the response to be enormously positive, the people of York have been incredibly supportive of the piece and it has been yet another great experience for me working in this city. The culture of York and Yorkshire is incredibly rich and vibrant and it has been a privilege to have been invited back to be part of that once again.
Attendance figures are currently around 40,000 and the Festival still has one more night to go, so do come down for the last night tonight.

"Rose" - A review

2010-10-30T09:56:00.006+01:00

I have decided to include a post with a link through to this blog as the writer, as well as being a good writer, has really captured many of the things that, for me, "Rose" is about, from ideas to realisation. I will follow this link up with a different view of "Rose", with a little more about its structure and content as I have received some tweets asking questions.

In the meantime, do please read this post.

Grow Happy Rose

New Work at York: "Rose"

2010-10-03T03:19:00.008+01:00

This year, Ross Ashton and I have been commissioned as a collaborative team again to create a son et lumiere work for York Minster for the Illuminating York Festival. Following our very positive experience with "Accendo" in 2008, I was very happy to be invited back to create a piece again for the Festival.

This time, the piece is called "Rose" and will be installed on the South Transept, focussed around the rose window in the Minster.
There is a great deal of richness and depth in the symbology we have chosen to explore with this and so far, once again, it is proving a very positive and fertile project so I'm certain I will enjoy my immersion in it!

Click here for more direct details from the website itself.

A Wet Autumn?

2010-10-03T03:17:00.001+01:00

Things have moved on apace!

I'm in Pittsburgh, at the Pittsburgh Festival Of Lights.
There are three works here I have had involvement with, one of which, "Cascade" is an open form installation at the Heinz Hall where the side of the hall has become a waterfall (albeit a projected one) and I have created a quadrophonic soundscape based on the forest areas of America, with the sound of water tumbling down by the hall.

The piece was created in the UK collaboratively with Ross Ashton and then installed here.

Whilst standing in the space, experiencing the atmosphere two nights ago, I was approached by an avid birdwatcher, keen to know what was going on - why were the sounds of birds reverberating through downtown Pittsburgh?
My experience on "Contours" around the far distant travel achieved by certain tonal expressions of high frequencies was something I was indeed aware of and wanted to play with here as well, to draw in people and get them questioning what strange thing was happening in their urban environment!

I plan to try and upload some pictures I have gathered during my visit.

Look here for more info on the Festival Of Lights, running until October 17th.

In the meantime, expect some more info back on "Illuminata" at Caerphilly Castle, Wales, running twice nightly currently until mid-October with a surround sound work I have created to accompany it.

Time To Catch Up

2010-08-09T22:37:00.005+01:00

Since my last post, things have been moving at substantial speed and change. So much so, in fact, that I felt I would let everything fall into a formal structure before I began to note down what's going on!
Firstly, I had a sound installation proposal accepted for an arts festival this summer. Due to clashing commitments however, that proposal has now been temporarily shelved but remains on the cards for the near future so watch this space for that! That proposal is one I'm rather excited about so I look forward to bringing that to fruition in the future.

Last month I was in India, as programmer and advisor for a project there which is still working through the creation stage - again, more on that probably in a month or two.

Right now though, I am in bonny Scotland as the programmer and projectionist for the Edinburgh Tattoo and creating a sound piece for a son et lumiere in Wales next month. More on that later too!

My website is also well underway as well though it may well be out of date before it even goes live if the next three months have anything to do with it so keep your eye open on this space as there will be more posting before the end of the month.

"Contours" is now online

2010-03-31T15:19:00.030+01:00

Photograph by Robin Morley

My sound piece "Contours" can now be heard online.

Commissioned for Odin's Glow, this piece was designed as a large outdoor surround sound installation. It was designed to be situated in a field bordering the village of Newton-Under-Roseberry in Cleveland.

Every evening, for three nights, it ran as an open form work that people could come into the field and experience as they wished. I fully intended for it to be heard in complete darkness, with the voices, music, effects, forming a shifting invisible framework around those who came, sounds that moved around you, or enclosed you, or seemed to come welling up from the earth itself.

The aim was to capture something of essence of heritage and ancestry through sound, to bring the landscape around to life in the darkness.

For more detail on this project, click here.

Special thanks goes to the Danish Consulate and the Danish Cultural Institute, both in Edinburgh. They gave me valuable contacts and advice which opened many useful doors.

To hear "Contours", click below or follow the links:

And the nominees are....

2010-03-09T16:07:00.003Z

During this month of Oscars and all other things competitively statuesque, news has just reached me that two arts events I have contributed works to have been shortlisted for awards.

The 'Lumiere' event in Durham, where I programmed the artwork "Crown Of Light" which we projected onto Durham Cathedral has been shortlisted for one award, and 'Odin's Glow' has been shortlisted for another.

By coincidence, my work for an online stereo version of "Contours", the surround sound work I created for Odin's Glow, is almost complete, bar the addition of one video clip and the final rendering so watch this space, its online appearance is imminent.

Straight From The Source - "Germania Meets Europa"

2010-02-08T10:44:00.004Z

I thought today I would look at a recent piece I created for October 2009: "Germania Meets Europa".This public artwork was a video, light and sound installation for "Rheinpartie" in Germany last year.
Ross Ashton and myself were both commissioned to create the work. For this piece, I focussed on the sound element and Ross created the projection.
The work itself became deeply layered. We had a variety of themes to work with, some of which were identical but there were others that were not. As a result, we came up with different storyboards for each element and gave the storyboards enough breathing space to allow for a sympathetic entwining of ideas and leading themes. For us, this gave the piece a greater depth for the viewer/listener to experience.

What kind of themes did we look at? The basic idea was that Germania, as a myth figure, would transform into another mythical figure, that of Europa and so the piece would be a symbolic representation of European union. It would be a site specific work capturing something of the dream of peace and change.

For us both, this was a site specific work and so we drew on the Rhine and water as another key theme. Ross implemented these themes into the animation on the statue.

I reflected the themes from a different angle. I decided to work with the full water cycle. For me, the simplicity of all sources of water gradually joining together to finally form a single oceanic body was what I wanted to aurally explore. I liked the idea of active union automatically inherent within this idea. I also wanted to follow nature's example because I was very aware that borders are manmade constructions. Rivers don't acknowledge borders, or different countries, they go where gravity pulls them and then they meet. Into this mix, came Beethoven!

The European Union anthem is taken from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and specifically from the very famous Ode To Joy. It is a very strident piece indeed, and I spent some time listening to the 4th movement and studying the score thinking about how water and Beethoven would mix. I have a great respect for the musical greats and geniuses that have gone before. I decided to "go English" in my reserach and see what the response was amongst my fellow countrymen.

I read through a commentary by Ralph Vaughan Williams in which he looked at the "Ode To Joy". He had nothing but praise for the melody itself but questioned at times its arrangement and handling, the very things I wished to reconcile for this artwork. I decided to follow my initial ideas of re-arrangement and allowed the water cycle itself to dictate pace, overall tone and density of arrangement. Water drips, fast flowing streams and enormous majestic oceans, all intertwined with the re-arranged theme and the additional scoring at times I put in as "watercolour", if you will pardon the pun. It would be Beethoven still, but framed anew.

The video below (by Oliver Blum) was taken onsite when the piece was playing. The sound quality is live, so it is a little indistinct at times.
The section of audio you hear is from the part I called "Stream Tumble". In this clip, that section is repeated a few times, though in reality it is followed by the section "The Rhine" as the whole piece is about 7 and a half minutes. "Stream Tumble" went elsewhere into the score, playing with the harmonies and arrangements underpinning the Ode itself.

I hope to put the whole thing online in the future.

Cambridge 800 - Thoughts on Programming

2010-01-22T22:22:00.006Z

For those who have been checking my status on LinkedIn, I have spent most of this month working on two of the three projection art installations by Ross Ashton that made up "Transforming Tomorrow" - the closing event of the University of Cambridge's 800 year anniversary celebration.

You are all aware I was in New York in December overseeing the staging of a specially created version of the opening work for the Gotham Ballroom, and also in Beijing in June for a cultural festival that featured the same thing.

"Transforming Tomorrow" featured 3 new works: "Blurring the Boundaries" a video installation on Senate House and the Old Library was the smallest and was the original site for the first piece done in January 2009. This time there was a new site, which I had the enormous privilege of creating the programming for. The other two pieces, "Nano" and "Planets to Proteins" were projected onto Kings College Chapel and the Gibbs Building across the large open green that forms the magnificent open panorama of buildings next to the River Cam, between Kings Bridge and Clare Bridge.

Programming for these particular large format projections can have a series of varied requirements - some pieces are with sound and some without. It can be something of my creation or something of somebody else's creation. In this case, there were some fascinating juxtapositions for me that I thought I would like to talk about.

Firstly, there was a close physical proximity between these two pieces. The face of the Chapel that contained the work "Nano" was next door to the Gibbs Building and "Proteins to Planets".

Secondly, the music was intended to work as an atmosphere, a mood that grasped the central concept of both works. It was not to be synchronised to!

As a person with a creative burn towards sound and vision, I took some time to think about these two things before beginning programming. I decided my aim was to bring all three elements together but without actual formal synchronisation. I approached each piece as a separate entity in its own right, and brought together moments, looks, colours and movements to allow the two pieces to occasionally join into a single panorama before breaking free once more. Their movements were complementary, they wove in and out of each other without compromising their integrity as individual pieces.

I listened many many times to the music, a piece called "The Angels" composed by Jonathan Harvey. This choral work captured the ebb and flow of angelic voice, layered in a way that suggested the sound of something universal rather than purely religious. What would an angel sound like if you could hear it?

I let the tempo of the music dictate the image movement, the ebb and flow of the voice was mirrored in the way the images faded in and out. Nothing was synchronised and yet I hoped that such an approach would create continual fusion between image and sound. I believe I succeeded in what I set out to do. Over those three days, nobody would have experienced the pieces the same way twice.

Why mention this here? Because programming is not a simple task - it requires thought, sensitivity, an instinct for timing and the ability to respond with physical tools to something as seemingly transient as a flow of sound through to the demands of hard rhythm.

One of the things that attracted me to sound is that to me, I hear rhythm everywhere, and have for as long as I can remember. I discovered that when I first saw a projected image, and began to work with that, I could see the rhythm in that. When I began in stage management in theatre, I could feel the rhythms of lighting changes, scene changes, the pace of drama, and I got the opportunities to follow that. Everything has its own life and flow and the thrill for programming for me is being the person to flex the creative muscle in bringing all these disparate forces together under one's steady control to achieve a whole new desired effect.

I believe art lies in there somewhere too, in that drive, concept, control and final realised vision.

The Adventure of Christmas

2009-12-21T23:34:00.005Z

This year I received a commission to produce sounds for the "Christmas Adventure" light sculpture trail at Stockeld Park in Yorkshire. This work included a site specific soundscape "Lake Of Angels" made to be played around the lake, which is part of the sculpture trail. (see picture left)

I visited soon after opening in October to check up on the work in situ.

It is a beautiful thing to see, especially with children, whom it is designed for. It is a mix of magical figures from fairy tale and well known fantasy stories as well as more Christmas oriented themes such as the angels.

If you live near Stockeld Park, do try to get there before Christmas for both the trail, the skating rink and the hot chocolate! The sculptures are skilfully made and the sound both brings the forest to life and creates a lakeside environment which I feel connects with the sense of place there without distracting from its natural beauty.

"Peace Garden" Now Open To The Public

2009-12-11T00:31:00.012Z

This evening Enchanted Parks 2009 opened to welcome the public in to experience the trail of outdoor artworks on the theme of the Twelve Days Of Christmas.

As already mentioned, "Peace Garden" primarily resonates with the First Day in a very real sense (see the previous post), though it also contains a bird selection from other days and five rings from a church bell.

The picture above was taken earlier today as the finishing touches were being put in place. Here you can see some speaker shelters in position. The Garden entrance is by the furthest one on the picture where the blue cherry picker is.

People walk round the tarmac path and return to the entrance via the additional pathway laid out on the grass. The "bell tower" which utilises a tower structure which forms part of the park's architecture, can be seen in the area above the security guards head.

Here is another view of the installation, showing three of the seven speaker shelters.

Of course, the installation is experienced at night.

A reference picture for my purposes taken in the dark. There is little direct light in the area but it is not as dark as this picture may suggest. Tealights line the paths and combine with the atmosphere generated by the piece as they flicker in the darkness. They also have an additional practical element as they guide people along the path's circular walk.

It has been a real privilege to create this haven of sound for the visitors to Enchanted Parks for the four days it will be running.

The Chants for "Peace Garden"

2009-12-07T22:51:00.013Z

Some people have expressed interest in what the chants mean that are being used so here are the texts for them.

"Dominus dixit ad me: “Filius meus es tu , ego hodie genui te.” Quare fremuerunt gentes, et populi meditati sunt inania."

The Lord said unto me: “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee. – Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?

"De libro Isaiae prophetae.

Haec dicit Dominus Deus : Egredietur virga de stripe lesse, et flos de radice eius ascendet; et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini; spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et timoris Domini et deliciae eius in timore Domini."

A reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.

"Christe redemptor omnium, ex Patre Patris unice, solus ante principium natus ineffabiliter.

Sic praesens testatur dies, currens per anni circulum, quod solus a sede Patris mundi salus adveneris.

Hunc caelum, terra, hunc mare, hunc omne quod in eis est, auctorem adventus tui laudans exsultat cantico.

Gloria tibi Domine, qui natus es de Virgine, cum Patre et Sancto Spiritu in sempiterna saecula. Amen."

Christ, redeemer of the world, Only Begotten Son of the Father, born ineffably of Him before time began.

The present day, brought back by the yearly cycle, attests to this; from the throne of the Father thou alone didst come down to save the world.

The heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is contained therein join together in a joyous canticle of praise for this day which marks thy coming.

Glory to thee, O Lord, who wast born of a Virgin, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.

As the theme is the Twelve Days of Christmas and I am recreating aspects of a monastic cloister, I have chosen texts which speak specifically about the day itself, the First Day of Christmas, as well as other facets of the piece. I decided to start with the introit Dominus Dixit as the image of nations plotting in vain feel appropriate for a Peace Garden. Then, to follow that with the well known prophetic section of the text from Isaiah, a single voice reading in the darkness. The final chant, Christe Redemptor Omnium, is a timeless hymn sung by all that has a clear focus on the First Day itself. This is then followed by a church bell, ringing five times (five gold rings) which signifies the end of the cycle before it returns to the start and begins all over again, as it does every year.
All chant recordings for this piece are by the Abbaye de Solesmes, who have given their permission for them to be used for this piece in this context and I am truly grateful to them for their generosity in helping this piece come to life for the people of Gateshead.

Time For More Enchantment - "Peace Garden"

2009-12-06T04:17:00.010Z

Last year the "Enchanted Parks" art trail won a Culture Award for the Best Event in the Tyneside region. I did a sound piece for that particular event entitled "All My Love", which was a site specific piece in the Rose Garden of Saltwell Park, where the event was held. (More on that later as I may have something of that to upload.)

This year I have been commissioned to produce another piece for the event. The theme this year is the Twelve Days of Christmas. With that in mind, I decided to create a piece that reflects the central facet of the First Day of Christmas, encorporating traditional Christmas themes and elements.

The piece I am currently creating is called "Peace Garden".

I deliberately wanted to create an environment in sound which is both architecturally sound and captures important themes.

In my mind were thoughts that sprung from numerous travels past the Imperial War Museum in London on the bus. In the grounds of the museum is a Buddhist Peace Garden and I would always look out over it in its corner near the road and want to visit it. The idea of a garden reflecting Peace as more than a state of being but as a concept and a place to contemplate and get in touch with that concept is one that interested me.

At this time of year, peace has a particularly strong resonance - peace and goodwill to all men, the power of Christmas day to stop wars albeit temporarily (the true stories from World War One of soldiers creating informal truces on the front line for Christmas Day and men of both sides came out to play football together). A peace garden is not only appropriate at this time of year but perhaps an essential expression of human need, distilled as a response to child's birth.

These loose thoughts developed further and solidified when I looked at the rectangular lawn space next to Saltwell Towers (see picture right).

The architectural aspect fell into place within a few seconds of being in the space this August and I could see a monastic cloister garden laid out before me, bisected on the diagonal. I decided that I would create the cloister garden using sound.

I won't say anymore in case I give too much away but suffice to say, incorporated into the piece are two different playback systems, a simple use of surround sound techniques, plainchant taken from the Night Vigil and main Mass for Christmas Day.

Within the piece, you may also find certain days from the Twelve Days of Christmas represented, at present the third, fourth and fifth. I am still toying with the idea of representing the second and sixth also, along with some simple lighting in keeping with a monastic lifestyle.

Rather than narrowing the Peace Garden to a single concept, I am wanting it to balance the peace we find we need as humans to be rejuvenated with the peace of being able to be free to live. In this man and unselfconscious nature co-exist, side by side.

I shall be there on the first night (Thursday) and I hope to engage with the visitors during their time there as well.

Cambridge 800 Now Visits New York

2009-12-05T06:16:00.006Z

I am currently in New York working on the presentation of an ongoing projection project. "Cambridge 800", a commissioned work by Ross Ashton was first shown in January 2009 at Cambridge University to start their 800th anniversary celebrations. Containing source content from various sources, including specially commissioned drawings by Quentin Blake, it has been travelling the world. As the original was created as a site specific piece of architectural projection, a special "touring" version has been created which is also projected but contains within its content the original buildings so the viewer gets to experience what the original work looks like.

In summer, it was taken to Beijing and right now I am in New York, preparing for its presentation with Ross, where it will be seen again projected as a large scale projection on the curving oval walls of the Gotham Hall by University supporters and a variety of high profile Cambridge alumni, including Sir David Frost, Stephen Fry, Eric Idle and many others.

Gotham Hall is an architecturally elaborate building that began life as a bank during the boom years of the 1920's prior to the Wall Street Crash and the following Depression. The heavy metal doors, the detailed bronze reliefs and curving cream stone walls provide the space with opulence and a feeling of airiness. The counters still remain, a second oval partially enclosing the centre area. The Art Deco era surrounds you.

It will be a wonderful experience to have dinner there tomorrow, watching the piece projected on the walls around us.

St Andrews Festival - The First Night

2009-11-28T19:18:00.006Z

The St Andrews Festival begins tonight featuring three art installations which I have been one of the artists on.

Last year, myself and Ross Ashton were invited to create a piece for the Festival within the the University grounds. The St. Mary's Quad site was chosen and we created "Origin", a 13 minute son et lumiere which looked at the creation of Scotland, from its physical landscape and animal inhabitants through to the human contribution of a more modern day. The sound reflected this, starting with an effects based atmospheric soundscape which contained music archaelogy samples and animal sounds from animals once wild here but are now here no longer. It moved into a more contemporary feel via the songs of Robert Burns into modern bagpipe playing.

This year we have added to this with two companion works at St Andrews Cathedral:

"Via Caeli" which is a projection piece, created for the still standing wall behind the altar. It looks at the way to the heavens and includes both religious works and observational views of the heavens and starscapes moving over the altar wall.

"Via Maris" is a son et lumiere which touches on "the way of the sea" and the relationship between that and St. Andrews. It touches on legends including the dream of the Greek monk St Regulus and his journey to Scotland with St Andrew's bones to prevent the Roman emporer Constantine removing them from Greece. It draws parallels between Andrew's origin as a fisherman and the history of fishing of this area, as well as the arrival of Christianity and the importance of the Cathedral.

All these threads move together into one. The sound piece allowed me to draw on Ancient Greek music as a direct influence, including the use of a fragment dating from Greece in 1st Century A.D. This melody is a recurring theme, opening the piece and becoming associated with St Andrew (he was martyred in Patras, Greece) featuring in The Dream Of St Regulus and resurfacing once more in a folk arrangement with guitar, treble recorder and cello at the end.

Other highlights for me include the use of verses from the Carmina Gadelica to underscore the nature of Celtic Christianity in its early days as well as providing a context for the 19th century fishermen later on.

Click here for Via Caeli pictures on Flickr

Working outdoors comes with its own glamour. Click here!

"Contours" - an online update

2009-11-24T13:25:00.004Z

"Contours" is a soundscape piece which I created to work with surround sound. It was commissioned for the Odin's Glow event in October this year in Redcar and Cleveland.
The arts event focussed on exploring the heritage of that local area and the commissions awarded reflected this in different forms, with the installations being placed in the village of Newton-Under-Roseberry.
It was a very ambitious event, not least because rather than be city focussed, it deliberately took art into a rural area. As well as that, the large peak that forms Roseberry Topping (a modern day corruption of its original name of Odin's Burg) was dramatically lit with large moving lights of various shapes, sizes and positions.

"Contours" was placed well off the main road in a field, where people could stand within the surround sound field in almost complete darkness with the only visual stimulus being the sweeping lights on the hill before them. Out of that darkness, voices, music, poetry could be heard in flashes, opening out the landscape and bringing life to the mystical end of the sound of a culture now hard to grasp.
The music was mostly music from that period and included improvisations on the lyre by myself as well as a rendition of a medieval piece of Danish music on the bone flute. Indeed, I enjoyed this project very much as I played all the instruments that were used.

My performers were all of Scandinavian, Icelandic or English background. They provided their own response to the translations of the Poetic Edda and Beowulf that we used. Moreover, much of Edda was heard in Old Norse and Beowulf was heard in Old English. Flavours of English, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish ran throughout as the languages of those descendants.
It was fascinating to work on and a privilege to work with so many enthusiastic people who really wanted to give voice to that landscape and fuse it with the present day. We all acknowledged the shared heritage that exists on both sides of the North Sea.

To thank these people I need to mention them by name so I will be posting a full credits list for "Contours" in the very near future as well as a link to a stereo version online so that those of you that missed it can hear a little of it.

Back from Durham "Lumiere" Festival

2009-11-17T23:06:00.005Z

Yesterday I returned from the Durham "Lumiere" Festival. I was there for a week as the creative programmer for the son et lumiere piece "Crown Of Light", which was a commissioned artwork for the Festival. I was brought onto the project by the projection artist Ross Ashton, with whom I have worked on many pieces as both creative programmer and also collaborative artist.
The piece also included the work of Robert Ziegler, John Del Nero and Sebastian Frost in creating the non-narrative soundtrack.
Durham gave the Festival an exceptionally warm welcome and the scale of response to the piece was certainly in keeping to the scale of "Crown Of Light" itself.
Particular highlights for me was the opportunity to work with the extraordinary artwork contained within the Lindisfarne Gospels. From a sound point of view, amongst the music chosen for the soundtrack was a short extract from "Viderunt Omnes" a Christmas chant by the medieval church composer Perotin. I have been an enthusiast of early music for a long time and always welcome the opportunity to explore it for projects so it was a delight to hear Perotin feature briefly on the sound side of this artwork.

Review in the Observer

Report in Live Design Online