Have A Listen...An Autumnal Special

The need to be productive has been upon me somewhat this autumn. More projects announced in due course.
In the meantime, when I can, I have been gathering together some edits and material to share with you in this blog. Many people have requested I put my work together for a website. I enjoy writing directly in this way about the things that move me, blog style, and also to put short messages into the ether via Twitter.

For those of you who are new, there are links to works online for 'Contours' on this site, played at Odin's Glow in 2009 and at Illuminating York 2011, outside York Minster.

For more long standing people, here are some edits for you to hear. All of this material hasn't been heard since it was played at the relevant arts exhibitions and events.

I know some enquiries have come in this week. Answering those, yes indeed, details about the original piece we did for the Illuminating York Festival in 2008 are available for viewing and hearing online! Parts from our archive footage for 'Accendo' have been available for viewing for some time and can be seen online here. A short explanation on the inspiration behind it can be found in the same place. The theme of the relationship between art, science and the transmission of knowledge is a fascinating one. I seized on the opportunity to work with a combination of self-written scripts and original texts by Alcuin of York. The soundscape was complex and perhaps deserving of a post in its own right.

But moving on...

ROSE - ILLUMINATING YORK 2010

I should mention that as I put the extract here, there are also some very good images to be found on my fellow creator Ross Ashton's flickr photostream here: rehearsal shots and event pictures.
If you click on the title, you'll go to pages on this blog where I spoke about it at the time.
This edit contains extracts from the sections 'Yorkshire Rose' and 'The Rose Garden' where I worked with a number of local performers, many involved in the Mystery Plays cycle, to record poetry for the piece. Early music enthusiasts present at the time may have spotted the musical motif (which returned throughout in various disguises) of the medieval carol ' 'Ther is no rose'.


VIA MARIS

This is a son et lumiere seen/heard at St Andrews Festival 2009.

The first part of the edit is from 'The Dream of St. Regulus', the second part is 'Fish Tango'.

THE CURIOSITY BOX


A little something seasonal and wintry.

I was commissioned to create a piece to accompany an interactive video snow globe created by The Projection Studio in 2008. It doesn't feature on this blog, but was destined for the award-winning Enchanted Parks 2008, along with a sound installation I created for the rose garden there, called 'All My Love'.


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St Andrews Festival - The First Night

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!

More links to follow.