In the busy public spaces of London's St Pancras International Station, everyday dramas are constantly being acted out; people waiting or rushing, engaged in conversation or lost in their own thoughts.
In Audio Obscura, equipped with headphones, you'd enter the crowd and overhear voices around you. What did that woman mean? Did he really say that? Does she realise what she is saying? You might wish you hadn’t listened or you might want to know more. You will look for stories and you might even find them... Read More...
If you go down to King's Wood in Challock, be sure of a big surprise. A 7-metre tall steel horn, to be precise, in the style of an old-fashioned gramophone. The structure blends in with the surrounding beech trees, so follow your ears to find it.
The ancient, 1500 acre woodland has been chosen as the ideal site for the award winning musical sculpture.
Conceptual artist Jem Finer's latest installation is Score For A Hole in the Ground, which Jem describes as a "hybrid water instrument". A large dew pond supplies running water to an underground pit, which houses steel discs and blades of different shapes, sizes and thicknesses. As the water from the pond, or rainwater, fall onto the steel instruments, sounds are formed. The horn acts as an amplifier, but visitors can also put bamboo poles to the surface of the pit and listen that way.
The piece was the first ever winner of the PRS Foundation New Music Award but is taking the art world by storm.
Lavinia greenlaw is a prize-winning poet and novelist who also writes radio drama and libretti. Recent books include a memoir, The Importance of Music to Girls, and her fourth poetry collection,The Casual Perfect, which will be published by Faber in September 2011.
Located in Manchester’s Piccadilly Station, a place where everyday dramas are constantly acted out, Audio Obscura is an aural version of the camera obscura: a framed and heightened reflection of the passing world.
In Audio Obscura, you will enter into the crowd to take part in an exploration of the overheard. What did she mean? Did he really say that? Does she realise what she is saying? You might wish you hadn’t listened or you might want to know more. You will look for stories and you might even find them.
There is an artist in residence oppurtunity which is being offered by the Woodlands Community Trust and the criteria are that the artist uses the back alleys around woodlands in such a way as to engage the local community.
Now, for those of you who have ever been scouting out for a bit or furniture or pc then you will know that these back alleys are generally just a bit of a dumping ground really and all this rubbish tends to get mixed up with all the mud which gathers here. SO, all in all they are what you might conisder to be a difficult place to do anything with, they are not particularly nice places to spend much time and tend to have a funny smell about them.
I have been considering ideas for these spaces and was thinking along the lines of cooking, having remembered the Dalston Mill which was set up as part of Barbican's Radical Natureseries of exhibitions and events. This was organised by a bunch of architects who set up a company called EXYZT in their year out and have never turned back (continued their education) since as they are so busy getting commission to make fantastic projects rather than imagining them on a drawing board.
Their idea was to recreate a small-scale version of Agnes Denes Wheatfield- A Confrontation, Battery Park Landfill, downtown Manhattan, 2 acres of wheat planted & harvested, summer 1982
They then managed to build a wind powered mill which powered a small electrical stone grinder into which they could put all the wheat which they had gathered. Making their own flour they brought the community together to make pizza and bread, for free. To view some images of the project, here is a link to a slideshow of Flickr images (alternatively click on one of the links above).
Taking this as my inspiration I would like to propose a mobile table and benches, which will be mounted on the frame of a trailer, upon which people will be able to make dough to bake their own pizza and bread. I will be importing a Country Living Grain Mill which I intend to connect up to an exercise bike, as demonstrated in the video below.
This can be installed in the back of the van which will be used to move the table so that the back doors can be opened up and the flour can be delivered directly onto the table so that people can make their dough instantly!
Richard (SEA4) has very kindly offered to donate his pizza oven with which we will be able to make fantastic pizzas, as we discovered last year.
The deadline for applications is this friday so wish me luck and I am very excited about the implications of this project, both short and long term. Although this may seem to be quite different to my usual practice (sound art) I am equally interested in this aspect of community work and wouldn't want to be labelled a sound artist. There are also various aspects of this work which relate to my public art project last year in which I installed a stile over the gate at the Kelvingrove Bandstand as a passive protest installation about the neglect of such an important historical and social space.
Avenue du Roi Koningslaan close Gare Du Midi facing in the direction of a busy junction near . Apparently this trumpet is meant for listening and not so effective at projecting a sound, which I would agree with as the hum of the traffic is condensed into a the small cavity of the mouthpiece through which you listen on the platform.
Having been making visits back and forth from site for the past couple of weeks, taking and checking various measurements, I finally managed to get the stile installed on the morning of the site visits.
A few adjustments had to be made, such as carving away a few indents so that the main posts would fit around protruding parts where the lock and chain were but apart from that it fitted rather neatly over the top of the gate.
I attached a small wooden box over the 'horns' at the top of both gates to prevent anyone from injuring themselves but also to function as a little something to hold on to as you are climbing over.
It also seems to function rather well as a table to eat your fish and chips on!
Having managed to put to tighten the last bolt as people arrived I was very much aware that I should really have installed it the day before to allow myself time to go and see other people's work - I sincerely hope that people did not think that I was not interested in their work and I do feel annoyed that I didn't get to see some of the other one off pieces to discuss later in the crit.
Was sorting out some paper work over the weekend and whilst I was flicking through Issue 6 of the Collective publication, what do you know... I found this work by Jennifer Grant which is must have remembered on some subconcious level as it is very similar to what I had in mind for the Kelvingrove Bandstand. Would like to know more about the piece and where it was done - the accompanying desciption doesn't really describe the work as such, it's more of a story.
I thought that the right hand side gate would be a good site for the stile as it is just off a public footpath which cuts accross the park from the pedestrian bridge.
I thought it would be good to try my hand at a bit of photoshop to get an idea of what the stile might look like once installed.
Here are some different versions of a stile which I decided to try out to help me decide on their visual appeal as well as making it easier for me to picture how easy it might be to climb over them.
Model 1: Proportions - 9 (top), 7 (middle), 6 (Bottom)
Triangle (Isoceles M & B)
Model 2: Proportions - 9 (top), 9 (middle), 9 (Bottom)
Spiral
Model 3: Proportions - 9 (top), 7 (middle), 9 (Bottom)
Triangle (Isoceles T & B)
Model 4: Proportions - 9 (top), 7 (middle), 9 (Bottom)
