Sounding Cobh

Location

Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh. 4-25 May 2016.

Description

This residency at the Sirius Arts Centre manifest itself as a process blog which you should visit for full details.

On the final evening, 25 May, a public performance/exhibition included field recordings, video, and other elements.

Thesis

What is “place” and how is it constituted? Each place we encounter is formed through an active process that integrates social and topological constraints with our perceptual apparatus and embodied experience. My practice is based on exploring these ideas by way of the “sounding”, a word that emphasises the active role of the acoustic in cross-modal phenomenology. We can sound a street by walking. We can sound a room by breathing. We can sound out a person through conversation.

My method requires immersing myself in a place – its history, social milieu, physicality, etc. – through durational activities such as close listening and walks/talks with local people. Perhaps more important than the media I gather (field recordings, photographs, written notes, etc.) are the experience and memory patterns formed in myself and other participants. Place is created as it is experienced.

Each place I investigate expresses itself differently through my work, which has included electroacoustic composition, live improvisation, installations and interventions, photography series, live readings, and non-narrative film. These results are only as valuable as the process of their creation. My role is to express my embedded situation within this matrix.

See Also

The site-specific composition “Three foghorns” was premiered at this residency.

The source material for the performance “Dust on my hands” was recorded during this residency.

Thanks

Thanks to the Sirius Arts Centre and Miranda Driscoll for facilitating my work through the residency programme.