Category: Past Events

Sound Exhibition :

9 September 2022 Friday 5-8pm

10 & 11 September Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

Running Time : 12 minutes. Free Entry

This is one of the four exhibitions of work and artists selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 3 – an Open Call for pieces that are based on field recordings. We are pleased that this round of the Open Call is funded by the Arts Council England and the work was jointly selected between Project DIVFUSE and sound artist and tutor Jose Macabra.

Connemara Landscape (Wind Study) (2022)

Connemara Landscape uses the post-impressionist paintings of Belfast-born painter Paul Henry as a departure point for creating a ‘sonic landscape’. Focusing on the wind as its subject matter, the artwork is an attempt to collaborate with the weather, drawing on anthropologist Tim Ingold’s idea of ‘correspondences’ (where humans respond with sensitivity, care and judgement to other beings, matter and elements).

The work explores the idea of collaboration and correspondence by using a number of sound recording techniques that focus on ‘macro’ soundscapes, to ‘micro’ moments of resonance and musicality, created by objects and plants interacting with the wind. The work was created in March 2022, while on residency at Interface, Connemara, situated in the remote locale of the Inagh Valley.

False Detection (2019–21)

False Detection is composed of sound recordings from the electromagnetic spectrum. Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) exist beyond the threshold of human perception, yet envelop the environment around us, emanating from electronic devices such as cellphone towers and WiFi transmitters. The risks of EMFs are debated amongst different communities, with research suggesting that EMFs can have detrimental effects on some forms of wildlife.

For False Detection, the artist collected a series of audio recordings of EMFs and played them to a mobile phone app called BirdNet, which uses a machine learning algorithm to identify bird sounds in the user’s surrounding environment. By iteratively manipulating the sound recordings and letting the BirdNet app listen to them, the artist was able to ‘trick’ the app into thinking that the EMF sounds being played were being made by birds residing in the local area. In this sense, the artwork exposes the hidden architectures and processes of the algorithm; making it heard.

Sound Exhibition :

2 September 2022 Friday 5-8pm

3 & 4 September Saturday & Sunday 2:30 – 6:30pm

Running time : 28 minutes. Free Entry

This is one of the four exhibitions of work and artists selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 3 – an Open Call for pieces that are based on field recordings. We are pleased that this round of the Open Call is funded by the Arts Council England and the work was jointly selected between Project DIVFUSE and sound artist and tutor Jose Macabra.

Desert (2019) – from the album ’Sonance’, released on Linear Obsessional recordings

Natural radio in a desert that goes on forever
obsidian chimes under the earth
life waiting under the salt

Natural radio field recordings made in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada using a very low frequency receiver constructed by Stephen P McGreavy, and a self-created magnetic loop aerial. Additional studio recordings by Stephen Shiell: Obsidian needle chimes – mined in Nevada and well known for their musical quality.

Voice by Hannah White is inspired by the story of the fairy shrimps, whose eggs lie encased in the dry playa soil of alkali flats until the rains come, flooding the desert and prompting the eggs to hatch, grow and reproduce.

Crummock 2019 – from the album ‘Kyem’, released on Industrial Coast

At Crummock water, in the Lake District , a contact mic receives the breeze, vibrating harp strings. Omni-directional mics filter the drone of the wind through a chimney, and a hydrophone hears rushing water and a bell, struck and submerged.

Sound Exhibition :

26 August 2022 Friday 5-8pm

27 & 28 August Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

Running Time : 34 minutes. Free Entry

This is one of the four exhibitions of work and artists selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 3 – an Open Call for pieces that are based on field recordings. We are pleased that this round of the Open Call is funded by the Arts Council England and the work was jointly selected between Project DIVFUSE and sound artist and tutor Jose Macabra.

amongst the references there are ones to borders;

between the liquid & the frozen

the solid and the porous state of walls along a cattle run

and between narrative and the shape of language as a sounding object.

‘Working on this piece, during a year where plans were constantly being shifted, created pockets of time that seemed to drift between the day-to-day and a suspended sense of progression. With A layer of liquid water (2020/21) I attempt to explore the aesthetics of certain located sounds; the memories contained in recordings from trips to Oslo and through others which reference ideas of the static and the transitory (restriction and movement). I have an interest in words as sound, with their meanings more fluid, and this became an important, refreshing element of the piece. With many thanks to Jenny Berger Myhre and Line Elkjær for their readings of the texts. ‘ – Pheobe Riley Law