Connecting Across Difference was an exciting collaboration between Drake Music and Furtherfield.org. The project brought together 3 schools from Tower Hamlets to compose and perform a piece of music. Working as the Music Technologist in conjunction with composers Kerry Andrew and Ed Farmer, alongside associate musicians Melanie Clifford, Anya Ustaszewski and Victoria Oruwari, the team created a piece that wove together traditional instrumentation, beatbox, singing and assistive music technologies. The final performance took place in the V&A Museum of Childhood with more than 40 participants spread over 3 floors!
For more detailed documentation please visit the Connecting Across Difference Blog which followed the progress of the project from start to finish!
Rebbecca Frankel asked me to create 15 minute composition to introduce her multi-sensory film screening ‘Celluloid Dreams’ at the Loop Festival 2008 in Brighton. Taking the John Water’s Smell-O-Vision films of the 80s as a starting point, it was an eclectic collection of short films with sensory surprises! The composition I created can be listen to below. Further to this, I also created quadrophonic sound installation around a fabric tunnel on the entrance to the cinema.
‘Hypnic Jerk 4′ was an exercise in sleep disruption and was exhibited as part of ‘Schadenfreuding’ in The Crypt (St GilesChurch, Camberwell Church Street, SE5) between the 17th & 20th of June 2008 as part of Camberwell Arts Week.
3 x 60 minute cassettes, cassette player (60 minute improvised loop), magnetic tape, foam, card & fairy lights.
The Mirrorphone was created for a school in Ayrshire and funded by NESTA under Professor Nigel Osbourne’s research into building a ‘Universal Instrument’. It is a fully programmable, expressive musical instrument that is played by moving in front of a webcamera. The user is positioned in front of a reflected image of themself and can trigger both melodies and chords by moving a user defined tracked point into specific areas of the screen. The nature of the software means it can be calibrated to work with any range of motion - from small movements of the eyes, to full bodied waving gestures.
Klippus was a clip show comprising of a wide selection of different animations both long and short, created by Hanae Seida. There were 3 episodes in total - all of which required sound design, foley recording, adr, composition and also some audio restoration. The most important factor in my mind was to great as much variety as possible in the sounds for different clips, so as to enhance the diversity of the animation. I completed the sound design for each clip separately in Logic Pro as I received them, and then I resequenced all the audio to fit the final structure of each episode providing additional sounds where necessary. The foley sounds were either from my own library or recorded specially for the project. I also composed all the music in Logic Pro (with the exception of the Klippus Intro theme which was restored from recordings from Hanae). Finally, the dialogue was restored from recordings given to me by Hanae, either captured directly from the camera or via a separate microphone - although a couple of lines were added later using adr techniques. All in all the project was a great opportunity to work through all stages of foley recording, restoration, composition and sound design.
Sound Designer & Film Maker Pablo D. Herrera came to me asking for help to build an interactive program to accompany his 3 experimental short films entitled ‘Saukiness’. The idea we settled on was to create a simple installation that contained all the content of the film, but allowed the viewer to interact directly with it. However the project was due to be installed in a remote location, and had to be able to run on a potentially low spec. machine (with a built in a mic!). Furthermore, this meant it had to run on a self-contained DVD to allow storage of all the high quality dv content. Bearing this in mind I designed a simple program that allows the user to move between clips from all three parts of the film by making clapping (or making a similar loud, abrupt noise) - one clap plays clips from the first part of the film, two claps the second, and three claps the final part. The program runs ‘out of the box’, automatically monitoring the average noise of the space it is in and any noise above the threshold level will trigger a reaction.
Performance & Installation in the Glasshouses of The Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh
“Suppose Life… was a visual and musical journey through both a physical space and the experiences of life. Working with original material, traditional arrangements and poems by EE Cummings, composer Dee Isaacs, director Roxana Pope and designer Iulian Furtuna developed Suppose Life as a site specific piece for performance in the glasshouses of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, between 8-11th March 2006.
Produced by Music in the Community at the University of Edinburgh, MSc Sound Designers Jules Rawlinson and Nick Wilsdon were invited to participate in Suppose Life, the objective of which was to develop output for public display through collaboration and participation in a multidisciplinary environment, using prior knowledge and developing new skills and tools.”
Further documentation of the Suppose Life project can be found HERE
Performance piece as part of Dialogues Festival, Edinburgh, March 2006.
This piece was an attempt to move away from the computer as a primary interface and move towards a more natural means of sound generation and performance. Following some previous experiments of recording underwater sounds with a submerged dynamic microphone wrapped in a condom, came the idea of passing sound through water as if it were an effects unit. Using some small portable speakers also inserted into condoms, I began experimenting with generating sound and passing it through water and sampling it through a submerged microphone. After recording a library of sounds both through the water and using a Korg MS2000 and tape effects, some musical sketches were composed. Using these sketches I built a patch for performance in MaxMSP that allowed for control of both direct ‘dry’ sound, and the ‘wet’ sound passed through the water. The resulting soundscape piece was performed live (after some extensive EQ fiddling and feedback catching with tireless sound-hero Alex Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes) whilst manipulating the water by stirring, splashing and blowing bubbles.
‘What is this shit?’, mixed media installation, Next Wave Festival.
Artist Ella Barclay approached me with a view to helping her create a sonic element to Warren - an installation she was curating as part of the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne, Australia. After several brainstorming sessions we decided that we wanted to create a sonic environment that was continually evolving, whilst simultaneously providing a claustrophobic soundscape to the maze of salvaged junk constructed in the space. Using some hacked USB dancemats I set about building an interface with multiple sensors to trigger sounds which could be hidden from the view of the public. Using MaxMSP I developed a standalone application (the entire installation was constructed on an automatically booting Mac Mini for ease of installation) that would hold multiple sound banks and effects units to be triggered by the movements of visitors to the space. The sonic content itself came from a lengthy & experimental studio session, sounds from my own library, and some gabba tunes composed specifically for the project.
‘A Conference & Showcase for excellence in music outreach & creative education’
At the end of October 2006 I was contacted by composer/conference curator Stephen Deazley with a view to assisting Dr Martin Parker in a performance at his 3 day conference. I had some involvement in the project through my dissertation, and Stephen had seen some of the interfaces I had created so it was a great opportunity to get involved. Stephen’s idea was to compose a piece of music for his Brewhouse band and students from Braidburn Special school in Edinburgh. I began attending early rehearsals where I worked with Martin to help familiarise the children with both the music and a variety of homemade interfaces. The final pieces were performed twice (at the North Edinburgh Arts Center & The Fruitmarket gallery, Glasgow) - with 5 children (Fiona, Helen, David, Jamie & Rico) using a set up of 4 laptops running MaxMSP and a whole assortment of Joysticks, USB Midicontrollers, Push-buttons, Matrix Controller, LDRs and much much more - alongside an 8 piece band (including a beautiful bell solo performed by Fiona using my Matrix Controller!)
