Unintimacy - Friday 26th April - 7pm-12am - The NewBridge Project

Unintimacy

Friday 26th April 2019

7pm-12am

The NewBridge Project

Carliol House, Market Street East, Newcastle, NE1 6NE

The launch event of the latest series of podcasts about collaboration curated by Caitlin Jean Merrett King. Episode 1 features an audio work by marginendeavour, collaborative duo David Foggo and Helen Shaddock

Join us in the foyer of Carliol House for a night of performance, film and music which has been co-produced by various artist through collaboration. These collaborations are made up of partners, friends, lovers and family, formed through both closeness and distance, admiration and mimesis, love and care, desire and lack.

Unintimacy has been co-curated by artists Caitlin Merrett King and Grace Denton. The duo will kick off the evenings events by presenting new experimental performance works made together but remotely between Glasgow, and Newcastle. The event will feature films by Harriet Plewis & Rhodri Davies | Cherry Styles & Laura Robinson | Competition & Sophie Soobramanien | Sophie Chapman & Kerri Jeffris | Alex Sarkisian & Bahar Yürükoğlu | McGilvary/White | Yeah You | Georgia Lucas-Going.

Following the screenings local radge pop band GGAllan Partridge and, NBP house DJs You F***in Wot will play a collaborative DJ set. Dancing is widely encouraged!

Opening of Great Exhibition of the North

Friday was the official opening of Great Exhibition of the North and Newcastle and Gateshead were bustling with people enjoying the sunshine and curious about what the festival has in store.

I was at the media call in the morning, and got a sneak preview of the UK's largest water sculpture in action.

Later that night the water sculptures came alive again accompanied by music, poetry, drones, lighting and fireworks.

The Drone Ensemble perform in TUSK at The Sage

A few photos from an amazing event - more to come later!

Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at V & A Museum

I have my Dad to thank for my love of the music of Pink Floyd. As a child I was introduced to a wide range of music, including Mike and the Mechanics, David Bowie, The Beautiful South, UB40, The Police, Eurythmics, Prefab Sprout, REM, and Fairport Convention. I can't say that I enjoyed all of his music, but I am grateful to him for bringing me up with such an eclectic mix of sounds. 

It is as I have grown older that I have been able to appreciate the lyrics of Pink Floyd for what they are. The story behind the band and the band members is an interesting one. There are only a few bands that are worth of such an extensive exhibition and, as the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A Museum showed, if the story is a good one, then an amazing exhibition can follow.

The Pink Floyd exhibition at the V&A Museum is full of material from artwork, posters, memorabilia, instruments, props, set designs, album designs, interviews with the musicians, song lyrics, videos and of course, plenty of music.

The exhibition is ordered chronologically, taking you through the history of the band, and focusing on some of the important aspects and influences. The psychedelic beginnings, politics, their use of lighting, circular screens and set design are all covered in the material in the exhibition.

The band embraced Roger Walters idea of the everyday problems of modern life, and made Dark Side of the Moon to address such issues as money, death, violence and madness. 

I was overwhelmed by the wealth of material that was included in the exhibition, and I spent over 3 hours enjoying what was on offer.

The many video interviews provide unique insights into things that happened behind the scenes. The story of the escaping inflatable pig is one that will always amuse me!

Even with all the mod cons of present day, the visuals they were producing for their shows years ago are top notch. Going to one of their concerts was a feast for the eyes and ears, and this certainly is the case for the exhibition as a whole.

Although the fee is rather high in terms of exhibition entry prices, I feel that given the amount of material and high tech equipment included in the show, it is understandable why that kind of price is required to make it possible. It is, in my opinion, money well spent.

The final room in the exhibition is a surround sound and visual delight. It is as though you are at one of the concerts.

I can only urge people to go to this exhibition. It is one of the most powerful museum exhibits I have ever experienced, and, although I think it helps that I am a Pink Floyd music fan, there are plenty of things to interest anyone not necessarily a fan of their music.

Colin Stetson at MIF as part of Dark Matter, curated by Mary Anne Hobbs

I am a regular BBC Radio 6 Music listener, and one of my favourite DJs is Mary Anne Hobbs, who hosts a morning programme every Saturday and Sunday as well as the Thursday edition of 6 Music Recommends. It was a few months ago I that first heard Mary Anne Hobbs play the music of the American saxophonist and multireedist, Colin Stetson.

"Over the years Stetson has worked extensively live and in studio with a wide range of bands and musicians including Tom Waits, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, TV On The Radio, Feist, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Bill Laswell, Evan Parker, The Chemical Brothers, Animal Collective, Hamid Drake, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Angelique Kidjo, Fink, and David Gilmore. Meanwhile he has developed an utterly unique voice as a soloist, principally on saxophones and clarinets, his intense technical prowess matched by his exhilarating and emotionally gripping skills as a songwriter.

Stetson’ s astounding physical engagement with his instruments (chiefly bass and alto saxophones) produces emotionally rich and polyphonic compositions that transcend expectations of what solo horn playing can sound like. 

Stetson is equally at home in the avant jazz tradition of players who have pushed the boundaries of the instrument through circular breathing, embouchure, etc. (i.e. Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson) and at the nexus of noise/drone/minimalist music that encompasses genres like dark metal, post-rock and contemporary electronics (i.e. Tim Hecker, Ben Frost – both of whom have mixed or remixed Stetson recordings)."

http://www.colinstetson.com/bio-1/

As part of the Manchester International Festival, Mary Anne Hobbs curated Dark Matter, "eight immersive shows from pioneering national, international and Manchester-based musicians." I was very fortunate that my visit to Manchester coincided with Colin Stetson's Dark Matter gig.

It was like nothing I have ever experienced before. The sounds produced felt like they were coming from an unearthly being, and Stetson has a way of making it seem like the instruments are part of his own anatomy. Using specialist circular breathing, he is able to sustain notes for a long period of time. I was really close to the front of the stage and was entranced by the strength it took just to hold the instruments, let alone play them in such an intense and prolonged fashion.

I would urge anyone who is on board for a totally unique sonic experience to check out Colin Stetson play live - it is something very special. But choose who you go with carefully - it is not easy listening and will challenge the ears!

To listen to highlights from Dark Matter at Manchester International Festival, including live tracks from Kojey Radical, Holly Herndon, Colin Stetson, Paleman and The Haxan Cloak, click the link below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xkzh5

Conversation with Anjeline de Dios

Following a recent blog post about my research into voice hearing, a number of researchers and voice hearers have contacted me. One of these is Anjeline de Dios, a geographer and maker of music in/from the Philippines. This morning (UK time) we began our first Skype conversation, and what followed was an incredible 2 hours of sharing and developing ideas.




I'll attempt to provide a summary of some of the topics of conversation we covered.


Anjeline provided a brief introduction to the cultural context in the Philippines. With over 80% of the population being Catholic, singing is very popular. People are not scared to sing in public and choirs exist in institutions such as churches and schools, but also at work.


Anjeline's PhD centered around Filipino music practitioners who are entertainers on cruise ships. She spoke about how they are a kind of their own, viewed as unauthentic as they cover existing songs, and do not have a sense of affinity with other musicians.


What are the performers listening to?
What are they listening for?
What songs do they sing for different people?


We then discussed Anjeline's experience of singing and vocal meditation. She set out with the aim of bringing herself to the point of tears, and was trying to find out what she sounded like; embodying the music.


Does singing in a group change the emotional level that one can reach when singing alone?


Group singing and singing for an audience introduces room for self doubt, vanity and self inhibition. There is a threat that one will not sing as they would when they are alone, but group singing and singing for an audience allows for inter-subjectual listening, meaning that the singer is in conversation with others and can find out what other people hear.


We acknowledged the human tendency to take on board the bad things we hear more than the complements we receive, and how this is a survival tactic.


I spoke about my difficulty at focusing on one conversation at once when in a situation with lots of conversations happening, and how I am most able to concentrate on my inner voice when I am walking. Anjeline recognised that I am responsive to external stimuli, and spoke of the modern trend to multi-task.


Our conversation moved onto the inner critic: the internal voice that tries to infiltrate one's thoughts with negativity. You are not good enough, your actions are not good enough, the inner critic attempts to prevent you from doing things and be less confident. We recognise that the inner critic is frustrating and it takes a lot of effort to challenge the thoughts, but that there is some purpose to the inner critic. It drives us to better ourselves.


I introduced my experience of the presence of a creative critic in addition to an inner critic. Whereas the inner critic tends to focus on the person as a whole, the creative critic is critical of what I am creating artistically. It tries to prevent me from continuing pursuing ideas and belittles what I do.


I spoke about my recent experience of contacting my inner child, and the development of an ability to identify with my different selves, accept the different selves and work with the different selves in a way to make my mental health as positive and stable as possible. This has taken years, and is still very much in the process of developing. It is a skill that can be learned and practiced.


We ended with a discussion about the relationship between creative individuals, an inner critic and a creative critic in relation to experience, in particular education.


Is the creative critic a development of the inner critic?
Do creative people turn to creativity as a way of dealing with their inner critics?
Are creative people more able to tune into their inner critics because of their creative education?
What does this mean for education in the creative fields?


I am really excited about continuing these discussions with Anjeline, and collaborating in some form or other.


To find out more about Anjeline's music and research, please visit her website


http://anjeline.ph/

My work featured on the Listening Booth

Today is the launch of my audio track 'Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger' on the Listening Booth.

http://thelisteningbooth.co.uk/latest-submission/

It is available for free streaming and downloading so you can listen to it anytime and anywhere!

It will remain on the Listening Booth from today.

While you are there, check out some of the other tracks by other artists/musicians/audio folk!

Drone ensemble

I've joined the Drone ensemble, a newly formed experimental sound group that make and perform extraordinary instruments that hum and wheeze, grunt and bark, shimmer and cascade. 

The group consists of a mixture of artists and musicians, but no experience of playing a musical instrument is necessary. 

We will meet every Monday evening and create instruments that make sound which we will then play.



I began by looking at some of the instruments that Joe has already made. He showed us a wonderful range of what looked and sounded like some form of steel drum. Another percussion instrument had been made by cutting a gas cylinder in half and making 4 tongues of different sizes on each half of the cylinder. The sound produced varied depending on the length of the tongue.



We then began making a kind of bagpipe/flute instrument using household pipes and inflatable yoga balls. Getting the mouthpiece right was rather difficult, and mine did not make much of sound, but as a team we managed to make a couple of organs, each with 4 pipes making 4 different notes.

On Friday 4th March we will be playing our first concert to an audience. A number of artists videos will be played alongside the improvised sound piece.

Please come along to the XL Gallery in the Fine Art Building, Newcastle University at 7pm on Friday 4th March for an exciting audiovisual experience.

Sound recording in a proper studio!

I've recently been doing some vocal recording and I've been learning how to use an audio editing programme. It's been hard to find anywhere in the Fine Art building that is quiet enough for recording, and so I booked to use a sound room in the music department at the University. I expected to simply get a quiet booth, but was surprised to find out that it was a proper recording studio with one room which contained the microphones and an adjacent room separated by a glass window which contained the computer recording equipment. 

The wonderful Dave even helped provide some technical support! It was a rather surreal experience, but once I adapted to the situation, the recording went well and I am hopeful that I have some good quality footage to edit. 

Comforting words from Martin Creed

In this fascinating interview, Martin Creed talks to Kim Hill about life, music and art.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/201773148/martin-creed-art-and-philosophy

A Third Exhibit - The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle - Saturday 16th May

A Third Exhibit

The Hatton Gallery

Saturday 16th May 2015

Exhibition runs until 21st May 2015

An experimental contingent-collaborative installation of light, planes, colour, depth and space by a group spanning the disciplines of Architecture, Fine Art and Music:

Ed Wainwright

Matthew Margetts

Sean Cotterill
Jack Lines

Rob Paton

Helen Shaddock 

Corbin Wood 

The particular focus of the exhibition is to rematerialise 'An Exhibit,' the immersive installation work made at the Hatton Gallery in 1957 by Victor Pasmore in collaboration with Richard Hamilton and Lawrence Alloway.

The installed iteration will be in constant flux – adapting to visitors, viewers, the artists, the gallery staff and curators.

The process of collaboration between people, materials, technology and space will be orchestrated in the Hatton Gallery over the course of Saturday 16th May, continuing until 11pm as part of The Late Shows

Susie Green artist talk

Tonight's postgraduate artist seminar was with Susie Green. In an essay about her practice, Susannah Thompson describes Susie as "a polymathic practitioner working across fine art, design and music". She spoke openly and honestly about not always knowing what she is doing, her desire at times to make the audience feel uneasy and her thoughts on selling her work.

The presentation or display of Susie's work is well-considered, leading us to discuss the links between presentation styles used by artists and the methods used in shops. The way in which someone navigates themselves through a gallery space is of importance to me, and I pay close attention to the space existing between works, relationships between pieces and the position of the viewer in relation to multiple elements. Similarly, visual merchandisers focus on how to direct the consumer through the shop, the positioning of key products in prime locations, and how to attract the viewer to promotions and selected items. 

http://susiegreen.co.uk