This sound installation was the outcome of Building Cultures of Sound, a series of four workshops led by composer Mia Windsor. Mia took participants through various exercises focusing on listening and reflecting to sounds of personal significance, how to record using personal or borrowed devices, and audio editing fundamentals in a digital audio workstation. While some participants were experienced with sound, many had never done this kind of sonic practice before and so the installation consisted of their first ever sound pieces! The collective kept in touch via a WhatsApp group and successfully built a sound community with interest in further practice and meetings. Each composer submitted their own programme notes which are available to read below.
Mia and Eddie co-curated two installations in Sovereign Design House - one for the Toast House Cafe which served to intervene in the busy public space and entice visitors down to the installation below in the Bath House Galleries, where the composers wanted to create a distraction free space for deep listening, in the spirit of the project approach overall.
Programme notes
Jacqueline Sharp
Profile
I work as a ‘Families and Children’s Support Worker’, managing comms and engagement projects, devise engagement activities for stakeholders, leading on the developed of our website and CRM system.
I feel like I’m exploring a new world, experiencing a language I’ve not heard before as ‘Building Cultures of Sound’ is such an abstract and alien concept to me. I am loving the lightness, and playfulness of the experience. I have enjoyed meeting and conversing with creative people.
To hear the tracks in full, access recordings in development or to let me know what you thought of the installation please visit www.sharpgraphics.co.uk
Jacqueline Sharp, Chore of Love/Ode to Chore
As one of five family members that use the cutlery, cups, plates, and pans in the ‘family home’, I often find myself frustrated with the lack of support I get from the other ‘users’. The frustration normally manifests around meal planning, scrunched up wet towels, washing up and the unfair division of labour.
However, creating the sound recording for this piece, brought smiles, laughter and joy into a space it was not normally found, at the ‘kitchen sink’. This emotional response influenced and flipped the direction I had anticipated to take the piece.
The process of the project and creative practice demonstrate how participatory arts benefits your wellbeing and mental health. How we can change the ‘story’ we tell ourselves, that we hear from the little ‘mind monkey’ and often niggling voice in our heads.
Jacqueline Sharp, Sitting in the Headmasters office l & Vl & Sitting in the small hall l & Vl
I work in an old school building built in the 1850’s, which is a heritage asset that serves the local and surrounding community. It has been a community centre for 40yrs and in 2022 was awarded, £2.51m for a once in a lifetime opportunity, to renovate a much-loved building in need of urgent structural repairs.
Through attending the Building Cultures of Sound, my mind was blown away when I heard Alvin Lucier’s, ‘I am sitting in a room.’ I was giddy/desperate to explore this concept and explore how to document the heritage of our old school building and capture the audio footprint before it is lost in the refurb.
Sitting in the Headmasters office l & Vl & Sitting in the small hall l & Vl is the beginning of this journey.
Adam Burntown, Pigeon Tremor Rituals
The initial sounds in Pigeon Tremor Rituals were taken from the recordings of earthquakes from around the earth over the past 40 years. Seismographs are used to take recordings of various types of ‘earth moving events’ which are usually so low in frequency that they are beyond our range of hearing. It is possible, however, to speed up this data so that we can hear these ordinarily imperceptible sound-scapes.
I wrote to over 100 seismic research stations to request the data of earthquakes from specific towns and cities that matched particular effects and filters I have been using in my work (also named after towns and cities). As I’m often interested in exploring physical space through sound, I spent the day in my studio recording the earthquakes as they were played throughout the building. At some point over the winter, some pigeons must have found their way into a cavity in the roof. They started to react to some, but not all, of the earthquake sounds; adding new layers of clicks, snaps and rumbles. I played through the tracks again and the pigeons reacted to the same earthquakes, but this time I recorded on a shotgun microphone, hoping to highlight the pigeon's routine reactions to the sonified tremors.
The four works that the pigeons have reacted to, and that I have contributed this sound-scape are:
Pigeon Tremor Rituals (Berlin)
Pigeon Tremor Rituals (Brooklyn)
Pigeon Tremor Rituals (Rome)
Pigeon Tremor Rituals (Tokyo)
The earthquake compositions that the pigeons did not react to were:
Los Angeles
Moscow
Munich
Paris
Prague
Valhalla
Vienna
Alison McIntyre, Water
I realised that many of my recordings were based around water, either out in nature or around the house – a babbling brook, my washing machine, cleaning a brush in a glass of water – so I collected them all together and began to play with the different lengths and frequencies of sound. I enjoyed the idea of a background swell, that had occasional surprising moments popping up out of it. I’d like to add some spoken word to it at some point, but that’s a development for the future, when I have a little more time. I’ve enjoyed getting my head around how Audacity works and playing with the different effects, despite not really knowing what all the numbers mean!
Atholl Ransome, Finding & Fettling
Finding
On Monday morning I woke up to the pretty horrific sounds of the pneumatics of the bin collection lorry - it sounded like a scream as something was obviously jamming it and scraping as it was working. Inspired by the workshop on Sunday, I grabbed my phone to record the sound. After I’d got the recording I went through my voice memos and picked a few other sounds I had captured over the last year and then dug out my stereo zoom recorder.
The next day I was working doing a session at a studio in Sheffield and I recorded the sounds of my journey, my walks to and from the train station around Huddersfield including going to the supermarket after the session and my train journeys there and back.
While at the studio the singer arrived with her 10 month old baby and we could hear the baby girl singing along to our horn lines in the headphones in the studio and she sounded so cute I asked if they minded me setting up my recorder so with their permission I left it running for twenty minutes and the various conversations, baby vocal noises and the sound of some of the session made up the majority of this piece.
Fettling
I tried to think of the sounds as three different spaces. The outdoor sounds that I collected walking around including the bin men and some wind chimes, air conditioning, drilling and bell sounds as one group. The train journey sounds were another group and the sounds from the studio were the third set.
I went through and chose the bits I liked best and then started to arrange, slightly randomly at first where I thought these sounds would work.
I then started the fettling process and that consisted first of all with eq’ing and fading the sounds. I then stretched and looped some sounds and fed them through different reverbs to group and give the different groups some cohesion.
I added some delay to some of the sounds and pitched some of the sounds to work better together and also just for fun in some cases.
The last thing I did was to take some of the studio audio - a snippet of the track we were recording parts on and I used Paul Stretch to make an ambient pad that runs underneath a large section of the piece.
This is my first composition not using any standard instruments and just using sound and I definitely have caught the bug and will be taking my stereo recorder everywhere from now on!
I really enjoyed the snapshot of a point in time and the creation of a virtual space comprising of lots of other spaces.
With thanks to Lauren Housley & The Northern Cowboys, Malcolm Strachan and Mia Windsor.
Sarah McLellan, 7.43
Three friends navigate life at 7.43pm on a Monday. Distracting thoughts circling in a mind. A comment on the millennial condition.
The creative process
I’d initially thought it would be interesting to record the same time, every day for a week. The time of 7.43pm popped into my head so I ran with it.
That week brought recordings of walking in the snow, figuring out had the spaghetti been cooked long enough, putting the kettle on, singing at choir and a video call between dear friends.
When I listened to it all back, I felt the video call was reflective of the conversations that other people may also be having between themselves as they circumvent life.
As someone who, like many others, sufferers from anxiety and the over-thinking that comes with it, the juxtaposition of a self-searching conversation layered over a very ordinary action of putting the kettle on, could represent the often swirling and distracting thoughts that may go round one’s head in the time it takes to make a cup of tea.
The end result being a comment on the life-affirming choices of women in their twenties and thirties and a somewhat personal account of a conversation between friends.
As the first time working with sound, the result is very DIY. Initial feedback was that people enjoyed its chaoticness, which if I’m being honest is quite reflective of my life in general. I look forward to listening back to it in many moons, with the helpful reminder - that most of the time - it all slots into place.
The experience
I’ve really enjoyed it. As mentioned previously, as someone who hasn’t worked with sound before, it was a great introduction and it really ignited my passion to continue to work on my creative endeavours.
This project has made it accessible for people from all walks of life to work with sound and the result from this project is a continual reminder as to why it’s so important that the arts are continued to be funded.
I’d like to thank Mia and Eddie for their help in the creation and running of the installation and look forward to seeing Cultures of Sound 2023 unfold.
Richard Lord, Travel Across JA to Nine-Night
This is a series of sounds recorded on our journey across Jamaica some years ago to attend the 9Nights celebration of a family member who had passed away. Featuring sounds as they occurred when we travelled through Santa Cruz, Junction and finally travelling up Plowden Hill. Along the way we pick up a car full of rum for Nine-Night
Nine-Night, also known as Dead Yard, is a funerary tradition practiced in the Caribbean. It is an extended wake that lasts for several days, with roots in African religious tradition. During this time, friends and family come together to the home of the deceased. They share their condolences and memories while singing hymns and eating food together.
In the old days, the nights were calm and reserved for the most part, but that tradition has changed with the times. Today, these gatherings resemble parties much more than they resemble wakes.
Clare Harford, A New Place
For me, this piece has the feeling of an unfathomable trek which disperses. It gives
way to something else. I hear sounds of human activity and nature clustering oddly;
there are landmarks floating in and out. It’s a new place.
All the sounds (except one) were recorded whilst I was on the move, walking and
then pausing from time to time. Some recordings were done in the centre of
Huddersfield: others walking by the river and through woods, going from Mirfield to
Overton. I recorded anything that caught my ear.
My favourite sound was some very insistent crunching through snow; during editing it
seemed to drive the other sounds forward. When the sounds were layered into co-
existence, they seemed to have their distinct identities emphasised. That surprised
me – and also the fact that they didn’t sound like any of the original places I visited.
This project was punchy and powerful: it brought me inspiration, practical skills and a
new way of listening.
