Inhabit Sounds

SoundFjord

On Sunday afternoon I went on the Into the Wild: Urban-Rural Soundwalk guided by Soundfjord’s Helen Frosi and Andy Riley  in Tottenham, North London. The walk was a chance for anyone who is interested in actively listening/recording, and talking about urban and rural sounds to engage with the sonic dichotomy of known or unknown Tottenham.

I could only partake in the first half of the walk where participants strolled along different streets actively listening to the sounds of urban Tottenham before being guided through the rural Tottenham Marshes.

Setting off from Lawrence Rd was a sonic experience in itself. A road that was once thriving with the sound of manufacturing is presently occupied by Ghanian worshipers – whose religious congregations on Sundays running nearly the length of the road in the formerly industrial and manufacturing buildings fill the wide street with sounds of song and music. The result of the buildings change of use actually results in a road thats sonic past connects with its present as a street where there was and still is a bold and vivid soundscape that envelops the passer-by.

At the end of Lawrence Rd we turned left and joined West Green Rd. The section of the street we walked along was lined on either side with multi-cultural independent businesses. The doors leading inside the shops and restuarants because of the hot and sunny weather were flung open, and the sound of different kinds of music were heard by those walking along the pavements. It struck me for the rest of the walk that mainly took in mostly residential streets how weather can make a usually quiet and unassuming view of building facades come alive. Windows were open, and front doors ajar to make the insides of houses and businesses cooler and more comfortable – meaning peoples individually chosen sounds and personal conversations poured on to the streets. Whereas if it had been a cold and rainy afternoon doors and windows would of been shut and streets would of been filled with less sonic variation. So I came to the conclusion that the sun and heat especially in those cities that aren’t accoustomed to many balmy afternoons make a sonic walk more appertizing.

Before I prematurely left the walk the 15 or so participants sat down in a local park and discussed our thoughts and reactions to our experience of active listening. As a result of the discussion I came to realise I am not as able to pick up and identify certain sounds in the myriad of an urban soundscape as others were. I realised that the reason for this was my attachment to recording sounds, and then listening to the recordings in a context where I can connect with what I hear consciously rather than try and immediately decipher what I hear in an everyday activity such as walking along a street where sounds are part of the unconscious sensory experience. It questions whether ‘found’ sound is a more powerful medium when transported and listened to in a context where it did not originate, or whether you can develop your hearing to be more acute. I think which ever view point you hold it is the right answer….

Sound map: the Caledonian Road

On a rainy Saturday in April, I set off with a group of 15 people, on an adventure up (down?) The Caledonian Road.

The walk was lead by broadcaster and oral historian Alan Dein. Over the course of 2 hours, and with the help of his trusty ghetto blaster, he managed to unveil the charm of this bustling 1.5 mile Islington road. We heard stories of Pentonville Prison, learned about the campaigners who saved Caledonian Road rail station from closure, and began to envisage the territorial boundaries felt by its residents.

You can follow our walk online

Requiem for Detroit?

This documentary was on TV a while ago, but I found myself raving about it (again) recently.

Watch this documentary. Even if only to see a tree growing out of a skyscraper, a house covered in polka dots, or a grand piano rotting away in a derelict hotel. This film charts the rise and fall of a great American city. It warns us of the dangers of city decline, while highlighting its new and exciting potentials.

V&A photography

Recently I went on a 3 day street photography course at the V&A. It was great.

Photographer Charlie Phillips gave us an insight into Europe in the 70s – through the eyes of a itinerant pap.

We were then unleashed onto the streets of Brixton, exploring the market and searching for colours and faces that stood out from the crowd. Here’s one of my snaps of the view from the railway station looking down into the street. I’m not sure why Argos caught my imagination, but it seemed strange that in the middle of such a bustling market area stood the garish turquoise of this chain store.

‘River Sounding’

Last Saturday afternoon I journeyed down and into part of the network of subterranean spaces of Somerset House usually sealed off from the public. The reason for the passage of accessibility through the Lightwells, and into the Coal Holes, and Deadhouse of this space is a sonic and visual installation by the sound artist Bill Fontana.

Fontana had over some months made many recordings within and along the River Thames, and transported the recorded and live sounds back into an environment that used to have a direct physical relationship with the river before the Embankment was built.

The meaning of the installation is to reconnect Somerset House with its watery past, but maybe more importantly to open up the sonic world of the Thames. The subterranean environment has become a living library of sound – a catalogue of the different and diverse sounds this iconic river makes.

The sunken outdoor passage that is the Lightwell has become a condensed passage of the River Thames. As you walk down the passage that the Coal Holes are dotted along and entrance to the Deadhouse runs off raised speakers broadcast sounds of the river. The sounds are blunt, powerful, subdued, eery, echoey, and fluid, making the walker aware of how the river is sonically and therefore physically diverse over the miles of land it carves through. The inclusion of sounds of chiming church bells made me aware of how the river’s shape has effected much of the built environment of London and the rhythmic movement of its people move to.

Some of the Coal Houses dotted along the Lightwell have been opened up. The interior walls are projected with abstract moving images that provide a visual representation of the watery sounds of the Thames. These rooms act as specific stops along the participants journey that reveal the different physical and sonic actions of the river. One of the holes is filled with the sound of water rushing and gurgling, that is visually represented by a projected image of vertical and horizontal columns which contain rapidly moving particles of light. I feel the various visual projections merge with the sounds providing the viewer with just a clue of the infrastructures bedded within the Thames.

The Deadhouse is filled with sounds of the Thames that as I walked down the internal passageway became more dramatic, and powerful – so much so that I felt I was inside the engine room of a submarine. Speakers rest on the top of pipe work that follow that passageway creating a sonic ultrasound of the power and movement of the river – detailing its particular flows and surges.

I really enjoyed the experience of Bill Fontana’s ‘River Sounding’. Installing sound not in a white cube but an environment with its own layers, textures, and temperature provided a strong and imaginative insight into a watery environment, and opened my ears to the banks, riverbed, and infrastructure of the pulsating River Thames.

Inhabit Sounds foray into Facebook

Inhabit Sounds now has its own Facebook Group. We have decided to make this leap into the social networking world to create a place where people can post photographs, links, write messages alongside Fran and I about urban environments.

We would love it to be a place that is used to link people and projects.

Free Range Festival

Inhabit Sounds is making a trip into the Leicestershire countryside on the bank holiday weekend of the 29th of May. You ask why is Inhabit Sounds making a trip into the English countryside….. well to be a part of the Free Range Festival. A new and fresh festival with an ethos of participation and collaboration.

Many individuals/ groups will be descending on a particular farm, spending the weekend putting on, delving into, and partaking in activities in the areas of Music, Arts, Outdoors, and Holistic.

Fran and I are going to be recording the many sounds of the Festival and bringing them back to the Big Smoke to create a soundscape, with the idea that both people who where there or not can listen and experience the Festival through its many (and I expect exuberant and pulsating) sounds. A soundscape that may make people reflect on their weekends experience, recollect fuzzy memories, or just want Free Range to appear again.

If you have already going to the Free Range Festival see you there, or if not tickets are still availabe and can be bought on the Festival’s website. Also the Free Range team are still on the look out for anyone who wants to contribute and put on an activity etc.

p.s. part of the ticket price will be going to a particular charity (info can be found on the Festivals website) and the rest will be going to putting on the festival, including all activities, and food and drink.

‘Mauerpark Berlin’ Documentary… what I’ve been doing this winter.

I think the snow in Berlin has melted.

Soon the summer will bring high spirits – simultaneously throngs of people will begin marking their space in ‘Mauerpark’ to enjoy the sun and the spectacle. I am fascinated with with this piece of urban green (although, it’s often less green and more brown as the grass gets worn down by constant use). I became so fascinated by the space that I made it the subject of my dissertation, and then still not sick of it, a short documentary was born.  So, this is what me and Sally have been crafting, have a peek at the trailer.

The full film will be available online, shortly.

The fabric of London

Bored of seeing the skyline of London as a black silhouette, I created this alternative version.

“Lost Sound”

On Thursday evening I found myself sitting in the amber lit Cafe Oto in Dalston waiting for John Smith’s film “Lost Sound” to commence. The evening was hosted by the RCA Curating Contemporary Art MA final year students as part of their graduate project. What follows in quotation marks is the students description of the film that was published in the handout.

“LOST SOUND documents fragments of discarded audio tape found on the streets of a small area of East London, combining the sound retrieved from each piece of tape with images of the place where it was found. The work explores the potential of chance, creating portraits of particular places by formal, narrative and musical connections between images and sounds linked by the random discovery of the tape samples.”

The cafe was humming with expectant voices and mummerings. I nestled myself into a seat on the second row, without knowing what to expect as I had not experienced John Smith’s work before.

I was engaged up until the last quarter of the film. My concentration waned as the structural composition  of the film (black screen with white writing stating e.g. street name etc – an audio fragment combined with a framed static shot(s) of specific street where tape was found – fades to black screen) was continually repeated. On reflection I think the rigid structure complimented the individual audio and visual studies, as each narrative of a street/place/balcony was an anthropological study in itself. You could experience one without seeing another. Reflecting the multi layered nature of even a small metropolitan area. A happening on one street may never occur to its neighbour.

There was one narrative study that especially caught the attention of my eyes and ears. A static framed shot of a puddle of water in a street gutter. The water continuously vibrated as the urban traffic rumbled by. The multiple frequencies and nuances of the audio which contained music fading in and out as vehicles passed was captured through the micro movement of the water. It represented to me how sound ripples through an environment, but is its most harsh at its origin. The puddle was contained in the gutter but through its micro reactions actively demonstrated an imagined or actual audio and visual life further down the same street.

My train of though brings me back to the tile of the film “Lost Sound”. The audio clips even though lost, were found, and this to me symbolise that what someone might hear in an instant is heard again, but has sonically evolved. For each set of ears there is always a different portrait.