Gwair gwyrdd, gwyrdd o gartref (The green, green
grass of home) [2008]
Music for Libraries [2005]
Music for Open Plan Offices [2005]
Basic set [2005]
9PIN Data Collection Project [2004-5]
Columbia livia [2003]
One idea beautifully expressed [2003]
Pastoral [2003]
Salva me [2001]
Miss Prentice Meets Josef Albers at Francey's Easter Brunch
[2000]
Waldscenen [1999]
Sub rosa [1996]
Soundings [1995]
Gwair gwyrdd, gwyrdd o gartref
The green, green grass of home
Commissioned by SAFLE and Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru.
Installed at the 2008 National Eisteddfod, Pontcanna Fields, 1-8 August
2008.
Neither a composition nor sound piece, Gwair gwyrdd, gwyrdd o gartref
(The green green grass of home) is about ambiguity - the same thing meaning
different things to different people. “Are you thinking in Welsh or
English?” could be another title for this piece. The piece is a collection
of words that although spelled exactly the same in Welsh and English have
very different meanings in each language. The order in which they were
arranged suggested English usage (but then I am English), however
making the piece at the National Eisteddfod allowed other outcomes.
So for example the English word that is spelled 'afraid' means 'unnecessary'
in Welsh ('ofnus' is the Welsh word for 'afraid'); 'does' means 'there isn't'
in Welsh ('gwneud' is the Welsh word for 'does'); 'cod' means 'code' in Welsh
('penfras' is the Welsh word for 'cod'); 'faint' means 'how much' in Welsh
('llewyg' is the Welsh word for 'does') and so on.
In this piece images are made in the grass by depriving it of sunlight (by
the use of pegged-down hardboard), and so reducing its production of chlorophyll.
When the hardboard is lifted (after about 2-3 weeks) the grass underneath
has either gone very pale green, or has gone altogether. I first encountered
this technique of grass printing in the work of Bruce Allan, and I am grateful
to him for his help and advice during the making of this work.
Music for Libraries
Commissioned by Kent County Council for Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope
Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope is a public building housing a Library, Art Gallery
and Museum (Clay Architects) in Sevenoaks, Kent. This multi-source
permanent sound installation features composed music for two ensembles:
viola, 2 cellos and double bass; and 3 alto flutes and bass flute.
This sound in held on CDs and played to a total of 10 speakers embedded in
the fabric the building. Due to the nature of the buildings use, the
sound in this work had to be very discreet. This determined the use
of very ‘rounded' and organic sounds (stringed instruments and very low flutes).
The location and embedding of speakers, equipment and cable routing
was developed in close consultation with the architect.
Music for Open Plan Offices
Commissioned by Arts Council England
In September 2004 Hywel Davies was appointed Lead Artist to work with
Niall McLaughlin Architects on the relocation of Arts Council England South
West to new offices in Exeter. His role was to identify and research
art intervention in the workplace. The staff were extensively consulted
about the nature of the interventions, and two principal themes emerged: that
the interventions should not be static, rather they should change over time;
and that the intervention should, in some way, ‘bring the outside insiide'.
The resulting three interventions are: wall works hung in the workplace
drawn from the Arts Council Collection and curated by the staff working in
the office (changing every 6 months); manipulated weather radar data shown
on a 4m x 3m rear-projected screen in the reception area, supplied on a live
feed by the Met Office and changing every 15 minutes throughout the day; and
a new sonic work for the Arts Council of England phone system to be launched
in Autumn 2005. Music for Open Plan Offices , the work for
the phone system, entailed the composition of 55 ringtones for desktop phones.
Staff select their own ringtones as individuals or as team, and the
piece is ‘played' as phone calls come through to a phone. With many
phone calls overlapping in open plan offices, the result is am aleatoric work
(a work of controlled chance) on a grand scale, in which the performers (people
telephoning Arts Council England) are mostly unaware of their role as performers.
Basic set [2005]
Group show - Day-to-day Data
As part of this touring exhibition (from Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham),
I contributed a sonic installation while the show was at the Aspex Gallery,
Portsmouth (September 2005). Basic Set is one of a number
of installations that have grown out of a 9PIN Data Collection commission
from SCAN - collecting the same repertoire of sounds in each SCAN
location. The principal piece to come out of 9PIN, awaiting staging
by SCAN, involves the extended abstraction of data beyond the found sound.
Each location where water sounds were collected was carefully noted
on OS maps, and so acquiring a six-figure grid reference. From this
data, new musical data (a pitch row) was derived by the methodology of total
serialism. In the large-scale piece the music that is derived from
each location is played on a different instrument. This isn't the way I normally
compose (and therefore doesn't sound like my work!) and in order to imprint
my creative personality on what is simply data, a further manipulation took
place. Basic Set is, if you like, an overture to this larger
piece. It presents water sounds collected at each location superimposed
with the pitch material in its most basic form derived from the grid reference
of that particular recording location.
9PIN Data Collection Project [2004-5]
SCAN (Southern Collaborative Artists Network) The 9PIN data
collection project was part of the first round of commissions from SCAN (Southern
Collaborative Artists Network). The project involved the collection
of found audio material from nine locations across the south of England (Sway,
Southampton, Banbury, Milton Keynes, Newbury, Newport (Isle of Wight), Salisbury,
Poole, Portsmouth). In each location the same repertoire of material
was collected, ranging from train stations, clocks and water to counting games
and humming. This raw audio data forms part of an archive with SCAN.
Pieces have already been made from this data and have been shown at Quay Arts
Centre, Isle of Wight (February 2005) and Aspex Gallery (April 2005).
Columbia Livia [2003]
This work is a partial restaging of Pastoral
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station , London, November 2003 (SPNM
60th Anniversary)/ Dokkhuset Trondheim Norway (fri-resonans Festival
2006)/ i-DAT- Plymouth (Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival
2007)
One idea beautifully expressed [2003]
Article
on sound installations published in New Notes.
Pastoral [2003]
New Greenham Arts, Newbury,
Berkshire, April-May 2003
Commissioned by New Greenham Arts
Pastoral was an installation that resulted from a period as
Artist in Residence at New Greenham Arts. The sonic installation was
shown in the former control tower of the former USAF airbase at Greenham Common.
The installation, over three floors, reflected on the unsettling nature of
Greenham Common's past (the airbase that stored nuclear cruise missiles and
was the focus for the British nuclear disarmament movement), and the prospects
for its future (being returned to common land and ancient commoners' rights
restored). It featured interviews with commoners, the sound of people
sleeping and original music performed by local amateur music makers.
The interviews with comers were installed in the room in the control tower
that overlooks the runway. This was to emphasise that although there
is a very strong taste from recent history (and this is inescapable by the
nature of the building) the site has a 1000-year-old and continuing history.
The sound of people sleeping was used in the upper control room, because
during the height of the protests against cruise missiles both pro- and anti-nuclear
campaigners used the phrase ‘so we can sleep safely in our beds' to emphasise
their point.
Salva me [2001]
2001 Bath International Music
Festival / Year of the Artist Residency
Commissioned by Bath Festivals Trust
Salva me was a sonic installation installed at two sites during the 2001
Bath International Festival. The first location was Walcot Reclamation
Yard, a retail business specialising in selling reclaimed architectural fabric
from demolished buildings. The second location was the Walcot Mortuary
Chapel, a small funeral chapel that is no longer in use. Salva me
used the sounds of pigeons collected in Bath that were manipulated and
then played back at random (Walcot Mortuary Chapel), and music composed for
local amateur music makers (Walcot Reclamation) . The sound
of pigeons was used for two reasons: first because of their abundancy at the
site; and second because the pigeon and/or dove has a symbolic significance
across a number of cultures as the creature that takes or helps the soul from
one world to the next.
Miss Prentice Meets Josef Albers at Francey's Easter Brunch [2000]
Society for the Promotion of New Music
/ Tate Gallery, Liverpool
This installation was made for an SPNM event at the Liverpool Tate, and was
installed in a gallery showing an exhibition of works by American abstractionists.
It featured Rhodes Suitcase Piano, and the reciting of a text by Josef Albers
- Calm down, what happens, happens mostly without you . Restagings:
Danscenen, Copenhagen (2003); the launch of SCAN (Southampton City Art Gallery,
2004); Dokkhuset , Trondheim, Norway (2006).
Waldscenen [1999]
ArtSway, Sway, Hampshire
Waldscenen was commissioned by ArtSway as part of their ‘The World
of Our Landscape' series. The work looked at attitudes towards the countryside
and took as its starting point Schumann's Romantic view of the forest found
in Waldscenen Op.52). The work consisted of four rooms: the
first ( Eintritt/Freundliche/Abschied [Entrance/Pleasing Landscape/Farewell]
) was hung with 2m long green tree protection tubes (Tuley Tubes) that
gave the impression of an ersatz forest - 16 of these tubes contained
speakers that played sound and interviews collected in the New Forest; the
next ( Jäger auf der Lauer/Jagdlied [Hunter in Ambush/Hunting Song] )
was a room in total darkness whose floor was covered with leaf mould and leaves
to give the impression of the forest at night - there was newly composed choral
music playing very quietly in this room; the next room ( Vogel als Prophet
[Bird as Prophet] ) was a living room decorated with wallpaper
and furnishings that made use of woodland motifs - playing from a radio in
this room was a fake radio station with newly composed and recorded jazz tunes
based on the original Schumann; the final room ( Einsame Blumen/Verrufene
Stelle [Solitary Flowers/Ill-renowned Locality] ) was painted yellow
and featured new music written for cimbalom and ambient sound recorded close
to Chernobyl - this room also contained dried flowers collected in the same
location.
Sub Rosa [1996]
f-stop gallery, Bath
Re-staging of the sonic elements of Soundings (see below)
Soundings [1995]
Society for the Promotion
of New Music / Bath International
Music Festival
Soundings was a collaborative work with artists Russell Mills and
Iain Walton. The location for Soundings was a disused bonded
warehouse below what was Green Park Station in Bath. This space contained
38 chambers, approximately 2.5m square and one long central corridor.
The piece reflected the origins of the city of Bath as a place to come for
cleansing and healing. The sound installed here featured the super-low
bass voice of Adrian Hutton and music written for medieval harp and the organ
of Bath Abbey.