Visitor Centre: Final show for Rea Garden Residency

12Sep10

Visitor Centre opens on Friday 17th September, 6pm – 9pm, and is open daily, 11am to 4pm from Saturday 18th September to Sunday 3rd October. The show is the culmination of my 10 week residency at The Rea Garden, a former industrial site in Birmingham. It features a sound installation, excavations and found objects and an […]

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Tags: Environmental Sound, Event, Excavation, Exhibition, Field Recording, Found Objects, Sound, Sound Sculpture

Open Sound Group event, first day

20Aug10

Info on the first day of the first Open Sound Group collaborative workshop can be found here. Seems silly to repost the same information, so below are a couple of photos of some of the recording experiments and techniques I used today.

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Tags: Collaboration, Contact Mics, Environmental Sound, Excavation, Field Recording, Local Artists, Recording

Recording spade sounds with contact mics

27Jul10

This week I’ve been making some more recordings, including recording the sound of the spade as I’m digging using contact mics. The contact mics are attached to the spade with silver gaffer tape. This first set up worked ok at first but the jolting of the digging movements caused problems with the recorder, so I […]

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Tags: Contact Mics, Excavation, Field Recording, Recording, Sound

Reflective writing on The Rea Garden residency so far

19Jul10

Mapping the Site A way to get to know the site. A feel for its dimensions. Noticing features (walls, gate). Starting to feel serious, working on the site. Taking the site seriously. Exploration and discovery. Mapping uncharted territory. Limitations imposed by equipment (short tape measure). Some parts are difficult to access due to plants. Questions of […]

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Tags: Broken Records, Excavation, Found Objects, Mapping, Reflective Writing

Buried car radio

16Jul10

Last week on site I found a Nissan car radio buried in the top few centimetres of topsoil, as I was looking for pieces of broken records. Below are a couple of images I took today which I might or might not use as publicity shots.

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Tags: Excavation, Found Objects, Photographs, Rusted Metal

Week four: Experiments with speakers, cymbals and a scanner

16Jul10

Today I’ve been experimenting, trying out some ideas I’d already planned and playing with objects in the space. First I tested out an idea based on the technique used in Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room, as also used by Jacob Kirkegaard in his recordings at Chernobyl. Basic idea was to record the […]

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Tags: Contact Mics, Environmental Sound, Excavation, Field Recording, Local Artists, Photographs, Recording, Rusted Metal, Scan, Sculpture, Sound

Archaeological excavations: process photos

14Jul10

Some images taken by Paul Newman of my process as I scour the site for pieces of broken shellac records. The strings on the poles are really a safety feature to stop people falling down the holes. The trays I’m using are photographic darkroom trays, weighed down with bricks to stop them being blown away. […]

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Tags: Broken Records, Excavation, Found Objects, Photographs, Rusted Metal, Shellac

Week 2: Test excavations, broken record pieces and brickwork

03Jul10

Second week on site, this time I was in Birmingham for two days.  For the first day I did lost of test excavations looking for possible sites where there might be more broken record pieces. 12:00 Arrived on site after struggling to find a parking space. Immediately found some broken record pieces in a new area, on the surface […]

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Tags: Broken Records, Excavation, Photographs, Rusted Metal, Shellac

Week 1: Mapping the site, first test excavation and photographs

29Jun10

The first day of the residency was a gloriously sunny Friday. After meeting with Arlene and Leon and some brief discussion of the schedule (and a bacon butty) I started mapping the site. Below is a sketch plan showing all the appropriate measurements, my failed attempt at trying to use Pythagoras’  theorem to calculate whether one of the corners was […]

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Tags: Diagram, Excavation, Found Objects, Mapping, Photographs, Rusted Metal, Slate