Sound Art Portfolio
For the best experience, please listen with headphones if you can.
SLIDESHOW - LIGHT NIGHT 2024
In collaboration with Department UK and historian and artist Clifford Stead I created a sound piece to sit alongside a carosel of never before seen images on a traditional slide projector of Leeds from 1960s to the 1990s.
I was inspired by the images along with my own experiences of growing up, living and working in Leeds. I collected recorded sounds around the city, from Butchers Row in Leeds Market to underwater recordings on the Water Taxi to construction workers' overheard conversations.
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I also threaded archive footage through the piece; distant chants of 'Marching On Together' heard miles away from Elland Road stadium, clips from a documentary about Leeds Markets and the theme from 70s TV show 'Queenies Castle' a sitcom set in the Quarry Hill flats, of which there were many photographs in the slideshow.
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I created a sonic journey around Leeds that morphed through times and spaces to connect with a wide audience. I experimented with effects in the editing process to sweep between time periods. I expanded, stretched and looped interesting sounds to enahnce and contrast with Clifford's slideshow images and to interweave past with present in a sonically engaging way.
Code Of Conduct
For HOP/SKIP/JUMP
Code Of Conduct was a piece devised for HOP/SKIP/JUMP, an artistic tour of St Aidan's Church on Roundhay Road curated by Live Art Bistro and The Institute for Crazy Dancing.
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I attended and recorded church services and recorded sounds from around the building. I then manipulated the recordings in the editing process and composed this 5 minute piece.
I performed the piece in the church baptistery with the audience looking away from me and out into the church. As the work played I used volume, bass, mid and treble to work with the resonating architecture of the building to enhance the sounds.
Dry Clean
For DOREMI Exhibition
This piece was made during the Doremi Residency in Barrow-in -Furness.
Dry Clean
Walking around Devonshire Dock Hall, listening and
making notes instead of using a listening device.
Feeling like I’m testing the line of authority. The sound
escaping over the walls. Recreating and reimagining
sounds. Thinking about sonar, submarines, echoes
and active vs passive listening.
The decision to listen could give away your position.
SLAPover, A SLAP Odyssey for York Mediale
A SLAP Odyssey was a multi-sensory voyage into the unknown. We asked audiences to enter with an open mind as they explored and interacted with the artwork formed for the SLAPover creative laboratory. This was an intensive week-long residency for collaboration, developing and devising new performances in partnership. Artists included myself, Aaron Howell, Ali Matthews, Minyung Im and Roderick Morgan, along with SLAP’s Sophie Unwin and Lydia Cottrell.
We guided audiences through our alternative visions for tomorrow through experimental performance, live art, installation and sound.
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In my 'surgeon of sound' role I would take audience's song requests and I'd perform live improvisations for each song, stretching, manipulating, exploring and tearing the song apart until it was reduced to white noise.
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These videos below show a trailer for the show and an insight into our process together as a team.
Between Waves with Archipelago
I was selected as an emerging female musician to take part in a project supported by Help Musicians UK called Between Waves. This project was run by North East based genre defying trio, Archipelago.
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For this project we collaborated over an intense two day period, writing an album's worth of new songs then performing them at Cobalt Studios on the end of the second day.
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This song, Snowplough 5AM is a live recording taken during the performance at Cobalt Studios and was the song we selected for the Between Waves album. This song has gone on to be played on radio stations across the world. We also performed this at Durham Jazz festival as a quartet.
To Lack A Place - South Square Gallery Thornton
As part of South Square Gallery's 'Of Real Worlds' exhibition to celebrate the 200th Birthday of Emily Bronte, I was commissioned to perform a one off improvised sound piece at the exhibition opening called 'To Lack A Place'. The exhibition was a celebration of her life and work.
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I walked the Bronte Way on my own over three days, taking field recordings as I went. Trudging through Bronte Country in all weathers, taking inspiration from the same surroundings that so inspired her work. I considered what it meant to be a woman walking alone and traversing a landscape, how free and connected to my body and nature I felt. I was inspired by how that feeling transcends time and that Emily Bronte would have felt herself whilst walking alone. When walking past Top Withens (part of the inspiration for Wuthering Heights) it was heavily raining, windy and extremely cold. I imagined Emily may have been caught up in weather like this. She captured the atmosphere through writing and I captured it through digital sound recording.
I then used these recordings at the Exhibition opening to perform two live half hour improvisations using my loop machine, kaoss pad, iPad and my own vocals. I wanted to take the audience on my journey and explore interesting moments I heard and felt whilst walking. I played with manipulating, stretching, looping and expanding the sounds. Moving between sound work and more rhythmic music, making beats out of dog barks and sheep bleats for example!
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Brighter Sound - Both Sides Now Residency and Performance
Close your eyes…take a slow deep breath in…focus on all the sounds within the space…
Listen…
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The soundcloud recording incorporates a 15 minute deep listening excercise that we asked the audience to take part in with us, the piece begins at 15 minutes in on the recording is around 45 minutes long.
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The live recording from the second Both Sides Now residency which saw a lineup of emerging artists explore left-field composition and the interactions between time, space and sound, directed by experimental classical composer and turntablist, Shiva Feshareki.
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This was a very intense and amazing week of getting to grips with deep listening improvisations as a group of 16 electronic musicians. We learnt about different philosophies of female pioneers in sound art, such as Delia Derbyshire, Pauline Oliveros and Daphne Oram. These teachings informed how we approached the work and the improvised performance.
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Produced and delivered by Brighter Sound. Recorded live at Leeds College of Music on Monday 12 March 2018 as the opener for Sounds Like THIS Festival.
Sunnybank Mills - Sound Portrait first draft
As part of my Developing Your Creative Practice (Arts Council) activity, I used Sunnybank Mills to experiement with my new microphones, voice over techniques and editing process and created a sound protrait of the building. This is a developing piece of work.
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Types of microphones used
- Hydrophone - The frog croaks from under the water in the Mill pond
- Electromagnetic Coil Pick Up - the lifts in the 1912 building
- Contact Mic - The deep sounds of the mechanism of the dobby loom, the metallic noises from the steel sculpture outside of the 1912 Building, the bubbling of the beer brewing tanks at Amity brew co
-Stereo mic - Mill Kitchen cafe ambient noise, general ambient noise around the mill
- Condenser mic - voiceover