Calling Calling – 2023

Posted on by

Photos/stills  from the documentary Jordan Martin

Calling Calling was an expanded vocal project taking place throughout 2023. A programme of public workshops and performances, and an artist development project exploring collaborative vocal ecologies through non-traditional voice and expanded vocal techniques. With special thanks to Sam Francis the project was developed out of, and run by, a group of Brunswick artists and the wider extended Brunswick community, who have come together through their shared interests in working experimentally with the voice.

https://vimeo.com/887349794 🎧

Documentary film of the project by Jordan Martin

Photos from the documentary Jordan Martin

An group of extended voice – vocal explorers came together to learn new approaches and skills from each other and from invited artists to learn a range of vocal techniques. To work towards creating a new collaborative performance.

Photos from the documentary Jordan Martin

The group have taken part in workshops with Alwynne Pritchard, Hannah Silva, followed by weekend residency led by Yas Clarke, Shirley Pegna and Jo Hellier at Arnolfini in early September to devise and develop a group performance for the event. Public workshops lead by members of the group in June 2023 offered opportunities for audiences to try out different vocal processes allowing all voices to be heard without needing to be a ‘singer.’

Photos from the documentary Jordan Martin

Sounding the Space – vocal workshop with Shirley Pegna

WORKSHOPS LEAD BY INVITED ARTISTS: Alwynne Pritchard, Hannah Silva and Phil Minton.

WORKSHOPS LEAD BY BRISTOL ARTISTS: Dali St Paul, Shirley Pegna, Tina Hitchens, Mr Hopkinson’s computer and Phil Owen.

THE ARNOLFINI PERFORMANCE EVENT: The Arnolfini Performance event performers :Sharon Gal, Nik Rawlings, Phil Minton – Ferral Choir, Dali St Paul and Wojciech Rusin, Calling Calling new collaborative ensemble vocal performance. Thanks to Phil Owen at the Arnolfini who championed the project.

THE CUBE CINEMA PERFORMANCE EVENT: the Cube Performance event performers: Maja S.k.Ratkje Maggie Nichols and Jo Helier and  Thanks to the Cube Cinema for collaborating with us.

Funded by West of England Visual Arts Alliance -WEVAA and Arts Council England and support from the Arnolfini.

Posters by Sam Francis

End

Rock Record Installation – Arnolfini 2022

Posted on by

Rock Record (phase 1)

Acetate records with rock embedded. Records pressed with seismic vibration – audible and in-audible. The embedded rocks sourced from a similar depth from where the sound was sourced. Disc created with Sonny Lee Lightfoot from Copper Sounds.

https://www.coppersounds.co.uk/copy-of-projects

Thanks to Bristol University / Brigstow Institute and SARU Oxford Brookes University. Special thanks to Dr Ophelia George for her support with picking out the seismic recordings from the data logger in the University.

Recorded onto the disc in the installation were these sounds played on three subwoofers and four mid-range speakers in the Arnolfini dark studio space.

The Arnolfini dark studio space

These were the sounds available to be heard:

Earthquake 7.4 – Sulawesi Island – Indonesia, 02°S 121°E_ / _2°S 121°E

7,595 miles from UK

Earthquake 7.9 – Ocean floor near Viti Levu Island – Fiji, 18.46°S / 179.26°E

9,959 miles from UK

Earthquake 6.7 – 50km SW of the Zakynthos Island – Greece, 37°48′N / 20°45′E

7,595 miles from UK

On the turntable is one of the acetate records playing while people listened and felt the vibration. They sat or lay down or walked around taking time in the space.

End

Earth Din – 2022

Posted on by

photo Will Pegna

Event at the warehouse Brislington Bristol with invited audience. Musicians Dominic Lash and Shirley Pegna. Film designer and editor Rod Maclachlan.

Watch here:

https://vimeo.com/812487212

Six subwoofers and four mid-range speakers were standing in an area of 40 square meters. We were particularly exploring the spatial element and if the piece would work in a large space, and if the audience could be mobile and would be willing to find different spaces within the sound. We aimed to create a film to give the impression of a possible future scale and breadth of the work.

photo Rod Maclachlan

Thanks to Alan Burgess and Matthew Olden for transport technical support plus Nick Spollin of Gathering Voices for the space and the audience for their feedback.

Photo Will Pegna

The Arnolfini event was commissioned by Bristol New Music and Arnolfini.

 Joining Dominic Lash and myself for the Arnolfini event was musician Angharad Davies and Louie Pegna. A mum and son collaboration, where Louie produced a large print for the installation.

Listen to exert here:https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/earth-din-impro

photos Caudia Pilsl

For this smaller space the audience remained static, and the three performers moved around the space responding to the surround sound arrangement.

Review from B247

“…The uncluttered field recordings created an unpredictable stimulus for Shirley’s cello with Dominic Lash on ‘bass violin’ and Angharad Davies’ violin. All seasoned improvisers, the trio’s sound vocabularies were as varied as the outbursts of static and unearthly wrenchings. With the players also continuously repositioning around the Arnolfini’s dimly lit Dark Studio…”

By Tony Benjamin  Tuesday May 10, 2022

https://www.bristol247.com/culture/music/review-bristol-new-music-festival-various-venues-2/

Here is some background to the recorded sound:

Ice Wind and Rock – Ytre Norskøya, Swalbard, 79°51,1′ N 011°37,9′ E

Space Weather – Hamnodden, Swalbard, 77°45,8′ N 014°30,6′ E

Glaciers Calving – Blomstrandbreen, Swalbard, 79°00,49′ N 012°10,29′ E

Inside Ice – Blomstrandbreen East, Swalbard, 79°00,13′ N 012°13,69′ E

Earthquake 7.4 – Sulawesi Island – Indonesia, 02°S 121°E

Earthquake 7.9 – Ocean floor near Viti Levu Island – Fiji, 18.46°S 179.26°E

Following my studies at Oxford Brookes University I have been working with data recordings collected during the Unsettled Planet project Bristol University Brigstow Institute and Earth Sciences Department. Sound waves audible and in audible, are a rich source of explorations and have instigated several works.

The recordings were picked up via seismometers placed in the Wills Tower from sources travelling through the ground ground from Greece (2,170 miles), Indonesia (7,306 miles), and Fiji, (9,827 miles), as well as sound from the 9 ton bronze alloy bell in the Wills Tower chiming for Armistice Day. Recordings played through a wooden sub woofer – 22” cone and coil. Sounds recorded via Nanometrics Trillium 120 P 3-component broadband seismometer along with a Taurus datalogger. [Thanks to Bristol University Department of Geophysics].

Additional recordings were made on The Arctic Circle – Artist & Scientist Residency Program, 2018. Pegna took a number of differently sensing microphones [thanks to SARU at Brookes University] including geophones and hydropnones that could listen into ice and rock as well as under the three-masted boat they were sailing. Electrical currents can be heard from naturally occurring sferics, picked up via a WR -3 ELF-VLF Handheld Radio receiver far above the top mast, and plucked from the Ionosphere 30 miles above the boat travelling up the north coast of Svalbard, Norway. https://shirleypegna.com/arctic-residency-aboard-the-antigua-winter-2018/

Working with these elemental sounds has inspired other collaborations and sister pieces: All Terrain Training which reflects the combined workings of mum and son artists Shirley Pegna and Will Pegna; where Will Pegna creates a Dojo like situation in the gallery space for physical contact and endurance to occur. 7 Dancers take it in turns to exert force against each other. Using physical and vocal signals the dancers maintain tension throughout the duration of the performance. The sound is mixed live at each performance.  The seismic recordings also inspired the concept for Rock Record, where an attempt to etch data recorded from a seismometer of earth activity into rock, which will have its own geological lifetime beyond our human span.

Photo Dominic Lash

End

Sunset – 2022

Posted on by

Photo Will Pegna

Watch here:https://www.instagram.com/reel/CYwGvn5J2ls/?utm_medium=copy_link

Will Pegna Director writes:

“When walking out I often notice how contact between couples shift between sunset hours- they would almost intertwine, unknowingly resulting in time- specific duets as they walked.”

Watch Sunset a new film series by dance artist Will Pegna wich explores and codifies these interactions by combining movement with subtle text.

Director @pgna

@olivehardy @izaacbrandt

DOP @maisass

Styling @stanlet_everest

Sound @shirley.pegna

End

Dealing With It – 2021

Posted on by

Photos Camila Greenwell

Sound for dance piece by choreographer Olive Hardy with dancers Bun Kobayashi and John Sawney. Performed at Lilian Baylis, Sadler Wells. Soundtrack is a mix of recordings from radio waves from pulsars.

Listen here:https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/dealing-with-it

Photos Camila Greenwell

Thanks to Dr Tim O’Brien and Stuart Lowe at Jodrell Bank Observatory for their recordings and information on the broadcast series Sounds of Space.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-62276833

end

Skumring  (Twilight)– 2021

Posted on by

watch here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqk2iVKI-hF/

Katy Connor wrote:  ‘Skumring’ (Twilight) 2021 – a short film made with sound artist Shirley Pegna[43” excerpt] 16mm film frotage and exposure to ice, snow, rock, fjord, glacier. Field recordings of underwater sea ice and hailstorms. Katy Connor and Shirley Pegna both spent three weeks on a remote residency, in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard during the month of October: a twilight time where the hours of daylight rapidly give way to the polar night.

We visited three years apart in 2015 and 2018 respectively. During this time global temperatures have soared while international leaders have ripped up prior agreements on climate change. Now world leaders gather in Glasgow for COP 26 we cant help but remember our experiences. Exposure to the effects of climate change, at such close proximity, leave lasting effects in the viscera, under the skin. When we look to nature and ourselves, remembering we are part of the eco system, we start to perceive processes that predate our existence.

A first draft of ‘Skumring’ was installed in Centre of Gravity Bristol (2020) and recently screened at  at    #SoundAround Kalingrad, Russia (2021) with #Beef Experimental and Expanded film.”https://www.katyconnor.net/

Photo Katy Connor

Installing the screen for the installation at Centre of Gravity Exhibition, Bristol.https://www.bestofbristol.co/listing/centre-of-gravity-exhibition/

End

All Terrain – a sonic diary in lockdown -2020

Posted on by

Recordings of the body through lockdown 2020 for the Sonic Arts Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. The pandemic knew no borders and people across the globe were united by our bodies susceptibility to catching the virus. Global coordinates and text is seen here:

https://sound-diaries.bandcamp.com/album/all-terrain

Confinement brought me the near at hand under the microscope. A focusing in on ‘skin’ instigated conversations with collaborators, animator Vicky Smith and sound artists Matt Davies, about recording under the skin.

The world of sound I recorded with in me was similar to the world of sound within all the people across the world dealing with the same unknown virus and threat. In All Terrain, texts describes their words and coordinates describe their whereabouts.

Thanks to Paul Whitty and Patrick Farmer at SARU at Oxford Brookes University for encouraging contact between artists and in this case sonic diary keeping.

End

SPLASH –   Extraordinary Bodies Circus – 2019

Posted on by

Splash!  was an immersive outdoor narrative show. In this performance the story follows Flo and her grandfather on a ‘shero’s journey’…… The work was created with a mixed ability company through circus, physical theatre, comedy and puppetry. The story unfolds in an interactive, sonic water world.

“ Lost in a magical watery world full of strange sea creatures, Flo learns to take risks, gain independence and become confident, until she finds her way back home.”

https://www.extraordinarybodies.org.uk/our-work/splash/

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/flo-at-the-waterside

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/seaside-hawaiian-style

The show was an outdoor daytime show, that couldn’t rely on lighting, or a theatre space protected from outside sounds. Instead, we created a rich and immersive world that combined spatial sound design that surrounded the audience. The interactive sets with puppets and circus equipment brought creative ways to tell the story of our main character, Flo.

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/storm-monster2

Creating the composed music and sound design with Michael Fergie, we devised a system where the speakers were incorporated in the set. Added to the sound on the speakers by the stage, the undersea rocks had speakers in them. Fergie constructed them so the audience could sit on the rocks and feel the vibration as well as hear the sound. As a mixed ability audience was especially invited, we aimed to give an experience to those with a different perception of the event.

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/flos-underwater-acro-dance

It was fun and an absolute pleasure to work with all the differently abled performers where access and support was a priority in the making process. A big thanks to musicians Ali Houiellebecq, recorders and saxophone, Fiona Barrow violin, Pete Brandt ukuleles and bass, Mike Vince percussion and Michael Fergie sound design tech and great collaborator. 

end