NOT(A) PART is an Animation on 16mm film, highlighting the decline of the bee population in and around Bristol (2018) by Vicky Smith. https://vickysmith.blog/aboutbio/
Sound accompanied the film live and is also recorded here. Sound makers Melanie Clifford, Matt Davies and Shirley Pegna.
The work was screened at Braziers Park Film Festival, Bristol Cube Cinema, The Bristol Brunswick Club and Broadcast on Mopamosa TV 2023. https://mopomoso.com/about/
Artist Residency researching vibration through natural phenomena, around the coast of Svalbard.
Picture above – receiving and recording ionospheric sound.Ionospheric sound picked up with a radio receiver – WR-3 VLF ‘whistler receiver’ Recording at away from the boat and its electrical circuits Bjonahamna,78°23,6′ N 016°52,8′ E
Research taken during this residency went on to inform and instigate projects Earth Din, All Terrain Training and Skumring. The experience of the trip has resonated in different ways, so much that I didn’t feel able to distil it down to one post. Here are just some elements of the exploration north.
Route of voyage from Longyearbyen took us south to Recherchebreen 77°29,5′ N 014°24,57′ E
North to Ytre Norskøya 79°51,1′ N 011°37,9′ E
Returning to Longyearbyen via the scientific community at Ny Alesund 79°57,6′ N 012°02,5′ E
Getting to land from the boat involved getting in the zodiacs (inflatables with an outboard motor) with the equipment taking equipment for our various projects. I had a hydrophone with me on this occasion.
On the trip I took this kit and at first it was hard to decide what to take to the landings. Sound Devices digital recorder 744T Aqua Audio H2a Hydrophone Pair of Lavelier mics AKG C568B condenser shot gun mic Audio Technica BP 4025 Rode Blimp 2 Windshield & Shockmount Dead wombat (windshield) for Blimp Contact mics C series Geophone Sensor: RTC-4.5hz, 375ohm Sound devices MM-1 microphone preamplifier WR -3 ELF-VLF Handheld Radio receiver and antenna
(Thanks to SARU at Oxford Brookes University for the loan of some vital equipment)
Anchor down Fridtjovhamna, 77°40,5′ N 014°35,02′ E
Taking soundings of the glacier where I can reach it. I tried out geophone, contact mic and hydrophone on the gritty thick edge ice.
Left. Up the rigging with the harness. photo Rachel Abrams
Mid photo the ships compass.
Right. In the sea especially thick wet suit – a bit too big for me. photo Lindsay Halleckson
Glacier meeting the sea inlet
Recording from an inflatable dingy 0.5km from the glacier, picking up the calving where the ice is breaking off the edge of the glacier and crashing into the sea water. It sounds like thunder but isn’t. We are being quiet in the boat, but you can just about hear our movements.https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/glacier-ice-crashing
Hiking up to the lookout at Uitkijck – photo Sarah Gerats
Reaching the farthest northern point of land before sea towards the north pole. In the ships log it says:
Landing Ytre Norskøya – hike towards ‘de Groote Uitkijck’ the big lookout, short hike and landing ‘de Klein Uitkijck’ – the small lookout.
It is law in Svalbard if you are travelling outside the port of Longyearbyen, to have a person with you in the group who has a rifle and is trained in safety in the presence of polar bears. Our 4 guides were experienced at this as well as being mostly artists themselves. I’d not been around guns of any kind let alone women with guns.
Here are the sets of halliards ready to hoist the different sails
The Antigua with her full set of sails
Finally, southwards running with a following wind. Top sails up and main staysail sail, with all hands to hoist. Skipper has been up the rigging to prepare the extra sail. Going 7kn. The sound is the wind and the stays clanking and the waves on the bow…..https://vimeo.com/1068245511
On deck for the aurora – northern lights Skansbukta, 78°31,8′ N 016°01,4′ E
I wondered if my WR -3 ELF-VLF Handheld Radio receiver would pick up any of the northern lights. The boat electrics created too much interference for me to identify the energy from the northern lights.
In the night the start of the northern lights
Crew and artists aboard the Antigua – photo on auto!!
And Nemo the ships dog
Longyearbyen – signs for organising the huskies
Photo – Dawn Jackson
Many fossils here
Late arctic blooms in ice
Late arctic blooms in the ice
Rock findings
I am posting this on World Glacier Day and I had some conversations with my Antigua artists travellers this morning. Emma Hoette and spoke of climate change – so I will quote her:
“…Yes the climate change thing is huge …. And I think one of the most productive ways to approach it is to realise that there is hypocrisy in all that we do – like flying to a far off land in order to have an experience of a landscape that confronts us with the beauty of the planet… but unless we acknowledge that being a human here on earth has inherent hypocrisy we will never be able to have dialogues we need in order to learn how to navigate this world….
This flag in Chinese say “One World”. Brought here by artist Georgia Rose Murray.
‘All Terrain Training’ reflects the combined workings of mother and so artists Shirley Pegna and Will Pegna. The work is a durational live performance stemming from the audio recordings taken from a residency in the Arctic Circle S. Pegna took in 2018. Alongside collected sounds including an earthquake originating in Indonesia 1,373 miles underground and electrical currents plucked from the Ionosphere 30 miles above Svalbard, Norway.
Taking influence from the earths relentless activity & energy needed to create these sounds W. Pegna creates a Dojo like situation in the gallery space for physical contact and endurance to occur. 7 Dancers take it in turn to exert force against each other. Using physical and vocal signals the dancers maintain tension throughout the duration of the performance. Using the floor and walls, they adopt low, grounded positions mimicking animal standoffs and rugby scrum like formations.
This is an interdisciplinary project funded by the Brigstow Institute’s Seedcorn funding. Those involved include the head of the project Michael Kendall BGS Professor of Geophysics, myself -artist Shirley Pegna, whose artistic research and practice is concerned with sound as material, together with Tamsin Badcoe (Department of English), Daniel Haines (Department of Historical Studies) and Lucy Donkin (History / History of Art).
We have met up and worked on interdisciplinary ways of thinking about cultural and historical responses to earthquakes. We have been generating insights into a shared language for research and creative practice in communicating the workings of the planet to a general audience.
We noted that using seismology, we can observe signals on all length and time scales be they micro vibrations generated by everyday activity around us or large earthquakes in the far reaches of the globe or seismic events throughout Earth’s geologic history. These seismic signals are often imperceptible but occasionally we hear and feel their full roar in ground shaking events that can be unsettling and even catastrophic.
Our discussions have explored ideas concerning time and human experience in addition to scale and vibration. We discussed our different interests in earthquake activities, and have been interested to bring about a situation where we could create an experience of the understanding of the earth’s noisy seismic activities on our doorstep in Bristol and on the University Campus.
The Tower and Bell
We decided to instrument the Great George bell in the Wills Memorial Building in Bristol University with a seismometer and data logger. The bell recorded cultural noise in Bristol, but also distant earthquakes from as far away as Fiji and other seismic active regions, but with regular punctuation from its own bell clapper. The tower itself is a cultural icon from last centaury, built in the 1920s but in a Victorian Gothic style to reflect the ideas of its funders in terms of promoting the gravitas of the institution – the University of Bristol.
The seismometer and data logger sensing and recording the vibrations in the tower
As a sensitive instrument it was able to sense the bell’s impact and vibration in the tower and the impact of the cities traffic on the roads around the tower cause the tower to vibrate. We were surprised at how much vibration there was from these sources. In addition to this, here were identifiable micro vibrations from long distance seismic activity recorded over the months. We have recorded the behaviour of the Towers reaction to the planet.
Thanks here goes to members of the Geophysics department for their fantastic advice and help, Anna Horleston, James Wookey, and to Ophelia George of course for keeping up monitoring checks, installing solar power and downloading the hard drive from the recorder to further the research into the recordings.
Film – The Bell – a day in the life of Great George
On the University’s charter Day day 23rd May 2018 with equipment and expertise from artist Rod Maclachlan, we captured on film a stop frame complete day and night cycle in the tower featuring Great George the 9.5ton bell.
The tower reminds us of the passing of time, majestic in its architectural splendour as well as showing us its fragility as a mere man made construction trembling from the vibration of the planet. The film captures the peeling of the bell by the volunteers for the Charter Day celebrations.
View from the top of the tower
Special collections
We were granted in 6th June 2018 permission to visit and benefit from university’s Special Collections. We were able to see historical illustrations and writings and as a ‘scoping exercise’ for resources, images, texts that gave rise to discussion where the past relates to the present.
Workshop
On the 19th June 2018 we organised a workshop where experts were invited to speak on their research. Thanks goes to Sarah Lawrence for organising the day with refreshments and lunch.
The planned workshop would bring to the fore ideas we had been discussing and those attending and particularly specialists would further the thoughts and ideas and questions of the project.
Our Questions:
How can artistic research bring new insights into the human perception of our unsettled planet?
How might bringing together artists, scientists and researchers in the humanities with shared interests, generate insights into a shared language for research and creative practice? We will focus on: What is certainty? How can we better communicate risk levels associated with ground movement?
Where has disruption and instability in the world encouraged a shift of ideas, solutions and connections? What are the political, environmental and cultural consequences of ground motion – and how do these scale with intensity.
After an introduction to the project by Michael Kendal, members of our group presented their papers and invited experts gave talks on seismic research. Recordings from the data collected from the seismometer in the tower were heard amplified on a large sub woofer. Time was taken to show the visitors and speakers the seismometer in the tower, and experience in an installation in a car the vibration amplified from in the street outside the university. Discussion occurred at lunch and the end of the day between those attending and were far ranging and of great benefit to the project.
Michael Kendall – Introduction to seismology and the project
Shirley Pegna – Shirley and George (a day in the life of a bell)
Lucy Donkin – Ruined buildings and unstable ground in early modern Italy
Tamsin Badcoe – ‘Steadfast Globes’ and ‘Unsettled Planets’: Earthquakes in Early Modern England
Stephen Vaughan – ‘Zassho-Cascadia: seismic histories and rupture probabilities in Japan and America’
Paula Koelemeijer, Oxford University – Picking up good vibrations: Feeling the beat through the elephants’s feet
Paul Denton, British Geological Survey – Man-made seismic signals, from Madness to Messi
Ophelia George – a poster with information about the data captured on the seismometer in the tower.
Artwork
An artwork will be made for the completion of the project along with an on line article in The Conversation. This work will take the form of an installation that will enable these inaudible sounds to be felt and sensed through vibration and stone. A rock disc will have grooves mastered within it, which will replay audible and inaudible vibration collected from the seismometer in the Wills Tower. These will be heard and felt via headphones and vibrating speaker box/s. In being made from stone, this ‘rock record’ will have a lifetime beyond our human span, and thus communicates the fragility of our (human) presence in geographical time.
As a spherical disc shaped slab of clay turns on a turntable. In the clip below you can see a vibrating hand-held speaker with an attached pointed sharp tool, making marks in the disc as it turns.
The marks in the disc are the result of the vibration of the sound from the speaker. When fired the solid disc with marks in it could theoretically be played like a record, and play back the sounds marked in it.
I have been speaking with the artists about the ideas around making a disc out of stone instead of clay. We discussed various ways this could be done with diamond cutting equipment or lasers and types of stone or other materials that could be used. The stone samples we are going to try out first are alabaster, soap stone, blue lias, marble and obsidian.
Also at the workshop was sound artist and DJ Graham Dunning. Dunning is known for his Mechanical Techno constructions and performances. It was great to construct with his help a near instant version of his ideas using a tier of discs that when played created repeated rhythms. Here’s my own creation made in the workshop that day in the clip below.
Nearly a hundred people turned up to experience the work walking in single file along a narrow path through a hay field in the moonlight.
Speaker carriers, there were six of them, were dispersed along the line of walkers. Every so often the line stopped and people listened while people’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
Please use head phones to listen
This is one of the tracks used in the walk. The sources of sound are all received from outside our earth’s atmosphere emanating from stars – pulsars at different distances and our own sun.
At the end of the field the line of promenaders followed the lead walker back along the path they’d just walked. Like a sedentary dance the outward walkers passed the returning walkers along the line, and their sounds crossed creating another version of the star sounds to listen to.
The quality of the summer air, the night sounds, the recorded star sounds and the clouds revealing the moon, prompted one of the walkers to say that it had made the experience of the vastness ‘above’ more vivid.
Richie Smith at last found a venue keen to have his idea incorporating his collection of 25 cymbals, up till now, and for the last few decades, stacked in a cupboard at home. https://www.supernormalfestival.co.uk/programme/cat_workshop
Supernormal 2017 welcomed his idea of a performance/installation with the cymbals offering the woods at the festival grounds in Braziers Park, Oxfordshire as a venue.
As he announced, it was a double first, to install all of the cymbals after so long, PLUS having the family performing and improvising together, which had never happened before.
After the 35 minute performance, Richie explained that it was a pleasure to have such a first experience for those reasons, but from where the audience was listening they may not have heard the full potential of the sounds that came from the metal percussion as some of the frequencies could only be heard up close. He therefore invited them all in to try for themselves, which they all did!
Here are the audience playing the cymbals for themselves…
‘As it happens such a unique experience will never happen again where my partner and I and our two sons will play altogether for the first time. Thanks Supernormal it was a gas.’ Richie Smith – joined by his family Will Pegna, Louie Pegna and Shirley Pegna.
Flight to Isafjordur
Please listen with headphones to all the sound
Exploration of the landscape via a hydrophone, geophone, contact mic, shotgun mic, pair of omni mics offered up experiences of the radically different terrain and these sonic experiences allowed me to feel more part of the environment – rocks, water, ice and all.
View from Bolafell Mountain 625m high looking out in the direction of Greenland. Here the snow and ice stays on the high ground through the summer.
The strange surfaces of rock, lava, peat, water courses and unfamiliar crust embellishment on the land tempted me to want to find out what sound signal and vibration could be experienced from this new place.
Please listen with headphones to all sound
Sound from under the ground
Shih Yu and Katherine filming at the jetty.
Sound through the jetty via hydrophones
Hydrophone on the jetty
Here at the jetty at Isafjordur, sounds travelling through air and water picked up through the fabric of an iron and wood jetty were picked up with an Aqua hydrophone.
Water was on the move everywhere down the sides of the fjords. Here’s the sound of a stream picked up with an Aquarian Audio H2A hydrophone with particular icy quality.
Sound of the small stream
The AKG C568B shot gun mic and geophone-senor-RTC-4-5hz-375ohm and Sound Devices 744T recorded were also very exciting to work with. Thanks to SARU (Sonic Arts Research Unit) at Oxford Brookes University, I was able to try a variety of different pieces of equipment lent to further my process of working recording sound through the air and through materials other than air.
Ready to record
Thanks to artist Katherine Lyons-Burk for an invitation to collaborate by contributing to the sound for her work concerning identity in the landscape and go to Iceland. I was able to work with her and filmmaker Shih Yu Chu, and try equipment I have not used before. Katherine was invited to work at an Arts Iceland Residency. http://www.transartists.org/air/artsiceland.
The resulting video collaboration, Contested Landscapes, was created in just over a week. It is part of Katherine’s project working with the organisation Mind that is concerned with mental health issues. Katherine also created workshops in Norfolk (Autumn 2017) with young people based on identity following on from her work in Isafjordur.
Contested Landscapes
I’m pleased to have been invited back to Arts Iceland to create work supported by their Residency in Isafjordur in the Westfjords. I feel I have only just scratched the surface of possibilities of both the culture and landscape with the trip this summer, which offered a taste of otherness.
I especially loved the Arctic Terns and their acrobatics. This one however did not like me and here’s the evidence of its rather accurate dive bomb! Too close for comfort!
