Evolution in nature - a study of wild crickets

A study of the field cricket in northern Spain, using tagging, infared cameras, cctv and motion sensors to monitor a group of crickets during mating season, so as to understand more about evolution in nature.
http://www.wildcrickets.org/

A few interesting points relating to when and why crickets sing:

• Good singing is in inheritable trait that is passed on.
• Crickets need plenty of food when young to become the good singer that they are genetically predisposed to be.
• Small male crickets need to sing to be able to mate, whereas large males mate more if they don't sing. 

The site also invites participation, watching and tagging videos: http://cricket-tales.exeter.ac.uk/

A summer night's chorus of cricket song

Documentation: Walking with Crickets, Points of Listening, sound walk

LISTEN:
A binaural recording of the cricket walk, recorded by Richard Bentley on Radio Aporee.

Full documentation on the Points of Listening website:
https://pointsoflistening.wordpress.com/2016/04/18/pol-24-documentation/

Points of Listening #24 Walking with Crickets, with Lisa Hall

I'm looking forward to leading this session: Wednesday evening, April 13th, 6.30pm
RSVP online: https://pointsoflistening.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/pol-24-walking-with-crickets/


Points of Listening (PoL) is co-convened by Salomé Voegelin and Mark Peter Wright in association with CRiSAP University of the Arts London. PoL is a monthly programme of experimental workshops, activities and discussions based in and around London. Events are open to the public and held at London College of Communication in addition to various locations, outdoors and indoors, throughout the city.

PoL # 24 Walking with Crickets



A sound walk with crickets to explore the city.

This session takes as its starting point a sonic trend which began in China over 1000 years ago in the Tang Dynasty – that of keeping crickets for their song. While mainly kept in the home or garden, the crickets were also carried around in small gourds, concealed in clothes and worn like a portable music player. It is thought that the practice, started by the royal family, began in order to bring company and comfort to the listener. The trend quickly caught on and became a popular pastime practiced widely in society, and it continues to this day.

For this Points of Listening session we will be staging a digital re-enactment of this trend. Participants are invited to experience and contemplate the act of carrying this sound through the immediate environs of Elephant and Castle, to explore an alternative to our present day sonic trend of headphones and mobile devices that are so popular in cities today. Through this public form of sounding and listening, we can experience not only the cricket song as a mobile music, but also how we relate to the spaces around us. How do we hear the city, ourselves within in and how are we ourselves heard? Can this technique make us think differently about our position and relationship to the spaces we move through, and the people that we pass? In this way, this PoL will use the cricket song as both a measure and a lens through which to explore our location – to sound out our surroundings, hear ourselves appear and disappear in the sea of noise, and explore our city in new ways.

Part of the evening will be spent in the studio and for the other part we will be outside on a sound walk, carrying recordings of crickets through the local area. Bring a warm coat.

…


Lisa Hall is a sound artist based in London. Her works take the form of urban interventions, digital interventions, sound installations and prints / books. Focused on spaces, places and how we move through them, her works explore the sonority of the built environment and the body through the push and pull of sound.
http://www.lisa–hall.co.uk

Image credit: ivanwalsh.com – creative commons attribution

RSVP online: https://pointsoflistening.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/pol-24-walking-with-crickets/

Speakers in tubes

In preparation for my new sound work Pillars at Profound Sound Festival tomorrow in Folkestone, I have been testing out my composition in a variety of different tubes - a slide, a cardboard tube and a sawn off lamp-post. 

The work is due to be installed inside a metal pipe, in Folkestone's Payers Park - which is an artwork in itself, having been designed by Architecture + Art group MUF for the Folkestone Triennial. The metal pipe is half buried in the ground, with ends that protrude so that you can speak, shout, sing, make noise through it. It makes good use of the slope that the park is built into and it actively encourages SOUND in this play space. 

But also, the pipe makes the perfect site for this sound work, which is a performance of musical pillars being played. In India there are numerous temples designed with musical pillars as their main supports, these pillars are made of granite (a naturally resonant material) and are shaped and positioned to play exact musical notes, when tapped (tapped like you would when playing a piano). These structures are effectively large musical instruments, but to the eye appear as usual, highly decorative, stone temples.

Of my pipe tests today, the slide was good, it was good to be in it and listen in there, the sound had that metallic quality to it.

The sawn off lamp post was a weaker version of these two ... not so great.. It was too short to do much.

The cardboard pipe was my favourite. It gave great resonance and a slight muffle, it made listening feel like it was from far far away. 

Profound Sound Festival, Folkestone Fringe. 

Sounds of India

An amazing start to the year with a month long trip to south India.

My Recordings:

#1 Early morning life in Hampi.
Sounds: sweeping, clanking dishes, spitting, murmurs, engine rumbles and roars, children's voices, a rare calm and stillness for me in India.

#2 Chanting in a Hindu temple.
Sounds: Voice, hands, feet, bells, doors, musical rhythms, belief & devotion.

#3 On a mountain top.
Sounds: tinny distant motorbike engines, flapping flags, chanting, birds, beeps, voices, claps, the ear-view of a sacred mountain top.

#4 Musical columns being played.
Sounds: varying tones, skin, resonance, stone, slapping, tapping, popping, an old rain like music.

#5 A busy road.
Sounds: Beeps, horns, blasts, engines, voices, squeals and shrieks of brakes, alarms, a classic India road side soundscape.

#6 Night train.
Sounds: voices, voices, voices repeating, coffee, chai walla, metal rumbles, chugs and rattles of engines, carriages, wheels on tracks, distant long horns, muffled voices, a good nights sleep on a top bunk.

#7 Crows, early morning.
Sounds: Crows cawing, kraaing, cawing, cawing and cawing, a terrifying but daily spectacle of a large Hitchcock style gathering of crows.

#8 Mumbai from high up.
Sounds: clatering of pots and pans, engines roaring, murmuring, speech, pigeons cooing, passing beeps and paps, air con whirring, the gentle sounds of a backstreet in a city.


Recordings I missed:

#1 Women's jewellery
Sounds: A delicate but strong sound cloud of high pitched jingling and rattling of silver anklets and clattering of glass bracelets worn by big groups of women and girls walking past me in Hampi.


#2 An Elephant passing
Sounds: a rhythmic jingle of chains, matching each short step of this elephant that passed me. It was sadly reminiscent of the sound of anklets worn by Indian women, but this ankle jewellery was worn to stop the animal escaping at speed from its labour camp, which it was doing for a few seconds as it tromped past us in Wayanad.

Mobile Audio Fest

Locus Sonus: Mobile Audio Fest
19-22 Nov 2015

I had the pleasure of visiting Locus Sonus and the Mobile Audio Fest in Aix-en-Provence last week, visiting from CRiSAP at London College of Communication due to some excellent Erasmus + training funding.

"Mobile Audio Fest is a 4 day event exploring the relationships between mobility and (new) forms of listening and sound-making. Conceived as a series of “rendezvous” in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, Mobile Audio Fest presents 15 projects by international artists in which mobility plays a central part. The program includes performances, installations, apps, soundwalks, audiowalks, workshops and talks."

Here are a few of my quick tweets as I visited some of the art works:

Sounding out #architecture, #space & #self with each footstep, in Katrinem's Path of Awareness. &what a great map - pic.twitter.com/9B5HDVApQz

— Lisa Hall (@Lisa_R_Hall) November 21, 2015

Becoming the Walking Machine with Jessica Thompson at @MobileAudioFest How to make your feet play, jump, tap, turn.. pic.twitter.com/Xxy3PTMt5R

— Lisa Hall (@Lisa_R_Hall) November 21, 2015

Wow, Christina Kubisch just took me on my own electrical sound walk of Aix! The city is so loud beeps drone & pulses pic.twitter.com/xIczMbHKSU

— Lisa Hall (@Lisa_R_Hall) November 20, 2015

Sound &architecture bending shifting replacing positioning Intervention by Pierre-Laurent Cassiere @MobileAudioFest pic.twitter.com/FPdx1rGZNv

— Lisa Hall (@Lisa_R_Hall) November 21, 2015

https://t.co/y7M3vGvZAu Amandine Provost's mobile app @MobileAudioFest, travel through a live stream #sound #map with unique wind 'shaddows'

— Lisa Hall (@Lisa_R_Hall) November 24, 2015

A sound map based on acoustics rather than geography - Marie Muller's interactive installation @MobileAudioFest https://t.co/eg4LZKTUdo

— Lisa Hall (@Lisa_R_Hall) November 24, 2015

More soon...

About Locus Sonus:

"Locus Sonus audio in art, is a research group whose main aim is to explore the, ever evolving, relationship between sound, place and usage. In an Art/Science tradition our research involves experimentation with emerging audio technologies particularly those relating to sound transmission, mobilization or spatialisation. Maintained by the art schools of Aix en Provence and Bourges, Locus Sonus is concerned with practice driven research and transdisciplinary approaches to the arts of sound."

http://maf.locusonus.org/

sound mapping

A large sound map over London Fields showing 9 sound works / routes / pieces by 9 artists, accessed only by gps and bike mounted speakers (sonic bike).

A very very site specific sound map that despite being made online is only to be heard in situ.

Summer Pedalling Games: http://sonicbikes.net/the-summer-pedalling-games/

We Built this City - Pop up Shop!

Excited to be a part of a pop up shop on Carnaby Street! 

My Musical Braille prints will be available to buy in this pop up between 19th-27th Sept.

The Pop Up shop takes over We Built this City in conjunction with London Design Festival, to showcase University of the Arts London Alumni art work, thanks to Made in Arts London.

56-57 Carnaby Street, London, W15 9QF

Monday–Wednesday  10am–7pm

Thursday–Saturday  10am–8pm

Sunday  12noon–6pm

More info: 

http://www.webuilt-thiscity.com/event/made-in-arts-london-pop-up/

https://madeinartslondon.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/mial-pop-up-shop-at-we-built-this-city/

Sound Map development

Sonic map development for The Summer Pedalling Games:

1. play map.

A sound free proposal for mapping made on day one.

2. a Route

The beginnings of a linear section of the sound work. Start and end point shown below. This mapped route will make up the first part, a specific sound journey, of my sound work.

3. Free zones

Part two of the sound work - the addition of a free area that can be explored without any specific route needed (shown to the left of park). The cycling reality of this showed that the organisation of the roads lead to uninspired cycling exploration though.

4. A better Free zone

On the right of the park, this area allows free routeless riding, without the rigid structure that the area to the left of the park offered. Here the cycling is more interesting, the roads winding, the architecture and function of the area more varied and in flux which gives a more appropriate area for routeless exploration in relation to the themes of my work. 

Above is the final map of my sonic cycling work. A readable map for cyclists is coming soon ...

More about the Summer Pedalling Games: http://sonicbikes.net/news/

Mobile Audio ... compositon for a sonic bike

I am developing a sound work for the sonic bikes at the Bicrophonic Research Institute, together with a group of other artists (who are also new to sonic bike sound composition) for The Summer Pedalling Games, on London Fields, 5&6 Sept - https://www.facebook.com/events/1456213021350873/1468684233437085/

I've been annotating my maps as I create them, documenting the slow learning process of creating sounds, mapping sounds, and then test riding them.

It has been incredibly interesting and often unexpected to learn how the sounds are affected by a number of factors, despite anticipation and planning for these:
- affected by the place
- affected by the listening experience of riding,
- affected by the quality of the sound outdoors
- affected by the connotations of hearing those sounds in those spaces.
- measuring up against my ideas and intent for the work.

Sunday 16th Aug
Key

• Pink squares are the sounds 'zones' that the bike must ride through in order to trigger the sounds.
• Black text is a simple name of the sound file that will play
• Blue text is a description of my experience hearing it on a sonic bike.

The Summer Pedalling Games info & facebook event  |  Bicrophonic Research Institute  |  @bicrophonics

Sonic Bike Workshop

Last weekend (15&16 Aug) I attended a sonic bike workshop at the Bicrophonic Research Institute, lead by Kaffe Matthews.

Together with 8 other artists and groups I learnt how to use the sonic bikes from a compositional perspective in order to be able to create my own sound work for the Summer Pedalling Games in September. We learnt about the mapping software, the capabilities of the mapper when working with the Raspberry Pi's and the practicalities of the composition on a musical bike out and about in the streets.

The Mapping tool.

Is brilliant. You draw shapes over a map where you want sounds to be heard. It all feels very simple and powerful. You suddenly have the ability to create new soundscapes on any street anywhere, laying over new sound spaces with a simple shape drawing tool.

Its not that simply though, and its easy to screw things up. You name the shapes exactly as you name your sound files, sound files must be saved and named in certain ways and of a certain size and length. Get any bit wrong and your bike might not boot up, or you wont hear your file, or in my case you get played noise at, very loudly instead of hearing your sounds. In short I ran from laptop to bike wielding a tiny usb stick until I get it right. And that was most of my Sunday morning.

Composing.

Kaffe made us ride, sound free, around the park and nearby street to first get an idea of how long the streets are in cycle time, what the acoustics are, how easy it is to cycle and really to pay attention to anything else in these spaces that we might not have spotted on foot. How incredibly useful. My small test street that I had been focusing on in preparation, suddenly became just a 12second ride. So although you can map sound to things, points, objects, it's more appropriate to think of locations in a broader sense - spaces and streets.

My idea.

My proposal was to sound out the built environment, using the bike as the 'Bicrophone', amplifying the streets and the spaces around the bikes as it moved. I wanted to focus on how the built environment sounds, the bricks, the windows, the doors, the railings, shutters, hubcaps, lampposts, rather than the sound of inhabitation and social activation of these spaces (designated use). I had in mind Harbour performances, where boats and vehicles use engines, whistles and bells to create a spatial performance, but was converting this to a city symphony in my mind, where people opened and closed windows, rattled shutters and slammed doors. While I also had in mind the silent and often unseen infrastructure of our urban spaces - the hubcaps that give sign to underground tunnels, cables, pipes and utilities, the lampposts that we reply on for lighting but look past, overhead electrical cables etc - e.g all the signs of planning and purpose for the space that we look and listen past. Plus deconstruction, building in the local area being demolished, road works and dismantling. I wanted to create this work with field recordings and let the layout of the items on the street create the composition.

However, learning and testing how the system actually works has changed things slightly, and so my work will take a slightly different course now... let the composition begin!

 - -

The Summer Pedalling Games will be held on 5&6th September in and around London Fields.
More info - https://www.facebook.com/events/1456213021350873/

The event is a Bicrophonic Research Institute event - http://sonicbikes.net/

Sound Arts News & Public Arts News

Some of my lunch break reading online:



Sites of architectural and acoustic interest - UK

Full of Noises: A weekend of new music and sound art, Cumbria, UK

... to keep an eye out for the next year.
http://fonfestival.org/


 - - -


Public sound art work - UK

Anthem: a public sound art work, Luton, UK

Central Bedfordshire Council have commissioned an audio work as a public art work for Woodside Link Road. Excellent news.

Visual artist Bettina Furnée and sound artist Marcus Leadley are creating the work. local residents are asked to submit sounds that 'best represent the area', Leadley will then create a composition from this and Furnée will create a visual sound wave along the sides of the road.

"Every place is alive with sounds: the sounds of animals and birds, the wind in the trees or familiar sounds such as church bells and traffic sounds. Some are mundane and some are extraordinary. Some we hold dear and some we wish would go away! While we always hear sound we often fail to really listen. The Woodside Link public art project celebrates both sound and image, drawing the two together in a rich audio-visual mapping of the surrounding Houghton Regis and Luton area. We are asking people to actively listen out and record their favourite sounds and contribute them to the project."

A nice idea, and brilliant to read about public sound art, especially one that involves others in its creation. 

However, the sound is available as a download or CD which does not make it easy to access. The likelihood is that most people will see this work and not hear it. If this sound was transmitted by a radio, just locally to cover the road, drivers would be able to tune in and listen much more easily. 

http://www.luton-dunstable.co.uk/Residents-asked-send-musical-submissions-Woodside/story-27549574-detail/story.html#1

 - - -

Audio James Turrell - AUS

Climata: Audio work created for and in a James Turell light sculpture, National Gallery Australia.

Composer and sound artist Robert Curgenve has made a 'drone music' style sound works to be heard inside a Turrell light sculpture. He used recordings from 15 of Turrell's light sculptures around the world.

"Curgenven's Climata is a recording project which recharts the divisions of space as "heard" within James Turrell's Skyspaces" ."If James Turrell employs light to shape space, Curgenven is interested in exploring the manner in which the auditory can manipulate our perception of space and our perception of the shape of time. He has explored this equally within architectural spaces as well as in remote open spaces in outback Australia."

An interesting pairing of audio and visual works that sound as if they will be complimentary to the experiencing of each work. Something I would very much like to visit.

Review: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/robert-curgenven-climata-in-skyspace-at-the-national-gallery-of-australia-20150806-gismtw.html

Perhaps the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the UK will commission the works to show in their Turrell light sculpture 'Deer Shelter SkySpace': http://www.ysp.co.uk/whats-on/open-air/james-turrell-deer-shelter-skyspace

 - - -

Hiroshima commemorative work  - USA

Hiroshima audio-visual art installation: University of Maine, USA

An audio visual installation made to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima bombing. Created by new media artists N.B. Aldrich, John Carney and Duane Ingalls who collaborated with sound artist Adachi Tomomi.

http://bangordailynews.com/2015/08/05/news/bangor/art-at-umaine-commemorates-anniversary-of-hiroshima-bombing/

 - - -

Sound, architecture, urbanism, cities, public art . . .

New reading material !
http://invisibleplaces.org/IP2014.pdf

Sound + Architecture

Ooh.. Architecture to enable speech (J. Gordon) & to study affects of sound (A.Catelli) inspiring stuff at Free Range Degree shows on Brick Lane.

Soundcamp - May 2015

Two days of urban camping at Stave Hill Ecological Park in London listening to a perpetual dawn chorus streaming live from around the world for 24hours, plus a bat walk with a bat specialist, a 4.30am dawn chorus walks with Peter Cusack and a raspberry pi workshop with Grant Smith.
http://soundtent.org/

Japanese frogs - underwater bees
Bird song
Flocks of Birds chattering in tree

Blackbirds
Thrush
Great tit
Blur tit

Panda Cam
Robin
Reed warblers
bat clicks, kisses
Static
fzzzzz
Rain on water
Sirens
Music
Distant traffic
Rain on plastic hoods
Waterproof clothing
Crunch of snails
The first bus
Pidgeons
Crows
Magpies
45mins of dawn

Rain on tent

Urban London - blackbirds song reverberating around houses off brick walls

Natives and visitors
Planes
Trill, churr, liquid, melodic
blackbirds song improves through the season (but you have to listen to just the one to tell)

Sound art for the V&A Friday Late this March

I'm pleased to be exhibiting a travelling sound installation for the next Late event at the V&A. The event's theme is based upon the Alexander McQueen exhibition, Spectacle of the Species, and I'm collaborating with a fashion designer Quoi Alexander.

The sound work will consist of a cricket soundscape, worn by the models and carries through the galleries. 

Inspired by iPod culture for mobile music, this work explores an earlier form of sonic body adornment - a fashion trend from 1000years ago of concealing crickets in clothing for their song.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/friday-late/

March’s Friday Late celebrates the V&A’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition. 
18.30 - 22.00 |  #FridayLate
From cocoons in gestation to birds in flight, the natural world was fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s most prominent source of inspiration. Join us for an evening of skeletal armoury, skins, scales and crystals as we explore the natural elements that were intrinsic to McQueen’s vision.

Sound Art for the Royal Academy Late event, March 26th

I've been commissioned by the Royal Academy to create a sound work for the late event 'Rubens: Decrypted' on 26th March.

I have created two 'Whispering Walls' that will share ideas about the the life and actions of the man behind the paintings using speakers hidden behind the images. One wall addresses his his careers as a diplomat, the other, his travels across the world.

Each wall visually references ideas of Phychogeography using imagery of Rubens paintings to prompt a new understanding. While sonically the walls explore field recordings of place and space aswell as concrete poetry style dialogue.

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/event/rubens-decrypted-late


Rubens: Decrypted
AttRAct Late | for 16–25 year olds | 26th March | 7 - 9.30

Decipher the links between Rubens and the many artists he inspired at this Late event, featuring interactive creative workshops, 17th-century selfies, music by The Coveryard, a Whispering Wall, feasts and much more.

Join us on a mission through the ‘Rubens and His Legacy’ exhibition to unlock the secrets of this celebrated painter, diplomat and spy.

This Late event is curated by attRAct, the RA’s Programme for Young People, and is suitable for 16-25 year olds only.

Exhibition of Embossed Prints: Capsule, this April

In this group exhibition organised by Made in Arts London I will be showing my series of embossed 'Musical Braille' prints.

Capsule, Embassy Tea Gallery 

8th - 12th April  | PV 8th, 6-9pm

https://madeinartslondon.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/mial-independent-exhibition-capsule/

"Made in Arts London presents ‘Capsule’ our third annual independent exhibition showcasing art and design from UAL students and recent graduates. A curated collection of site specific creations, limited editions, fine art, design, video & performance pieces will be exhibited, including Made in Art London’s latest Spring/Summer 2015 Collection chosen by Kathleen Soriano, Dominic Wilcox and Natalie Brett.

‘Capsule’ is an exhibition celebrating the journey of our artists as they work towards their careers as creative practitioners, and the journey of Made in Arts London in supporting them to do so.  All the work on display will be available for sale, offering a unique platform to collect affordable art and design pieces from some of the emerging stars of London’s art scene, and the next generation of artists."

Exhibiting Artists:

Adriana Krawcewicz, Alex Wood, Alexander Devereux, Anastasija Pudane, Anita Chowdry, Annalaura Masciave, Aphra O’Connor, Arnaud Meneroud, Bart Hajduk, Cally Lathey, Charlotte Whitehead, Chloe Hope King, Christopher John Simpson, Conall McAteer, Deniz Paran, Dimitri Yin, Dominika Świerad, Egor Kraft, Elizabeth Mackintosh, Emily Carter, Fiona Masterton, Fredrik Andersson, Fru Kenworthy-Browne, Helen Wilson, Imogen Parry, Inga Loyeva, Isabella Pagnotta, Isabelle Mattern, James Rogers, Jazz Szu-Ying Chen, Jessica Proctor, Jessica Windhorst, Joseph Jackson, Katy Binks, Klaus is Koming, Lara Drnovsek, Laura Aldous, Leonid Dementiev, Libby Heaney, Lisa Hall, Liz Nehdi, Maggie Jingyun Shu, Meiko Kikuta, Mette Sterre, Miranda Sofroniou, Monica Alcazar-Duarte, Moonjung Song, Naomi Takeda, Olga Krasanova, Olly Fathers, Pamm Hong, Patcharakan (Mai) Vongprasert, Robbie Porter, Ronnie Chen, Rowan Ottesen, Saachi Mehta, Sabrina Shah Hakim, Saffie Pluck, Sarah Fortais, Sarah ‘Kenikie’ Palmer, Simon Peters, Sylvia Moritz, Tess Williams, Victoria Batt, Ximena Escobar and Yana Zino.

My new comission