Steve Reich

John Cage, Morecambe and Wise, The Who

Tui Crossing

With all the beeps, alarms and buzzes in urban environments a few natural sounds wouldn't go amiss.

The artist Nina Katchadourian did a project called "Natural Car Alarms" this short video from You Tube isn't particularly good, but you get the idea and it is just black for the first bit.

Wellington Calling

The next stage of the project is to develop ideas for a couple of test soundscapes for different sites and to see what the interest might be. One site will be at Wellington Station, which provides lots of possibilities to test out ideas including historical and contemporary sound recordings. Another site might be at Otari School where I am working with students already and they have started their own sound map, this could be expanded to include a wider area including the native reserve next door and perhaps interviews with local residents.
The pilot projects will be small in scale but hopefully provide lots of useful information and throw up potential problems before making funding applications, also I intended to explore the possibilities of working with some other organisations to help support the project.

Elsdon Best recording Iehu Nukunuku playing a flute, 1923

Sound Map

As part of my work with students at Otari School in Wellington we have been mapping the school grounds and have made a series of maps including a sound map. We shall be doing some more work on its development next term and it has been interesting to explore the area's sounds, especially the sounds the children make in the playground during breaks. I have worked in a number of primary schools and the sounds the children make in the playground seem very similar, which I could test if I had recorded them all.

5 Ways To Listen Better - Julian Treasure

John Cage

John Cage

Susan Philipsz

Susan Philipsz

Wellington Calling - Prezi

Presentation testing ideas for Wellington Calling

Wellington Calling - Sites?

Wellington Calling

I have been working on the Wellington Calling ideas and to help with thinking I have been doing some visual thinking. The images are mock ups of various places around Wellington that could be used  for the project as well as some thinking pictures.

The City Rings Project

I came across this project, called The City Rings,  while researching ideas for Wellington Calling and as I am setting up a series of workshops for people to learn about and contribute to the project this looks an exciting way to engage with people and communities.

"The main goal of TCR is to encourage young people to exchange experiences about the place where they live through sound. Our main approach is a series of artist-led workshops that are held simultaneously in schools in various countries."

Wellington Calling - Alaejos

The second stage of the Wellington Calling project will be to collect sounds from the Alaejos in Spain. This will involve making contact with people in the town and others in the region to gather the sounds, these will be uploaded to freesound a website allowing users to contribute sounds from across the world to form a global database of recordings.

Along with collecting sounds from Alaejos, the opportunity to have a 'tube' set up in the town will be explored, this would enable sounds to be exchanged between Wellington and Alaejos, with the 'tubes' making a visual connection between the two sites.

Wellington Calling

I have been working on Portal in various forms over the last year and have now stripped the idea down to a participatory sound work. Now the work will involve collecting sounds from Wellington and Alaejos, which is the antipodean point to Wellington, and forming these into a soundscape.

I have identified a sight for the work at Queens Wharf, which is situated close to the waterfront and has a series of ventilation outlets running along it. These are perfect to use the sounds to be played from as they look the part and you can imagine the sounds coming from deep in the earth. 

The next stage will be finding potential collaborators to help develop the work and collecting sounds from across the region.