SOUND PIECES FROM NORTH WALNEY

In advance of pictures and video from our exhibition days, here are the Sound Pieces made by Amy and the North Walney boys and girls. These were played back through radios in the bushes in the wild garden, and from a hidden player in a canoe, and comprise the children's readings of their sound poems, source sounds and audio-pictures of the beach and woods.

https://soundcloud.com/artspacebarrow/soundwaves-final

https://soundcloud.com/artspacebarrow/sound-poems-and-music-final-1

We have further recordings of our exhibition visitors interpreting and
  reading the poems for themselves....cover versions!

Here are Amy's comments on the process behind the recordings..I think this tells the story of our time with North Walney, and a flavour of the whole project.. 

"Since our initial explorations with collage using rescued materials the project with North Walney evolved into a sonic adventure! We enjoyed a windy trip to the beach, making field recordings on the way, capturing the contrasts of Walney, from the sound of shop doorbells and cars, to birds, wind and sea. On the beach we investigated the sounds we could make using found objects and brought some back to school to play around with simple musical composition.


We used the paper based sound maps created on the day and recordings to invent new words, which we cut up and combined to make nonsense sound poems, in the vein of Schwitters famous ‘Ursonate’ sound piece.
Our trip to the Merz barn fuelled our imaginations and helped the children get more of a sense of the environment that inspired some of Schwitter’s work. (See May blog post for more on this visit).
We worked intently to produce materials for our final sound installations, destined for the garden at Bram Longstaffe Nursery. One piece was inspired by the sound of the waves and combined vocal sounds and words to create a layered textured piece that ebbed and flowed like the sea. On installation day this was played from a radio transmitter hidden in an old canoe, to tie in with the watery theme. We scattered stone shaped collages of the children’s favourite beach words to complete the scene.
For our second piece we bravely performed and recorded our sound poems in groups, which were later layered up with the Walney field recordings. The groups created their own musical compositions to act as ‘credits’ between the poems, returning to the use of beach objects as their instruments. These were transmitted alongside paper and cardboard collage versions of the poems scattered amongst an untamed willow dome!
The children of North Walney have responded with gusto to these unusual artistic opportunities. Their work has resulted in some unique and intriguing compositions, and they have been an absolute pleasure to work with!"