When tracing the history surrounding St. Ives and the studios, it is inevitable that one ends up reading alot about pilchards and the 'Huers' that helped locate shoals of fish from clifftops. This led me to thinking about the subtleties of shoal behaviour. In my research I came across a useful behavioural model, designed by Craig Reynolds, that described elements of shoal behaviour, also known as 'flocking'. The three rules of flocking are: SEPARATION: not crowding/colliding with others ALIGNMENT: facing the same way COHESION: staying close to each other As shown in the picture to the left! These rules make for interesting performance instructions. Imagine multiple performers following these rules in a sonic/musical way to create a 'shoal' of sound that contains multitudes but moves as a single organism? It would certainly be exciting to explore. Since these rules were originally written as a computer model, I have began to research the possibility of a visual shoal, programmed or filmed, as being the impetus for the performers' movements (sonic, not spatial!) Sarah So far, this month, I’ve been gathering a collection of discursive interests and content ranging from a radio programme about marine ecology to visits to arts and science events and workshops in Cornwall, relational, perhaps, to ‘TTP’. In radio wave form, a broadcast of underwater recordings of fish tapping and or what seems to be bumping into coral reefs or gnawing algae from the reef’s surfaces with emphasis on just how noisy, or how much sound there is at any given moment in the oceans. In the other direction, that of deep space attending workshops at Goonhilly Earth Station near Helston and the experience of being close to the working, concave/convex and towering forms of the satellite dishes sited in Goonhilly Downs National Nature Reserve. The shadow drawing made by sunlight in collaboration with the antennae of the radio communication discs acts as its own time keeper, reminding me of a sundial like apparatus on the surface of this mottled and weathered disc. This subliminal-like effect seems to permeate all around including the lily ponds where I found myself, without thinking, quietly tracking the movement of a tiny reed warbler sensing its environment through the feedback of information from its feet as it traveled slowly across a lush and giving surface of weed. I’m back there in the moment of memory, image and sound. My actual focus on the project over the past couple of weeks has generated a bubble-like structure of thoughts and actions around practice and making as we get closer to starting our residency. Questions about the ways in which an individual or a collective’s creative processes can bring about a potential communication and response to an environment or space have been surfacing. For instance, which elements – materials, concepts, shared visual and audio experiences, or just simply doing – can best support our exploration of experimental approaches in working in installation through our performances and workshops? How to discover and recognize cognitive events taking place through play and within our engagement with, for example, materials, tools, instruments and happenings as they take shape. Will this be, for example, in the exchange of sound and visual recordings we make, the feedback we collectively give, interpret and translate as well as the experience and skills we’ll all take away? One question which surfaced and one I will be thinking about came in a conversation in 2016 which is how do participatory and collaborative events different from one another in content and action? My interest in Brazilian artist Lygia Pape’s process and play from wall-based practice into viewer-participatory pieces developing into collaboration and event seem all the more appropriate. Next step: looking forward to working with my fellow collaborators in a couple of weeks time… Clare Ref: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b0pvmz ‘The Life Scientist’ with Professor Callum Roberts, Marine Biologist University of York, UK http://www.goonhilly.org/ Goonhilly Earth Station, Helston, UK http://groundwork.art/ Ground Work: international art in Cornwall, Helston, UK http://www.mayescreative.com Dark Skies: Bright Stars Project Cornwall UK With our arrival in St Ives now only 2 weeks away, I've been turning my thoughts from logistics to what my own particular interests are, & trying to articulate them out from the percolation stage to something more concrete.
Rather than a fixed concept to explore, I am more interested in approaching the fortnight from a 'daily practice' perspective, being open to different ideas of traces, tracking these through daily attention to engage with what's going on both in terms of the town & what fellow collaborators are doing, bringing my findings into the installation spaces & threading them through whatever else is going on. That said, there are aspects of trace which draw me, revolving around absence-presence, emergence-erasure: The relationship between presence & absence is strong in the historical elements of St Ives - the regular indentations in walls where a wooden beam would have anchored to press a barrel of pilchards, the hooked stones that would have hung on the beam & pressed the lid in this process visible in many place around town. Or the communal courtyards where the fish were once baulked - with central drains & specially placed cobbles which would have drained the liquids & especially oils from the pilchard baulks (the oil used as lamp fuel, often exported to London as well as being used locally). These courtyards also highlight another absence - in St Ives the historical activity of the men is still traced through the current fishing industry, whereas the historical work of the women of the town - the baulking & packing of the fish, the creation of nets, is evoked through these spaces now repurposed for other things. Language traces: obviously the traces of Cornish - in place names, street names (a favourite being Wheal Dream - an evocative name where the Wheal more practically denotes a tin mine, once where the Museum now stands); but also language usages that trace unusual differences: in St Ives, 'cellar' & 'loft' denote usage of spaces, rather than necessarily their spatial layout: a loft is a space for maintaining nets, & is as often below a 'cellar', which is a space where materials - usually originally the pilchards - are stored. As the above suggests, architecture tracings abound in the town, from the buildings in the old town whose floors accumulate vertically but may also move off crabwise to the side, so that a room from house 'A' may form the top floor of house 'B'; or to take another example from the Porthmeor Studios, a wall revealed in the recent renovation of the building shows evidence of 2 previous roof tops under the current one. Erasure is also a trace-element that interests me; both the more obvious ability of a natural force like the sea to erase the day's human traces (as well as bring in materials of human presence - plastic fragments, frayed strands of net), & the human activities that erase - for example, photos of Porthmeor from the Island clearly show Porthmeor Studios as a building surviving from an older period amongst newer apartments complexes, & the Tate building (& its somewhat controversial extension) is a presence representing a space which was once a gas-works. Finally, trace through other senses: touch, taste, smell, & perhaps (as a musician) especially sound - what are the soundmarks of St Ives? What sounds are now absent, erased? What sounds are emerging, soon to be new presences (the drone camera I heard for the first time in St Ives last year, for example). 2 weeks to go - we're looking forward to our time in St Ives, to the people we will meet during our stay, to our workshops, performances, explorations & interactions with this extraordinary town & its people. Gavin As I was exploring graphic scores, I came across one that really inspired me: This is Kwi - drawing the air, a representation of an electronic piece. What inspired me was there isn't an obvious line or path to trace - there are many within the collage, and which line you follow depends on what draws your gaze - which colour, which shape, which pattern? It's collagic nature really struck me, as my map/graphic score plan is also based on collage. It made me think about other elemts I could include in the score - not only parts from maps, but also excerpts of brochures, newspapers - anything with strong links to St Ives.
While 'drawing the air' is just a representation of sound, I'd like my score to be instructive, to inspire performance, not just accompany a fixed piece. So, how shall I turn the collagic elements into information for the performer? Or shall I leave the musical interpretation completely up to them? More thoughts later... Sarah |
time-trace-place
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