Yesterday was the final crit for the work that was produced for the 'A Space For Sound' brief. The day started pretty mad, I had to gather up the equipment I needed for the piece (thanks to Ariane for her speakers). This consisted of Ariane's speakers, and my speakers, I also needed all the necessary cables, a laptop... and a iPhone. The first excitement came when I was walking to get the train to school, which I saw from below the bridge, which meant I had to run as fast as i could carrying all this stuff, which wasn't the most fun, however I managed to jump onto the train while the door beepers were going, so a good if not sweaty start to the day...I got to college and there were a few people milling around setting up various equipment and whatnot, it was all quite interesting as it is nothing like any of us had done before which was cool. After walking around listening to various sound installations, which were all really interesting in their own right, my turn was up.
Off I ran to the courtyard in the Lethaby, called Henry to lend a hand (massive thank you to Henry 'player' Griffin) with pressing a few buttons.
I arrived at the chosen spot and set up a set of speakers on the bottom floor directed upwards into the courtyard space, plugged my laptop in, with one half of the track loaded on to it, gave the instructions to Henry and then went off up to the fifth floor (top floor) where I set up another set of speakers. This time the speakers had another track loaded onto it, which was to be played around 20 seconds into the recording of the first track which was playing on the first floor.
After all this was set up the group joined, and were congregated at the other side of the courtyard waiting for the sounds to start. When I was ready I gave Henry the go ahead, at this point a swirling sound rose up from the first floor, filling the courtyard with the sounds I had pre-prepared. It was really exciting to hear it for the first time properly, however after twenty seconds I had to trigger off my track, which added another element to the atmosphere of the courtyard and the mix of the two tracks playing from the bottom and top floors.
The track seemed to fit pretty well within the context that it was playing, and I felt this was down to the space that I had chosen and the sounds that I had composed. After the 1:22 seconds was up, I played it a few more times for the group. At this point they started to walk around the college, listening out for the sounds, and getting a new sound each and every step. Apparently a few people around the college including tutors wondered what the heck the sounds were all about, which added to the experience of the installation.
After the playing and listening had been done, everyone joined me on the top floor to conduct the crit. On the whole feedback was positive, people were saying how the courtyard really hightened the sounds and that at some points it felt eary. We talked about possibly using sounds that humans make around the school that sound similar to the heartbeat, this would be things like footsteps, or doors opening and so on, these things could have added to the composition, which I feel would have been interesting. It concluded with James chatting about an experience he had was younger saying that he enjoyed watching things happening outside from inside. Apparently when he was at primary school one day and completely randomly an alien spaceship landed in the school feilds, with everyone watching from the classrooms, then as soon as it had finished everyone went back to work, strange but true.
It was an interesting day all round and I was glad to hear my piece finally played in situ.
Henry just chilling to the sounds.