Latest news with #soundart
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Voices from Dorset to be heard at one of London's busiest Underground stations
TUBE passengers at one of London's busiest Underground stations will hear voices from Portland thanks to a new sound artwork heavily influenced by the island. Turner prize-nominated artist Rory Pilgrim worked with various people including staff and inmates at HMP/YOI Portland to create a 10-minute piece called Go Find Miracles which combines music and spoken word. Some of it was recorded in one of Albion Stone's underground mines on the island. It will play for a fortnight from today between 10am and 5pm on weekdays until Friday, July 25 along the moving walkway that connects the Jubilee and Northern lines at Waterloo Underground station. The piece asks how we 'go beneath the surface to imagine new structures of repair and possibility'. It focuses on the role that Portland has played in shaping London, with stone from the isle being used to build many of London's most iconic buildings. Of course the island is also the site of two prisons and the former site of a prison barge and the Bibby Stockholm. Expanding from Pilgrim's long-term collaboration with communities on Portland, Go Find Miracles features spoken reflections and poetry by Neurodiversity Support Manager at HMP/YOI Portland Holly Upton and east London-based Carina Murray. It is accompanied by music composed by Pilgrim and sung by soloist Robyn Haddon, alumni of the Prison Choir Project, and a further choir of singers. The lyrics and melodies were partly written with people from the Portland prison. Holly Upton said: 'This has been an inspiring experience for both staff and prisoners. We're looking forward to seeing it come to life on the Underground. Working in a prison has its challenges, but you can make a difference.' The piece was produced in collaboration with the Mayor of London's Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme (CCSaR), the Feminist Library in Peckham and the Prison Choir Project. It is heard alongside visual artworks by Pilgrim on display throughout Waterloo Underground station and is accessible through a QR code on posters across the network. An expanded leaflet documenting the piece's development is available to collect from Waterloo Underground station. Eleanor Pinfield, Head of Art on the Underground, said: 'We are delighted to be launching a new sound commission for the moving walkway at Waterloo Underground station, one of the busiest on the network. Pilgrim's collaborative approach has brought together voices from London and Portland to consider the miraculous in the everyday. This new audio work reminds us of the power of connection, to those around us in our communities and those we travel through the city with each day.'
BBC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Sound artwork launched at London Waterloo Tube station
A sound artwork has been installed at Waterloo London Underground station by Transport for London (TfL).Rory Pilgrim's 10-minute Go Find Miracles, which combines music and spoken word, partly written by prisoners, will play along the moving walkway connecting the Jubilee and Northern lines on weekdays until 25 July.A collaboration with the Feminist Library in Peckham, the Prison Choir Project and the Mayor of London's culture and community spaces at risk programme, it reflects London's links to Pinfield, head of Art on the Underground, said: "Pilgrim's collaborative approach has brought together voices from London and Portland to consider the miraculous in the everyday." The Dorset Isle of Portland's stone is the material used to build many well-known London buildings, including the headquarters of TfL and the BBC, as well as Waterloo station in an underground quarry and on a disused Jubilee line platform, Go Find Miracles explores how the law impacts our lives and environment and is structured around a prayer of call and response between London and lyrics and melodies of the work have partly been written together with men from HMP/YOI Upton, neurodiversity support manager at HMP/YOI Portland, said: "This has been an inspiring experience for both staff and prisoners. "We're looking forward to seeing it come to life on the Underground."
New York Times
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Last Words of a Dying Glacier
By Lutz Stautner Mr. Stautner is a filmmaker. He spent time with sound artist Ludwig Berger at the Morteratsch Glacier in Switzerland. When I first heard Ludwig Berger's recordings of a melting glacier, I could hardly believe they were real. They reflected what I'd long associated with glaciers: complexity, excitement, life. By approaching the glacier through sound, by making it seem alive, Berger gave me a whole new perspective, not just on climate change caused by humans, but on coexistence. The short documentary above, 'Crying Glacier,' explores what we can learn by listening. This Op-Docs film is a collaboration between Lutz Stautner, a filmmaker from Cologne, Ludwig Berger, a sound artist and composer based between Montreal and Alsace, France, and El Flamingo, a creative studio in Düsseldorf, Germany. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@ Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries by independent filmmakers. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
ABC News
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Rising festival 'sound experience' Saturate asks audiences to jump in a pool
It's not every performance that requires an audience member to strip down to their togs. So, from the outset, Saturate, an underwater musical "experience" on during this year's Rising festival, establishes that it's little bit different. Picture 60 or so people together in a public pool — the historic City Baths in the centre of Naarm/Melbourne — serenely sharing what is usually a very active space. "Your ears need to be underneath the water to hear the sound composition in its full frequency spectrum, which means that you need to be either diving under the water or floating on your back," the show's creator, sound artist Sara Retallick, says. Retallick, who has produced and performed different underwater listening experiences — including at Rising 2021, and Brunswick Music Festival — says her underwater composition presents a "really different way of listening". "We're geared towards imagining sound [under water] to be quite muffled, [for example] if you were to listen to a radio that was submerged in water or someone singing or talking under water. "But because I'm using underwater speakers that are designed for this process, the clarity of the sound is actually really quite incredible." She's deliberately used instrumentation that couldn't acoustically be performed under water — "air-reliant instruments" like flutes or voice, and electronics — which she presents under water with clarity. Some of the sound is also recordings of water. "It's designed to get people thinking about whether they're hearing the sound composition or hearing the water around them. [It's] sort of playing with reality versus recording. "So it's this very different encounter with sound." Retallick is keen to ease her audiences into the show, which "starts in a fairly gentle way". Front of mind is that she's asking her audiences — disrobed, submerged in water — "to be in quite a vulnerable position". "That's definitely something that has a been a theme through all of these underwater works that I've made, is that that care for the audience is really important and the whole journey becomes part of the work. "So, of course there's the sound work itself, which is the main thing, but then how people move through the venue and through the change rooms and all of that, I also consider a very big part of the work." To refine her compositions, she jumps in a pool herself, to test scaled-down versions of the sound. She's even found an "Airbnb for pools" so she can use a private pool for a few hours at a time to listen as her audiences would. "A lot of my compositional process uses sound and digital processing to create quite unique sounds and I've really thought about — listening under water myself and getting a sense of what sounds work quite well and what sounds don't work as well and what frequencies respond well under water." The process of making the work has presented plenty of things to think about that she wouldn't have had to consider if she'd presented her composition in a concert venue or other "normal music venue". "So there's all of these considerations that come into play." Saturate runs for 24 minutes and 37 seconds, which is a very purposeful duration: it's the same duration as the longest breath held under water. And, for Retallick, seeing bathers-wearing audience members experience it in a state of deep, focused listening is a joy. "[It's] incredible for me as a sound artist because that's what I was hoping to get out of this work; to present something that would encourage audiences to really tune in. "And I guess the gesture of inviting people to actually fully submerge their bodies in water in order to access the sound means that they're committing a lot to the work, to being able to experience that listening." Retallick has discovered, over years of practice, that something very particular occurs in audiences' bodies during her underwater shows. "I came across this realisation that we listen really differently under water. So, when we're submerged in water, in a pool or in the ocean, we listen through bone conduction hearing. [That] means that the sound vibrates through the skull and the bones in our skull, and the jawbone, rather than passing through the ear canal as it would if you're listening above water or through air. "So that gives the sound this very close quality. It almost sounds like it's inside your head and we sort of lose the directionality of the sound, so it's like the sound composition is coming from all directions at once." Saturate is on as part of Rising festival, running June 14-15.
ABC News
29-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- ABC News
'Creating the seen from the unseen': Dr Sione Faletau turns sound waves into Tongan kupesi
Artists have a unique way of visually representing our world — including elements we can't physically see, like sound. Tongan artist, Dr. Sione Faletau has combined his skills in digital art, audio engineering, and coding to create visual representations of sound, which he calls "creating the seen from the unseen." At the heart of his work is ongo - a concept that relates to both sound and feeling, reflecting the deep connection between Tongan cultural and spiritual life. Faletau uses audio waveforms — often from voices, music, or environmental sounds - and manipulates them digitally to create kupesi, the traditional Tongan patterns found on ngatu. Dr Sione Faletau says this digital practice was born during COVID-times but as a musician, sound "is very much a part of my art practice." ( ) His practice, which he calls "sonic mark-making," is an ode to the traditional role of ngatu as a medium for recording stories and histories. "I've kind of identified this geometrical language within kupesi or traditional Tongan patterns [that] have angular arrangements. These [are] clues that I can extract and create traditional forms in a digital way - in step with the ancestors," he said. "I've always been interested in patterns and kupesi. I would say tapa cloth ... our mats, they are our, I guess, form of written language."
