sunset

My Walk this Week 260 – Under Scottish Skies

My walk this week is a celebration of the different weather conditions we enjoyed under Scottish skies recently. I won’t say much more than that. As you will be able to see below, we relaxed to beautiful sunsets, cold winds, and water not just ebbing and flowing with the tide but also falling from the sky. On one occasion this produced a thunderous roar as the drops hit the tin roof above us in the middle of the night.

Night Rain

Talaterra Podcast featuring StillWalks

Something extra  for anyone interested in knowing more about me, my work with sound and StillWalks.

Tania Marien from Talaterra interviewed me a couple of weeks ago. You can listen to the podcast at either of the links below:

Talaterra Website
Host site (Simplecast)

 

rigging and masts

My Walk this Week 151 – The Music of Storm Hannah

My walk this week was short, cold and through the remnants of Storm Hannah – it was part of a sound and weave workshop I was running over the weekend. The first stage of the workshop was to go round Swansea Marina and listen to the sounds which featured what is known as the Marina Orchestra.

dark water

The leading orchestral instruments are the masts and rigging followed by the percussion of clanks and bangs, thumps and gloops of other maritime artefacts and of course the choppy water of the marina itself.

It was wild and cold and although we found a relatively sheltered spot to listen to the “symphony”, when we ventured down to the seafront, Continue reading

My Walk this Week 149 – Sound and Weave

My walk this week was more like a run than a walk – I was run off my feet setting up and installing art work in three different venues in Swansea. The main exhibition is the British Tapestry Group’s “Sound and Weave” in which I have an interactive tapestry.

There is a route map for the exhibitions below and I will be posting images and videos about the work over this month on FB and IG and perhaps here as well.

"Sound and Weave" exhibition venues in Swansea

“Sound and Weave” exhibition venues in Swansea

Sound and Weave at Swansea College of Art UWTSD

Sound and Weave at Swansea College of Art UWTSD

Sound and Weave at Swansea College of Art UWTSD

Sound and Weave at Swansea College of Art UWTSD

Louise Martin installation

Louise Martin installation – “WHISPERED WORDS”

Stephanie Edwards

Stephanie Edwards’ – “SHHH . . . the sound of silence”

This is the first post I have written and published entirely from my phone – the result of pressure of time! While I have been very busy with this work, I would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of one of the other exhibitors, Stephanie Edwards, my daughter, Hannah and my wife Julie – also the support in the background of the BTG. Thank you all very much.

My Walk this Week 133 – Format Change

Hi everyone, for a number of reasons I have decided that My Walk this Week is going to be posted just once a week . . . on Fridays. So I hope you will look forward to Friday for my next walk which presents the sights and sounds of an Autumn woodland – see the image below as some encouragement to look, read and listen to the post.

The posts will still include a soundscape for the walks and I hope to encourage you to click the play button for these and then browse the images in sequence. This does not give the same experience as a StillWalks® video, which I will soon be making available through membership, but I hope they are still enjoyable and give the opportunity to take five minutes out from the hubbub of modern life.

woodland footpath

 

Autumn sumac

My Walk this Week 130 – Soundscape for an Autumn Valley

My walk this week in a damp, misty Welsh valley Autumn landscape provided me with a fantastic and varied soundscape. The walk took me up one side of the valley and back down the middle where the river was further engorged by rushing tributaries.

water gushing

Having enjoyed the Autumn colours of a Staghorn Sumac, I descended the twisting path towards the river and recorded its approaching sound as I went. I have kept most of this clip included in the soundscape below (making it longer than usual) because the changes in its timbre as I twist and turn are, to me, fascinating and beautiful. Also included Continue reading

tapestry weaving

Dumfries 3 – Sound and Weave

The most important reason for me to visit Dumfries was to check out Gracefield Arts Centre and the space in which I would have work in an exhibition later in the year. The British Tapestry Group exhibition “Sound and Weave” is now on at the arts centre and runs there until 29th September.

Gracefield Arts Centre

My tapestry is experimentally interactive with light sensors embedded in the weave – the sensors trigger different field recordings layered over a looping background soundscape when they are cast into shadow by, for instance, the viewer’s hand or body.

“Experimental” is the key work here and it proved a challenge to calibrate the sensors to react at their optimum in a space with lighting quite different from my studio. In this instance I am happy for the interactivity of the tapestry to be sensitive to the changing ambient light as much as the gallery lighting and human intervention, but in future venues I will provide my own lighting with a view to a tighter control of the sensors.

The videos below show both my own tapestry “in action” and the other works in the exhibition. Thanks again to Dawn, the Arts Officer at Gracefield, and all the BTG people involved in setting up the exhibition. It will be my turn when it comes to Swansea in March 2019!

If the videos do not show below in your browser, please click the links below to view them on Vimeo.

INTERCONNECTION at Gracefield Arts Centre

https://vimeo.com/285860378

Sound and Weave at Gracefield Arts Centre

https://vimeo.com/286544845


ducks enjoying the rain

And The Rain Began to Fall

Near the end of my walk this week we approached the double walled kitchen garden of the National Botanic Garden of Wales and as we walked through it towards the hothouse and the butterflies, the rain began to fall. Not too heavy at first so I was able to get a couple more photos before going inside, but while we enjoyed looking at the few large butterflies fluttering around at this time of year, the rain really started coming down and the noise of stair rods hitting the glass roof was noticeable to say the least.

the rain came down

So we took more time in the hothouse than perhaps we might have done but our wait for the rain to subside was futile and we eventually put up our hoods and ventured out towards the entrance and car park. The ducks seemed happy enough!

The sound clip below does not relate to this and I realise in writing this that my habit of posting a soundscape at the end of the week has a flaw. If I only have a sound clip rather than an edited soundscape, then the sound will only be from one particular part of my walk and give no sense of progression or change of environment or conditions. So the clip below should have been posted at the beginning of the week when we were inside the Great Glass House (so I have posted it there now as well as below). It was busy with people and birds all enjoying Mothers Day – mothers perhaps because it was Mothers day and a visit to the NBGW on what was a nice day at the time included a craft fair and the birds because their were plenty of crumbs to be had around the cafe area.

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