On the 4th of October I attended a live experimental night at the St Mary Le Wigford Church, here in Lincoln, as part of the Sonophilia festival festival; Lincoln’s festival of “sound and conferences for lovers of audio, both professional and amateur.” The evening was hosted by ESP2 (Extra Sonic Practice) a collective of Lincoln University artists and scholars. I took interest in attending this because of the experimental aspects of my desired project.
The first performance I watched was by Marie Thompson and Linda Kemp, who both used flutes along with amps and simply played. But they were manipulating the instrument so the sounds we were hearing were not the ones you would expect to hear from those instruments; if you were not there to physically see them playing them you wouldn’t of believed it. Surprisingly it wasn’t until after the performance when I looked on the website that I realised their performance was in fact improvised; how they managed to play out the live piece so in-tune with each other is what made me think that everything was planned and practiced. Throughout I wasn’t really sure what was going on and what was the point in it, but their aim was to show the amount of different sounds you can produce from something that has always been designed and perceived as producing a distinct sound and only that.
The second performance I witnessed was by Gruinard Ensemble which right now I am still unsure about some aspects of their piece (I have sent an email questioning these, so possible edit of post in future*). This was also a live improvisation yet this really did sound like a worked on soundscape. Their piece had a long build up but when it got into it there was many industrial sounds incorporated into it, such as cars driving by, what sounded like rain on the pavement and trains; this part intrigued me the most because it is how I wish to go about my piece. I want a build up where I’m using synths and possibly some manipulated recordings, then having untouched industrial recordings gradually being layered into it and then making a big impact. The areas of this piece I am still waiting to understand is when one of the guys was playing a brass instrument into a microphone so quietly it was almost impossible to hear it. I’m not sure if this was the intention or if it just somehow managed to get lost amongst everything else we were hearing.
Although I didn’t experience Emily Wilczek’s experiment at the time of the event I did the week after, and it was using a standard coat hanger with some string; two pieces of string attached on either side, twisted a few times around your finger and then you stick your fingers in your ear and you bang the coat hanger on a surface and it really does sound like a gong. Another example of sound being manipulated, to create a different sound from an instrument or object that is not expected. Giving it another/new meaning.
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