Living Waves, Sea Box, and more at Coastival 2014!

University of Hull @ Coastival, February 14th – 16th

There are a number of events on at Scarborough’s Coastival Festival this weekend involving staff and students from the University of Hull, including Living Waves by Rob Mackay – Featuring Evelyn Glennie.

Living Waves

Living Waves is a sonic journey in to stone. It uses the sounds of ringing rocks found in the Lake District to create an immersive sound installation. It was commissioned for the Ruskin Rocks Project and features Dame Evelyn Glennie playing a new lithophone specially created for it .

I’ve seen Rob present this piece three times and have heard excerpts from it several more. This is the first time it will be exhibited in a complete form but Rob assures me there so much more material to create more work

It will be on at Coastival in Scarborough this weekend on Friday and Saturday (10am – 5pm) at Scarborough’s Rotunda Museum of Geology. FREE ENTRY!

There are two other installations including sound design by Rob Mackay, installations by Sam Eaton and Sea Swim:

Sounds of Our Surroundings

by Rob MacKay and PhD student Sam Eaton is a virtual instrument in which you make music by interacting with a map of Scarborough. “Create your own composition by combining the sounds of the landscape!”

Sea Box by Sea Swim

This is an installation with 3 channels of video and surround sound which immerses viewers into the experiences of swimming in the North Sea. By Lara Goodband, John Wedgewood Clark, and Rob MacKay.

The festival will involve over 700 performers from the town in the epic production of
Orpheus the Mariner which uses giant puppets, some of which have been made by Music and Drama students from the University of Hull, including the world record attempt at the largest puppet ever built!

The Piano Makers @ St. Peter’s Church, Nottingham as part of World Event Young Artists 2012

The Piano Makers was selected for the World Event Young Artists 2012 event that is taking place in Nottingham, England, during 7th – 16th September 2012.

Hosted in the impressive St. Peter’s Church, in Nottingham, the piece is presented in the form of an installation, with a number of wireless headphones available to listen. The work is on loop from 11am – 4pm, 7th – 14th September.

The Piano Makers uses source material that is binaurally recorded – small microphones are worn inside the ears, resulting in recordings that, when played back over headphones, sound externalised and enveloping. The installation is completely free, and I recommend you visit the numerous other events that WEYA have organised during the week.

Programme note:

From The Piano Makers, written by D. Wainwright:

The frame and strings
of a fully strung grand piano
must withstand the pressure
of about 20 tonnes

The Kemble piano factory in Milton Keynes was the last to exist in the UK until its recent relocation to Indonesia and Japan. Using binaural recordings made during a visit to the factory before its closure, The Piano Makers is a study of piano material and manufacture, and the idea of the tension and pressure that the instrument withstands.

With thanks to Peter Corney and all of the Kemble Pianos Ltd. employees at Milton Keynes for obliging my intrusion.

This global event will showcase a selection of the best international creative talent, across a spectrum of artforms, in one city, providing an opportunity for 1000 artists from 100 nations to join together and share their creativity on an international platform.