Hearing Catherine

This is a selection of the tunes from my 2004 album, Audicle.

Audicle

These are some of the amazing chants recorded on the Women's March London, January 21st, 2017. Proud to sing alongside these amazing women and to add my voice to the throng.

Women's March London, 21st January 2017

The Glen of the Downs 20 Years Reunion

This is a collection featuring all the sounds I played during my presentation at STUK during the ARTEFACT FESTIVAL, Leuven, Belgium. 

http://www.artefact-festival.be/2013/programma/detail/60593

A city shaped

This is the sound of the Bluefaced Leicester sheep grazing near to Cecilia's house; Cecilia spins with their wool, sometimes.

Grazing Bluefaced Leicesters

This is the sound of some of Sue Blacker's Gotland sheep in their barn.

Sue Blacker's Gotlands

Unlike the combing machine, the carding machine doesn't force all the fibres to lie parallel to one another before they are spun; instead, the carding machine approximately tidies up the fibres, so that they still have air between them and don't lie entirely parallel to one another. The "organised" wool fibres are then rubbed carefully between rubber boards to produce tidy little pencil rovings, which are then ready to be woollen-spun into nice bouncy yarns. This is the sound of the fibres being gently rolled between rubber boards, at the end of the carding process, and before the spinning process.

Rubbing wool - Natural Fibre Company

This is the sound of the wool combing machinery at the Natural Fibre Company - home of Blacker Yarns. This machine combs washed woollen fleece, causing all the fibres to lay parallel to one another prior to spinning. This results in drapey, dense, worsted-spun yarns which usually have a nice lustre because of the smoothing effect that making the fibres lie parallel before spinning them has.

Natural Fibre Company - industrial wool combs

This is the sound of one of the many processes which takes place at the Natural Fibre Company - home of Blacker Yarns - and in which raw fleece becomes yarn you can knit with.

Natural Fibre Company - machinery

This is the sound of the birds outside Cecilia's house. Since Cecilia lives very near to the flock of Bluefaced Leicester sheep whose wool she uses, these birds are the same birds that the flock hear when they are out grazing.

Cecilia's birds

Halcyon low-key vibes. Just a sketch or outline of an idea, as I get to grips with understanding how I can use Ableton Live. Keen-eared listeners might spot, in the mix, some chimes that came in Christmas crackers used to make a tune.

MELOMIDI - just a sketch out of ideas

This is what I've been working on in my first Ableton Live course - it's the same track as before but I did some compression and EQ on the beats and re-recorded my own versions of the choral sounds and the beautiful wineglass resonance.

Halcyonic

This is my final submission for Point Blank Music School's Creative Audio Ableton Course WHICH I HAVE LOVED. 

Source sounds mostly recorded around my garden and including wind chimes, sweeping the patio, hitting the bbq with a knitting needle, bashing a big green gardening tub and suchlike. 

The only other samples are from my all-time favourite self-releasing artist on bandcamp, Rrrrrose - Loyalty Freak Music - and their amazing Space Porn album which was released under a Creative Commons 3.0 License:

https://chezmonplaisir.bandcamp.com/album/space-porn
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

MUSIC SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT

This is a recording of the song "Farewell to Northmaven", played on the piano at the Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, London. 

"Farewell to Northmaven" was composed by George Hogarth, the father of Catherine Dickens. A poem by Sir Walter Scott provided the lyrics to which this music was originally set, but in this recording you can just hear George Hogarth's composition; the ambience of the dining room; and the characterful piano held by the museum. 

This recording was made as part of the research for "Hearing Catherine", a commission in which I am working to represent the textures and presence of Catherine Dickens in the Dickens household.

Farewell To Northmaven

This is the clock in the hall at the Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street. I have recorded it striking 5; such a beautiful and pretty sound, once presumably part of the daily domestic soundscape of the Dickens family when they lived here from 1837 - 1839.

The Clock Strikes 5

This is a small audio tour of the graves connected with the members of the Dickens family who are buried at Highgate in the West Cemetery. The tour group includes members of staff and volunteers from the Charles Dickens Museum. Our knowledgeable tour guide is John Turpin, a Friend of Highgate Cemetery and co-author of a book about Victorian cemeteries entitled "The Magnificent Seven: London's First Landscaped Cemeteries" by john Turpin and Derrick Knight.

I was making recordings to try and capture something of the place where Catherine and Dora are laid to rest; the bells at the end are recorded from their graveside. 

The Dickens's Graves at Highgate Cemetery

This composition features text from Catherine Dickens' recipe book "What Shall We Have For Dinner?" mixed with field recordings created in a working Victorian kitchen. It is one of the tracks I have produced in the course of researching and developing an Arts Council England supported sound project called "Hearing Catherine" for the Charles Dickens Museum.

"Hearing Catherine" is a trail of six sound pieces spread around the Charles Dickens Museum. Each piece has been designed to give presence and texture to the memory of Catherine Dickens throughout the house in which she and Charles lived from 1837 - 1839. The works combine carefully sourced field-recordings with extracts of text written by Catherine Dickens and music composed by her friends and her father. 

This piece has been developed in the course of working on the sounds and text for the kitchen. The voice belongs to voice actor Rachel Moffat, and the sound sources include a butter churn; lemons; Victorian kitchen utensils and the ingredients mentioned in the text. Like Catherine, Rachel grew up in a middle-class family in Edinburgh. Here she uses her accent to create a strong sense of Catherine’s Scottish ancestry and culinary flair. 

In "The Other Dickens" (a scholarly investigation into the life of Catherine Dickens) Lillian Nayder writes that Catherine’s book “allows us to hear her voice in an assertive and self-confident timbre, as she explains the dos and don’t of kitchen practice” – a statement that has guided the vocal work in this sound piece. 



Mâitre d'Hôtel Butter

This is a snippet of a composition by Catherine Dickens's Father, George Hogarth, played on the piano in the Charles Dickens Museum. It will be used in a composition I am developing as part of an Arts Council England supported sound project called "Hearing Catherine" for the Charles Dickens Museum.

"Hearing Catherine" is a trail of six sound pieces spread around the Charles Dickens Museum. Each piece has been designed to give presence and texture to the memory of Catherine Dickens throughout the house in which she and Charles lived from 1837 - 1839. The works combine carefully sourced field-recordings with extracts of text written by Catherine Dickens and music composed by her friends and her father.

Catherine came from a musical and literary family. Her father, George Hogarth, composed this work and it is highly probable that it was played on a piano like the one in the Dickens Museum when the Dickens family lived there between 1837 - 1839. The piano in the Dickens Museum has no sustain pedal and no dampening pedal; the action inside the piano is more like that of a harpsichord.


George Hogarth, Waltz and Trio, 1832

This is one of the tracks created in the course of researching and developing an Arts Council England supported sound project called "Hearing Catherine" for the Charles Dickens Museum.

"Hearing Catherine" is a trail of six sound pieces spread around the Charles Dickens Museum. Each piece has been designed to give presence and texture to the memory of Catherine Dickens throughout the house in which she and Charles lived from 1837 - 1839. The works combine carefully sourced field-recordings with extracts of text written by Catherine Dickens and music composed by her friends and her father.

This piece has been developed in the course of working on the sounds for the kitchen. It uses Catherine’s cookbook "What Shall We Have For Dinner?" as its starting point. Lillian Nayder writes that Catherine’s book “allows us to hear her voice in an assertive and self-confident timbre, as she explains the dos and don’ts of kitchen practice” – a statement which has guided the vocal work in this sound piece. 

The sounds in the background are all recordings of preparing Scotch Broth on a working range according to Catherine’s recipe, and these are combined with her written instructions, read aloud by Rachael Moffat. Like Catherine, Rachel comes from a middle class Edinburgh family and here uses her accent to create a strong sense of Catherine’s Scottish ancestry and culinary flair. 


Scotch Broth

This is one of the tracks created in the course of researching and developing an Arts Council England supported sound project called "Hearing Catherine" for the Charles Dickens Museum.

"Hearing Catherine" is a trail of six sound pieces spread around the Charles Dickens Museum. Each piece has been designed to give presence and texture to the memory of Catherine Dickens throughout the house in which she and Charles lived from 1837 - 1839. The works combine carefully sourced field-recordings with extracts of text written by Catherine Dickens and music composed by her friends and her father.

This piece has been developed in the course of working on the sounds for the kitchen. It uses Catherine’s cookbook "What Shall We Have For Dinner?" as its starting point. Lillian Nayder writes that Catherine’s book “allows us to hear her voice in an assertive and self-confident timbre, as she explains the dos and don’ts of kitchen practice” – a statement which has guided the vocal work in this sound piece. 

The sounds in the background are all recordings of following the instructions for Catherine Dickens's recipe, "To Boil Cauliflower With Parmesan" in a working Victorian kitchen. These culinary recordings are combined with Catherine's written instructions, read aloud by Rachael Moffat. Like Catherine, Rachel comes from a middle class Edinburgh family and here uses her accent to create a strong sense of Catherine’s culinary flair. 

To Boil Cauliflower With Parmesan

This Presidency Will Not Stand

Women Have The Power

These are some of the amazing chants recorded on the Women's March London, January 21st, 2017. Proud to sing alongside these amazing women and to add my voice to the throng. This chant was sung by the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign. You can read about their good work here: https://londonirisharc.com/about/

My Body, My Choice

This is the sound of the Sapporo Clock Tower. This is the oldest building standing in Sapporo and it was designed by Americans, who helped to establish the city in the late 1800s. I read about the chome of this clock on the 100 Soundscapes of Japan project website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Soundscapes_of_Japan. This US-style clock tower was installed in 1878.

Sapporo Clocktower

This was a small packet I produced for BBC Oxford's cultural magazine show, "The Hub". The piece drew its inspiration from the popular I-SPY books of my childhood and involved hearing or using sound to tell the story of seeing various artefacts detailed in "I-SPY IN THE COUNTRY". In this interview I'm with Roy Brigden at the Museum of English Rural Life, seeing and hearing many of the objects detailed in the book, which are handily there in the Museum's collection.

I-SPY / I-HEAR at the Museum of English Rural Life

Sounds of newly hatched cygnets from the Town & Country soundmap currently in development for MERL: aporee.org/maps/work/projects.…ject=townandcountry

I wanted to supply you with an update on the swans <a href="http://www.knitsonik.com/2017/04/25/recording-swans/" target="_blank">of which I wrote the other day</a>. Having followed the male swan and listened to his aggressive defence of the lake, his nest and his mate, I confess to having become rather attached to the outcome. Clearly I am not alone in this - as you can hear in the recording, many comrades were gathering at the weekend to greet the six perfect cygnets and their parents now swimming relaxedly around the lakes. You can hear families, ducks, some of the other birds who live around the lake, and keen local photographers as eager to capture the fuzzy loveliness of the cygnets in light as I was to document their glorious chirrups in sound.

07/05/2017 14.33 Cygnets

This is a recording made with the trusty EDIROL R09 sitting at the fireside in the morning at the camp by the Octagon, playing music with Jeff's recorders, accompanied by two budding musicians, Hawkeye and Bea. Bea is on percussion, Hawkeye is on recorder. The wind sings with us and you can hear other comrades from the camp speaking as we sit in the smoke, listening and sounding together.

Hawkeye, Bea and me playing music by the fire in the morning

This is the sound of the stream running through the Glen of the Downs, combined with the stream of traffic that runs through the N11. Recorded with EDIROL R09.

The stream running through the Glen of the Downs

This is the sound of Kathleen and Aidan jamming by the fireside at our Glen of the Downs Road Protest 20 Years Reunion.

Kathleen and Aidan jamming at the Octagon

Meat sizzling on the fire, chatter around the fire.

Sizzles on the fire

Amazing recorder duet between myself and Damnhait, on Jeff's lovely old wooden recorders.

Recorders Duet

This is the sound of the snow falling in our garden on 27th February, 2018. I read somewhere that if it's snowing, you can record the sound by placing a digital sound recorder in a bowl with tinfoil stretched across the top. The snowflakes hitting the foil are recorded. I'm not sure of the source of the creaky sounds in this recording - maybe the garage roof responding to wind and the pressures of weather? You can also hear two sets of windchimes, the ever present planes from Heathrow, and the noises of police sirens and traffic.

Suburban Snow

This is one of four pieces produced for workshops delivered for the Museum of English Rural Life - or MERL for short - as part of their project, “Making, Using and Enjoying”. The MERL commissioned writers, makers, artists and craftspeople to explore ways of engaging with museum collections through creativity and you can read more about it online at merl.reading.ac.uk by following the links to research projects.

I delivered four workshops at the MERL between March and April 2018 as part of this project. In each session, I was joined by local knitters and, together, we explored a different part of the Museum’s collection through knitting and sound.

This episode was created for the first session in the series: KNIT A SONG OF SHEPHERDS [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/knit-a-song-of-shepherds-tickets-43073345536#]. The inspiration came from looking at smocks held in the collection of the MERL and reflecting on how farmers and shepherds are represented. Often beautifully hand stitched on linen or cotton, the MERL‘s glass cases of smocks recall a certain sort of nostalgic farmer figure. Often a man, softly spoken with a crook and a dog - this figure is historic, often romanticised, and bears little relationship to the folk populating today’s working agricultural landscapes. We could study the actual structure of the sewn smocking stitches involved in the creation of these special, historic garments, but I found I was more interested in exploring them more symbolically, as a starting point for thinking about the identity and presence of the farmer or the shepherd. I kept thinking about a special interview from 2012 that I’d done with Pam Hall of Fornside Farm in the Lake District. Pam weaves, knits and makes felt from the fleeces of her sheep, and is a long-term member of the Wool Clip in Cumbria – a co-operative whose skilled members are all textile workers who, more often than not, work with wool they have grown themselves. Shepherd and maker, I felt Pam’s interview could give us a new kind of template for thinking about the figure of the farmer. I thought that if we could somehow knit a kind of smocked texture in wool, it would reference the historic smock collection in a very small way, while providing a direct, material connection to Pam’s land and animals. 

In KNIT A SONG OF SHEPHERDS, we knitted squares of Smocking Stitch in Herdwick wool from Pam Hall’s flock, in Cumbria. While working with this yarn and knitted stitch pattern, we listened to Pam, her sheep and the weather and the traffic around her farm.

For further information see knitsonik.com
This work was commissioned by the MERL for the project "Making, Using and Enjoying: The Museum of the Intangible". The project is funded by the Arts Council England (ACE) Designation Development Fund.

KNIT A SONG OF SHEPHERDS

This is one of four pieces produced for workshops delivered for the Museum of English Rural Life - or MERL for short - as part of their project, “Making, Using and Enjoying”. The MERL commissioned writers, makers, artists and craftspeople to explore ways of engaging with museum collections through creativity and you can read more about it online at merl.reading.ac.uk by following the links to research projects.

I delivered four workshops at the MERL between March and April 2018 as part of this project. In each session, I was joined by local knitters and, together, we explored a different part of the Museum’s collection through knitting and sound.

This episode was created for the second session in the series: KNIT A SONG OF SHETLAND [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/knit-a-song-of-shetland-tickets-43075193062#]. The inspiration came from looking at a pair of hand-knitted ladies’ woollen gloves which are part of a larger collection. The gloves were acquired from the British Council in 1960 for a touring exhibition representing craft products made in the British Isles. They were supplied to the exhibition by the Shetland Handknitters’ Association and are decorated with a characteristic Shetland star pattern. The knitter of these gloves employed a special technique to create a red line running around the edge of each of the fingers. Ordinarily, the side stitches on a pair of Fair Isle gloves would be worked in the same contrasting colour as the main pattern to produce this effect, but since there is no pattern on the fingers of these gloves, the red stitches outlining each one must have been added retrospectively after the main knitting was done, using duplicate stitch or a crochet hook. The gloves were knitted in 1945 or 1946 and what I was thinking about when I was studying them, is the continuity of the Shetland wool trade which has been alive since well before that date right up to the present day. The endurance and long history of Shetland knitting are part of what set it apart as a knitting destination. Having been lucky enough to visit Shetland several times in the past few years, I wanted to share some of the sounds from there with knitters in Reading, as we worked on a project based on these gloves. I wanted to celebrate, with fellow knitters, the special connections between the gloves held at the MERL and the people, labour, animals and places lying behind today’s thriving Shetland wool industry. 
 
In KNIT A SONG OF SHETLAND, we knit pincushions using Jamieson & Smith 2 ply Jumper Weight Yarn in shades 34 and 93, which are very close to the shades used in the original gloves. Jamieson & Smith began life in the 1930s and continue a flourishing trade today. Their beautiful yarns are hugely popular with contemporary designers and knitters alike but retain an immense sense of history and heritage. A member of the team there and an independent knitwear designer – Ella Gordon – provided some insights about how the gloves might have had the red line added after being knit. I incorporated the tutorial she shared into the construction of the pincushion and our discussion of technique continued in the workshop, as we worked on our pincushions and listened to the landscape where the gloves – and our wool – had come. 

For further information see knitsonik.com
This work was commissioned by the MERL for the project "Making, Using and Enjoying: The Museum of the Intangible". The project is funded by the Arts Council England (ACE) Designation Development Fund.

KNIT A SONG OF SHETLAND

This is one of four pieces produced for workshops delivered for the Museum of English Rural Life - or MERL for short - as part of their project, “Making, Using and Enjoying”. The MERL commissioned writers, makers, artists and craftspeople to explore ways of engaging with museum collections through creativity and you can read more about it online at merl.reading.ac.uk by following the links to research projects.

I delivered four workshops at the MERL between March and April 2018 as part of this project. In each session, I was joined by local knitters and, together, we explored a different part of the Museum’s collection through knitting and sound.

This episode was created for the third session in the series: KNIT A SONG OF SILK [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/knit-a-song-of-silkworms-tickets-43075447824#]. The inspiration came from seeing that MERL hold a book in their archives titled “Lullingstone silk farm 1932-1954, by Zoe, Lady Hart Dyke”. The accession notes describe this book as including “a silk sample in pocket at back” bringing together the physical textile with Hart Dyke’s account of its creation. I wanted to combine silk textiles with their story of provenance and to share with workshop attendees my own experience of having raised silkworms in 2014. 

For KNIT A SONG OF SILKWORMS, I took an old hand of silk reeled at Lullingstone (you can still find these on the Internet) and processed them for hand spinning. I first had to degum the silk in a mixture of washing soda and cetyl alcohol (a surfactant), after which followed a couple of hours spent rinsing out the cleaned fibres. After this, I dried them on a radiator. The next day, I set about hand spinning enough silk for everyone at the workshop to be able to knit a bracelet featuring lengths of i-cord worked in handspun silk. It’s impossible to record the sounds of Lullingstone Silk Farm anymore as it no longer exists. However, listening to accounts of the silk farm (I read out several sections from various books by Lady Hart Dyke both in this piece and in the actual workshop) we were able to tie together a better sense of the provenance of the silk with which we were working. I went with bracelets as the knitted outcome for this project because silk is so labour intensive to produce that, to me, it seems as rare and precious as jewellery.

For further information see knitsonik.com
This work was commissioned by the MERL for the project "Making, Using and Enjoying: The Museum of the Intangible". The project is funded by the Arts Council England (ACE) Designation Development Fund.

KNIT A SONG OF SILKWORMS

This is one of four pieces produced for workshops delivered for the Museum of English Rural Life - or MERL for short - as part of their project, “Making, Using and Enjoying”. The MERL commissioned writers, makers, artists and craftspeople to explore ways of engaging with museum collections through creativity and you can read more about it online at merl.reading.ac.uk by following the links to research projects.

I delivered four workshops at the MERL between March and April 2018 as part of this project. In each session, I was joined by local knitters and, together, we explored a different part of the Museum’s collection through knitting and sound.

This episode was created for the last session in the series: KNIT A SONG OF SHEEP BELLS [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/knit-a-song-of-sheep-bells-tickets-43745281314#]. The inspiration came from looking at sheep bells held in the collection of the MERL and reflecting on the history of these objects and their lost presence in the soundscape of UK farming. Contrary to popular belief – that bells are used purely to locate the flock of sheep over large distances – many accounts describe placing sheep bells on sheep as an intentional and deliberate musical practice. Bells do also amplify the quietness of sheep, and I was interested in finding and sharing a corollary with using sonic stitch markers to emphasise the often quiet act of knitting stitches.

In KNIT A SONG OF SHEEP BELLS, we created our own sonic stitch markers using bells, which we then used to mark the increase points on a knitted sheep bell based on one of the examples held in the MERL’s collection. While knitting with our own bells on our knitting, we simultaneously listened to accounts and recordings of bells on sheep in different farming landscapes and then heard my own recordings of the usually silent bells held at the MERL.

Credits and acknowledgements:

Thanks to Tony Whitehead, Mike Taylor and John Grzinich for uploading their recordings and words to aporee.org under creative commons licenses that allow me to use them in this show;
to Tim Shaw for enabling me to use his recording of sheep bells in Switzerland, released through bandcamp with permission granted for reuse;
to David M and Anthony McGeehan for their amazing starling recordings and notes, shared on the xeno-canto website under a creative commons license;
and to Rucisko, for sharing his recording on the freesounds website under a creative commons license.

For further information see knitsonik.com
This work was commissioned by the MERL for the project "Making, Using and Enjoying: The Museum of the Intangible". The project is funded by the Arts Council England (ACE) Designation Development Fund.

KNIT A SONG OF SHEEPBELLS

This is the piano in Tuuli's parents' house in Võru, Estonia. The wallpaper was on the walls there since around the 1960s/70s, during Soviet Times. The tune was just made up tinklings.

Tuuli's Piano

Tuuli's Loom

This is the sound of MERLin the bat echolocating upon his release into the wild this evening in the Museum of English Rural Life garden. Recorded with a slightly hissy heterodyne bat detector, pitched to 40Hz. MERLin is a nathusias pipistrelle; you can read his story in this thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMERL/status/1099661508852752390

MERLin The Bat

One of the tracks on "Audicle", produced in 2004 for my BA degree show in Ireland, "Thumper" explores the world of my youngest brother, Thaddaeus, when we were teenagers. Many of the stories in "Audicle" relate to animals in one way or another... "Thumper" is a toy rabbit.



Thumper

One of the tracks on "Audicle", produced in 2004 for my BA degree show in Ireland, "Glockenspiel" recalls the tunes that I made up on the piano as a small girl, and the glockenspiel I played at the Fairfield Halls in a primary school concert. Many of the stories in "Audicle" relate to memories. "Glockenspiel" is about all the tiny, sparkly, sad little glinty things in girlhood.

Glockenspiel

One of the tracks on "Audicle", "Little Monkey" sonically celebrates the imagined humanity of our primate buddies here on the Earth.  

Little Monkey

This is a ringtone created especially for Wovember 2012. Download it as an mp3 and apply it to your phone, so that the sound of the source of wool can be spread around the world every time your phone rings! IF YOU HAVE AN IPHONE, you should be able to download it via iTunes by searching for felicityvford and downloading "Felicity Ford's boos" - it will only download this one file!

Baa tone

I produced this audio last year, in 2011, during WOVEMBER, for the Cast On Podcast! You can hear it in that original context, here: http://www.cast-on.com/11/podcasts/episode-104-different-is-different/ or you can listen this year, at http://www.wovember.com

In this piece, I explore the idea of "the sounds of wool"!

The Sounds of Wool

This was an episode of Knit Weekly, produced for The Hub by Felicity Ford in 2010. In this feature, Felicity meets Richard Martin of Filkins, at his place of business, the Cotswold Woollen Weavers. They discuss many different topics relating to wool, including the original sheep-to-garment process involved in the making of the Throckmorton coat.

Knit Weekly at the Cotswold Woollen Weavers

This is a sound recording of the end of a concert in Estonia, heard from outside the building where the concert took place. You can hear the seagulls going wild at the sound of the heavily amplified music inside. Myself and Kaisa didn't go inside because we were very tired and giggly, and didn't want to spoil the concert! In fact we could have screamed with laughter and nobody would have heard us... the performance was incredibly loud. The seagulls are a major feature of the soundscape of Tallinn and it was amazing to listen to them responding to Tuned City with their own voices. 

This is an edited version of the recording, taken from the end of the radio show produced by myself and Valeria Merlini, using recordings and a plan for the show created together with the brilliant participants in the workshop - Kadi, Danny, Kaisa and Lewis. 

Seagulls in Estonia

This is a recording I created with Stavroula Kounadea for James Saunders's "Make Sound Here" project. 

We explored the city of Oxford with a view to making sounds through interacting with the buildings and architecture. I found a stick and used this to play the railings; what a beautiful way to discover hidden paths, and how different one's experience of the city is when exploring it for sonic possibility, rather than for some other purpose.

http://www.sound-diaries.co.uk/2013/02/make-sound-here/

"Make Sound Here" in Oxford

This is the sound of walking in the streets of Leuven and listening to the bicycles and the students passing. 

To feel at home in a strange city, I did what I do at home, which is wander the streets, taking photos of the bricks, and listening to the sounds of where I am. 

The set-up was a Fostex FR-2LE and a pair of Naiant X-X mics worn at my shoulders (I secure them inside the tunic and then they poke through holes near the neckline) with rycote wind shields on both. The wool is 100% silent, so there is no rustling of my clothes, and I can walk around wearing microphones outdoors in this way gathering sonic impressions using a combination of clothes and technology. 

Bicycles in Leuven

This is the sound of getting Frites in Frituur Fonske in Leuven, Belgium. It is the first field recording created whilst wearing my field-recordists' listening tunic! The set-up was a Fostex FR-2LE and a pair of Naiant X-X mics worn at my shoulders (I secure them inside the tunic and then they poke through holes near the neckline) with rycote wind shields on both. The wool is 100% silent, so there is no rustling of my clothes, and I can walk around wearing microphones outdoors in this way gathering sonic impressions using a combination of clothes and technology. 

The sound was recommended to me by Katharina Smets, who interviewed me for local radio and very kindly wrote me an email listing some of the sounds which she especially loves and remembers from her time living in Leuven. 

Frituur Fonske, Leuven

The tower of the K.U.Leuven Central Library on the Ladeuzeplein in Leuven in Belgium houses one of Europe’s largest and best carillons.

It was erected together with the library building in 1928 and was donated by American engineers as a war memorial. Thanks to the efforts of American carillonneur Margo Halsted, the instrument was renovated and enlarged to 63 bells in 1983. The total bell weight is 35 tons.

During term-time from 7 - 7.45pm on Tuesdays, there is a carrilon concert in which many songs are played. It is a beautiful thing to stand in the square before the great library, listening to the lovely sound of the bells. The penultimate song at the concert I attended on Tuesday 19th February 2013 was "Thank you for the Music" by ABBA. Here is the last refrain from that most apposite tune, melting away into the nocturnal urban soundscape of the city at the end.

The carillon at K.U.Leuven Central Library on the Ladeuzeplein in Leuven, playing ABBA

Felicity celebrates everyday life through a playful and imaginative focus on sounds and listening. She is interested in linking sounds with material culture, and in using sound to animate, describe and explore the physical world. In her work, she seeks to link creative artistic practice to ordinary objects and concerns. A recipe or a shopping list becomes an instruction score; wallpaper becomes the basis for an imaginative sound-recording and composing project; and hand-knitting a sound-system becomes a way of connecting voices and sounds to specific landscapes and communities.

Since concluding her PhD in 2011, Felicity has been working full-time as a self-employed artist.  

Felicity is currently working on commissions with the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (Sonic Wallpaper) and the British Film Institute and the Wellcome Library (creating a soundtrack for Bathing & Dressing Parts 1 and 2). In addition to these projects, she co-runs the Sound Diaries project with Paul Whitty and recently returned from a month-long residency at MoKS in Estonia, in which associated travel costs were covered by The British Council. 


FelicityVFord

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