Poem by Alice Oswald
Angel 
in which an angel sees everything closing in on itself at the moment of dawn
Voices: Alice Oswald, Peter Oswald, Alaric Sumner
Commissioned by INA-GRM, 1999.

Soundings Of Angel [poem by Alice Oswald]

covid crepusculars #2 [Leicester Square]

Based on interviews with 40 city centre residents about the views from their windows, this dispersed, digital portrait of Exeter uses a range of social and participatory art practice, to gently explore the meeting points of public and private space. We worked with associate artists, students and Exeter residents to make This City’s Centre in three main parts – 1. Window, a two channel video installation, 2. Linger, an interactive map and 3. Here, Now, a performance held in an empty, city centre office space with live webcam streaming from the homes of community participants. During the development of the work we experienced and shared life in This City’s Centre from new and surprising angles – from the privacy of other people’s homes – through other people’s eyes. Inviting us to think more deeply about how daily life in this … and any British provincial city, can shape us, provoke us, define us. www.blindditch.org/portfolio-items…s-citys-centre/

Window, Pt. I

Window, Pt. I – audio from the video installation by Blind Ditch

Cattle Grids Of Dartmoor (excerpt)

Spanning January 2000 to November 2002, Sounding Dartmoor was
an environmentally orientated public-arts project taking the sounds of
Dartmoor National Park, in the South West of England, as its field of inquiry – those of its people, places and habitats, in one word, its soundscape. It was initiated by a grant secured from Arts Council of England by the Touring Exhibition of Sound Environments (TESE), and brought together a number of
organisations: TESE, the Digital Crowd (University of Plymouth) and
Aune Head Arts (based in Princetown in the middle of Dartmoor). The project was coordinated by John Levack Drever. These soundscapes were recorded by the group over this time period.

Fox Hunt In Progress Near Hound Tor, March 2002

St. Mary's Church, Dunsford, March 2002

Top Of Haytor Rocks, A Sunday Afternoon In August, 2002

Cattle Grid Near Newbridge, March 2002

Yarner Wood National Nature Reserve, August 2002

Burrator Waterfall, September 2002

Fox Hunt In Progress, Near Jay's Grave, March 2002

Red Deer, Scoriton Down, October 20000

Willsworthy Range #1, MOD, with the The RAF Regiment, September 2002

Dartmoor Railway, Meldon, April 2002

St. Peter's Church, Buckland - In - The - Moor, March 2002

Stoore Cattle Market, Ashburton, December 2000

Higher Foxworthy, Poundsgate - Start Of A Meet Of The South Devon Hunt, April 2002

Loch Ness Stream

Loch Ness Stream 2

Annoying sound of the day, Monday, 22nd November 2021. Binaural recording.

London Bridge Escalator

Tim & Mairead Robinson Memorial Event - speeches at Roundstone House

The set off of the last London to Brighton Mini Run, 20th May 2023 recorded by Cheam Recreation Ground, London. 

The Last London to Brighton Mini Run

Dawn fieldrecording in Nonsuch Park photobombed by grey squirrels. 13th April 2024

Springtime Grey Squirrels (Nonsuch Park at Dawn April 2024)

Dan Dryer #1

Dan Dryer #2

Dan Dryer #3

Dan Dryer #4

98 voices emulating/mimicking/impersonating/singing/sounding Denmark’s Dan Dryer, Turbo Design model. 

A participative and creative approach that contributes to an ongoing study into the noise effects of ultra-fast hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and special auditory needs, such as children, older people, tinnitus and hyperacusis sufferers. Hearing models used in design and legislation are predicated on the notion of a healthy person aged between 18 to 25 years. What about the hearing of an 8 year old child on the autistic spectrum or a partially sighted hearing aid user in their 70s? In ayre #2[Dan Dryer] you can hear a wide range of voices from a 2 year old child to older people in their 80s. In such projects Drever seeks for a greater consciousness of aural diversity, a departure from our default understanding of an idealised, perfect hearing, a model of hearing that he calls the auraltypical. 

Thanks to Radar, Godsbanen and Aarhus University.  And special thanks to all those who contributed their voices including Class 1.B at Rosenvangsskolen, Aarhus and St Barnabas Choir, Dulwich, London.

https://vimeo.com/171068424

sanitary tones: ayre #2[Dan Dryer] - documentation

The piece is finished once all the ropes have been stored.

I made multiple recordings of this performance event every Sunday afternoon between swimming training and water polo, each with its own unique style. Then one week the same procedure of winding up the lanes was carried out but with no sonic accompaniment – someone had oiled the storage reel.

Score for Swimming Pool Lane Ropes Storage Reel

Wednesday morning (starting from c. 6.15am) springtime residential soundscape from the suburbs of South London during the first lockdown. The recording presents the entire refuse collection sequence from the point of audition of my bedroom. The bin lorry turns into the top of the street, gradually moves down the street passing by my bedroom window where the microphones are positioned, and steadily disappears from within earshot. The bin lorry refuse mechanism generates a noise more in place in Jurassic Park, which a touch of WD-40 could eliminate. Remarkably, I would normally sleep through this, but during the first lockdown the soundscape got “louder” despite the usual incessant drone of traffic noise dropping away.

Winner of the Worst Sound: A sound that should never have been made or that should have been designed better, Sound of the Year Awards 2020. https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/ 

​

covid crepusculars #1

Collaboration with Choreographer, Tony Thatcher; John Drever, sound; Emma Redding, performer; Film, Madoka Furuhashi. Premiered on Kingsdown Beach, Kent, 2006.

Video: https://vimeo.com/70930154

-scape [Goodwin Sands]

The Litany of the Hand Dryers [sung] - excerpt

Operating at the intersection of acoustics, audiology, urban design, sound art, soundscape studies, and experimental music, Drever’s practice represents an ongoing inquiry into the perception, design and practice of everyday environmental sound. He has a special interest in soundscape methods, in particular field recording and soundwalking. Resulting from the findings of his study on the noise impact of high-speed hand dryers, Drever has been developing the concept of auraldiversity, attempting to reconceptualize hearing in sound practice that diverges from a paradigm predicated on a singular, idealized, symmetrical model of hearing (i.e. the auraltypical) that has predominated.

Drever is Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he co-leads the Unit for Sound Practice Research (SPR).

In 1998 he co-founded and chaired the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (a regional affiliate of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology) for whom he chaired Sound Practice: the 1st UKISC Conference on sound, culture and environments in 2001 at Dartington College of Arts.

Drever is an avid collaborator and has devised work in many different configurations and contexts. Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, France (1999), WDR Studio Akustische Kunst, Germany (2011), Shiga National Museum, Japan (2012). As a core member of arts collective Blind Ditch, he is currently working on the Common Line project (https://thecommonline.uk/), Britain’s first linear forest.

John Levack Drever

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