The alarm clock located on the bedside table aids movement for the working day. The faint ringing of the doorbell finds complement with the telephone, which often only had one location, the table in the hallway. Who is going to answer the phone call when it rings, who is going to open the front door? Who is going to turn off the alarm clock?

This sound piece is inspired by Lal Hitchcock’s 1984 etching 'Job Sharing' and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ 1969 work 'The Maintenance Manifesto'. Ukeles' manifesto presents the artist’s life as a series of domestic maintenance tasks that become her art practice:

"I am an artist, I am a woman, I am a wife, I am a mother.
After a revolution, who is going to pick up the rubbish?
Show your work, show it again. Keep the contemporary museum groovy. Keep the home fires burning. 
Clean your desk, wash the dishes, clean the floor, wash your clothes, wash your toes, change the nappies.
Fix the fence, keep the customer happy, throw away the rubbish.  Cook, invite people to eat, clean up, put away, change light bulbs.
What shall I wear, where are my socks, can I please have a drink… pay your bill, don’t litter, wash your hair, I’m out of perfume … say it again, he doesn’t understand".

'Keep the Home Fires Burning' is an 11-minute audio piece featuring sounds generated by the objects in Hitchcock's etching, along with several roles Ukeles describes in her manifesto. It also includes voices from women participating in the Women’s Line Project, Macclesfield. The work is currently exhibiting at The Silk Museum Gallery and Macclesfield Library.

Keep the Home Fires Burning

Voices From The Women's Line Project, Macclesfield

O[au]ral Projection is a work that seeks to define the relationship between the level of control and order when considering the interweaving of sound, language and communication, written and spoken. 
This piece presents the locational sounds (field recordings) that influenced the formation of the book O[au]ral Projection - Reading as Listening, Soundings as Text Forming a Collective Memory. 

(http://www.leannecunningham.com/oaural-projection-2016.html)  

The interaction between printed text and spoken word, amplified and non-amplified results as a performance, as an outcome of documentation through live reading and field recordings.

O[au]ral Projection (Live)

Improvisation

Installation at CRiSAP, UAL. 
Combining a close relationship between the interior and the exterior of the surrounding spaces of E&C, Narrating the Urban Space occupies a place in which many sources of visual elements and sonic layers meet and merge, focusing on the divisions between public and private spaces.

Narrating the Urban Space

Bridging and combining sounds in order to remain connected to the points of transition

Minutes of Transition

Slowly Untie Before Form

create a model of interaction / a social conduct / a space where confrontation is not to be considered as over sensitivity... 

Make a narrative progression through sound and objects, where mark making and myth making (live and recorded) occurs. Allow it to fill a space that is layered with heterogeneity, and the heterogeneous self.

A Transparent Void of Fractured Associates

Of both sight and hearing, the work compensates for spatial and temporal absences. Retain an imperfect memory and allow it to have its own state of reality. 
It attempts to break down boundaries between private and public relations in order to identify the overlapping exposures of multiple realities and fictions raised from a reality.
The overlapping of multiple selfs exceeds a representation of the neither singular nor plural self.

“we are not immediately conscious of ourselves, but immediately through representation, intervention and extra perceptual process of differentiation and identification, we arrive at something like identity”. (Kim-Cohen, p.63, 2009)

Your Tongue Is Better Than My Cocoon

12 minutes, 38 seconds
Sound, photography, film, publication
2013

TEN:TWO explores the interconnectedness of two cities - Liverpool and Preston - through a short film, installation, and publication that weaves together sound and still images. The work serves as both a documentation and an exploration of these urban environments, which I travelled daily. It captures the passing of time and reflects the ever-changing nature of the cityscape that surrounded my often-hectic routine. In contrast to this pace, I became increasingly drawn to moments of quiet spaces, where listening could become an intentional act of slowing down, a means to find refuge and reflect.
Listening is central to this project - not merely as hearing, but as an embodied, attentive, and reflective practice. Drawing inspiration from Pauline Oliveros’ notion of Deep Listening, TEN:TWO invites a heightened awareness of sonic environments. Oliveros described Deep Listening as “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what one is doing.” This ethos resonates deeply within the work, where the act of listening becomes a method of sensing place, presence, and transformation.
The sound component is composed of site-specific field recordings - ambient textures, incidental rhythms, and the subtle acoustics of the cities - carefully edited into a cohesive soundscape. These recordings are not simply background but foregrounded as carriers of meaning, mood, and memory. In pairing sound with still images and slight movements, the work invites the audience to listen into the environment, to notice what might usually go unheard.
The juxtaposition of image and sound creates an atmosphere where time appears suspended yet constantly shifting. This stillness is not silence but a sonic pause, an invitation to become fully present. TEN:TWO becomes not only a portrait of place, but a meditation on perception, attention, and the transformative potential of listening within urban life.

In addition to this sound piece, I have a book available to buy, which consists on imagery within the specific place recorded. 
A film can also be found at

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAEOb1bFR6I

TEN.TWO

Nature Ambiences | Soundscapes | Field Recording | Sound Art
Documenting sounds.

Leanne Cunningham

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