sound design and compositions for film, theatre and radio

Sound Design & Composition

Examples of music from the sound track of War Letters directed by Alice Nelson. 
Part of the Grid Iron/ Book Festival collaborative promenade production from the Edinburgh Fringe 2014
by Zoë Irvine 2014

Windinstruments

Slowpiano

an aeolian harp
wind in the marina at largs

WEATHERBOMB largs marina

extracts from Democratic Resonance
multichannel sound piece, 30mins duration
By Zoë Irvine & Pippa Murphy 2015

Democratic Resonance is the first piece to emerge from the artist residency in the Scottish Parliament undertaken collaboratively by Zoë Irvine (sound artist) and Pippa Murphy (composer) 2013-4. 

For an extended period the two artists explored the building in sound, walking and talking. Their sonic curiosity inhabits a crossover territory between documentary field recording, ethnography and musical composition.  Recorded conversation was also an important element.  The artists met with many different people who work in the building and began to get a sense of all the different activities which contribute to the working of Parliament.

The basis of Democratic Resonance lies in the building's different acoustics, the idea of the fabric of the building being a resonator of the activities within. The piece aims to bring to the listener a sonic experience of different spaces and times in the working life of the building. Recordings used in the piece come from the corridors, hallways, basement and courtyards. The sound reflects from Kemnay granite, Caithness flagstone, Scottish oak, Italian marble, glass, concrete, carpet.  It circles in the stairwells and lift shafts and resounds through the kitchens, corridors, hallways, basement, chamber and committee rooms.

During the Festival of Politics this year, the a 7 channel version of the piece was installed in the Parliament building. 

The artists thank all those who participated in the making of the work and the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body for hosting the residency. The residency was supported by funds from Creative Scotland. 


Democratic Resonance instal extract 3

Democratic Resonance instal extract 2

Democratic Resonance instal extract 1

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble plays challenging experimental music.

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble are a socially engaged group of hens and human.

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble aims to explore ideas of trans-speciesism, human/non-human relations, ecological interdependence and communicative musicality with absurdity and humour.

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble uses sound to communicate. 

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble uses sound and composition to interrogate and reflect on hierarchies and cultural production. 

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble does not anthropomorphise hens, but rather brings human music into the gallinaceous language.

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble’s work is for hens and humans and any other creatures who like to listen to it.

The Galloanserae Experimental Ensemble

An example of a Magnetic Migraion Music live performance, using tape collected from the street and respooled. sampling, looping, excavating.

Example of live mmm

A Selection of Tracks from HAIRWAVES A Cautionary Tale by Zoë Irvine & Mark Vernon in collaboration with Freight Design, Glasgow.

A friend once explained to me that it is essential to dress up for a trip to the hairdressers, to attempt to express the style of what you're looking for in the cut, clothes & colours that could be visually de-coded by the hairdresser, something beyond words to assist the communication, fraught as it is. This project was born prior to this top tip, after yet another brutal scalping at the hands of a Dundee hairdresser. Mark and I had decided to collaborate, but didn't yet know what we would do. I was not concentrating fully as we discussed various ideas, irrationally distracted by the undesired and uncooperative HAIRCUT. And so it was that in 2001 we began to record hairdressers. Mark, not having such a personal bug bare with barbers soon broadened the scope to pet grooming, wig making and the paranormal. We've collected much material, from anecdotes blowing hot and cold on the subject of hairdryers, to accounts of the bald facts on barbers. We have snipped and textured, layered, added some highlights and brushed away the clippings so we can now offer up this cautionary tale.


http://www.freightdesign.co.uk/hairwaves/index.htm




 

06 Permanent  that natural look 1

33 Semiperminent  Coloured In

Sound artist Zoë Irvine and visual artist Helen Douglas collaborate to create a richly textured, multi layered soundscape composition (2 CDs: Irvine) and ornately interwoven visual narrative (2 sided concertina book: Douglas), exploring a sense of memory and place. Inspired in the month of May by a week long visit to Illiers Combray, the small town immortalized by Marcel Proust in his epic novel In Search of Lost Time, Irvine and Douglas weave together their own distinct mythologies and reveries; their subjective responses elliptically united by their shared sense of place. 

Illiers combray soundwalk

Radio 101 was an exhibition and FM radio station at the BCA Gallery, Bedford. The show related to the R101 airship built which was built at nearby Cardington in the 1920s and set off on it's illfaited maiden voyage destined for Karachi. The journey however finished in disaster as the R101 came down, after a flight of just 7.5 hours, at Allonne near Beauvais outside Paris on Saturday 4th Oct 1930. Of the 54 on board only six survived. The episode was a national tragedy and symbolised the end of empire, it also stirred up many stories of supernatural activity.


Allonne

A track composed for Gair Dunlop's film installation Yellowcake.
http://www.atomtown.org.uk/html/yellowcake_intro.html

Scritty Ditty

Melancholy theme created for Akerman's Fasach

Sweet Catastrophe

Duet for clarinet and crashing computer.
Created for Akerman's Fasach.

Stangle Clari

These were the tracks played back as part of the Blue Skies Festival on Aug 10th at the Olympia Swim Centre.

02 AquaAeris

featuring the voice of Kiki Smith which is an extract of the first recorded conversation I made.

Like A Bird

When I Pretend

MUSIC FOR THE UNCONCIOUS MIND
This is the sound track from a sound installation I created in 2011. The listener was invited to recline on a treatment table in a darkened room on their own. 
The piece brings together the soundscape of intensive care with Bach’s Goldberg Variations played out on sampled ECG monitors.

I became interested in the soundscape of ICUs when visiting a relative a couple of years previously. He began to suffer from what was called ICU syndrome, this is a hallucinatory and disoriented state brought about by the noise levels, the lack of day/night rhythm, the drugs used etc. The resulting acute sleep deprivation in patients can create further health complications and is a challenging working acoustic environment for healthcare professionals despite their habituation.

This rather depressing scenario put me in mind of the apocryphal tale that accompanies the composing of the Goldberg Variations which also touches on illness and insomnia. For more detail on this see:
http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/tomita/essay/cu4.html

By bringing these two elements together I wanted to create an installation work that was at once serious and a little comedic, hopefully thought provoking too.

The piece was shown in the micro cinema, VRC, Dundee Contemporary Arts as part of Shared Imagination in 2011.



Music for the Unconcious Mind

The Last Afternoon in Antwerp (5:20)
An instalment from the Priscilla Tapes by Zoë Irvine 
Created for the RSA annual show 'Between Late and Early' 2013
Featuring improvised music from a live session in Almaty, Kazakhstan by Sacha Chikmakov (guitar), Zoë Irvine (computer) and Denis Kolokol (Electronics).


Sound Design & Composition

zebraphone