Posts Tagged ‘Events’

In The Field

As part of b-side arts festival, where Variable 4 will be appearing in its fourth incarnation, we’ll be talking in conversation with Duncan Whitley on sound and site-responsive work, chaired by Cecilia Wee.

From the website:

In the Field features Artists Duncan Whitley, Daniel Jones and James Bulley in conversation with each other and the audience. Cecilia Wee (FRSA) will convene, focusing on the motivation, challenges and consequences of site-responsive audio work, where the Artist is engaged in an investigation of place, taking into account geography, locality, topography and community.

The event will take place in the stunning surrounds of St George’s Church, built in the 18th century from Portland stone: “a treasure trove of fabulous headstones and memorials that tell tales of murder, piracy and adventure in a gloriously atmospheric setting” (source).

St George's Church, exterior

St George’s Church, exterior

7th September 2014, 2:30pm – 3:30pm.

More: In The Field.

Variable 4 Portland Bill

We are very happy to announce a new edition of Variable 4, taking place in September 2014 on Portland Bill. At the tip of the promontory of the Isle of Portland, Dorset, Portland Bill marks the southernmost point of an ancient stretch of Jurassic coast. Its rich maritime history and exposed weather conditions will undoubtedly create a perfect landscape for the piece.

Portland Bill Lighthouse

Portland Bill Lighthouse

The installation is a part of b-side Festival 2014, a pioneering art festival commissioning new site-specific works across a range of media. We’re proud to be alongside an excellent collection of artists.

Variable 4 will be installed from 5th—14th September 2014. Travel and access information will be available in due course on the festival website, or via our mailing list.

the reading festival of weather, art and music, 1st-3rd june 2012 http://t.co/drk0Mjbi


Daniela Cascella on sound art panel discussion

We’re very excited to have one last addition to the night we’re curating this Wednesday at The Book Club. Writer and curator Daniela Cascella will be joining us on our sound art panel, discussing sound-related practices from composition and storytelling to the issues involved in curating, presenting, documenting and archiving live sound works.

In her words:

“Not being a musicologist or a musician, I never seek to examine the construction of a sound piece per se – I am interested, rather, in what comes after the piece: in the space between the work and what occurs around it. Working in the realm of sound and all types of leakage, expansion and cross-border transitions of sound toward other art forms, I also had to search for new ways of presenting sound and discussing it.”

Alongside an extensive history of curation, Daniela has written for Frieze, The Wire, Sound and Music, Il Giornale della Musica, and many more. We’re delighted to have her along.

Variable 4 showcase at The Book Club

On 22nd June, we are holding a Variable 4 showcase, discussion and post-Aldeburgh celebration at The Book Club, EC2. We’ll be presenting the piece and showing audio and video excerpts, demonstrating how it works under the bonnet and introducing some of the musicians and technicians involved with the piece.

Alongside this will be an informal panel discussion on sound in art, featuring some luminaries within the field: producer Joana Seguro (Faster Than Sound, Lumin), curator Cecilia Wee (Sound and Music, Rational Rec), BAFTA award-winning sound designer Nick Ryan (The Fragmented Orchestra, Papa Sangre), and writer and curator Daniela Cascella.

We’ll then be doing an eight-channel DJ set featuring some of the spatialisation methods devised for the piece — controllled with a windvane and anemometer interface. The world’s first meteorological DJing, as far as we know.

The event runs from 7pm on 22nd June, just off Curtain Road, Shoreditch.

Competition: Win two coach tickets to Variable 4/Soundfields!

Because it’s a sunny Friday and we’re celebrating a highly successful Variable 4 field test yesterday, we’ve decided to give away a free pair of coach tickets to Variable 4 at FTS: Soundfields on 28th May. These will shuttle you direct from London Liverpool Street to Aldeburgh for a sound-art daytrip to the Suffolk countryside (travel details).

To enter: simply send an email to competition at variable4.org.uk, subject “Competition”, by 7pm Friday 20 May. We’ll notify the winner on Saturday morning.

Variable 4 at FTS: Soundfields, Snape Maltings

We’re delighted to finally bring news of further Variable 4 happenings. This May, almost twelve months on precisely, we’ll be taking the piece to new terrain courtesy of Faster Than Sound and Aldeburgh Music.

As part of FTS: Soundfields, the work will be alongside as Bruce Gilbert, Beaconsfield ArtWorks and the fantastic Blast Theory, making a triumvirate of immersive sonic art. Sited on the expansive reed fields beyond the Snape Maltings concert hall, Suffolk (local map, google map), it will be in striking contrast to the desolation of Dungeness.

We’re currently in the midst of rewriting the score from ground up, developing new algorithmic methods to link together distant parts of the piece, and in the studio with a number of fantastic musicians. More reports on this in the coming weeks.

FTS: Soundfields

Finally, we’ll be previewing Variable 4 prior to Faster Than Sound with an afternoon-long installation in London. This will be taking place sometime in early May, near to the digital studios at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dates will be confirmed very shortly.

Variable 4 at the Thursday Club

Over the winter months, we’ve been working on some blueprints for Variable 4’s next steps. We’ll shortly be making a formal announcement of what these will be; suffice to say, we’re thrilled at where it is going next.

In the meantime, we are talking about the project at this week’s Thursday Club, New Cross, an excellent weekly series of talks based at Goldsmiths, University of London.

poster-final

We’ll be discussing the genealogy, development and concepts behind Variable 4, talking about how we see it fitting into both its cultural and physical landscape. For those of a technical disposition, we will have a look under the bonnet at how the software infrastructure is wired together. And, most excitingly, we’ll be giving a sneak preview of its next appearance.

Hope to see you there.