- CollegeCentral Saint Martins
- CourseBA (Hons) Fine Art
- Graduation year3
This year, I have embarked on an exploration into how my process translates across multi-disciplinary creative practice. After 2 years of pandemic induced isolation, I have found much importance and beauty in a playful, and collective practice. Deeply influenced by Ursula Le Guin’s ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, the key elements in my practice have become the process of gathering, and of sharing. Challenging the trope of the hero or individual storyteller, I am always operating inside collaboration, whether it be with individual artists, musicians and designers, with broader collectives, or channelling the feelings of a whole location (or tensions therein).
My independent work is enabled, enriched, and made more joyful by participating in creative networks, in particular my project Gene Pool, a musical collective co-founded by myself and my partner, Jack Pool (BA Music and Sound Design at Ravensbourne University). This has become manifest in event organising, curating playful, generative listening and sharing spaces. My process has currently settled in a few long-term, shared passion projects, which continue to yield new realisations through experimentation.
I believe strongly in the act of the shared listening experience, and that deep listening (and the process of enabling it) is intrinsic to transformative thought and action.
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey's work - the artists I have collaborated with on Witness Stand - has deeply moved me, bringing together local artists who truly understand and care for Brighton, to co-ordinate a beautiful, community-enriching and generative collaboration project. Witness Stand has allowed me to feel validity in Gene Pool's status as an artistic collective.
Cover photo by Thor McIntyre-Burnie
Final work
Gene Pool - Brighton Festival 2022 (Audio excerpt)
Live performance made for Brighton Festival 2022 Sound performed by Gene Pool at Brighton's West Pier Recorded on site by Dave Squires Visualiser by Sarah Ryan (Gene Pool) Project commissioned by Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey
Research and process
Sound experiments 1-4
Sound experiment 1 Playing with a MicroKorg synthesiser, I found I was able to create bird-like sounds by quickly moving the delay dial. I became fascinated by the starlings complex ability to mimic and their flitting rhizomatic structures in murmuration. Explorations into time travel and the history of the site, where starlings are a constant. Sound experiment 2 Made in collaboration with Esme Wright (Gene Pool member, BA Digital Music and Sound Arts at Brighton University) Sampling organic noises in Ableton Push controller - aiming to create the deconstructed sounds of the West Pier as textures that, when built up, sonically mirror the space. Walking on stones, the flapping of starling murmurations, the sparkle of the sea. Spiralling out of control of time. Sound experiment 3 Translating sounds and feelings of site through organic- rhythmic improvisations. Wire brushes used to ‘thwack’ the drum skins like wings. Metallic clinking of the pier. The constant repetition of resonant bass tones, rattling the metal frameworks, mirrors the cyclical motions of the sea, and grounds the frantic, wild movements of lifeforms. Reflective of the dissonance felt in this space - jittering, yet peaceful. Sound experiment 4 Combination of audio approaches/effects. Trying to embody a single starling amongst a huge murmuration. The feeling of flight. The dark whooshing of the wind. Dread and suspenseful underpinning. The forces pulling me home. A deeper, personal tie to the themes felt and associated with site.
Visualiser by Sarah Ryan in collaboration with Adam Lester
Share this project
Gene Pool (Witness Stand)
This year, I have embarked on an exploration into how my process translates across multi-disciplinary creative practice. After 2 years of pandemic induced isolation, I have found much importance and beauty in a playful, and collective practice. Deeply influenced by Ursula Le G...
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