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Workshops
We returned to the Shed in Aldborough this weekend to run a series of free workshops, exploring the sub-surface through creative sound recording and image making. Rob’s speakers were set up on a table, field recorders were assembled (wind muffs at the ready), an assortment of microphones lined up. And alongside them stood a stack…
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Exhibition
Last week saw the first Soundmarks exhibition go up at The Shed in Aldborough. Eight paintings held the wall, whilst Rob’s ethereal, evocative sound piece filled the light space. We planned it all months ago, and it seemed odd that it was finally crisp and clean, finished. This is one of the best bits of…
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Initial Sound Sketches
The first Soundmarks exhibition/installation took place last week, alongside the launch of the sound trail and book. We’ll write some reflections on all of that soon (thankyou to everyone who took part!) Today I’ve been archiving all my project materials (all 30GB of sound and images… my laptop cooling fan breathes a sigh of relief)…
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Making marks
In our respective studios, Rob and I have had our heads down, each busy stitching together our final pieces ready for the exhibition opening. Snippets of sound and image have been pipping back and forth, as the work grows: sub-surface landscapes (re)emerging from tape-loops and wax-resist. Rob has been immersed in reel-to-reel recordings, taking a…
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Fly-photography
A little while back, Rob sent me an image from some work he’d been making for the Canal and River Trust. Four long samplers arranged together, colours draining watery like litmus paper test strips. At first I thought they were paintings: brush marks of light seem to flow across them. They spoke of somewhere and…
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Graphic Scores
Rob: The sound works in this project are being created using a mix of field recordings taken around Aldborough – both above and below ground – and composed musical elements. Just as with the field recordings, I wanted the compositional parts of the project to be led by the characteristics of the landscape. Through their work over…
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Sub-surface sound
Rob: We’ve just finished another few days of collaborative fieldwork at Aldborough under cloudbursts of summer rain. We collected what are probably the final sound recordings for the project from the village landscape, ahead of their transformation into the sound work for the installation, sound trail and book. In a barley field just north of…
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Layering time: experiments with medium format photography
Rose: An ordinary blue tarpaulin billows cloud like, anchored by stones. Strewn through and across it, an eruption of hawthorn flowers. It is a scene of early summer; delicately layered into abstraction. This is one of Rob’s double exposure medium format photographs. He took the first ones on a visit out to site, calmly aiming…
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GoPro Glitches
In the first of a series of ‘object writing’ blogs, Rob and Rose reflect on a series of glitchy images produced by the on-site GoPro camera. Rob: Rose set up a Go Pro camera on the same spot each day during the 5-week archaeological dig at Aldborough in May. The camera took a picture once…
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Furtlings
I’ve just come back from a visit to Rob’s over in Bowland, Lancashire. Driving the A59 as it scooped and rose through the moors, skirting the fells, my mind slipped once more into thinking of the connection between Aldborough and its Roman connections – the movement of people and materials that formed this strong east-west…
