Program
We encourage you to book your free tickets in advance. This way we can stay in touch in case of updates or changes to the program Here you can download a printable program
FRIDAY-SUNDAY 11.10 - 14.10.2019
Start: 10.10.2019, 6pm (opening)
Place:The Arches, Quadrangle Gateway, Kings Walk, Newcastle University, UK
The Art of Field Recording / Various Artists
During the Walking Festival of Sound in Newcastle a new listening
space at Newcastle University will feature multi channel sound pieces
from artists and field recordists.
Artists include:
Martyna Poznańska,
Martin Eccles,
Jacek Smolicki,
Jez riley French,
Pheobe riley Law,
Phill Niblock,
Yvette Janine Jackson
John Bowers,
Tim Shaw,
James Davoll,
Peter Cusack,
The Arches is a new, semi outdoor listening environment at Newcastle
University. This unique sound space will play host to a wide range of
audio works from artists and researchers working across the University
(and beyond).
FRIDAY 11.10.2019, 10am
Begin to Hear / Martin P Eccles
Begin to hear is a soundwalk that presents an evolving complex
location, taking a listener/walker through a 'real' world whilst also
presenting them with the sounds of a different world.
Begin to hear is based on four walks, two islands and one bird; you
will be hearing across 21 days and 2000 miles. As we walk, we will
move through a visible world that you can, in part, hear, whilst being
presented with the sounds of another, invisible, part real, part
constructed space. Sometimes this is clearly audible, sometimes it is
not, sometimes it mimics the current real world (for example the sound
of the close passing of traffic) and other times it presents a
completely incongruent world (a seabird colony).
The sum of what you hear is a function of your 'interaction with sound
... taking account of factors like memory, perception, temporality and
imagination'.
Martin P Eccles is a walking artist working predominantly in sound and
text. His practice aims to reflect the experience of his presence in
and walking through natural environments. He uses a range of methods
to respond to time, distance and place in the landscape.
FRIDAY 11.10.2019, 1pm
Ambulation / Tim Shaw
Ambulation is a headphone-based sound walk that uses adapted field recording equipment and DIY listening technologies to explore the sonic quality of different environments through an expanded performance practice. Ambulation configures field recording as a live, performative act. Each Ambulation event responds to and engages audiences with the interplay between sound and space in a particular location. The performance supports a collective listening experience and considers how recording and performance operate as shared listening practices more broadly.
During the forty to eighty minute walk that is the performance of Ambulation
I use a variety of listening technologies, which I have adapted to record and manipulate
the sounds of the immediate context in real time. The sounds I 'collect' during the walk are
broadcast live for the duration of the performance to wireless headphones worn by participants
who are walking alongside me. With this set up we walk together along a loosely planned route around the local environment.
Using the portable system that I have developed for Ambulation, along the route I record, re-sample and manipulate
the soundscapes of the contexts we move through. No pre-recorded material is used in Ambulation, which
means that the first time the audience hears a sound is also the first time I hear it as the performer.
The event is thus constituted of listening to the environment we are walking through via my improvised sound performance.
Tim Shaw's practice is concerned with the many ways people listen,
specifically how listening environments can be constructed or explored
using a diverse range of techniques and technologies. He has a background
in recording sound and his practice is anchored in the creative use of field recordings.
He is interested in appropriating communication technologies to explore how these devices change the way we experience the world.
Presenting work through musical performances, installations, walks and site-responsive interventions his practice attempts to
expose the mechanics of systems through sound to reveal the hidden aspects of environments and technologies.
Collaboration plays a central role in his approach.
Recently his work has been presented at Cafe OTO, Brighton Dome, New Ear Festival, New York,
History of Bosnia Museum, Sarajevo, ARC, Switzerland, bb14, Linz, Stereolux, Nantes, Baltic, Gateshead, Touch Radio, FACT Liverpool, Eastern Bloc, Montreal and The Wired Lab, New South Wales.
https://tim-shaw.net
FRIDAY 11.10.2019, 7pm
Start: 7pm
Meeting point: the Exhibition Park underpass, underneath
the Central Motorway
Book your free ticket
The Road to the Holy City / Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Modernist Society
Join the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Modernist Society on an expedition into the Brasilia of the North to commune with the ghosts of a lost future,
journeying along the route of the Central Motorway. Expect the spirits of Newcastle's modernist heyday to be invoked in underpasses, tales of cities that could have been retold beneath flyovers, and search for signs of ghosts as the paths wind their way above, below, and between the levels of Motorway. Was that sound just a car? Or could it be the spirit of T Dan Smith?
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Modernist Society is a local collective of enthusiasts,
experts and survivors of Newcastle's modernist history, exploring the legacy of its architecture, city planning and artworks.
SATURDAY 12.10.2019, 11am
Instructions for Walking Women (workshop: women only*) / Tess Denman Cleaver
Instructions for Walking Women is a growing archive of
instructions for walking initiated by artist Tess Denman-Cleaver and
written by and for women. It is continuously developed through
workshops and interventions in a variety of settings. The first
Instructions for Walking Women workshop was held as part of a Sisters
Uncut takeover of NewBridge Gallery during Hidden Civil War (2016).
Instruction cards created during workshops reveal the way that women
experience and navigate public space, and invite consideration of who
is allowed to walk where, and how.
This workshop, developed for WFOS#2 (Newcastle), will invite women to
engage with the existing archive of instructions and to share their
own experiences of walking - in the everyday and within the context of
walking art and sound-walking practices. Through a facilitated but
informal conversation participants will (anonymously) contribute new
instructions to the Instructions for Walking Women archive and
experiment with ways of activating the archive as a whole.
The archive of instructions will be shared with the wider festival
audience at programme events following the workshop, and online after
the festival weekend.
*This workshop is open to all women (trans, intersex and cis) and all
nonbinary, agender and gender variant people, according to a gender
inclusion policy of self-definition. If you have any questions about
the inclusion policy of this workshop please consult the Sisters Uncut
Safer Spaces Policy or contact the artist via the festival organisers
and Tess will be happy to explain who this workshop is for and why it
is a women only event.
Tess Denman Cleaver is an artist whose work spans
performance, writing, workshops and installation. Her recent projects
have been presented at Vera Baxter (Stockholm), Ovada (Oxford), Hatton
Gallery (Newcastle), Workplace (Gateshead), Tate Britain, Tate St
Ives, English Heritage, M_HKA (Antwerp) and Turner Contemporary. She
is currently Artist in Residence at the Sonic Arts Research Unit
(Oxford) exploring relationships between radio technology, language
and sound. Tess was the Artistic Director of Tender Buttons theatre
and performance company between 2010-2018 and a programmer for The
Northern Charter between 2015-2018. She has a PhD on landscape and
performance philosophy. She is also the Producer of Tyneside Cinema's.
Projections programme
SATURDAY 12.10.2019, 7pm
Dog Leap Stairs / Usue Ruiz Arana
Join Usue Ruiz Arana for an evening walk in search of the Dog Leap
Stairs' creature that terrorised Newcastle's residents in medieval
nights. The walk will take us around Newcastle and Gateshead's old
quaysides, and along low frequented paths and stairs sporadically
maintained, where nature is allowed a freer hand.
In European folklore, there are many creatures such as the one
introduced above, part human part animal, or not quite human, that
materialised at night, when listening plays a primordial role in the
navigation of space. Some of these creatures were harmful, others
helpful or harmful depending on human action. In either case, these
creatures were an expression of the fear, respect, and fascination for
nature held at the time; sentiments still very valid today. Through
listening, we might be able to bring those sentiments back to life.
Dog Leap Stairs and Long Stairs at dusk and dawn. Recordings by David de la Haye and Usue Ruiz Arana
Usue Ruiz Arana is a landscape architect and Ph.D. researcher at Newcastle
University. Her research is concerned with the role of listening in
the affective engagement with the landscape, and the active use of
sound in landscape architecture practice.
SUNDAY 13.10.2019, 11am
Still Walking / Jacek Smolicki / Fragmentarium Club
At the Walking Festival of Sound, Smolicki invites participants to a listening exercise in a form of a silent walk and participatory soundscape composition.
The group will walk through public spaces of Newcastle for about 30-45 minutes while remaining completely silent. Everyone will take turn leading the group.
Each time after discovering and listening to an interesting sonic situation, the ears of another participant will continue leading the group
further, until all have taken the lead. During the walk, Smolicki will intervene with several micro-performative, site-responsive sonic actions inviting participants to join in
by, for example, playing pre-recorded field recordings from their mobile phones. The field recordings to be used during these interventions derive from 'Listening Back, Listening Ahead'
a project in which Smolicki explores soon-to-be-gone sonic environments and speculates on what soundscapes might await us in the future. The walk will be followed by a discussion.
Jacek Smolicki is a cross-media artist, designer, researcher and "walker"
who traverses intersections of aesthetics, technology, memory, and everyday life.
In his design and art practice, besides engaging with existing archives and heritage, he develops new techniques for experiencing, remembering,
and para-archiving human and other-than-human environments. He has exhibited, presented his works, performed, and soundwalked internationally
(e.g. Madrid, Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, San Francisco, Budapest, Vienna, Sarajevo). Smolicki holds a PhD in Media and Communciations from Malmö University.
He is a founder of Fragmentarium Club, an independent platform uniting enthusiasts of soundwalking, attentive listening, and soundscape documentation in Sweden and internationally.
www.smolicki.com
SUNDAY 13.10.2019, 2pm
Walking Festival of Sound Record-A-Thon™ / Tyneside Sounds Society
Tyneside Sounds Society are proud to announce their third Tyneside Record-A-Thon™ - a fun,
social and flash event for anyone with an interest, both passing or professional, in field recording, phonography and our sonic environment.
Bring along your recording device to Star & Shadow Cinema at 2pm on Sunday 13 October. From there you can grab a free coffee
and pastry and you'll get a quick briefing. (Star and Shadow Cinema is on Warwick Street in-between Heaton and Shieldfield,
the Number 1 bus drops you right outside) You'll then go out into the surrounding area of Ouseburn, Heaton & Shieldfield
for 2 hours to capture and record the sounds. Returning to Star & Shadow Cinema for 4pm.
You can grab some food at Star & Shadow on your return and also meet/chat/share recordings with other
participants whilst TSS folk transfer and upload what you've recorded to
Tyneside Sounds Society Soundcloud and the online global sound map - Radio Aporee
If you do not have any recording kit don't worry we have a very limited number of devices you can loan for the morning. You need to let us know before hand if you wish to loan a device*.
Expert field recorder types will be at the briefing if you need any advice or have any queries about technology or techniques. Beginners, amateurs, professionals - everyone's welcome to take part!
*You will also need to provide ID (passport, driving license etc), proof of address (recent utility bill, bank statement etc) and mobile phone number if you wish to loan kit.
Tyneside Sounds Society is a network
of individuals and public programme of events and
initiatives dedicated to the recording and interpretation
of the aural environment and sound heritage of Tyneside in North East of England.
It also broadcasts a regular monthly show on Resonance Extra hosted by producer and museum impresario Michael McHugh
extra.resonance.fm/series/tyneside-sounds-society
SUNDAY 13.10.2019, 7pm
Returning the Ear / Tim Shaw & Jacek Smolicki
Returning the Ear is a method for attending to, para-archiving and mediating space through an array of sonic interventions and on-site experiments.
Shaw and Smolicki will invite the audience to a soundwalk which will be followed by a performance indoors.
They will animate the space with an array of sonic techniques, field recordings and debris collected in public spaces of Newcastle.
Tim Shaw's practice is concerned with the many ways people listen,
specifically how listening environments can be constructed or explored using a diverse range of techniques and technologies.
Jacek Smolicki engages with existing archives and develops new modes of mapping, field recording and para-archiving human and other-than-human environments.