This chapter seeks to bring together two relationships, the first, between science and art in the... more This chapter seeks to bring together two relationships, the first, between science and art in the West during the period of modernity and the second between the fabric of sound-space and the rendering of Echo. Following the dis-articulation of sound-space pre-empted by Sabine’s equation for reverberation (and its adoption by the acoustic profession) I draw together the various traits of echo as mythic figure, as disembodied voice and as acoustic phenomenon to consider the re-articulation of sound-space through sound-art practice. This chapter offers to artists, acousticians, and architects an alternative mapping of the history of acoustics by drawing the reader’s attention to the work of Athanasius Kircher. I suggest that he is as much the father of the acoustic arts as Mersenne, his contemporary, is the father of the acoustic sciences.
Already 289ms Away was made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David ... more Already 289ms Away was made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Prior and Frances Crow, which address the changing role of bells in contemporary culture. The piece was commissioned for BEAST FEaST 2015 at Birmingham University, where standing 100m tall (some say 99m, some say 110m), Old Joe is said to be the tallest freestanding clock tower in the world. Unlike a church bell, which defines the territory of a Parish, protecting those within it and calling the faithful to prayer, Old Joe has no sacred function, does not strike to warn of danger and provides no opportunity for ringing the changes. Striking the hours, Old Joe represents only the authority to mark time. However, standing at the foot of the tower, it already takes 289ms for the sound of the bell to reach our ears, and at the bell’s acoustic horizon it might take up to twenty seconds or more to be heard. Already 289ms Away was installed in a building right next to Old Joe, where the bells c...
An international symposium of manifestos, interventions and future visions of the diverse aesthet... more An international symposium of manifestos, interventions and future visions of the diverse aesthetic forms, sensibilities, regional particularities and politics of walking art practices. Featuring provocations from Giulia Fiocca (Stalker, ITA), Deirdre Heddon, Cathy Turner (Wrights & Sites) and Clare Qualmann (WAN/ walkwalkwalk), a guided walk with Moira Williams (Walk Exchange, NY), a screening of Liminal's film Of This Parish in partnership with the Cornwall Film Festival, and Bram Arnold's exhibition Walking Home (Again) at the Fish Factory. In partnership with the AHRC Walking Artist Network, the Articulating Space Research Centre at Falmouth University is hosting a symposium to consider the future of walking arts through a programme of interventions, propositions and/or manifestos that address three key strands of inquiry: The diversity of forms and growth of interest in walking art practices The regional particularities in walking (art) The politics of walking (art). In...
To Intercession was made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Pri... more To Intercession was made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Prior and Frances Crow, which address the changing role of bells in contemporary culture. This work extends the theme with a particular focus on the dual role bells have played in defining territory and interceding between humans and God. Just as prayers are often inscribed into the metal of bells, casting them to heaven when played, so too were bells understood by the early church to represent the voice of God. In To Intercession the voices of the women interviewed by Binaural/ Nodar are transmuted into bell tones, which are then played through four tiny speakers mounted on brass rods – tiny transducers, mediating one kind of energy into another. To Intercession takes its physical form from the networks of megaphones found in the Parish of Sul, where the project began, that play recordings of bells to mark the passing of time and to amplify the voice of the priest during Mass. The piece re...
This paper discusses the implications and issues that arise in carrying out a sound installation ... more This paper discusses the implications and issues that arise in carrying out a sound installation for a public art project in a commercial visitor attraction. It covers issues of visitor expectation and what role a sound installation should and can play in this context. By concentrating on the space in-between art and function we explore the real and virtual spaces that can be created through the use of technology in juxtaposition with the physical site for an installation. This paper places these issues within the context of a case study of ‘Swash’ a 24-channel permanent sound installation commissioned by Paignton Zoo for Living Coasts their new coastal habitat’s visitor attraction
This case study considers the impact that a participatory design workshop ‘Connected Communities’... more This case study considers the impact that a participatory design workshop ‘Connected Communities’ has had on developing design briefs with architecture students and local members of the communities for which the designs are proposed. The case study provides a detailed analysis of the workshop covering design methods such as walking and talking, ‘drawing out’ and representing proposals for public review. The case study claims that introducing architecture students to co-design within their first few years of study raises their awareness of social responsibility and challenges their expectations of the role of the user and the architect in design development
Transient Parish was made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Pr... more Transient Parish was made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Prior and Frances Crow, which address the changing role of bells in contemporary culture. Transient Parish extended this theme, imagining a temporary Parish by erecting a bell tower at the centre of the festival site. The sound of the bells both punctuated the passing of time and formed an acoustic substrate to the temporary community that gather for the festival, offering protection and a sense of belonging to those within the bell’s acoustic horizon. Standing 6m tall, the tower itself was a 1:10 scale model of the radar receiver towers that once stood on Goonhilly Downs. In this way, Transient Parish meditated on the way in which towers have evolved in both form and function while so often retaining an imperative to act as a means by which we human beings can reach beyond ourselves. Whether we try to reach God by building towers that reach into the sky, or we use the sound of bells or ra...
Of This Parish: Creative Placemaking was a pecha-kucha presentation as part of The Exchange, Penz... more Of This Parish: Creative Placemaking was a pecha-kucha presentation as part of The Exchange, Penzance’s, Creative Placemaking conference. The pecha-kucha presented research themes that come from a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Prior and Frances Crow, which address the changing role of bells in contemporary culture.
Connected Communities: Creative Placemaking, Penzance was a Pecha Kucha presentation, written and... more Connected Communities: Creative Placemaking, Penzance was a Pecha Kucha presentation, written and presented by Frances Crow, as part of The Exchange, Penzance Creative Placemaking workshop on 9 June 2016. The presentation covered the research work that was carried out under the research platform Architecture Making Community conveyed an approach to live project teaching using the Connected Communities: Penryn participatory design workshop as a case study project. Following the presentation the Penzance Town Manager worked with Frances Crow and Tom Ebdon to develop a design project that responded to issues raised in the Penzance Neighbourhood Plan. In January 2017 the third year architecture students worked on a site in Penzance to develop a cultural quarter. The Exchange, Penzance worked closely with the students to develop a brief for the project and provided feedback as the student projects developed. Connected Communities is a two day public workshop that uses participatory desig...
Framing Listening and the Phonosphere, was presented as part of the ‘Ubiquitous Sound Panel’ of t... more Framing Listening and the Phonosphere, was presented as part of the ‘Ubiquitous Sound Panel’ of the Bright Collisions Summit 2014. The invitation to present this talk came in response to Liminal’s award winning project Organ of Corti. At the time Frances Crow and David Prior had just completed their film Of This Parish and were beginning to develop the wider research theme of the changing role of bells in contemporary culture. The presentation developed the research theme of framed listening explored in Liminal’s (Frances Crow and David Prior) award winning project Organ of Corti – an experimental instrument that recycles noise from the environment ¬– juxtaposing it with the notion of acoustic space as a phonosphere explored through Liminal’s project Of This Parish. Where Organ of Corti does not make any sound of its own, but draws attention to ubiquitous sounds already present in the environment, by framing them in a new way, Of This Parish takes as its starting point the idea of ‘...
‘liminal’ were appointed lead sound designers for The Imperial War Museum’s £6M, Casson Mann-desi... more ‘liminal’ were appointed lead sound designers for The Imperial War Museum’s £6M, Casson Mann-designed Churchill Museum (Frances Crow: project manager and architectural consultant; Prior: principal sound designer). This project enabled research at the highest level of exhibition sound design, working directly with world-renowned exhibition designer, Roger Mann. The research ‘problem’ was to create an integrated soundscape in a large, acoustically difficult, open plan space in which hundreds of sound sources could co-exist, ensuring both intelligibility for individual sources and overall exhibition cohesion and identity. liminal drew heavily on Prior’s experience of working with spatialised sound in a musical context and collaborated closely with acoustic consultants and software designers, integrating experimental technologies such as ultrasonic loudspeakers. The exhibition’s curation relies heavily on recorded media. Its centrepiece is a twenty metre interactive table on which visitors can scroll through files and folders associated with dates in Churchill's life. Significant events emerge from the folders, sometimes taking over the entire table, visually and sonically. With Boston software engineers Small Design, we created an interactive environment to spatialise sounds with fluidity and precision, providing a context in which complex movement models could be explored in the hundreds of films and animations for which we provided sound-tracks. Due to the museum’s scale, sound for the smaller exhibits was designed by other established media companies, all working to liminal’s design specification. As lead designers, Casson Mann have received numerous awards and nominations for the Churchill Museum including D&AD Yellow Pencil, Council of Europe Museum Award, FX Award Best Museum, Visit London bronze award, AV magazine awards, Design Week Awards joint winner etc.
Frances Crow and David Prior were invited to give an artist talk as part of the Seachange Festiva... more Frances Crow and David Prior were invited to give an artist talk as part of the Seachange Festival 2016. The talk was followed by a screening of their film Of This Parish, which is part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Prior and Frances Crow, addressing the changing role of bells in contemporary culture.
Of This Parish is a 25-minute film essay made as part of a larger project of artistic research un... more Of This Parish is a 25-minute film essay made as part of a larger project of artistic research undertaken by David Prior and Frances Crow, which addresses the changing role of bells in contemporary culture. The film follows a fictionalized St. Anthony as he travels from a church tower in the centre of the town of Sul, Portugal, out to the threshold at which its bells can be heard. It is both a sonic portrait of the Parish in the Gralheira mountains where it is set and a meditation on the changing role of bells in a rural Catholic community. Of This Parish begins with the idea of a Parish as territory defined by sound, a community whose borders are drawn by the earshot of a bell. As we travel from the epicenter of the community to its outer limits, we encounter bells used as a call to prayer, bells as time-keepers and alarms and also bells as pre-Christian protectors used to purify the air. Of This Parish uses the format of the film essay to articulate its research themes through the...
Field of Play: End of the Game is part of a wider research theme that David Prior and Frances Cro... more Field of Play: End of the Game is part of a wider research theme that David Prior and Frances Crow have been developing that considers the impact of ubiquitous sounds on our perception of our landscapes and as part of our cultural heritage. Many of the sounds that we associate with particular places or communities are being lost and through this research question we consider how these intangible forms of heritage - ‘soundmarks’ might be remembered. In Field of Play:End of the Game Liminal created a memorial for a lost soundmark. Field of Play:End of the Game memorialises the sound of the football crowd at Cambridge City Football Club's Milton Road ground following the construction of 106 new homes by Crest Nicholson. An engraved, brass whistle encased in a box is hung in each new home built on the site of the old Cambridge City football ground. The whistle remains silent except for once, annually, when it may be blown from 3pm within a 90-minute period on the Saturday closest to...
Chroma is a two-part, sound installation for six cassette players. The piece both builds upon app... more Chroma is a two-part, sound installation for six cassette players. The piece both builds upon approaches to the sculpting and framing of ‘surplus’ noise evidenced in liminal’s (Frances Crow and David Prior) Organ of Corti, but here, the focus moves from the acoustic mediation of environmental sound to an examination of the role of noise in recording media. The installation was made for the Paul Stolper Gallery, London. Contributing to the recent upsurge in both scholarship and practice on the theme of noise, Chroma juxtaposes the two meanings of the term – as unwanted sound and as a sound that has no discernable pitch – in dialogue with each other. Part one of the piece plays six ostensibly 'static' noise colours through six tape players. While these recordings interact with each other within the acoustics of the gallery, they are also interacting with the technology that carries them: the cassette tape and the 6-watt speaker. In this way, Chroma: Interactions of Noise, uses...
Bells have had a central role in the formation and solidification of communities. The idea of a ‘... more Bells have had a central role in the formation and solidification of communities. The idea of a ‘Parish’ – a common device used to delineate territory while also defining a sacred community – was an articulation of acoustic space: the Parish was the zone in which a church bell could be heard. This notion of ‘Parish’ as phonosphere is the point of departure in a piece which explores the relationship between acoustic spaces: the personal and the shared, the secular and the sacred, the near and the distant, the historical and the contemporary. In the piece, four walks are made simultaneously by four synchronized sound recordists, all starting from the central location of a Church with a tolling bell. When the recordings are played through four corresponding pairs of loudspeakers arranged around the perimeter of an installation space, the recordings would begin with this integrated 8-channel surround recording; each recording rendering the acoustic scene from an only marginally differen...
This chapter seeks to bring together two relationships, the first, between science and art in the... more This chapter seeks to bring together two relationships, the first, between science and art in the West during the period of modernity and the second between the fabric of sound-space and the rendering of Echo. Following the dis-articulation of sound-space pre-empted by Sabine’s equation for reverberation (and its adoption by the acoustic profession) I draw together the various traits of echo as mythic figure, as disembodied voice and as acoustic phenomenon to consider the re-articulation of sound-space through sound-art practice. This chapter offers to artists, acousticians, and architects an alternative mapping of the history of acoustics by drawing the reader’s attention to the work of Athanasius Kircher. I suggest that he is as much the father of the acoustic arts as Mersenne, his contemporary, is the father of the acoustic sciences.
As lead-artists for Birmingham’s Warwick Bar urban development, ‘liminal’ were invited by MADE (M... more As lead-artists for Birmingham’s Warwick Bar urban development, ‘liminal’ were invited by MADE (Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment) to work with Architects Kinetic AIU on the area’s masterplan, funded by the PROJECT fund overseen by CABE (Commission for the Built Environment) and A&B (Arts and Business). We set out to explore how consideration of sound can inform approaches to urban design, planning, regeneration, and their surrounding discourses, and began by surveying the site from the perspective of sound. Planners’ and architects’ surveys traditionally focus primarily on topography, with some acknowledgement of social and historical context. Acoustical concerns are almost never addressed beyond utilitarian issues of noise limitation and isolation. Our survey began with the premise that soundscapes are important to urban geographies and that the development’s sustainability would depend on rigorous understanding of the site’s sonic character, history and potential for further intervention. Our first outcome was a soundwalk commissioned for Birmingham ArtsFest (8th-9th September 2006). This considered how materials collected during making and sharing the walk might identify important soundmarks to be kept, enhanced or even reinstated, and might raise the status of sound to become a significant influence on project design overall.
Organ of Corti is an experimental instrument that filters the sounds around it into new listening... more Organ of Corti is an experimental instrument that filters the sounds around it into new listening experiences. The piece invokes the disciplines of music; sound, land-, and installation art, acoustic ecology, and acoustics, offering insights in these domains. Organ of Corti is devised not by means of creating new sounds, but by steering the ear to reconsider the often unwanted sounds already present in its immediate environment. The idea of mediating acoustic behaviour has precedent in the work of Lucier, Cage and Asher and has certain parallels with the visual art of James Turrell and the ideas of Tim Ingold. However, this work explores distinctly new relationships between visitor, site and sound and utilises previously unexplored technologies to pursue this end. It was devised by liminal (Frances Crow and David Prior), and is based on an array cylinders arranged as a ‘sonic crystal’, in a design made in collaboration with Prof. Keith Attenborough (OU). The project is represented here as a portfolio comprising photographs, a short video, an exhibition catalogue and two journal articles, which explore some of the research themes underlying the work.
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