“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds; what worlds make stories.”
Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, (2016)
Title: Active Listening Workshop
Artist: Vivienne Griffin
Date: 5 July 2023
Location: School of Art + Design, Delia Derbyshire Building, Coventry University
Workshop Participants:
The workshop participants will comprise 5-20 persons, invited through an open call to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Coventry University. Participants will be from the MA Collaborative Arts, BA and MA Music Production and Popular Music programs, and the Enterprise and Innovation Department at the Coventry School of Art and Design. These departments have established long-term partnerships with independent regional arts and music organisations, including Coventry City of Culture and Supersonic in Birmingham.
Part 1: 11:00–13:00
The workshop will begin by collaboratively identifying harmonic or monophonic sounds—referred to as “Drone”—from field recordings taken from the sites of two case studies, along with a sound walk along Cox Street in Coventry. This identification process will employ various listening techniques, such as Sonic Mediations by Pauline Oliveros, Forensic
Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, (2016)
Title: Active Listening Workshop
Artist: Vivienne Griffin
Date: 5 July 2023
Location: School of Art + Design, Delia Derbyshire Building, Coventry University
Workshop Participants:
The workshop participants will comprise 5-20 persons, invited through an open call to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Coventry University. Participants will be from the MA Collaborative Arts, BA and MA Music Production and Popular Music programs, and the Enterprise and Innovation Department at the Coventry School of Art and Design. These departments have established long-term partnerships with independent regional arts and music organisations, including Coventry City of Culture and Supersonic in Birmingham.
Part 1: 11:00–13:00
The workshop will begin by collaboratively identifying harmonic or monophonic sounds—referred to as “Drone”—from field recordings taken from the sites of two case studies, along with a sound walk along Cox Street in Coventry. This identification process will employ various listening techniques, such as Sonic Mediations by Pauline Oliveros, Forensic
Listening by Lawrence Abu Hamden, and the compositional structures from Maryanne Amacher's Making the Third Ear, which describes a listening phenomenon experienced by audiences.Subsequently, participants will use tuning forks, condenser microphones, and Max MSP software to create dense sound layers. These layers will resonate with the sonic frequencies and sustained tones found in the field recordings, which prominently feature vehicular sounds.
The selection of Drone sounds is intentional, reflecting the location of each case study near the Coventry Ring Road (A4053) and aligning with the content of the Data Sets, which include historical recordings of Indian classical music and poetry, as well as electronic music.
Part 2: 13:30–15:30
In this session, participants will engage in various polyphonic and harmonic vocal techniques to sustain a collective Drone sound. These sounds will be recorded and played back for the participants to experience.Born in Dublin, based in London and New York, Griffin makes sculptures, drawings, and audio works in their anti-disciplinary practice. The voice, vernacular language, and noise are used in text works (2D and aural) and free poetic form is applied to assemblages of objects (found and made). They are currently focusing on the problematics of hyperindividualism in a new body of work and the uses of sound (and/or silence), dance music, meditation, singing, and podcasts as means of transcendence of the self. Their work seeks emancipation from the apathy of banality: entangled with everyday life, it implicates the ordinary as rare.
The selection of Drone sounds is intentional, reflecting the location of each case study near the Coventry Ring Road (A4053) and aligning with the content of the Data Sets, which include historical recordings of Indian classical music and poetry, as well as electronic music.
Part 2: 13:30–15:30
In this session, participants will engage in various polyphonic and harmonic vocal techniques to sustain a collective Drone sound. These sounds will be recorded and played back for the participants to experience.Born in Dublin, based in London and New York, Griffin makes sculptures, drawings, and audio works in their anti-disciplinary practice. The voice, vernacular language, and noise are used in text works (2D and aural) and free poetic form is applied to assemblages of objects (found and made). They are currently focusing on the problematics of hyperindividualism in a new body of work and the uses of sound (and/or silence), dance music, meditation, singing, and podcasts as means of transcendence of the self. Their work seeks emancipation from the apathy of banality: entangled with everyday life, it implicates the ordinary as rare.