::: weekend program @ soond gaitherin #1 :::
w/ felicity ford & james wyness
saturday & sunday, 8-9 june
oxnam village hall
oxnam, near jedburgh
A weekend of workshops, social listening and field trips investigating common ground between textiles and sound, with visiting artists Felicity Ford (Reading) and Patrick McGinley (Rapina, Estonia)
full schedule:
Saturday 8 June
10.30 – 13.00: mini knitted sonic pillow-making workshop with Felicity Ford
Materials Provided: one small pillow speaker, pure wool stuffing, pure wool yarn. Participants should bring: your own knitting needles, circulars or DPNs, sizes 3.5mm and 4mm. Maximum participants: 10. Booking essential, to make sure there are enough materials for all! This workshop is for people with some experience of knitting. Participants will know how to knit in the round, and how to cast stitches on and off. At the end of the workshop you will have a very wee 100% wool covered and stuffed pillow which you can bring with you anywhere or keep in your actual pillow at home, for listening to woolly sounds. You will need your own iPod, mp3 player or similar device to plug the woolly speaker into, and all workshop participants will be given a specially-created mix of wool-themed field recordings to play back through their speaker pillow!
10.30 – 13.00: ephemeral listening with Patrick McGinley
For this workshop, as a basis for the afternoon field recording session, we will begin from the beginning, avoiding technology and concentrating on our most important tools: our ears. We will explore listening as an active endeavour, examining our perception via both pre-recorded and natural soundscapes, through listening exercises, soundwalks, and discussion. We will actively examine our hearing and how it works, attempting to consciously experiment with the perception and filtering that our brain typically uses unconsciously. Most of all: we will listen.
13.00 – 14.00: lunchbreak – cafes and restaurants in Jedburgh, or bring a lunch
14.00 – 16.30: natural dyeing workshop with Felicity Ford
Materials Provided: dyestuffs, yarn to dye, tags for labelling results of experiments. Participants should bring: an apron, notebook, and pen. Maximum participants: 10. Booking essential, to make sure there are enough materials for all! In this workshop we will experiment with dyeing a range of primary shades, using madder, indigo, and onion skins. At the end of the workshop you will have a small collection of mini skeins in different shades, plus notes on how to repeat those shades if you want to have a go at home. While we are dyeing wool, workshop participants working with Patrick McGinley will be recording and collecting some of the sounds produced by the dyeing process.
14:00 – 16.30: recording colour with Patrick McGinley
Following on from the morning ephemeral listening session, we will use both ears and microphones to explore the sounds and textures being produced in the course of Felicity Ford’s natural dyeing workshop. We will provide a variety of microphones to try out, including contact microphones and hydrophones, as we put our newly warmed-up ears to the test through the mechanical, chemical, textural, and human sounds of the wool dyeing process. Feel free to bring your own recorders, microphones, and headphones if you have them.
All workshops cost £10.00 which includes the cost of all materials.
19.00 – 21.30: soond gaitherin
A social listening event in a relaxed setting with curated sound works, performances and
contributions from guest artists. Cost: £10.00
Sunday 9 June
10.30: field trip – environmental interventions and field recording
A rare opportunity to work in the field with sound artists Patrick McGinley and Felicity Ford, supported by James Wyness. Meet at the Glebe Car Park, Jedburgh (just off the A68 overlooking the Abbey and the river, across from the swimming pool) at 1030am. Bring a packed lunch. Cost: £10.00