Information
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da Vinci Students jumping on the fence to see what it sounds like. 2009. Martin Lacelle.
COMMUNITY SOUND[E]SCAPES Aims Community Sound [e]Scapes is a creative research project, run by the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice research initiative (ICASP), based at the University of Guelph. For more information about ICASP, please visit the main ICASP website. This project examines ideas of place, community and sound. It aims to develop new, accessible pathways for collaborative creativity based on place. It also explores whether playing with recorded sounds could help people to better understand their spaces and communities. Components From September 2009- September 2010, ICASP worked with four community groups based in Canada, Australia and Northern Ireland. During this period, people learnt how to record sound from their environment, and how to mix these sounds together to make sound art pieces that talk about their unique environment and perspective. Workshops and /or information sessions were held with each group. These groups included the Da Vinci highschool project in Canada, an new group of students and local residents formed at the University of Guelph in Canada, a group of bicycle builders and riders living in the small town of Woolgoolga in Australia, and a youth group based in the housing estate of Ballybeen in Northern Ireland. Each group was very different, and the activites held in each group were chosen in collaboration with community leaders in order to reflect and respond to different community interests and needs. This website has been constructed in consultation with the members of the project. It contains all of the sounds that have been recorded, samples of the improvised sound pieces made during the workshops and photogrpahs and videos submitted by members in each group. It showcases each group through the words, sounds and images they have chosen. The site also includes a simple, personal online upload tool for regsitered users to get their recordings added to a combined online library. It acts as a vehicle for communication through the Forum boards. It is also used as a way for members to find out about coming events or oportunities and access any new research or press publications that are written about the project. We have also develped an online sound mixer the eScaper that allows users to play with the sounds in many different combinations. Community members in the three countries have helped us to develop how this mixer functioned and what it can be used for. Interviews have also been done with artists working in this field. (See Research page) This is a predonminantly practice-as-research project, allowing artistic practice (in this case community created sound, sound art and improvisation) to stand as its own research outcome. Researchers, however, will also be analysing the projects that took place and the use of this website to look at whether this sort of improvised creativitiy can help communities and/or if it can teach us about the ways people imagine, live in and use the spaces around them. Any papers etc. that result will appear on this site. Dr Rebecca Caines is the lead researcher in for this project. She has an award-winning academic research pedigree and extensive community development experience (she is has recently completed a period working as an arts development officer in post-conflict Northern Ireland) as well as an established practical background in developing multimedia artwork with communities. Her research can be found in journals and books including Performance Research, Australasian Drama Studies, Afterimage, a Routledge Reader in Community Performance and many others. Ethics This research has received clearance from by the Research Ethics Board at the University of Guelph. For information, please contact Sandy Auld, Research Ethics Coordinator, at +1 519 8244120. Ethics clearance certificate appears at the bottom of this page for your information. Phase 1 Professional sound artists and technicians to each community group to allow participants to learn how to record sounds, edit them using computer software, and mix and add effects to them in order to create a series of artworks based on sound.During each project, the participants explored improvising with their sounds in a live, collaborative environment Researchers observed the project (for Canada projects only) and surveys were submitted annonymously by some project members. Video artists have produced documentary footage of the workshops which appears on this website. Participants were invited to come back again in summer to be part of the second and third phase of the project. Participants were invited to participate in a second phase of the project in July-August 2010 where they learnt to use a new online system for mixing sound art available online on a secure system. Participants filled in online electronic bug reports and met with researchers (in person or online) for informal conversation about the systems. Participants were invited to attend (on-line or in person) a number of rehearsals in August 2010 in order to practice using the system and then to be part of a performance at the launch of the website in September 2010 where they demonstrated creating a sound art piece with the new system. The launch took place in Guelph and had online link ups with Australia and Northern Ireland.The launch event also included an installation of photo montages by local Guelph artist and project researcher Nicholas Loess. Theoretical Framework Henri Lefebrvre’s famous treatise The Production of Space reminds us that the spaces we touch, experience and think about are both produced by society and produce it, shaping the way we think, act, remember and challenge the world around us. It follows that affecting space can have a profound affect o our lives. Post-Lefebvrean scholars such as. Nick Kaye, Miwon Kwon, Iain Bordern, Lucy Lippard, and Ed Casey offer new multiplicitous, porous models of space which incorporate physical architectures and environments (site), conceptual and online maps and territories (space) and experienced, remembered and lived spatial arenas (place). Coupled with theories of everyday life as practiced into being (e.g., Michel Decerteau) and poststructural understandings of discursive power and performativity (e.g. Michel Foucault, Judith Butler), as well as relational models of art as experience (e.g. James Meyer, Nicholas Bourriaud), this research project approaches space as a ubiquitous, performative, triumvirate site/space/place and then applies this trope to community-based, site-specific performance events. Principal contacts for the project:
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