Live experimental, electronic and DIY music and sound from Cambridge and beyond. Annual events at Kettle's Yard New Music Mornings since 2003.
Product of Circumstance are working on participatory soundwalks this summer as part of the Visualise programme of public art in Cambridge. Today 3rd April 2012 they are trying to capture as many sounds and stories from the city, however seemingly insignificant …
‘We’re building a portrait of one day in Cambridge and we need your help …
Tuesday 3rd April seems like an auspicious date, we want to document it, to freeze frame it and to turn it into a story. To do this we want to collect sounds, words and pictures from the people who live in Cambridge.
What we’d like you to do …
For 24hrs on the 3rd April we’re opening a phoneline and an email channel to you.
- Really we’d love to hear your voice, to tell us what you see, to tell us what’s happening around you or to you.
If this is difficult or uncomfortable you also could
- record a sound yourself and then email it to us,
- or take a picture,
- or you could just tweet something with the tag #cambridge1234
- or all of the above!!
What we’re going to do with all this stuff . .
We’re going to create a story that threads all these things together, and then we’re going to turn it into a series of soundwalks that you and anyone else can experience on the streets of Cambridge. (imagine something like a museum audio guide, but with a cinematic soundtrack, and a dramatic fiction drawn from the everyday). These soundwalks will use satellite positioning so as you walk around the city you will hear different parts of the story at the locations they came from. We’re going to release these walks as a series of episodes over April, May and June. In the summer we will also publish a small book collecting everything we create together with you …
How do I get involved?
On Tuesday 3rd, at any time of day, wherever you are you can …
Phone this number +44 1223790151 and leave a message telling us what you see, what’s happening around you or to you. It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant you think it might be, it’s all happening. But please be sure to tell us WHERE YOU ARE (e.g. a street name or nearby building)
Send a sound recording to a@productofcircumstance.com, but please let us know WHERE AND WHEN IT WAS RECORDED
Send us a photo to a@productofcircumstance.com but please let us know WHERE AND WHEN IT WAS TAKEN
And of course, you can use your own online channels just tag them with #cambridge1234 (and maybe email us to let us know!)
To stay update on the project and when it gets published check back to the website at the end of April or you can email us and we’ll add you to our Cambridge email list’
This year’s event:
Hidden Channels
Sun 4 Mar 2012, 12 noon-1pm
Kettle’s Yard, Castle St, Cambridge, CB3 0AQ
http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/music/newmusic/
Celebrating 10 years of live experimentation and DIY music and sound making in Cambridge and beyond.
Featuring new music, sound and pop-up installations from:
Pete UM
Simon Scott
Sadly Simon has had to cancel this performance due to illness. The commissioned piece is still planned to be completed.
Simon Scott (12k/Miasmah) presents the hidden subterranean sound environment of the waterways of Cambridge. New commission for this event.
Ypsmael
Cambridge-based Ypsmael is a self-taught recording artist/musician from the Black Forest region in southwestern Germany. His clouded build-ups and slow-burning improvisations of audio detritus and subdued noise are mainly based on live processing and layering of textural guitar, field recordings and found sounds. This is sometimes combined with visual elements, crafting atmospheric soundscapes for live performance and film music .
Local Radio
New site-specific hidden installation. Originally devised as a pop-up installation and experimental PA as part of ‘Frequency Modulation’ at Kettle’s Yard New Music Mornings in 2008.
plus
‘(20)12-3-4’ after Gavin Bryars’s ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ (1971)
A scratch band of instrumentalists each wearing headphones plays along to a separate cassette tape. Each tape contains a selection of familiar music (rock, jazz etc.) which can be anything. Performers may be skilled, unskilled, rehearsed or unrehearsed but must pick out their part as best they can from the tape (e.g., a guitarist tries to play the guitar part). The tapes themselves are not heard by the audience. As the piece progresses the cassette playback will go out of sync. The music on each tape eventually slows down and fades into a chord.
Thus the primary material of the piece is ‘hidden’ — ‘all available to the composer, part available to the performers, and not much to the listener’ (Michael Nyman ‘Experimental Music, Cage and Beyond’). Around this time Bryars was particularly interested in ‘hidden’ and ‘private’ music and the roles of performers and listeners in such pieces. The Portsmouth Sinfonia project, also including Brian Eno, required performers to be either non-musicians or musicians who were playing an instrument new to them.
The themes of hidden music and non-professionalism vs unprofessionalism in bringing DIY music projects into the context of Kettle’s Yard led to the choice of this piece.
‘Local Radio’ pop-up sound installation for radio transmitters and receivers, Mixed Receptions, 2009.
Graphic score created by Alex Sullivan and Sharon Sullivan in place at Kettle’s Yard. LEAPS Graphic Score event, 2005.
John Cage, Variations IV, creation of the site-specific score for Kettle’s Yard using a plan of the music room and chance methods at Kettle’s Yard prior to the performance. As part of Mixed Receptions, March 2009.
