Geomagnetism and Ambisonics

Very excited to receive an Arts Council Develop Your Creative Practice award (DYCP) to help me combine ambisonics with geomagnetic data, bringing global fluctuations of magnetic north into performance and sound installation. Over the coming year, I’ll be working with various specialists across several fields to explore what on/in Earth is going on and how shifting sounds can bring these hidden spatial patterns to body and ear in both new and ancient ways.

After last year’s pilot project ‘The Barrow Alignment’, collaborating with Jonathan Lindh supported by Full of Noises, I am now in a position to take the ideas much further. I’ll be working with Dr Callum Watson at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh in order to find out what kinds of data might be useful and how his team process it creating 3D visual maps. I’ll then be discussing composition and exploring how to use the geospatial data to shift elements of sound around ambisonic/multi speaker arrays with Dr Alex Harker at Huddersfield University. The process of crafting this work into DAW-based parameter automations will mainly be dealt with in collaboration with Griet Beyeart, who I have worked with in several sound-based projects, most recently ESS<=>GEE. Throughout I’ll be oscillation up and down the West Cumbrian coast to FoN in Barrow to test some of the ideas in their amazing space at Piel House, and collaborating with its architect, Jonathan Lindh (see above), ultimately producing a sharing event at FoN early next near. I’ll also be working with Bill Laybourne of Worksop 24 finding ways to take the project even further into performance and future exhibitions/installations.