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  • jojomatthewsart
    • Mar 15, 2021
    • 1 min read

Decaying starfish at Wardie Bay / A storm over there

Updated: May 12, 2021


FIELD NOTES

As I walk along the flies swarm from the starfish, they are decomposing, emitting a yellow residue. What sound does a decomposing starfish make?


Rising sea temperatures, deoxygenation and desalination could be the causes of these deaths. Or is it all part of a natural process? Was it a storm that washed them up and stranded them and now they are dying, exposed on the beach?


References to 'Star wasting disease' in the US, linking it to sheltered coastlines with no many waves (Wardie Bay is such a place).

Wikipedia - Wasting disease

National Geographic - Kent starfish strandings 2018

Yellowcraig beach starfish stranded 2020


A few days before seeing the starfish there was a storm...

There is a storm brewing on the other side of the bay, I can see flashes of lightning from over here, it’s currently over there. I cannot see the houses, they have been totally eclipsed by the cloud, which seems to have a solid edge at which it ends. Where does this border bleed into the sky over here? I was recently walking in a park near my house with the toddler that I look after and he said 'let's sit down and look at the view'. We sat down, he then said 'oh let's run into the view' so we ran into the view until the next view was seen and we ran into that one, and so we continued'. It reminded me that with this storm, as with the sea haar, I seem to be fascinated with where a weather phenomenon begins and ends and how we are inside it.


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  • jojomatthewsart
    • Mar 13, 2021
    • 1 min read

Back to raving

Coming back to raving, some new reference points:


Cal Mac 'Agony to Ecstacy'

https://www.fvu.co.uk/watch/agony-to-ecstasy

A film about intimacy, addiction, ecstasy, raving and the freedom of open rural space. Mixes scenes in the Scottish countryside with scenes of clubbing.

Artist Emmie McLuskey essay https://www.fvu.co.uk/read/writing/states-of-being


Plastique Fantastique

http://www.plastiquefantastique.org


After the tutorial with Angela McClanahan-Simmons, I was able to find some more commonality in my various research. Taking ecstasy and dancing in a throbbing crowd is a kind of ritual where you can experience a temporary bodily and cognitive shift. This liminal, dark and comforting place is my experience of the 'weird' eerie. It is a positive experience inside the darkness.


Other useful references/connections are around cognitive archaeology, states of decay:

Arnold Vangennep

Mary Douglas - the function of taboo

Alexa Hare - Nemoralia

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  • jojomatthewsart
    • Mar 12, 2021
    • 1 min read

Singing to the seaweed - score responses (updated)

Updated: Mar 30, 2021



I invited some musicians/composers to interpret to the Singing to the Seaweed score. Passing the score on to someone else, its a reinterpretation of a place and an experience. Feelings and sensations re-imagines. What does that open up? Do I invite more people to interpret the score? How does this fit into my wider work? Where does it fit conceptually? I am not sure where to go with this thread next.


Singing to the seaweed by Nicholas Escobar

Listen here

He used shells, synthesizers, distorted soundscapes amongst other sounds to make the piece.


Cuppa by Joe Coghill

Listen here


My original sound peice

Listen here

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