Conversation with dying Starfish: ideas & references

Project design idea

It's a dialogue

Where are we going?

A dialogue with the Starfish and me through sounds

Travelling through the sand and out into the cosmos

A conversation with a dying Starfish

A multi-channel sound installation. Place the listener inside the sound spatially – speakers like that used in Susan Hiller's work 'Witness', hanging from the ceiling. Translucent speakers, delicate.

Is this a video work? Is it just sound?

I will use the voice and edited field recordings for this work. Why the voice? There is an intimacy with the voice that can be achieved better than other instruments, it comes from the person, it's sensual, it's unique to the person it comes from. Whispering, chilling.

Residency at The Burnished, Bamff Eco-tourism in Mid March with George Finlay Ramsay

I've recorded sounds whilst away on residency that will make up the sound performance. I've started editing these sounds.

Some sounds in development:

Could be one of the 'voices of a Starfish' (click to listen)

Travelling through down into the beach? Dialogue with dying starfish (click to listen)

Playing with communication - voice work (click to listen)

Writing is a part of the process of this work, it also is feeding into my audio essay about ecological intimacy and meandering. Updated writing from Fieldnotes

Read here

References for the sound performance

'Technological Phantasmagorias I, II, III' at Tramway Glasgow in 2009 (can't find the image)

Samuel Beckett 'No I' 1973 staging

Bjork's keening track 'Ancestors'

Susan Hiller's sound installation 'Witness'

Which I saw/experienced at the Tate in 2011

susanhiller.org/installations/witness_video.html

Paulina Anna Strom's track 'Marking Time'

'The tidal sense' - radio programme

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000sycw

Artist and scientists working together to understand the tides

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