Listen to SANCTUARY

Sanctuary is a smartphone audio installation commissioned by the Amble Bird Sculpture Trail. The work draws connections between the avian and the human by digitally transforming people’s voices into ‘birdcalls’ and birdcalls into human-like vocalisations. Scored for a hybrid ensemble of singers, musical instruments, digital sounds and an unlikely chorus of people and birds, the work encourages reflection on the intersections between bird and human life in terms of how each has a common need for a safe haven. I think of Sanctuary as a kind of meditation, offering bird trail walkers the opportunity to pause for fifteen minutes or so and experience Little Shore as an al fresco concert hall. This small beach close to Amble harbour is frequented by seabirds, and I like to think that people listening to Sanctuary might interpret the displays of bird flight there as part of the piece’s overall drama.

Sounds for Sanctuary were gathered from a variety of sources, including recordings of local people and members of Harbour Lights choir whose ‘birdified’ voices form part of the work’s sonic texture. Along with soprano Alison McNeil’s wordless singing (listen out for her brief duet with a skylark), and a hybrid score of orchestral and electronic instruments, these elements combine to treat human and bird utterances as interchangeable: transposing, juxtaposing and intermingling their ‘voices’.

My research involved observing and listening to birds, and reading various articles about bird flight, habits and habitats. I found migration a particularly telling metaphor for the contested ethics of human exodus and resettlement, and this guided me in sculpting the sometimes plaintive, sometimes playful music. As did stories about birds: in particular, The Origin of the Birds by the Italian author Italo Calvino. Calvino’s short tale highlights the sheer otherness of birds, and I was especially drawn to one scene where the central character, Qwfwq, takes refuge from a flock of attacking birds by hiding under the wing of a giant bird. I equate this idea of a safe haven to the stretch of coastline that plays host to the Amble bird sculpture trail, and which provides a habitat and a shelter for birds and people alike.

Sanctuary - site-specific, participatory harbour and beach spectacle. Little Shore, Amble, Feb 2024

Description
A vocal setting of the verbatim testimony of adolescents living with type 1 diabetes, responding to Dr. Kathryn King’s co-authored paper “Perceptions of Adolescent Patients of the ‘Lived Experience’ of Type 1 Diabetes” (2017).

Soprano: Ashleigh Kate Charlton
Piano: David Murray
Video: JKK

Duration
13′

Visit the INSULIN AT TEATIME COLAB SITE

“Hammers and drills are usually present to us only when they fail. Prior to this they withdraw into a subterranean background, enacting their reality in the cosmos without appearing in the least.” (Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object)

Tool-Being Audio Extract

The Difference Engine marks the bicentenary of the birth of Ada Lovelace (1815). Accomplice to the early computer pioneer, Charles Babbage, Lovelace is widely credited as the first computer programmer.

The cogs and wheels of a working Difference Engine produce a pattern reminiscent of the DNA double helix. Projected footage of this twisting mechanism forms part of this installation’s scenography, invoking the common biology of both sexes. The percussive clicks and rattles produced by the machine—along with their gendered associations—inform the rhythmic and sonic content.

Title
La-La Land

Description
Object Opera

Technical
Mapped projection onto English apple
iPhone/Pico projector/Cox apple

Book of Bells from John Kefala Kerr on Vimeo.

Description
Durational A/V Installation

“In the shadow of Amy Johnson, Charles Lindbergh, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Brian Milton and Jennifer Murray et al, composer, sound artist and pilot John Kefala Kerr enacts a real-time flight between the two places he calls home—Newcastle, UK and Volos, Greece. Using flight simulator software, JKK traverses a virtual distance of some 1500 miles using a single-engine piston aircraft, navigating a technically challenging route with stops en route for refuelling.”

AirSpace explores the theme of identity via the metaphor of endurance flight, conflating the transcendent myth of ‘the skies’ and the abstract regulatory areas of ‘airspace’ as defined by Control Zones – ATZs, CTRs TMAs, etc—the piece seeks to narrate dilemmas of fixing, orienting and locating geographical and spiritual self.

AirSpace enacts the navigational practices associated with solo endurance flight, draws on historical and biographical accounts and uses simulation, live action, video projection, composed music and sound recordings gathered from places under the flightpath. Throughout the 15-20 hr performance the ‘airspace’ of the piece itself—the gallery, theatre, site, etc.—undergoes a transformation as the paraphernalia of flight planning and the disposable ephemera of food and drink consumed en route, pocketed souvenirs and the contents of a portable plastic urinal, accumulate.

Duration
15hrs

First Performance
19 October 2002, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, prod. KOPCO

Testament (A Movie Icon) (2002)

Description
The second work in the Beyond Belief cycle, commissioned by Cumbria Arts.

Duration
55′

First Performance
St Michael’s Church, Workington, Feb 2002