Tag: Mike Blow

Mike Blow’s Solar Work

Mike Blow installed a series of devices around the campus at Oxford Brookes University. They are solar-powered oscillators which emit a sound and which hang from the trees inside golden gramaphone horns.

The campus at Oxford Brookes where Mike’s Solar Work was presented during Audiograft 2012 is a very vibrant soundscape, containing the sounds of students talking on their phones and vehicles moving about the campus. The sounds of the grey squirrels and birdlife that live there mix with the sounds of traffic from the main road by the gate.

To document the relationships between this soundscape and the new sounds introduced into the environment by Mike, everyone participating in the Audiograft 2012 Documentation Workshop walked around the grounds listening to the work, and then created a recording, capturing some aspect of their listening experience. Here is one account of that process, from Valeria Merlini;

This recording was made shortly after a listening walk in the area.
With different equipment we spread out from our starting point (under one of Mike Blow’s pieces, near the main entrance of the Richard Hamilton Building where SARU is based) exploring the sounds of the installation with our recording devices.

With the directional microphone in my hands I was mixing the synthetic sound of the installation with its surrounding environment. Oscillating slowly between this two situations, I tried to find a nice balance between the different sound sources. – Valeria Merlini

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Felicity Ford also recorded an interview with Mike Blow, exploring how conversations between people can be used to bring extra information to sound recordings.

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Coats, microphone sounds and “Ceremony” by Mike Blow

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

The low hum in this recording is the sound emitted from 12 speakers, in an installation by Mike Blow entitled “Ceremony“. You can also hear the sound of manmade fabric rustling as Felicity Ford and Mark Stanley walk around the installation space, listening to and looking at the piece; and the sound of an Audio Technica BP4029 picking up even the slightest of hand movements through its pistol grip.

[mejsaudio src=”http://www.sound-diaries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/21-coats-microphone-ceremony.mp3”]

Mark demonstrating Mike Blow’s “Shower Piece”

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

In this recording, we get an insight into the realities of documenting a sound art festival! Mark Stanley is instructed to demonstrate operate Mike Blow’s “Shower Piece” while Felicity Ford records the sounds. You can hear microphone handling and directionality, Mike’s speakers blasting out the recorded sounds of a bathroom shower, and the hum of vending machines in the foyer above the ground floor where “Shower Piece” was installed.

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