Prof Tony Myatt, School of Arts - Artist in residency
Friday 25 January 2013
Prof Tony Myatt, School of Arts, will take up an artists’ residency next week at the Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh, joining wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson in a project called In Britten’s Footsteps.
Tony Myatt and Chris Watson performing Going With The Flow at The Sage, Gateshead, 2012.
Photo: 4130 Photography
Watson is one of the world's leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena. He creates audio works and also specialises in natural history and documentary location sound. His credits include Bill Oddie Back in the USA, Springwatch, Autumnwatch and The One Show, BBC Radio productions such as A Guide to Garden Birds, Jules Verne's Volcanoe, and TV documentaries The Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals, Life in the Undergrowth and Life in Cold Blood with Sir David Attenborough.
Faster Than Sound have commissioned a new sound work by Chris Watson called In Britten’s Footsteps, retracing Benjamin Britten’s daily composing walks around Aldeburgh. Britten’s routine was to walk from the Red House in Aldeburgh after his morning’s composing, reviewing what he had just written, planning ahead, all whilst absorbing the natural sounds around him, especially birdsong. This special commission is based on sounds recorded in Aldeburgh over a year, reproduced and combined with some of Britten’s cello music performed live by Oliver Coates.
Tony’s research interests include the development of computer controlled loudspeaker arrays to create spatial music for contemporary and experimental art works and performances. His research embraces the aesthetic and artistic aspects of spatial audio, spatial audio perception, the technical means of spatial sound reproduction and digital audio signal processing systems.
Tony will be working closely with Chris during the residency to develop bespoke software and methods to present In Britten’s Footsteps in a live performance using a high specification twenty-channel loudspeaker system.