Prof Tony Myatt, School of Arts - Artist in residency
Thursday 14 February 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.
In Britten’s Footsteps will be performed on 1st February at the Britten Studio, Snape, preceded by a pre-concert talk.
Follow up after Residency
Several comments were received after the performance shown below:
"There were two key factors that made this performance piece superior...The second factor was the specialism of Tony Myatt from the University of Surrey, which was responsible for the technological wonder of the performance: spatial audio programming.... What was truly amazing was how this technological development enabled you to completely immerse yourself in the habitats and environments that were being represented.
Walking around the room my awareness of the birds, animals and environment changed. I moved away from the goldfinches chirping to my left and headed towards the pealing bells of Aldeburgh Parish Church. The trees swayed behind me, the wind rustling their leaves. Then there was that nightingale – you couldn’t escape that, the way its song dominated the entire landscape. It was a phenomenal experience – closing my eyes completely removed me from the confines of this large, foreboding hall and I was outside again, wrapped up against the cold, a robin chirping in the hedge next to me. What was most unnerving was when something alien appeared, like a roll of thunder, the bark of a fox or a crash of a wave, and I found myself glancing around nervously, as if that very thing was right next to me".
