Over the course of 2024 I was fortunate to be awarded a “Developing Your Creative Practice” grant from Arts Council England. My research title was ‘Improvising with the more-than-human-world”. based on the following aims :

• Draw inspiration from the sounds, behaviours and phenenomena of the natural world and for this to inform my approach to improvisation and instrument making.
• To find opportunities to improvise with others, for live improvisation to become more integrated into my practice, and to find contexts to respond to the sounds of the more-than-human world.
• To create a set of instruments and interfaces adaptable for improvisation in a multitude of contexts, aiming to maintain a strong visual element to the instruments.
• For these instruments to be lightweight, easy to set up and to travel with, and be feasible to use outdoors or in unusual locations.
• To research using renewable energy to power outdoor performances sympathetic to existing soundscapes in those spaces.

At the start of the year, I took part in Shedonism at 101 Outdoor Arts in Newbury. This is a 4 day Lab for makers working in outdoor arts to get together to make and invent stuff using the incredible workshop at 101. It’s also a rich and fertile environment for sharing ideas, techniques and to collaborate. I spent some time exploring aeolian instruments that resonate with the wind. I also went out to forage for fallen branches to practice using a wood lathe, with help from Stephen Stockbridge. This was immense fun and I discovered a new love for wood-turning. Martin and Olivia built a rubens tube, Mark refined his pyrophones, Ezra and I recording a squeaking gate with many different types of microphone, Martin explored lighting and projection, Bill levitated balloons, whilst my lathe-turned wooden balls provided entertainment, and much more…

As well as this intensive time spent making, focused on outdoor arts, I also spent some time in the spring improvising with modular synths with others. This involved some exploration of combining software interfaces (with help from Matthew Olden) with physical electronics, thinking about how this area of research could be connected with the more physical making explored at 101 Outdoor Arts.

At the same time as applying for this grant, I applied for a residency at iii in the Hague. Both of these areas of research were in a similar area, so I could get out of both opportunities, and happily, both turned out to be successful. Prior to my iii residency, I spent time researching magnetic sensing – inspired by how birds (and other species) use their magnetic sense to navigate. I am particularly fascinated by this, and scientists who study animal behaviour cannot work out exactly how birds sense the weak magnetic field of the earth. One theory speculates about entangled quantum particles in the eyes of birds – which I find mysteriously appealing and poetic. A more detailed account on how I further developed ideas around magnetism on my residency at iii can be read here, with a few images below too.

Following the residency, I had prototyped a number of new instruments that use magnetic fields. The most promising being a trio of pendulums that work with the push and pull of magnetic fields. They incorporate some fixed polarity magnets with some electromagnetic coils that I can control the strength and polarity of live. Each pendulum has an adjustable LED on the end, which swings over an array of Light Sensors. I can set the pendulums in motion by switching the polarity and strength of magnetic coils, and then by also adjusting the brightness of the LED, it’s possible to use the light sensors as an interface to manipulate sounds.

The next phase of my research was to prepare for a residency in Paretz, Germany (close to Potsdam) with long term collaborator Sabine Vogel. We have a duo called ORNIS and Sabine is an amazing improviser, and her work is closely connected to a relationship to place, nature along with the process of active, close listening. I visited Sabine at her cabin in Paretz to work together for a week preparing a new collaborative composition in response to the surroundings. It was May and on arrival I was instantly transfixed by the richness of birdlife, with so many nightingales singing both day and night – interspersed with the captivating song of the Oriole and so much more. We spent time listening, observing, gathering materials, field recording and started to piece together a performance that would respond to the location and time of year. Below are some pictures of our process over the week.

This opportunity to work closely with Sabine in such an incredible location was very inspiring. It was also an opportunity for me to develop some instruments based on my installations that are lightweight, portable and easy to set up… (one of my aims). As I had a week to prepare with Sabine, I decided to take some elements of installations, and some open ended systems that could be combined with locally sourced materials and found objects – to improvise on how the instruments are constructed, as well as improvise with them, with plenty of open ended-ness to make space for collaboration with Sabine and the location. I was keen to continue to work with balancing water levels, as explored with my installation Tipping Point and composition for QME ‘acts of balancing and unbalancing‘, which also connects well with previous collaborative performances with Sabine.

In preparation, I worked with Matthew Olden on an adaptable software system for a small raspberry pi computer with midi controls, so I could use a multitude of vessels to hold water to then resonate with feedback using a pair of small microphones. In Paretz, we discovered a wonderful large glass vessel in an outhouse that had been used for brewing cider, and a few more glass jars, jugs and bottles to experiment with. I also brought with me some small vibrating motors and a speed controller to rig up with gongs and small bells in the trees surrounding the audience area. Below are some photos from the performance, which included a trio with accordionist Eva Völlner. For this, we all focused on ‘air’ whether this was bellows pushing air through accordion reeds, breath through flutes or vibrating elastic in the wind… I adapted some ‘falling reeds’ from my composition ‘FLOCK‘ made in 2023 for Red Note Ensemble to create a playful moment that was visually appealing and surprising. Sabine and I also moved around the audience playing the ‘windhummers’ I developed in January at 101 Outdoor Arts. Read more about this residency here.

Our performance began with transducers playing sounds from the local area resonating inside metal buckets distributed around the space, between audience members. We moved through the audience with ocarinas, tiny motors activated bells and gongs hanging in trees, as we moved to the stage to perform on flutes, resonating glass vessels, singing bowls, bells to create a delicate, immersive soundscape that allowed sonic space for the existing, naturally occurring soundscape to become part of the composition.

Following the Paretz residency and performance, the next opportunity to take my DYCP research further was at the invitation of In Between Time, to respond to the installation ‘We Are Warriors’, a light and sound installation in Redcliffe Caves, Bristol. This was most certainly a chance to revisit the illuminated magnetic pendulums developed earlier in the year and try them out in an interesting setting. Read more about this here.

I took the pendulums and the glass feedback system to Venice in September. This time, in preparation, I developed the glass vessels system further by adding a stepper motor and some sound-responsive LEDs into the glasses – this time taking specific glasses and a portable suspending system with me. I performed at the Cinema Galleggiante – the floating cinema, run by Microclima – at the invitation of Iklecktic. It was a spectacular setting, and being as it was set up as a cinema, I integrated a live mix of my 16mm film River Traces. Isa and Eduard from Iklecktik connected me with local hydrophone maker Andrea Peluso of Organic Audio, so I was able to record sounds from the Venice Lagoon to incorporate into my improvised performance floating on the lagoon.

In October, I went to the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Machynlleth, Wales to do the 2 day course “Make a Wind Turbine”. Aswell as make a fully functioning wind turbine as a group, following the Hugh Piggot design, there was a wealth of information about other kinds of renewable energy at CAT, combined with participants and staff eager to share a their knowledge. I learnt a huge amount about many aspects of renewable energy on this trip, alongside a very detailed insight into how to generate wind power in multiple ways which is very useful in terms of further developing the wind activated instruments I started in January at 101 Outdoor Arts. It was satisfying and enjoyable to hand carve the wooden blades, which added to my wood crafting skills. We also hand-wound the coils to move past the strong earth magnets to generate power – and this knowledge related back to my research into magnetic sensing and those relationships between coiled wire and magnets, which relates to so many aspects of sound recording, sound reproduction, aswell as experiments in radio transmission and reception.

In summary, during the year I gained experience improvising with others, including a number of different public performances in a range of locations from outdoors, to inside a cave. I designed, prototyped and tested a number of new ways to work with hand-built instruments that are adaptable to different contexts. I’ve started to compile a variety of approaches when considering travelling lighter, ranging from skeletal systems as a basis for re-building on location, and a number of lightweight instruments that are a modular design, and can be expanded and reduced to suit the context.