In The Clockwork Forest, we have created the first chapter of an untold fairy tale.

Just turn the key and the mechanical soundtrack will accompany your journey in to the forest.

Commissioned by the National Forestry Commission, this installation opened on the 7th October, 2011 in Grizedale, England.

Click here for a Radio Cumbria interview [Audio Recording]

The installation was also showed temporarily in at the Illuminate Bath Festival, in January 2012.

(See also Railings, Bins and Benches, The Tail and Wave)

Located directly in front of the Centre, the installation is over twelve metres long. Comprising of 16 polished metal rods, the artwork responds to peoples voices.

As one speaks in to one end, the artwork leaps in to life, the sculpture modelling the amplitude of the persons speech.

The Copernicus Science Centre (Polish: Centrum Nauki Kopernik) is a science museum standing on the bank of the Vistula River in Warsaw. It contains over 350 interactive exhibits that enable visitors to single-handedly carry out experiments and discover the laws of science for themselves. Many artworks have been installed in and around the Centre.

The Centre is the largest institution of its type in Poland and one of the most advanced in Europe.

http://www.kopernik.org.pl/

greyworld tuned these railings so that when you ran a stick along them they played “The Girl from Ipanema.”

Created without permissions in cities around Europe, many versions have dissapeared. But some still remain.

To find them, all you need is a stick.

(See also The Clockwork Forest, The Tail, and Bins and Benches)

The project began thirteen years ago, as an ongoing art scheme in urban areas. Originally, the awards were installed without permission, appearing over night in areas of outstanding sonic importance.

In order that the plaques may be seen by many, the awards are now installed permanently, and their locations listed in the Sound Award logs that will be visitable online. We are currently in the process of adding the entire Soundawards list to the site, including maps and recordings.

For more information visit: soundawards.org when its complete!

P.S Over the years since we created the Soundawards installation there have been many projects that have sought to record or map areas of sonic importance. We will link to them here shortly. However, greyworld’s Soundawards installation is unique in several ways. Firstly, the project is primarily concerned with urban areas – the unmarked Sonic Monuments that exist in cities. In many ways, these are truer works of public art than the bronze statue or the highly polished rock we often find in cities. Secondly, whilst greyworld created the system, anyone can award a location a Soundaward and log its location.

Soundaward 79 [Audio]

What appears to be the remains of a playing field is still visible through the overgrown grass. As people explore this area they unlock the ghostly sound of past sporting activity.

It is not clear what kind of game was played here. As they move across the warped wooden floor of the playground the sounds of the players, their encouragements and successes are woven into a gentle ambiance – all created by their motion in the area.

The playground is flanked by seating on either side. As with the playground the seating is also a gateway into retrieving the past sounds of the area. When sat or leant on, they unlock the sound of the spectators watching the game, their conversations, cheers and applause.

The installation was completed in August 1999 and is open to the public seven days a week.

Ten plinths are arranged around an open space at the centre. Each plinth has a wooden frame on top of it, enclosing a square of urban material: a slab of concrete, gravel, recycled plastic, stainless steel, brick, water, glass, wire mesh and stone. Each element is labeled, describing the material and its provenance: “Concrete, 30cms x 30cms, Dublin High Street.”

It is as if we had wandered around a city, cutting sections from the urban environment and brought these fragments inside for exhibition.

When touched or examined, the elements create music with the sound emanating from within the plinth itself. Each element creates a part of the sound environment and every experience is unique, as our generative programme creates new compositions based on location, pressure and duration.

The sound environment that is generated has many facets. Some elements involved very contemporary sound patterns, taken from dance music. Others created vocal parts, snatched from local conversation. As people explore and play them they create the whole: a sonic representation of Dublin, created by the materials of its making, formed into a contemporary, ever changing urban sound environment.

Exhibited

• Pittsburgh Centre for the Arts, USA, 1999
• Akademie der Kunste, Germany, 1999
• Guinness Store House, Dublin, 2000
• V&A Museum, London, 2003

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel was the first installation in a public space to use the Layer system. We had been experimenting with different ways to articulate these transit spaces, from purely analogue methods of sound capture and distortion, to more complex means of digesting movement and form.

A long blue carpet was installed in the dark tunnel running underneath the Thames. Tiny sensors beneath the carpet detected the direction, weight and speed of pedestrians as they passed along its length and translated this information into a generatively produced sound environment. An album – ‘Various Walkers’ was created by recording these performances.

The installation was commissioned by the London Docklands Commission and sponsored by the Daily Telegraph.

The Layer has undergone many changes since the Greenwich foot tunnel. These allow both a wider range of inputs to be used, such as colour and shape as well as a large range of expressive outputs, such as light and generative display. Essentially though, it is the legibility of the installation to a broad public that remains paramount to us.

The work of art was also installed along the Millennium Bridge that runs across the Liffey in Dublin, Ireland. It gave pedestrians crossing an opportunity to create and interact, simply by passing through the space. The installation was a counterpoint to another work of art, which we installed in the Guinness Storehouse.

We installed a bright blue carpet along the bridge, to signify that something was different in the centre of Dublin. We then embedded sensors in the carpet that responded to each footstep across the bridge, generating unexpected sounds and melodies – a plaintive piano phrase or the sounds of footsteps crunching through snow or sploshing through puddles.

Exhibited

• Greenwich Foot Tunnel, July 1997
• Millennium Bridge, Dublin, December 2000

Visitors to the installation space are requested to think of a word. Any word at all. They are handed a white cube, which they hold. As they speak their word in to the box, the box begins to glow with a gentle blue light.

They are then invited to explore what appears to be a large empty space, delineated by a red line around its edges. As they wander off in to this area they realise that in fact, invisible to the eye, there is a rich sonic environment to explore, full of words that are nestling amongst trees, flitting around pools of water, or hiding out in caves.

Some of these words live here permanently, and some have been dropped by people walking through the space. If the visitor wants to do this, they simply tip over their box, the light drains away, and their word falls out, living in that area for several hours, for others to discover.. When they are done, they return the box, to be filled by another word.

At first glance each object would appear to be an ordinary bollard, ubiquitous in public spaces. However, these objects have been injected with a magic serum that has transformed them into elegant music boxes. As people pass through out the space, the columns respond directly to their motion and spin gently, playing unique fragments of sound.

A matrix of lights, embedded into the columns scores the music with a series of luminous notes. Together the columns form an urban choir, or orchestra, each with their individual voices that would come together to create a harmonious musical performance, capturing people’s presence in the space. The installation creates a series of digital melodies that weave together to create a unique composition, held in the air for a brief moment.

The sound work is comprised of six individual compositions, which respond to Flavin’s installations in a particular space in the gallery. Each piece infuses the gallery space with sound in a way that compliments Flavin’s compositions of “electric light defining space”.

The soundscape draws on the key themes of the exhibition, capturing Flavin’s ironic sense of humour, complex relationship with religion and commitment to minimalism. Choral elements interweave with spare electronica, hypnotic drones, sustained echoes and elegiac melodies to create a rich tapestry of sound that responds to Flavin’s revolutionary use of light as a medium for creative expression.

Visitors to the gallery were able to download the sound work from the gallery’s website onto their MP3 players to listen to as they explored the gallery. Apple also donated twenty i-pods to allow visitors without access to an MP3 player to experience the soundscape.

The exhibition ran from January-April 2006 and was the first comprehensive retrospective of Dan Flavin’s work.

Track One
Track Two
Track Three
Track Four
Track Five
Track Six