Larkhill Place 1918

Steve Davismoon

    Research output: Non-textual formExhibition

    Abstract

    Larkhill Place 1918/2018 is a sound installation in the historic themed street at Salford Museum and Art Gallery. The brief for the installation was to re-create the sonic environment of Salford during 1918; commemorating the centenary of the end of WW1. The chosen software environment for the installation was Ableton Live and Max for Live. I investigated the 'handling collection' of the museum, and made audio recordings of many appropriate historic objects - from toys, to food stuffs, from tools to washing and cooking implements. I was also allowed to make audio recordings of the fabric of the structures/doors, doorbells, tools etc. of the buildings that were already present in Lark Hill. I also investigated appropriate transport sounds (trams, cars, motorcycles, trains, horse and cart etc.) and either made my own location recordings or gained samples from a variety of sound libraries. Another aspect of the remit was that I should make the overall sound installation interesting and as non-repetitive as possible. My attempt to meet this aspect of the commission was firstly to populate the space with 8 separate audio channels, which would each reflect the area of the street (pub, music shop, grocer store etc.); each speaker would have foreground sounds and background sounds. The overall installation is populated with - at last count - some 350 separate sounds. To make the playback of the sounds for each channel unpredictable I set up a two-tier (foreground 7 background) random sequence generator for each of them. To enable a global 'ebb and flow' for the installation I built into each of the sequence generators times of silence or non-event. I also used timers within the Ableton set to switch the whole installation on and off automatically during times when the museum would be open and closed; I also used timers to again change the dynamic of the installation and to reflect the time of day i.e. morning sounds; afternoon sounds etc.
    Original languageEnglish
    Media of outputOther
    Publication statusAccepted/In press - 6 Feb 2018
    EventLarkhill Place 1918 - Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Salford, United Kingdom
    Duration: 6 Feb 201831 Dec 2018

    Keywords

    • Sound Ecology
    • World War 1
    • First World War
    • Sound Installation

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