Artist in Residence

ØY Festival, Papay November 2018

Space Staion

Nick Turner

Upon the Space Station theme of this year's festival,I spent three glorious days on Papa Westray - distilling island life into biomusic, found sound and ambient soundscapes

director,watercolour music

Mythology

Field Recording

Soundfield SPS200 ambiosonic microphone recorded on to a Tascam DR70d mkII as well as a hand held Tascam DR100 for the odd informal moment .

hydrophonics

Four H2a-XLR Hydrophones suspended from a floating array and recording directly to a Tascam DR-70D. 96Khz, 24 bit

studio production

Pro Tools 2018.12 DAW with a Neve mixing desk. Sound design plug-ins from SSL, Wave and Avid.

Wave Station

Almost all planetary science relies on waves of one form or another. Sound waves is an interesting addition to our means of gathering data and an appropriate medium to use in Orkney, given its setting surrounded by the dynamic ocean wave-scape of the Pentland Firth and North Sea. In particular: • Geographical isolation improves the quality of an unpolluted source • Wide surface area provides a broader data collection range • Orkney has a strong tradition of using music to impart emotional information; a cornerstone of any advanced civilisation.

For the festival I collected: Sound Waves: Original field recordings,archive and existing field recordings Tidal Waves: Locally observed tidal information; tide times, currents, water depths Light Waves: Meteorological information as well as manmade (Noup Head - Westray Lighthouse). Radio waves: From random radio transmissions and other microwave communications. I also convolved (Acoustically Mapped) St Bonifaces Chapel and the Kelp Store

It's a weekend of live performance, music, space walks, workshops, exhibition, cinema and a deep space disco, all centered in and around the beautiful Papa Westray.

ØY Festival

The Music

Seal Song

Tuned ambient recording from Moclett Head mixed with a hydrophonic recording from the pier.It also includes a tuned Seal Colony recording along with drum samples from the Skip at the Pier.

Young Persons Guide to Papay

Very loosely based on Mr Britten's famous classical piece.It introduces various collected sounds from my visit including Holland Farm cows playing a chord sequence. If you listen very carefully you will also hear St Boniface's turnstile play the original theme.

Kelp Store Stomp

Festival artists and attendees provide a solid beat for this rhythmic piece and all "placed" in the Kelp Store via a convolved reverb.

Sound Waves

A sequence of notes generated by the North Ronaldsay and Noup Head lighthouses as they "play across" Papay's Eastern and Western seabed topography.

Palingenesia

Edwin Muir regarded Orkney as Eden. Fitting then that his words are placed in the rejuvinated St Boniface's Chapel. Spoken here by Alan Davidson. Nobilis Humilis – performed "Strengleikr".

Impulse

"A force acting briefly on a body and producing a finite change of momentum". Sounds from The Knap of Howar - Europe's oldest stone house.My Ithophone was created using the "Kontakt" sampler.

Papa Westray ØY Festival

ØY Festival

Muckle Supper

Harvest Homes are an Orkney traditional celebration in honour of a successful harvest.Now part of the festival, Papay’s "Muckle Supper" is an annual feast of Holmie mutton – from the Holm’s seaweed-eating sheep.

Jonathan

Artists, writers, thinkers have been especially attracted to islands through history for the solitude and the landscape, and as places to contemplate and inspire. Using this as a starting point, artist Saoirse Higgins and I decided to set up an event which responded to this particular island trait.

Saoirse

Saoirse Higgins is a artist-designer from Dublin, Ireland, currently living on Papa Westray, Orkney. She is interested in revealing some of the connections between our vision of the world we live in, our expectations for the future and the technology we use to help us with this.

Drop us a line

Address

Watercolour Music, Ardgour PH33 7AH

Phone

01855 841320

Email

nick@watercolourmusic.co.uk