Soundtrap V
Duncan Whitey
Arch Gallery 3
2 June - 11 July 2010
3 August - 7 September 2010
(Summer Closure 9 - 23 August 2010)
Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 5pm
On-site residency open to the public
Duncan Whitley’s practice combines an ethnographic interest with a passion for sound in all its forms and nuances. The artist focuses these pursuits by honing in on particular subjects that are rich in both human and aural data, making a study of the subject using a combination of film, sound recording and interviews which are meticulously archived and analysed. His goal is to create a profound sound experience with the transformative affect he originally experienced in the subject.
Currently in residence at Beaconsfield, Whitley is commissioned to produce a score for a new composition based on a significant archive of environmental field recordings made from Seville’s ‘Semana Santa’.
For the past five years, the artist has travelled to Spain at Easter to absorb and document Seville’s Holy Week rituals. The new work will present a radical interpretation of his experience of the city’s spectacular processional drum marches, using a combination of drum synthesis, field recordings and choreographed spatialisation through a multi-channel sound system. Using an unusual compositional process where original recordings are exploited to create a score, the new piece will be an immersive work with strong rhythm, exploiting sound, space and power.
The ‘score’ will provide guidelines for the reproduction of sound as heard - as opposed to a traditional Western musical score, where the form of notation describes a series of discrete pitches and rhythms. Precedents for original composition rooted in ethnomusicological research can be found in Béla Bartók’s research into Hungarian rural folk song and Franz Listz’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, where research becomes an explicit part of an original composition, using words and melodies from existing traditional song.
Andalucian Drum March will constitute a serious contribution to the fields of sound art, experimental electronic music and ‘phonography’ - a cross-disciplinary practice that engages practitioners across the visual arts, experimental and acousmatic musics, anthropology and ethnomusicology. The Soundtrap residency aims to question themes of interpretation and presentation, and to query the cultural values we ascribe to the phonographic document. Whitley’s archive is both collected and supported by the British Library’s World and Traditional Music Department.
Duncan Whitley is the fifth artist to be commissioned for Soundtrap, Beaconsfield’s annual portfolio scheme for new sonic works.
Soundtrap V: Duncan Whitley is supported by the PRS Foundation.
Soundtrap is Beaconsfield’s portfolio scheme for new sonic works.
Beaconsfield Commissions 2010
