Beacons of Sound was an electroacoustic ensemble co-directed by Gavin Osborn & Heather Bamforth between 2007 & 2009. During that short period, the ensemble achieved widespread success, showing work at Futuresonic, ART, SAN Expo Brighton, & the York Late Music Festival.
Futuresonic 2008
Recycled for Sound:
An interactive piece using sound objects & live electronics. This piece highlighted our interest in reusing as sound obect materials that would otherwise be thrown away - a concern which resurfaces in other works, including some outside of Beacons, most recently in the overall approach to The Nature of Things, & in tracery web of movements tracery. The work was designed to be audience interactive, placing playing 'stations' around the space, with plenty of soundable objects. At each station was a microphone, picking up sound which was then processed by Heather & myself.
ART 2008
Playing the space:
An invite from Michael Mayhew to join a number of internationaly-recognised artists, performing work over a weekend at an invitational event 'off beat' at Mayhew's art studio in Chorlton. Our contribution was to design a work where the only materials played were those found within the studio itself - from manipulatable objects to the building structure itself - all miked & transformed through automated live processing. Two performances
were given - one where all sounds were made by Heather & myself, the second were the audience was invited to become the performers.
SAN Expo Brighton 2008
Message in a Bottle:
This was a radiophonic work, made for broadcast on the Expo radio during the festival. The originating idea of Heather's was to make a work using the thoughts of Brighton residents about their home town, using the concept of the 'message in a bottle'. Around 35 clean, empty juice bottles were collected together (another example of 'reuse') and along with paper & pens were sent off to Brighton, where a then-student of mine, Emma Champion, did the legwork of asking Brighton residents of widely varying ages & outlooks to respond. The messages where duely placed inside the bottles, which were returned to us. Heather made sound recordings of people reading the texts, while I assembled a large number of sounds processed solely from phonetic elements of the word 'Brighton'. After designing a structure, the finished versions of the piece were actually made live by me, using a midi console to mix the various sounds & trigger the spoken text. Listen to one version here.
View images of selected messages here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
York Late Music Festival 2008
Ariel Music
Cloud
York Soundwalk
In a Name
