COLLABORATION- COLLABORATION INITIAL IDEAS

For this collaboration unit, my initial response to the brief was to pick the accessible insturemnet design pathway as I have a personal conncetion towards it. My older brother was borns with a hand defect which means that he dosent have fully grown fingers but instead stubs and a much smaller palm. I grew up watching him learn how to do all the same things I was but at a much greater struggle. To me his hand is the same as mine, something that I rarely notice. The only time in our childhood that I relaised how different me and him were was when he would watch me play instruments that he had no access to due to his hand. I want to dedicate this unit to my brother and create something that he can easily play for the rest of his life. Woodwind instrument are something that he’s always been fascinated by but unable to play. I wanted to collaborate very closely with him and see what he wants and cater to his needs.

Unfortunately upon a deeper reflection I have realised that I may have been giving myself too much to do. This project also doesn’t necessarily fit in with my practice. For this final year before the dissertation I wanted to follow my theme of exploring the natural world in an environmentally acoustic manner as to lead up the my diss which will encounter all of these elements that I would have explored in a more academically and formulated way. After having initial discussions with my brother about what to create for him I realised how far off of topic I was going, something that I don’t know if I could have put all of my heart into. My brother also isn’t necessarily available for my to co collaborate with due to his mental health and doing this project solo would have been far to over whelming. But after my discussion I did decide on an idea. I realised that I was thinking about his hand too linearly, why use the structure of an already made instrument when I could create him something that didn’t necessarily need both of his hands to use, I wanted to use breath as a way of creating a cord. For instance 2 fast breaths could signal a certain cord or note. The length of the breath along with other factors could allude to how long the note should be etc. As I was thinking about this idea it really dawned on me that this was just too much work, especially technically and although I agree that it is good to try new things sometimes, this was just too far for what I stand for in my practice.

After having discussion with my tutor Kate Carr it became apparent that I wanted to go in a different direction. I expressed and idea that I had been thinking about fro some time to Kate. I have always wanted to collaborate with people who work with soil, specifically allotments and public or shared spaces. Luckily I have a friend who dose all 3.

My initial idea arose from my curiosity about noise and plants. I was on an extremely busy and polluted road in London where the noise even for my was too loud, I wonder about the plants around me if this noise was helpful or damaging to them. I know that there has been a varied amount of insight into how certain vibrations can stimulate certain plants. Just like the old wives tale of if you sing to you plants they will grow more (even though this tale is about oxygen I still think it implies). So on my quest to understand plants and they way they grown and more narrowly focus on they’re needs I will formulate a more soil idea once I have discussed with my collaborator.

I have now chosen not to go with this idea as I am focusing on soil in my other unit Contemporary issues in sound arts. I will do a follow up blog of my next idea.