We’re delighted to usher in the summer in with our rescheduled listening event featuring interdisciplinary performances and speakers, as part of our Summer Solstice weekend.

In sharing sound, we visit the in-between, making contact with an invisible but connected world; join us for a communal moment that honours presence by listening closely.

Following a week of research, experimentation and production at Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre in 2021, Sound Re-dug brings together four artists working across sound, installation, radio broadcasts and performance. From the ephemeral currents of field recordings to polyrhythmic oscillations and materials meeting in friction.

The day will culminate in an open decks session, radio broadcast and communal meal on the lawn.

The line up:

ASHLEY HOLMES

http://www.ashleyholmes.co.uk/

Ashley Holmes is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield working across sound, installation, radio broadcasts and performance. His practice is informed by ideas of ancestral transmission and collective memory to explore the ways sound recordings, music and oral histories document a relationship between race and the environment. He hosts Tough Matter, a monthly broadcast on NTS Radio and also facilitates Open Deck - a series of gatherings giving space to collectively listen and hold discursive space around relationships to sound.

DIALECT (ANDREW HUNT)

https://www.andrewpmhunt.com/dialect

Andrew PM Hunt, aka Dialect, is a composer and musician based in Liverpool whose work encompasses a multiplicity of approaches including field recording, improvisation and computer processing to produce delicate compositions which hint at the interdependent complexity of the natural world. His recent album "Under~Between" (RVNG Intl, 2021) was recorded with new music group Immix Ensemble and fuses electroacoustic techniques with chamber music instrumentation, drawing on his background as a songwriter to produce innovative work with a deeply emotive core. Current preoccupations include faith, religion and their relationship to modern ethics and ecology. As someone born on The Wirral he is also excited to explore the resonant iconography of his childhood, in particular Bidston Hill itself.

KELLY JAYNE JONES

https://www.kellyjaynejones.org/info

Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester based artist making work that combines performance, installation and sound. She is mostly self taught and began working in DIY experimental noise music and her practice has expanded to include dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film scores. She is interested in creating a multi-sensory experience that creates possible conditions for communication and exchange. Creating contemporary zones bordering quantum fictions, where communion may have the potential to explore our inner dimensions.

QUIETING

https://vimeo.com/626400691

Recently relocated to her birthplace in the Northwest of the UK, Maeve Devine is a multi-instrumentalist, music producer visual artist and DJ whose work leans towards experimental electronic and dance floor orientated sounds. She finds fascination in movement and texture and has recently begun to include found sounds, field recordings, oral history interviews and randomly generated sequencers into her practice. With an extensive background as a guitarist, vocalist and drummer in the Uk’s punk, hardcore and DIY indie scenes Maeve’s music is infused with an urgency to connect people, places and politics at the intersection of poly rhythm and throbbing psychedelic soundscapes.

NON-RANDOM

https://evolvingourselves.non-random.co.uk/

Linda O Keeffe, Tony Doyle and Ashley James Brown will launch the latest collaborative project from Non-Random Collective. 'Evolving Ourselves with Unnatural Selection' looks to establish an adaptive audio-visual space online for users to play with and explore the ethical questions brought on by human-computer interactions, such as with CRISPR sequencing. Examining the emergence of such gene-editing technologies from a digital multi-arts approach, the collective examines the psychology of play and the changing relationship between technology and the body. Non-Random asked scientists, ethicists, ecologists, artists, sociologists and those living with or supporting people with genetic conditions, to explore the future of gene editing in a rapidly transforming global ecosystem. From these discussions emerged the GAIA game world survey. This immersive audio-visual world asks the user to engage with ethical questions about real and future scenarios.

Practicalities:

Tickets are on a sliding scale dependent on personal resources and funding. Please self select the rate you are able to pay.

£20: a subsidised ticket for anyone who needs one

£25: our standard ticket price

£30: a standard ticket, which includes £5 Pay It Forward to help subsidise tickets for other people.

Ticket prices include: BOARC day user rate, dinner + eventbrite fees. Spaces will be limited, so pre-booking is essential.

Please email: enquiries@bidstonobservatory.org for any questions, to let us know dietary requirements and/or access needs.

For more information on the summer solstice: sound re-dug full weekend programme : http://bidstonobservatory.org/?solstice22