Section Two of Four:
Dot Howard installed the Floor Survey piece we made in May. She set up a television for her video, while I set up an amplifier with corresponding sound. It provided a chance for us to reflect on the method of working in advance of our new local version. She taped bubblewrap across the entrance floor as a basic sound source, which was very popular with children. She then set about creating a carpeted workspace and filling it with modelling balloons for video filtering experiments.
Michael Ridge got straight to work on a Big Mouth Billy Bass he had found in a charity shop. It was skinned and suspended from a bracket near John's loop, with its wires hanging down to the floor. During the day he wired the sensor to a point near the entrance, and modified its sound so that whenever anyone entered the space the fish would twitch and squeal. He also began what looked like a constructivist assemblage, but which was actually pieces of charity shop cassette tape stuck to a board, which he then played with a tape head. By this stage, the room was getting very noisy…
I attached a contact mic to the underside of the visitors' comments table so that whenever they wrote the sound would be amplified. This became an instrument later on during the group improvisation, and resulted in lots of scribbly drawings where the marks were secondary to the sounds they produced. I also set up the bicycle wheel as a playable object, attaching it to a girder and tying paper cups to the spokes, with the instruction "Hold Me Tight". There were two violin bows available to play the spokes, and moving the cups to your ear amplified the vibrations.
The group came together at about 3pm to make a joint sound piece. John set up a new loop and then recorded the rest of us responding to it. Michael used his tape strips to generate short bursts of sound. Dot made low creaks with her balloons and a contact mic. I played the bicycle wheel, making drones. Kevin played extracts of audio, which at one point said "I am sending you the message now", coinciding with a lovely computer dial-up sound from John's loop. Kate made scratches and rhythms with the table. The whole piece was about 10 minutes long, and seemed to end quite naturally when one of the balloons burst.
Later on, Dot, Michael and I linked all the balloons together to form a giant, wobbling mass. We each attached a contact mic to a part of it and set about trying to generate feedback through the vibrations in the balloons, producing wonderful drones at different pitches. There were moments where we managed to hold onto a chord between us before the balloons twisted away. It could be developed into a succinct repeatable performance if we ever needed anything to tour…
