- Venue
- The Shed
- Starts
- Saturday, August 24, 2019
- Ends
- Saturday, August 31, 2019
- Address
- Aldborough Manor, Aldborough, York, YO51 9EP
- Location
- Yorkshire
- Organiser
- Soundmarks
Beneath the quiet streets and farmland of the North Yorkshire village of Aldborough lies the Roman town of Isurium Brigantum. Recent work by the Aldborough Roman Town Project has revealed that it was a town of great importance in the Roman north; a key trading point and busy hub. It was a busy town with a central forum and basilica, large town houses, warehouses and workshops, an amphitheatre and large suburbs.
Visiting Aldborough today, this rich history is not always immediately obvious. This year, a collaboration spanning art, sound and archaeology has explored and documented Aldborough’s hidden sub-surface landscape, leading to an art exhibition and sound installation and a series of public events in August 2019.
Soundmarks is a collaboration between Dr. Rose Ferraby and Rob St. John, funded by Arts Council England. An exhibition of their work will be held at The Shed, Aldborough, between Saturday 24th August and Saturday 31st August.
A free ‘art trail’ will be launched alongside the exhibition, allowing the public to navigate eight ‘soundmark’ sites through the village. Each soundmark is located on an important Roman site – such as the Forum, amphitheatre and river – and will be accessed either using a free interactive mobile app, or using a paper map distributed through the village.
At each soundmark, visitors can view Rose’s visual work and listen to Rob’s sound work, each interpreting the character and history of the site. The soundmark trail – which takes around an hour to walk in full – is designed to encourage people to explore Aldborough’s unique landscape, and to gain new perspectives on its rich Roman history.
At The Shed, visitors can view Rose’s original visual works and listen to an immersive ambient sound piece created by Rob using the sounds of Aldborough, and produced using compositional cues from archaeological techniques, datasets and maps.
Rose and Rob will run a series of free workshops on the 17th and 18th August, where the public can learn drawing and sound recording techniques to create their own ‘creative place portraits’ of Aldborough.
Two invited guest speakers – Dr. Lesley McFadyen, an archaeologist from Birkbeck, University of London, and Dr. Jos Smith, an environmental landscape writer from the University of East Anglia – will give talks on Saturday 31st August, alongside an artist Q+A.
An artist book documenting the Soundmarks collaboration – containing a download of Rob’s sound installation piece – will be available to purchase.
