The penultimate event in the tour is at Bardsea Malt Kiln, Cumbria, 28th June, 2-4pm – TICKETS JOIN US.

We will kick things off, demonstrating the latest work on our Giant Feedback Organ. Originally commissioned by the Southbank Centre, we have continued to develop the sounds this beast can produce and we will share these with you…

Next up we have Phil Powell and Shaun Blezard talking about their duo Hugs Bison, which they describe as the collaboration of a musician with an interest in technology, and a technologist with an interest in music.

They’ll demonstrate the devices, apps and techniques they use, and how they’ve evolved over time as the technology has matured. They’ll talk about the setup they are using to take their gigs “off grid” and ways to collaborate remotely with other artists.

For the second presentation in Cumbria we are delighted to have Lee Patterson presenting his work.

Lee will explore the sonic potential of his unique instrumentation. From effervescent salts to amplified springs and dry rock chalk to burning nuts, he will open up and play the usually inaudible, microscopic sounds emitted by otherwise mute devices and objects. Sam was lucky enough to witness the outcomes at Monomania Festival earlier this year. You are in for an aural treat.

All being well, this will be accompanied by the usual local ale, grub and cake. JOIN US.

The second event in the tour is at Fitzhead Tythe Barn, Somerset, 22nd June, 2-4pm – TICKETS. JOIN US.

We will kick things off as usual, demonstrating the latest work on our Giant Feedback Organ. Originally commissioned by the Southbank Centre, we have continued to develop the sounds this beast can produce and we will share these with you…

The second presentation is from a wonderful maker we met at the Southbank Centre, as part of the aforementioned commission. Jules Bushell will talk about his work on this project, known as Bushell’s Amazing Drain-O-Phone – a pedal-powered drainpipe organ – and a selection of other pieces he has worked on.

For the second presentation in Somerset we are delighted to have Hacker Farm presenting their work. They have a message for you regarding their intentions.

A few words from HACKER FARM: “When we were asked to appear at If Wet… the first thing we did was hack their web-page. But we hacked them in the nicest possible way – we temporary borrowed the HTML tags that ‘describe’ the web-page advertising the event we were asked to appear at: Fitzhead Tythe Barn, Somerset, on Sunday 22nd, June. The processing is known as ‘scraping’ because it literally scrapes information off a web-page. We took this borrowed data and ran it through an algorithmic script that creates MIDI information. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface – it’s a protocol for controlling synthesizers and samplers that was used a lot in the 80s and 90s. Many of your favourite classic pop records from that era were played using MIDI information. So, basically, we turned the If Wet… web-page into a tune…

“We’ll be playing that tune using a… ah, well, you’ll just have to wait and see. We will also be bringing along and demonstrating a variety of hand-built / salvaged musical-instruments, incl. the NANDIcams (chip-based synthesisers housed in Kodak Brownie cameras), a synth made from an old paraffin can along with a rusty-broken bucket – now re-envisioned as the Atari-Punk-Bucket. All of this, as well as broken/bent kids-toys and contact-mic’d plastic-instruments – will be played through our purpose-built ‘Farmyard Sound System’…

Well, there you have it. Somerset, eh? All being well, this will be accompanied by the usual local ale, grub and cake. JOIN US.

The first event is at Sompting Village Hall, West Sussex, 21st June, 2-4pm – TICKETS. JOIN US.

We will kick things off as usual, demonstrating the latest work on our Giant Feedback Organ. Originally commissioned by the Southbank Centre, we have continued to develop the sounds this beast can produce and we will share these with you…

Next up, we are delighted to have Leslie Deere presenting her work.

Leslie will be talking about several projects, including an ongoing sound sculpture series, works in progress and KPPG live performance work. Her recent work in progress project, which revolves around field recordings and projected images, will be the starting point. Photographs and sounds were captured in California and Nevada last summer and she has been experimenting with analogue techniques to process the material. Deere recently transmitted some of these sounds live to a sound silo in California for her first KPPG performance. Leslie will also be talking about her ongoing time capsule project, preserving thoughts, musings and moments in time through sound.

Following on from Leslie we are delighted to have Sarah Angliss back at an If Wet.

Sarah charmed our audience when she came to the village hall we call home so it seemed like a good idea to invite her back when we were so close to her home of Brighton. She will talk about her automata and how she uses them in her live performances. She has also hinted at a couple of other pieces she would like to discuss and demonstrate. Most exciting!

Here is a recent video of Hugo to whet your appetite:

All being well, this will be accompanied by the usual local ale, grub and cake. JOIN US.

Here is the full audio recording, in two parts: Part1 / Part2

Here’s an overview of what went on, so you can access topics of interest:

Welcome

“Actually I don’t know quite what to expect, which is one of the delights of doing If Wet!”

MortonUnderwood present…

[2:20 – 38:36 | Part 1]

World Listening Day

[2:20 – 7:00 | Part 1]
We started by introducing World Listening Day before going on to cover our release on RHP, entitled “Field Augmentation”.

“World Listening Day is to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology.”

“I don’t know whether you’ve ever experienced a tube journey but it is phenomenally loud sometimes. […] For me those sorts of journeys are fascinating because you have people there who would never normally listen to that sort of sound. I would go to a concert that sounds rather like that […] but a lot of the people on the tube definitely wouldn’t.”

Field Augmentation

[7:00 – 38:36 | Part 1]

“We are very open to all of the chance sounds of course that appear in that setting; of which there are many.”

“[…] has the rather odd effect of sounding, as you’ll hear in a few minutes, like a scrapyard in a cathedral.”

“We are going to play this track in full. It’s about seven minutes long, so this is an endurance listening moment.”

“It’s quite interesting that people seem to be paranoid if you take a camera out but to my surprise it’s the other end of the scale with microphones.”
[David talking about our experience when recording in the field]

“Why is it that one type of sound is acceptable in a certain environment and another type of sound isn’t?”
[Sam talking about the recording of his piece The Bells]

mortonunderwood.co.uk

Laura Kriefman

[00:09 – 01:02:42 | Part 2]
Laura Kriefman introduced us to her work as choreographer, technologist and sound artist.

“I came up with this ludicrous theory […] which is that the more labour saving devices we’ve found, the less we have rhythm in our body.”
[Laura discussing why we find dancing increasingly awkward]

“So, I started this plan to liberate dance. […] I may never achieve it but I am going to keep trying. […] I started taking all our work we were doing and putting it slap bang in the environment people were spending time in, because I wanted to show the way people move every day is beautiful.”

“I wanted to create something which could be installed anywhere, whether it’s a country estate in the middle of a forest or on a street corner. […] The smallest one is small enough to hold and the largest one is large enough to sit on.”
[Laura talking about her Rolling Stones project]

“Would anybody like to touch a Rolling Stone?”

“That’s playing on that base of chaos. It’s a really unusual place to put yourself, to create a piece of work when you know it’s going to tour because you have to make something that’s tourable. So, it has to have a finite form in the programming, it has to last 45 minutes, it has to be suitable for these kinds of people […]”
[Laura discussing applying chaos in her latest work]

Moving on to her mechanical bird building, Laura outlined her approach to making a variety of birds for her latest exhibition.

“How can I create a way for people to look up?”

“Some of the sculptures have very real birds and some of them have imaginary birds, so of course honker birds do not exist, nor do fluster birds. I only brought two of the fluster birds, there will be six living in this nest.”

“All the birds are kenetic and hand manipulated because actually it’s more fun.”

“For the final one I need five volunteers!”

guerilladanceproject.com

Run What Ya Brung

[01:05:14 – 01:16:45 | Part 2]
We run a regular feature at If Wet in which members of the audience are invited to bring along and demonstrate instruments, sound objects and sonic oddities. This month our regular contributor Richard Windley brought down his self-built Stroh guitar and amplifier. Once again, a remarkable rarity demonstrated in our village hall!

Richard Windley

[01:05:14 – 01:16:45 | Part 2]

“The original Strohs were made out of some sort of nickle and aluminium alloys, which I guess were cutting-edge in the early nineteen hundreds. […] What Stroh did was he took part of the energy from the bridge and he pivoted it and brought this little arm down onto this very, very thin diaphragm, which is spun aluminium.”

richardwindley.co.uk

Once again, the event ended with a lot of people sticking around to chat. One of the core aims of If Wet it to build links locally. We are confident there are people who share our interests out there and we’d like to hook up with them to form some sort of creative community. Another successful If Wet, see you at the next one!

________________________________________

The full set of Pete’s photographs of If Wet are available here.
 

If Wet #4 will soon be upon us – Sunday 21st July, 2-4pm.
Note: this is a week earlier than normal, as Sam is performing at FON the following weekend.

We welcome the wonderful Laura Kriefman of Guerilla Dance Project from Bristol to talk about how a dancer and choreographer started playing with sound. She will present her Rolling Stones project and some work she has been doing on building mechanical birds.

Here’s the promo video from when Laura’s Rolling Stones appeared at The Southbank Centre. Next stop, Callow End Village Hall.

Your hosts MortonUnderwood will be presenting their new release on RHP, entitled Field Augmentation. An overview of how the pieces are created will be provided, along with some demonstration pieces.

We will also have our regular Run What Ya Brung section where anyone can do a brief, informal presentation of a sonic curiosity they might own or have built. Last month we had a range of exciting stuff, including: techno clog dancing, a multi-faceted noise box synth and a selection of three-hole whistles / flutes. Please JOIN US and contribute!

We will also have the usual yummy treats of home-made food, cakes and a local ale.

We are most excited and hope to see you at Callow End Village Hall on Sunday the 21st July at 2pm!

Tickets can be purchased here.

The next If Wet is fast approaching – Sunday 30th June, at the new time of 2-4pm. We are delighted to have the wonderful Sarah Angliss up from Brighton to talk about her automata and how she uses them in her live performances. She has also hinted at a couple of other pieces she would like to demonstrate in public for the first time, which is most exciting!

Sarah’s robots looks great but they sound even better – check this video out…

Your hosts MortonUnderwood will be taking a bit of a back seat for this If Wet. We hope to bring a little something along but we wanted to give the bulk of the event over to our guests. As well as Sarah we also have Paul John back, this time with a clavichord to play for you. He will talk a bit about the history and features of the instrument too.

We will also have our regular Run What Ya Brung section where anyone can do a brief, informal presentation of a sonic curiosity they might own or have built (last month we had self-built dual Theremins from Richard Windley) and we will finish with a Sonic Exchange, if time permits.

Oh, and all being well we will have the usual yummy treats of home-made food, cakes and a local ale.

We are most excited and hope to see you at Callow End Village Hall on Sunday the 30th June at 2pm!