Tag Archives: Maker Faire

If Wet #22 – documentation

Our second If Wet of the season saw us hosting a special event in our home village hall. In fact, for various reasons, it is the only event we have planned to take place in our village hall this year.

Late last year, John Doran of The Quietus got in touch to ask about us hosting him for an event as part of his tour, to launch his new book Jolly Lad. We weren’t entirely sure how this fitted with a standard If Wet but we thought we’d go for it; in part to just keep bringing exciting stuff to Callow End.

As John intended to perform readings from his book, accompanied by music from Arabrot, we decided the emphasis would be more on performance than usual at an If Wet. We also decided to try and find a selection of artists for whom storytelling was central to their work. The wonderful Sarah Angliss immediately sprang to mind but we wanted to have two further artists to accompany John and Arabrot. David and I chatted and he reminded me of Josephine Dickinson, who we had met when running If Wet at Bardsea Malt Kiln last year. I got in touch with her, and her enthusiasm to be involved was palpable…so that was our line-up sorted!

Tickets sold well and we were delighted to have a great turnout on the day as well; The hall was as full as it has ever been for an If Wet. We started by setting the scene and briefly demonstrating the headset for our latest project Amplification, before handing over to Josephine for her delightful talk, which covered studying under the tutelage of Michael Finnissy and going mushroom picking with John Cage.

setting-up-full-hall

Setting up.

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Sarah testing. Sam helping. David supervising.

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Josephine prepares.

sarah-setting-up

Sarah prepares.

jd-arabrot-prep

John and Arabrot prepare.

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Sam with Amplification headset.

josephine_speaking

Josephine speaks.

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Josephine speaks.

josephine-speaking3

Josephine speaks.

josephine-to-full-house

Josephine speaks, to a full house.

proud-josephine

Josephine soaks up the generous applause.

Next up we had Sarah Angliss, who was a delight to behold, as ever.

sarah-and-hugo

Sarah and Hugo.

sarah-chats

Sarah speaks.

sarah-chats2

Sarah speaks.

sarah-recorder

Sarah plays her recorder.

Lastly it was over to John Doran and Arabrot. John read from his book; Arabrot created ambient soundscapes in accompaniment. Wonderful stuff!

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John reads.

arabrot3

Arabrot performs.

doran_and_arabrot

John and Arabrot.

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Arabrot tweaks.

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John and Arabrot.

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John reads.

doran-takes-questions

John takes questions.

arabrot

Arabrot.

Thank you to our artists and to all who attended for making this such a wonderful experience! Callow End Village Hall has never witnessed anything quite like that…

Many thanks to George Benson for the wonderful photographs!

If Wet #21 – documentation

Our first event of the year took place at Maker Faire, where we were invited to programme a stage for the two days of the festival. Our plan was to have an artist on each day who would talk about their work in a slot in the morning and then perform in the afternoon. As it worked out, we just ran the whole of each day as a drop-in session, for people to come and ask questions etc…with a performance in the afternoon.

For this If Wet we invited the wonderful Graham Dunning back with his Mechanical Techno set-up and Paul Granjon with his musical robots. They both went down a storm.

Thank you to our artists, all who attended and to Maker Faire for being such wonderful hosts!

music-makers

We are the Music Makers

setting-up

Setting up…

amplification

Paul trying out the prototype of our latest piece Amplification

Day One featured Graham Dunning. It was wet and cold, and we were outdoors…but the show still went on!

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Graham Dunning with onlookers

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Graham Dunning with record

dunning-playing

Graham Dunning adding to the stack

dunning-one-more

Graham Dunning tweaking

dunning-more

Graham Dunning putting a donk (cymbal) on it

dunning-playing2

Graham Dunning manipulating light-dependent synth

dunning-live

Graham Dunning with full stack

dunning-smile

Graham Dunning smiling

Day Two was Paul’s day, and the sun had come out. He played his wonky dance music to an appreciative crowd.

granjon-audience

Paul Granjon with audience

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Paul Granjon with tail and ears

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Paul Granjon with tail and ears

paul-mofo

Paul Granjon readying Mofo

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Paul Granjon with Mofo

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Paul Granjon dancing with Mofo

Once again, huge thanks to our wonderful artists, audience and to Maker Faire!

If Wet in 2015 – revised plans

room

We are firm in the belief that any decision we make regarding our projects is open to review at a later date, and when we came to assess our plans for our third season of monthly If Wet events in the village hall we decided we would put these on ice; and save our Kickstarter cherry for another day. There are various reasons for this decision but central to it is the fact that doing a regular event each month is really time-consuming and energy-sapping. If Wet was intended to drive our own making, for demonstration at the events, but the regular monthly events actually stifled our own building of stuff in 2014; so for now we have put them on hold.

This doesn’t mean an end to If Wet events in 2015. In fact, we have a few really exciting events lined up already and we are looking for more. Here are some dates for your diaries:

If Wet at Maker Faire
Saturday 25th – Sunday 26th April
A series of If Wet demonstrations and performances over the two days of the festival, taking place at the Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne.

If Wet hosts John Doran
Sunday 10th May
An all-day special event in our home venue of Callow End Village Hall. Including an If Wet salon, followed by an event featuring Arabrot performing an ambient set featuring John Doran reading from his new book Jolly Lad, due out early May on Strange Attractor Press. Yes, this is happening in Callow End!

If Wet at Three Choirs+
Thursday 30th July
A one-off If Wet event on the Theremin as part of the Three Choirs+ programme in Hereford. Further details soon.

If Wet at Worcester Music Festival
Sunday 20th September
Plans are afoot for If Wet to revisit Worcester Music Festival (and hopefully the glorious Quaker Friends Meeting House) for the second year running.

There are a couple more events in the offing and we welcome anyone getting in touch if you’d like to discuss us programming and hosting an If Wet as part of your event, wherever you are in the world!

We also started a regular monthly radio programme on Sound Art Radio in December 2014, which is broadcast on the last Sunday of the month from 2-4pm; each programme featuring a different musical instrument. More information on that here: radio.ifwet.org.uk

We welcome any suggestions for the radio show and we look forward to seeing you at an If Wet in 2015!

JOIN US.

Sam and David.

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