Fabiana Galante Halloween 2005

Multi-media arts residency Fabiana Galante, Musician, Argentina Rebecca Stapleford, visual artist Dudendance, video making in collaboration with Caroline Ross Project Report

Introduction Fabiana Galante has been invited to come from Argentina to Huntly to work for four weeks on both soundscape research and collaborative work with Dudendance and Rebecca Stapleford, visual artist. The project included the following elements: 1. Soundscape research Hidden Huntly 2. Collaborative multi-media art installation and performance -

Community work, to include a full week workshop with children A performance based multimedia installation Clanking Curios shown at the opening of the Halloween in Huntly, petrifying Arts Festival Production of CD

3. Production of 2 CDs 4. Additional education work

1.

Soundscape research with Fabiana Galante

First stage was to search for suitable material that will work as a starting point to compose a Huntly sound-scape piece. For this the artist took the town’s road map and walked around, listening to environmental sounds. The sounds were divided in the following categories: 1) Nature (birds , wind , river , rain , animals, etc. ) 2) Public spaces and buildings (shops, coffee places, pubs, church bells, Post Office, Gordon School’s bell, Library, etc.)

3 ) Regular or spontaneous community activities ( Doric Evening Reading , Coffee Morning at Stewarts Hall, sheep/cattle mart , Scottish fiddler Paul Anderson playing at a pub, football games, teenagers at Huntly ‘s Square on Friday night.)

4 ) Sounds that belong to domestic environments ( pipes , electrical appliances such as kettles , record player, different Northeast Scotland radio stations , etc.)

5 ) Means of transport (cars, buses , trains, airplanes. ) 6 ) Other sounds, including the animal auction at the local farmers mart.

Stage 2 focused on recording most sounds already mentioned, which also meant looking for the best possible weather conditions to record the first sounds group.

In addition the artist went to all sorts of places, sometimes more than once, a particularly interesting resource provided an antique’s shop “Bygones” which specializes in clocks, where she spent considerable amount of time.

The research time allowed the artist to collect material, but also provided her with a better idea of the kind of sounds the area could provide.

In order to move on to the next stage of the work and develop a fuller project the artist would : -

broaden the sound spectrum through use of sensitive recording equipment

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improve the quality of the material

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spend more time in Huntly and at the editing studio

To achieve these aims the artist suggests to: -

go through individual people’s days in order to find a “map” of sounds (not less than twenty people from a cross section of the community)

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re- record part of the existing material, and also get a better quality microphone

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take more time to fulfill the work and a higher amount of expenses to afford recording studio’s fees.

As a result of this research the artist has six full minidisks with material (nearly eight hours), and also a 7 minutes 50 secs duration CD, that works as a sample of the kind of work she could dvelope.

If further development were envisaged Fabiana would be able to compose sounds within the environment to be performed both as support for visual work other artists (e.g. Dudendance Company) and / or as a complete work in itself.

The artist collaborated on this project with Ben Page, a musician with excellent technical and sound recording skills at Drumblair Lodge, Forgue near Huntly. The newly set up recording studio at Drumblair Lodge is a very valuable new development for Deveron Arts and any future project should take in account their human and technical resources from the onset.

2.

Halloween in Huntly, Multi-media arts event 30 Oct – 1 Nov 03, Brander Building, Huntly Collaborative work with: Fabiana Galante, composer/musician Dudendance Company (film) Rebecca Stapleford (visual arts)

Workshop with young people During the October (tattie-) holidays the artists undertook a full week workshop that lead to a performance with local children.

The workshop was two hours a day with some of the children that had participated in the Summer School run by Dudendance, working both on sounds and movement.

The artists planned the work in relation to the space where the installation /performance would take place (Brander Building). Therefore children improvised on given directions such as : -

go on sound “journeys” into the house using stairs and doors (slamming, opening,etc)

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actions like walking , running ,chasing , sliding (with or without using their voices)

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use of voice only (shouts , whispers , telling stories , others)

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use hands (scratching glasses, passing “scary” objects, etc)

The children, were aged 7 to 13 years old and were also asked to bring not only some instruments but any toys that had interesting sounds. This led us to work on a sequence of movements and sounds that later became part of the performance.

Spirit Machine/Clanking Curios For this project Fabiana Galante worked with the Dudendance Company to develop the performance and soundscape with the children that would be shown as a multimedia piece along with a specially edited installation work by Dudendance. Visual artist Rebecca Stapleford, who had also participated in Dudendance’s summer school also collaborated through developing her own photography and plaster casts that became part of the installation.

The project resulted in an installation in the Brander Building on the town’s square.

This was performed with the children as part of the opening night of the Halloween in Huntly festival. For the following days the installation was to be seen as ‘stand-alone’.

The performance itself consisted of five children and a giant bed draped in red velvet.

A “grandmother” figure and a magician where also present, as the children appeared and disappeared from under the bed as if in a state of trance. The children’s performance was timed according to the images projected and the sound scape. This resulted in the work being choreographed across the disciplines of film, performance and sound. The resulting performance was shown in two rounds with the audiences being led into and out of a totally black space.

Most important is to describe the holistic feel of the evening in the Brander building, which was transformed for a night into a kind of Victorian castle. With dimmed lights instead of the neon, all the usual posters down, eerie music and young ghosts (some of the performers wandering around the house).

Work-process The starting point for Fabiana and Dudendance was to exchange ideas on both images and sounds. A first version of the sound scape ( 7min. 50 secs duration) was mixed onto CD and used to edit the video footage.

Sounds mixes were subsequently re-recorded in Forgue. Video was then re-editied during the rehearsal process with the children so that both the sound and the film footage would work in completing and complementing the performance material. The footage and sound were finally looped so that the whole could be installed to run for one hour.

The installation was complemented by work entitled Materialisation Conspiracy from Rebecca Stapleford which is a tribute to the attempts of illusionist photography.

Rebecca recreated séance scenarios using a traditional method of photography, a pinhole camera, to capture images that once convinced viewers of the existence of life after death.

Two 11 by 14 inch black and white prints which were hung in the entrance way in the Brander Building. They were matted in red velvet, sepia toned and framed in antique wooden frames.

3.

CDs and video A CD will be produced that includes all the sounds of the Halloween in Huntly Festival. This will include this project’s work, electronic sound with Tom and Ben Page, new music composed by fiddler Paul Anderson and a perfor4mance with Umesh Maddanahalli.

Fabiana Galante made another 10 minutes long CD based on variations on a single sound, that could be used in a room next to the installation´s space.

A video with soundsape has been produced as a result of this project.

4.

Additional Educational Work Further, Fabiana Galante was also invited to visit Drumblade´s Primary School to play for the children, work on sounds and be “interviewed” by them. The whole school of 50 children attended.