Tag: soundscape

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Songs for a Stranger

Songs for a Stranger - SolitudeSongs for a Stranger is a collection or cycle of five electroacoustic works that draws metaphorical inspiration from the many senses of the word ‘stranger’.

Everyone feels like a stranger sometimes – when travelling somewhere new; returning home; confronting solitude. Some feel estranged in close intimacy; others find connection through anonymity.

Songs for a Stranger movements:

i  A Fragile Memory (4’40)
ii  Blowing In (5′)
iii  Solitude (4’26)
iv  I Said You Said (5′)
v  In the Midst (4’39)

The piece was premiered in the intimate ‘dark space’ at The Arches LIVE! Festival in September 2011, performed and diffused over a 4-channel speaker system. I invited Swiss vocalist Céline Hänni to rehearse and perform the work for Arches Live. Sound diffusion: Graeme Truslove. Many thanks indeed to all at The Arches.

Songs for a Stranger was further supported by a Creative Scotland Quality Arts Production Award.

 

 

 

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All We’re Skilled In | Plantation Productions

All We’re Skilled In was a film, sound art and heritage project run in partnership with Plantation Productions, Glasgow Film Theatre and Scottish Screen Archive. Erin Scrutton and I worked with young carers in Glasgow to create atmospheric sound tracks for silent film clips using original historical footage of the Govan shipyards and the people who worked there. The film below, made by Jamie Dempster, is a short documentary of the project itself. The film has had several screenings, including the Glasgow International Film Festival.


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Panic Patterns by Louise Welsh and Zoë Strachan

Panic Patterns – sound design commission for theatre

I was commissioned by Glasgay! as composer/sound designer for Panic Patterns  by Zöe Strachan and Louise Welsh. The work was further supported by  a Creative Scotland New Music Award. The play was directed by Alison Peebles and ran from 19th – 30th October at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.

Reviews

“… sound designer Nichola Scrut(t)on’s noises off for comfort…” ****The Herald

“Nichola Scrutton’s sound design plays a starring role…” Broadway World

“…an atmospheric set and soundscape…” ***The Scotsman

“…while Nichola Scrutton’s ghost-radio music……add to a twitchy atmosphere” Times Higher

@zoestrachan
@louisewelsh00
@NicholaScrutton

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Hold Your Breath

Hold Your Breath 5Hold Your Breath was a large-scale visual/sound art project set up to improve the entrances/exits to the Clyde Tunnel, with the participation of the Whiteinch and Linthouse communities at each end of the tunnel.

I composed the various contributions of source sound and music into one large 40-minute work, which was to be projected by radio into the cars traveling through the Clyde Tunnel.


 

 

 

 

Various groups were involved in creating sound/music source materials for the soundscape: Paragon Ensemble working with St Jerome’s and Whiteinch Primary Schools; Art Form with Bryan Tolland; Tigerstyle and Dhol Infusion drummers; and the MacAlpine Family all contributed. I worked with Paragon Ensemble in the schools, gathering up sounds/songs from the children, the playground and surrounding streets, and recorded songs at the MacAlpine’s (four generation) family party

(photos courtesy of Kathy Friend)

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Sustenance


Sustenance is a studio composition (14’37) that explores human interaction with objects and processes that make up our daily existence. The sound materials progress through sections, each defined by a specific sonic/material character drawn from the objects and processes used in cooking. At a higher level of structure, the work traces a general transformation from dry to wet, reflecting decay. Selected for various international broadcasts, SONUS online listening library and for NAISA Deep Wireless 7CD, produced in Toronto, Canada.

 

 

 

 

 

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Academic Awards

Academic Awards and Qualifications

2009 PhD in Electroacoustic Composition, University of Glasgow
Portfolio ‘Hearing Voices’ 

Funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Award – selected from open competition (2005 – 08)

2005 MMus in Composition, University of Glasgow

Supported by a Bellahouston Scholarship and a Broomhill Scholarship

2004 BMus (Hons) First Class, University of Glasgow

The Goudie Prize ‘Most Distinguished BMus Hons Graduate’.

 

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Hooks + Bites | Glow Co-Create

Sound artist and facilitator in the creative team of Plan B Collective, who were awarded £30,000 for a Glow Co-Create project  Hooks + Bites for the Curriculum for Excellence (2010-2011). The project worked in partnership with Perth Concert Hall, Perth and Kinross Council, Learning and Teaching Scotland and Creative Scotland. Hooks + Bites was one of ten education projects across Scotland commissioned to take artists into schools to work with pupils to generate creative content for the national schools intranet, Glow.  

The Hooks + Bites project culminated in an exhibition in Perth Concert Hall’s unique media art space Threshold and included a digital audio-visual artwork on its soundbox, bank of screens and sound/audio unit in the public toilets. Plan B Collective was later selected to present a seminar on the ‘Hooks + Bites’ project at the 2010 Scottish Learning Festival.

Creative Team: Fiona Fleming, Nichola Scrutton, Erin Scrutton and Barbara Chalmers.

Watch a film about Hooks + Bites

 

More on Glow Co-Create

The Co-Create project has been set up through a partnership between the Scottish Arts Council (Creative Scotland) and Learning and Teaching Scotland.  GLOW Co-Create recognises the important role the arts can play in learning, in supporting and enhancing the Curriculum for Excellence, and in developing innovative new approaches to learning and teaching through Glow.

Managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, Glow is the world’s first national intranet for education.  It provides a platform for online collaboration and sharing and allows Scotland’s 54,000 teachers and 750,000 pupils to work and learn in ways that have not been possible before.  Glow is breaking down barriers and making learning experiences and opportunities more widely accessible to users across Scotland. Also read more at TES news.

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Breathing Space

Breathing Space (7’56) is an early studio composition that uses the human voice as the only sound source.  As the title suggests, the driving force of the work is the breath and its potential to evoke different sensations of space.  Breathing Space continually overlaps the border between the literal and metaphorical, and the ambiguous relationship between ‘natural’ and processed sounds.  The form proceeds as a relatively free exploration of these multiple vocal possibilities but comes to pivot on a transformation from intense saturation to extreme reduction. The work was selected for a range of international broadcasts on experimental radio.