Past Events – Project DIVFUSE

audible silence : Jez riley French [PAST]

Sound exhibition:

14 April 2023 Friday 5-8pm

15 & 16 April Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

21 April Friday 5-8pm

22 April Saturday 2:30-4:30pm

23 April Sunday 4:30-6:30pm

Running time: 30 minutes. Free Entry

Talks:

Session 1 – 22 April Saturday 5-7pm (Full)

Session 2 – 23 April Sunday 2-4pm (Full)

£8 | 10 places each session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for ticketing

Both sessions will be delivered in similar contents, ie they are not Part 1 and Part 2.

After having run four rounds of Open Calls DIVFUSE Sound Archive looking for works that are based on field recordings, Project DIVFUSE is pleased to present a sound exhibition by Jez riley French, an artist who builds microphones for capturing sound in different environments. Jez will also be giving two sessions of talks on recording devices and techniques involved based on his extensive experience.

Sound exhibition

soil horizons (2023)
spit soil beds

Traces of durational listening to the inner sounds of plants and to soil horizons; on-going research into transpiration, root systems, cavitation, vibrations in soil systems, situated connections between ground dwelling species, public and private land borders.

Recorded with adapted JrF contact microphones and hydrophones.

Three-Day Residency : Merkaba Macabre [PAST]

Residency

24 March 2023 Friday 6-8:30pm. DJ from 6-7:30pm. Live by artist from 7:30pm.

25 March Saturday 6-8:30pm. DJ from 6-7:30pm. Live by artist from 7:30pm.

26 March Sunday 3-7pm. DJ from 3-5pm. Live by artist at 5 AND 6pm.

Free entry. . [[Photosensitive Warning]]

Merkaba Macabre presents a new audiovisual project that explores colour to sound synthesis for a three-day residency at Project DIVFUSE. The project maps the perceived colour spectrum to the audible frequency spectrum, allowing each color tone to pair with a unique sound tone. These ‘binary tones’ are performed live as quantized patterns across three digital projectors and a 3.1 sound system. Building upon the artist’s previous research in analogue light-based composition, Merkaba Macabre investigates this field in a purely digital process resulting in a triptych audiovisual expanse.

A Tape Recorder Workshop 2023 : Robin The Fog [PAST]

Live sound generation + Tape loop creation

18 March Saturday 6-8pm

Ticket: £10. 8 seats only (Sold out now!). To buy tickets, please email divfuse@gmail.com for payment details.

Project DIVFUSE is pleased to present our third event under our curatorial series Sound Meta, which celebrates sound making through performances or workshops. Join us for a 2023 version of this unique event by Robin The Fog where tape loops will take over the entire venue – and the audience will be expected to help hold it all together!

Robin The Fog is a Cumbrian sound artist and audio producer based in London. He is the founding member of Howlround, a project that creates recordings and performances entirely by manipulating sounds on a quartet of vintage reel to reel tape recorders, with all additional effects strictly forbidden – no samples, no synths, no pedals, no plug-ins. Howlround’s eighth studio album was released in 2022.

RobinTheFog.com | Howlround.co.uk

Image by Victoria Hastings

PreView : Guy Sherwin [PAST]

A film event

24 February 2023 Friday 6pm & 7pm

25 February Saturday 4pm, 5pm & 6pm

26 February Sunday 4pm, 5pm & 6pm

Each session is about 30 minutes. 8 places each session. Please email divfuse@gmail.com for a space.

Artist will be present during the event. Free entry

‘In the late 1980s I was living on Clarence Road a stone’s throw from DIVFUSE Gallery.

Looking out through the windows of my upstairs flat I made a ten-minute film, Views from Home.

Shot in time-lapse, the film also recorded sunlight passing through the empty rooms while I was out at work. Sax player Alan Wilkinson lived and practised in the flat below, and he unknowingly provided much of the soundtrack.

For this event, a live video of the street plays alongside an adapted version of the original film.

Note: Views from Home was filmed in super 8mm and completed on video in 2005.’

– Guy Sherwin

Listening and Improvisation : Caroline Kraabel [PAST]

Lecture :

16 December Friday 6:30-8pm [UPDATED from 9 December]

£5 | 12 places only | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Workshops :

10 December Saturday 2-4pm PART ONE

17 December Saturday 2-4pm PART TWO

£12 each part or £20 for attending both parts | 6 places only | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for ticketing information

Note : Participants are recommended to attend both parts as PART TWO will be building on the materials delivered in PART ONE. BYO instruments.

Two workshops and a lecture by Caroline Kraabel

Exploring her own practice, along with a wider view of improvisation and identity: even the world of freely improvised music can be experienced as an enclave that excludes, despite the perceived association of improvisation with limitlessness and freedom.

How do people who improvise feel and think DIFFERENTLY from each other on the subject? How do we avoid or alter any dominance of particular groups over the theory or practice of improvisation? Does the experimental nature of improvisation make it easier for members of élites to shine in the field, because they have more pre-existing socio-cultural capital? Or, does improvisation come more easily for outsiders who are already primed to find alternative paths? How are improvisers affected by their musical and cultural histories? How does a group, maybe a large group, of improvisers negotiate space and time, noise and silence in a musical and just way?

For improvisers who have experienced forms of oppression in music making and/or life, is the aim when making music merely to recapitulate existing power structures, but try to place themselves at the top? Or to create new and fairer structures?

References: Gittin’ To Know Y’all: Improvised Music, Interculturalism, and the Racial Imagination, by George E. Lewis, Columbia University

https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/845/1396

Naked Intimacy: Eroticism, Improvisation, and Gender, by Ellen Waterman, University of Guelph

https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/845/1396

Hidden Reverb : Maciej Wirmański [PAST]

Sound Exhibition :

2 December 2022 Friday 5-8pm

3 & 4 December Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm. Artist will be dialling in from Poland for an artist’s chat between 5pm and 6pm on Sunday.

Running time : 30 minutes. Free Entry

This is one of the three exhibitions of work and artists selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 4 – an Open Call for pieces that are based on field recordings. We are pleased that this round of the Open Call is funded by the Arts Council England and the work was jointly selected by Project DIVFUSE and sound artist Kate Carr.

A Hole in a Wall (2021)

‘When I was at the Sanatorium of Sound Festival in Sokołowsko I hiked a lot. During one of my trips I found the ruins of some old buildings. Ruins were based on a slope of a hill in between meadow and woods. When I came closer I saw black eye of a rusty pipe looking back at me. It went from the outside to the inside of ruins. I put my ear to the dry pipe and I heard a rumble so different from the calm soundscape of the spa. It was so loud but almost unnoticeable even from a short distance. It amazed me so I put a shotgun microphone into the pipe and a pair of omni mics I left outside.’

Early Electro-acoustic music in the empty ballroom (2021)

‘Not so long ago I used to work for the local theatre company. The company owned an old hotel which they meant to renovate for a new stage. Empty space of a ballroom in the hotel was central to the building. Before renovation started I decided to honour the space and its unique reverbnation which was going to be lost soon. I went there at night with my microphones. The night was silent. I’ve decided to provoke reverbnation by using found objects such as broken tiles, scrap and rubble. I moved it on the concrete floor of the room. I recorded all of it on a broken tape recorder and then played it once again into the same space (inspired by “I am sitting in the room” by A. Lucier) and simultaneously playing on rubble once again. The outcome is a microphone performance/field recordings and homage to place which is gone by now.’ – Maciej Wirmański