sonic illuminations proposal- King's Cross lighthouse

here's the outline of the idea for the proposal;

Kerry Andrew and Harriet Poole Joint Application to Sonic Illuminations

overlooked
a helter-skelter history of the King’s Cross lighthouse

Most people, heads down as they fight their way across Gray’s Inn Road and Pentonville Road in the jostling heart of King’s Cross, won’t notice it: on top of a thin curved building sits a derelict lighthouse. Bizarrely out of place, it is a genuine mystery; there is no record of who put it there, when and why. Suggestions have included that it was erected by 19-century teahouse or oysterhouse owners who once plied their trade beneath, or that it was a clocktower, a camera obscura, or even a helter-skelter salvaged from a local funfair.

We propose to produce a 5-minute film/sound/performance event that explores both fictive and real histories of the lighthouse and its immediate area, using a mixture of historic and contemporary film and photography techniques, live and recorded vocal music and sound design. The piece would begin by introducing the lighthouse with interweaving stories, both from real suggestions and fantastical, invented ones. A middle section would turn to today: we would go to the site and interact with the transient community there, filming them, showing them the lighthouse and recording their thoughts on its purpose. We would also use traditional and digital pinhole images of contemporary King’s Cross in response to the camera obscura idea. Finally, we would film the development of the pinhole photographs, and as they swim in liquid, the contemporary ideas and stories would overlap, disperse, and transform into an sonic evocation of the sea. This project would be a development of our collective interests in storytelling and myth, social engagement and site-responsive work, combining vocal (spoken and sung, live and recorded) looping, playing on the musical qualities of speech, and potentially including a live art aspect. We would be keen to work with the Camden Historical Society in investigating the area and lighthouse further.

sonic illuminations proposal- photos of site visit- King's Cross lighthouse

sonic illuminations is a competition for sound artist/composer and filmmaker to make a 5 minute piece exploring the history of King's Cross, to be presented at the opening of King's Place Arts centre in October. some info on the lighthouse is here- urban75 website, plus flickr site. we went to the camden local study centre archives and found an illustrated article entitled, 'A light at King's cross,: The 'lighthouse' building: fantasy and fact,' by David Hayes, in Camden History Review, Vol 23 (1999) David Hayes is part of the Camden Library Services. the article give a good survey of the known and guessed history of the lighthouse, similar 'follys', suggestions about it being a camera obscura (hence why i like this site!) helterskelter, dispensary, lookout.



the fish and chip shop maybe found in a lighthouse's normal seaside location

Biography for Nunnery show

(in)visible exchange
live photographic performance in the Nunnery closet (durational)
28 February-2nd March 2008

Harriet is a visual artist and educator based in South London. She specialises in creating, teaching and co-ordinating projects within the visual and interactive arts, experimenting with live performance and media arts.

Her current MA work explores theories in the work of Roland Barthes and Tino Sehgal, the first for his theories of the ‘mortality’ of the paper based photograph as an ‘impossible’ record of ‘now,’ and the latter for the fleeting materiality of his art works. Harriet is researching principals of non-matrixed theatre and audience participation through the subversion of time based media practices. She pushes the temporal nature of performance through marrying with the temporal nature of photography, placing the process of image making intrinsically at the heart of an intimate performative experience. In (in)visible exchange, made site-specifically for this Nunnery show, stories told in a closet surface momentarily through a photogrammed memory of objects, referencing those tucked away spaces maybe under the stairs, amateur darkroom in the attic, child’s den, inventors quiet paradise to be able to sit and consider one’s thoughts, make new discoveries, or share secrets. The fleeting exchange of memories between two strangers is, as is the problem with photography, of the moment that has passed. This performance thus culminates in marking this fact through the death of the photographs created, as either to become treasured relics, art objects or to emerge carefully under the door of the closet denoting the end of a period of togetherness as two strangers then leave one another.

Previous work has seen Harriet creating a photographic installation exploring invisible performances in a commercial setting. In Give me a new look in August 2007, she asked shop assistants at stores on Oxford Street to give her a new image based entirely on their perceptions and to photograph with a disposable camera the outfits for her, posed as though requesting them for her partner to see how ‘good’ she could look. Other work has included collaborations fusing her work with other arts practitioners be it creating illustrative or interactive visuals for sound art, music, movement, spoken word. She has had a range of visual commissions including for large scale visual-music-theatre work, Sedna Stories, composed by Kerry Andrew, and a collaboration with voice (acapella group, juice), ensemble and electronica artist Paul J Abbott which premiered in York, in 2005 and then Cargo, London June 2006. This work embodied the theatricality of Inuit folk tales. In July 2006 she created a visual score (film) for silent improvisation for Hausmusik (Claudia Molitor – Klangsieben and Sound Source series for spnm - Society for promotion of new music) In September 2006, she created a film played live to sound art performance Solar Noise Generation (SNG- Ash Sargant -!PLOVA) screened as part of Wormhole Saloon at the Whitechapel Art Gallery London. In March 2007 she created live visuals for Gobsmack, an experimental vocals night at The Spitz, London.

Harriet is heavily involved in visual arts and design education, with a variety of experiences in directing, teaching and collaborating within local and international schools, colleges and communities. She is currently on sabbatical leave from her post as Director of Visual Arts and Design at the BRIT School for Performing and Creative Arts in South London, where she champions interdisciplinary and interactive arts projects.

Harriet has a Foundation in Art (Chelsea College of Art and Design, 1994,) BA (Hons) Fine Art (Staffordshire University, 1997) PGCE Art and Design (UWIC, 1998) and PGCERT: Innovation in Education (Warwick University, 2006) and is currently studying MA Theatre: Visual Language of Performance at Wimbledon College of Art.

harrietpoole@gmail.com
http://harrietpoole.blogspot.com
07900 563631

Please contact me for further information, to comment on my work or discuss it further

(in)visible exchange was developed from an original work in progress idea between Harriet Poole and Laura Smith, Cause for an Action, January 2008.

Klaus Obermaier again......

ok, so here's the article my collaborative project guru (sedna stories) and great friend kerry andrew wrote as a review for spnm (society for promotion oif new music);

June 26th, 2007

Royal Festival Hall, London

RITES

Marin Alsop conductor

Julia Mach dancer

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Tonight's much-hyped concert trumpeted the marrying of old and new: ancient rites and cutting-edge technology in a reinvented version of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The LPO, under Marin Alsop's masterful eye, delivered a first half of music loosely complementing Stravinsky's pagan rituals: Philip Glass's Prelude from Akhnaten based on an Egyptian sun god, and Edgard Varèse's Arcana, which echoes Stravinsky's thumping rhythms and shrill woodwind, and even quotes the work. It started less with a bang than a repetitive whimper, with Glass's blocks of short see-sawing motifs stacked on top of each other feeling very much like music-by-numbers. The Varèse was more fun, a riotous mish-mash of Captain Scarlet-esque timpani and brass, military marches and chorales. However, even this lacked power; this was my first visit to the newly-revamped RFH, and though looking like a gleaming space-age ski-lodge, I'm not sure the acoustic has improved as much as it should have. The orchestra sounded strangely muted - even with twelve percussionists, the 'lion's roar' in Arcana sounded rather kittenish. I was also unconvinced by the static backdrop on the colossal projection screen - a cloudy blue screen for the former piece and a bright red one for the latter - which added very little visual weight to proceedings.

Still, all of us were there for the second half, made immediately exciting by the distribution of 3-D glasses, which made the auditorium appear to be filled entirely with Joe 90 lookalikes. The orchestra was left to its own devices for the magical opening, and then a solo dancer appeared in a two-sided box to the side of the stage. Her curving hand movements began to create red hieroglyphics onscreen, which eventually took on a life of their own. Mach herself was then projected amidst them and interacted with these abstract, virtual dancers. The novelty of having blood-bright shapes seemingly suspended in the air in front of us was fantastic and this was followed by Mach stretching out of the screen and reaching for us like a personal lap-ballet-dancer. Digital artist and choreographer Klaus Obermaier kept us fascinated, with a series of new ideas encompassing morphing hands, distorting Mach's body into Gollom-esque twisting figures, throwing her up and down on a lurching floor and surrounding her with floating star-clouds. It didn't always bear much relation to the themes of Stravinsky's work and felt like an remote, Final Fantasy version of the piece at times, but for sheer technical impressiveness, it was a night worth remembering.

my biography prior to starting the MA course, as of May 2007

to throw into the pot as i begin to define my practice......what's important and what's not?

Harriet is a visual artist, educator and arts director based in South London. She specialises in creating, teaching and co-ordinating projects within the visual and interactive arts, experimenting predominately with live and media arts, using photography, film and animation. She loves collaborating fusing together her work with other arts practitioners be it creating illustrative or interactive visuals for sound art, music, movement, spoken word.

She has had a range of visual commissions including for large scale visual-music-theatre work, ‘Sedna Stories,’ composed by Kerry Andrew, and a collaboration with voice (capella group , juice), ensemble and electronica artist Paul J Abbott which premiered in York, in 2005 and then Cargo, London June 2006 . This work embodied the theatricality of inuit folk tales. In July 2006 she created a visual score (film) for silent improvisation for 'Hausmusik' (Claudia Molitor – Klangsieben and Sound Source series for spnm - Society for promotion of new music) In September 2006, she created a film played live to sound art performance 'Solar Noise Generation' (SNG- Ash Sargant -!PLOVA) screened as part of Wormhole Saloon at the Whitechapel Art Gallery London . Currently she is collaborating with visual artist Specialchild in generating stop frame animations for folk electronica band The Woodcraft Folk. In March 2007 she played live visuals for Gobsmack, an experimental vocals night at The Spitz, London.

Her work can be playful, bright visual pop exploring the bezerk and the kitsch, the plastic and the misplaced, or monochrome and macabre; she is flexible and open to new adventures.

Harriet is heavily involved in visual arts and design education, with a variety of experiences in directing, teaching and collaborating within local and international schools and communities. She is currently in charge of Visual Arts and Design at a Performing and Creative Arts school in South London where she has been in post since 2001, and SSAT Lead practitioner for Visual and Digital Arts, delivering a seminar on performance art at the SSAT National Arts conference at the Barbican in February 2006. She is also Subject Mentor representative on the Teacher Education Board of the National Society for Education in Art and Design,(NSEAD.) In 2004-5 she developed a collaborative teaching project in Shenzhen, China sponsored by the British Council exploring international perceptions of identity though the visual arts. She previously taught Visual Arts to 16-19 students and adults in the Community Arts programme at a sixth form college, and in a community arts initiative First Base, both based in Brighton from 1998-2001.

Harriet has a BA (Hons) Fine Art (Staffordshire University, 1997), PGCE Art and Design (UWIC, 1998) and a PG CERT in Educational Leadership and Innovation (Warwick University, 2006) and is starting MA Theatre: Visual language of Performance in September 2007 (Wimbledon College of Art)