SMFA Lecturer in Music Performance, Dr Ruth Herbert features in the Routledge Companion to Sounding Art (2017) which contains 36 essays that cover a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to studying sounding art from the fields of musicology, cultural studies, sound design, auditory culture, art history, and philosophy.
Her chapter, Sonic Subjectivities, compares subjective experiences of sounding art with informal everyday multimodal experiences of music – the way individuals customise mundane experience with music. It goes on to consider Experience Design and examine the faculty of imagination as a psychological given and evolutionary adaptation.
A music psychologist and performer, Ruth has diverse research interests in the fields of music in everyday life, music, health and wellbeing, music and consciousness, sonic studies and music education.
Replica of Ancient Roman and Egyptian artefacts. Photo by George Morris
A 2 year AHRC-funded project to study Roman and Late Antique Artefacts from Egypt – a collaborative effort between the University of Kent, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the UCL Petrie Museum, Bloomsbury, London – has resulted in the production of replica ancient musical instruments using 3D print technology. Using laser scanning data and further research to enable the identical reconstruction, School of Music and Fine Art technicians, Georgia Wright and George Morris made a set of reed panpipes, 3 different ceramic rattles, a pair of wooden clappers and two sets of double-flutes.
Lloyd Bosworth, archaeology technician in SECL, 3-D had scanned the objects at the museum and then created virtual 3-D models from the scans (Lloyd has just won a University research prize for his research support). The virtual 3-D models were sent to Georgia Wright, who printed them out to use as a basis for the replica objects in the original materials, and with George Morris then produced the instruments.
Replica of Egyptian Reed Panpipes. Photo by George Morris
On the Project Team, Dr Ellen Swift, Reader in Archaeology at the University of Kent, commented: “It was very exciting going over to Chatham to pick up the instruments and I was really pleased with how Fine Art Technicians, Georgia and George, were able to achieve a close match with the size and appearance of the original artefacts thanks to new 3-D scanning technology. On my first visit, I picked up the 3D print-out of the panpipes and it was a real eureka moment to find out that they played a musical scale known from written documents to have existed in the Roman period. Making the instruments did pose a challenge as in some cases there were parts missing and some additional research and creativity was needed to fill in the gaps.”
The replica artefacts are a key part of the project and will be used for research and also for an exhibition at the UCL Petrie Museum at the end of the project in 2019. When all the instruments are ready, sound recordings will be made at SMFA to be used at the subsequent exhibition.
This research project – the first in-depth study of Roman and Late Antique Egypt that uses everyday artefacts as its principal source of evidence – aims to transform our understanding of social experience, social relations, and cultural interactions, among the populations of Egypt in this period.
School of Music and Fine Art Audio Electronics Lecturer, Dr. Sean Williams, was featured on a programme called Radio Controlled on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday February 11th at 6:45pm with several other academics, talking about early experimental electronic music on West German radio in the 1950s.
Presented by Robert Worby, the programme tells the fascinating story of how post-war West German radio, and modern music, was conscripted to win the cultural cold war, often juggling political, economic and cultural forces outside of their control.
Dr. Sean Williams is a researcher with a strong background in music practice. He has released a number of records on various labels in the UK, Europe and the USA, and performs solo and with groups including Grey Area, and the Monosynth Orchestra. For more info go to https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/staff/staff-profiles/musicandaudio/Williams.html
SMFA music lecturer Anna Neale-Widdison has released a new single Evolution which is available on all the usual music platforms such as Spotify and iTunes. The video was filmed at the Historic Dockyard Chatham and Royal Dockyard Church, and featured University of Kent (Medway) students. It can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/GrWcMpNOMko
Evolution is taken from Anna’s forthcoming album Wide Sky, due for release on the 23rd March, featuring performances from Syrian musicians and the members of the English National Opera (ENO) chorus. Fusing together Middle Eastern music with Western pop, and continuing the world music theme featured in her previous album River Man.
Anna is a multi-talented singer/songwriter, composer, session vocalist, and voice over artist, and has performed at most of the major music conferences, released two albums and two EP’s to critical acclaim, written songs for other artists, radio and TV advertising, and provided vocals for many TV animations, songs and adverts. As well as her composing and performing credits, Anna has lectured at the University of Cambridge, The British Museum, BIMM (Brighton & London), Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Hertfordshire. She is also a member of the Oxford Brookes’s music industry board. Her research interests include songwriting and the music of Ancient Greece. More info here: http://www.annaneale.net
SMFA’s Adam Chodzko, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, is adjudicating The ARTiculation Prize South East Regional Finals at Quarterhouse, Folkestone on 31 January.
The ARTiculation Prize is a nationally acclaimed annual event designed to promote the appreciation and discussion of art and encourages students aged between 16 -19 in full-time further education, to express their opinions and thoughts via a ten minute presentation to an interested audience about a work of art, artefact or architecture of their choice. Adjudicators are asked to assess each presentation as a whole, looking at content, structure, delivery and the speaker’s original approach and unique potential. In 2018 nine Regional Finals will be held across the country.
Adjudicators will select a first, second and third prize winner in each Regional Final, who will each receive book prizes sponsored by Laurence King Publishers. The first prize speaker from each Regional Final will go on to give their talk at the ARTiculation Grand Final on Friday 9 March 2018 at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Winning 2018 Finalists will be awarded 1st Prize £300, 2nd Prize £200, 3rd Prize £100. All ARTiculation Finalists will receive one year’s free membership to The Art Fund to include an Art Pass and a year’s membership to the Friends of The Roche Court Educational Trust.
Dr Ruth Herbert, Lecturer in Music Performance in the School of Music and Fine Art, has been invited to give a guest lecture at Humboldt University, Berlin http://hu.berlin/mbkhu as part of The KOSMOS Workshop Mind Wandering and Visual Mental Imagery in Music from 16-19th May. Ruth is one of several invited from international experts in the field of mind, music and consciousness.
Funding from Humboldt University will allow MA music student Andrea Hepworth, who has an interest in music psychology, to accompany Ruth and participate in the conference.
Ruth’s guest lecture, Everyday Musical Daydreams and Kinds of Consciousness, will feature both music we actually hear plus music that pops into our heads – including so-called ‘earworms’.
A music psychologist and performer, Ruth has diverse research interests in the fields of music in everyday life, music, health and wellbeing, music and consciousness (including ASC and Trance), sonic studies and music education. Further research interests include performance psychology, evolutionary psychology and ethology. She has published extensively on aspects of music teaching and education and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Sonic Studies, Musicae Scientiae and the Global Listening Centre. http://www.globallisteningcentre.org/member/ruth-herbert/. She is also a member of the Music Education Expo and Musical Theatre and Drama Education Advisory Committee, the NYJC/IoE Jazz and Gender Forum, and (latterly) the Musical Progressions Roundtable.
SMFA Fine Art Senior Lecturer and acclaimed artist Adam Chodzko has a video work, About Knots, screened on February 8th at the Whitechapel Gallery in Refuge – an evening of films, sound-works and readings that mark Britain’s historic status as a place of sanctuary for threatened European artists.
About Knots focuses on the relationship between artist Kurt Schwittersin the final years of his life in the late 1940’s, living in poverty, (and exile) in the Lake District, and J. Edgar Kaufmann, wealthy owner of the Kaufman Department Store in Pittsburgh, USA. The work combines text and moving image and creates a narrative about longing, creation and fragmentation, endings and beginnings.
Exhibiting internationally since 1991, Adam Chodzko works across media, from video installation to subtle interventions, with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm. http://www.adamchodzko.com
SMFA Fine Art Lecturer and acclaimed artist, Adam Chodzko, is featured in new exhibition, The Ash Archive, a collaboration between the University of Kent and The Ash Project which examines the human relationship with the ash tree and woodlands. Reflecting on the uncertain future of the ash tree, the exhibition brings together works by artists, designers and local makers which explore our dynamic and complex relationship with the life and death of the natural world. Artists featured include Ackroyd & Harvey, Colin Booth, ,Sebastian Cox, French & Mottershead, Magz Hall, Max Lamb, David Nash (in collaboration with Common Ground), Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton and Sheaf + Barley, and there is a collection of objects made from ash wood from Rob Penn’s book The man who made things out of trees.
The Private View is on Thursday 18 January, 6-9pm, at Studio 3 Gallery, Jarman Building, School of Arts, Canterbury. The exhibition runs until 14 April.
The exhibition is curated by Madeleine Hodge and Rose Thompson for The Ash Project in partnership with the University of Kent, and will tour galleries across Kent in 2018, including Limbo Gallery in Margate, Nucleus Arts in Chatham, UCA Brewery Tap in Folkestone as part of the Salt Festival and at Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks.
The Ash Archive will grow over the course of the exhibition and the public are invited to make contributions of ash objects to the archive. The Ash Project is an urgent cultural response to the devastating loss of one of our most important species of tree. For more information go to: www.facebook.com/events/202163857010683
On the 8th January 2018, Tim Meacham, Lecturer in Fine Art and Partner College Liaison Officer in the School of Music and Fine Art, is delivering a paper with a video & sound piece as part of the Large Objects Moving Air conference (LOMA) with CRISAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice at UAL , London College of Communication http://www.crisap.org/research/projects/loma-18/
And in February 2018, in conjunction with the Turner Contemporary Margate, Tim has been asked to make a piece of work as part of the Journeys with the Wasteland exhibition which explores the significance of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land through visual arts. The work – Eye of the needle – will be exhibited in the Hantverk & Found gallery in Margate http://www.hantverk-found.co.uk/
Of the work Tim explains: “The viewer accompanies the needle on its journey across the landscape of a gramophone record. The role of the needle is considered in first embedding sound, through creating the grooves of the record, and then as a “rider” travelling across the surface of the disc as it plays. 78-rpm records, made of shellac and slate dust, give something of themselves (dust) in order to release their sound, thus changing the landscape with each play”.
The work explores T.S. Eliot’s relationship with the mechanical sound recording of the gramophone, making particular reference to its role in The Waste Land in providing the machine mediated sound track of modernity.
“She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.” The Waste Land 254-56
Adam Chodzko, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, has been asked by the British School at Rome’s Council to become a member of the Faculty of the Fine Arts from 1 January 2018, until December 2022. He joins a faculty that includes the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, the Director of the Government Art Collection, and Senior Curator of Contemporary British Art, Tate. More here: http://www.bsr.ac.uk/about/governance
Exhibiting internationally since 1991, Adam Chodzko works across media, from video installation to subtle interventions, with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm. http://www.adamchodzko.com
