MAS(S) is a new work by artists Tristan Shorr and Rae Champion (CONCRETE) in collaboration with artist Lomond Campbell.
MAS(S) is a sound art project exploring migration, refugees, war and loss through the human voice.
A series of specifically designed generative sound sculptures guided by software and machines will turn the audio testimonies of 8 Ukrainian artists/ refugees into a multi-channel immersive sound experience, culminating into a voice siren that will call out along the British coastline, allowing audiences to actively walk the siren call together, mapping our borders.
We see MAS(S) as communal sound art. A place where the artists words and the generative sound sculptures coexist to become a powerful interpretation of the original text, where the call and vibration of vocal frequencies and words form a sonic narrative, a call to listen and to act.
MAS(S) is both an indoor and outdoor work that allows audiences to sit with and/ or walk with the voices of war.
The work looks to highlight and honour the real stories of the Ukrainian refugees that have shared raw, lived experiences with us and to open a dialogue about our own countries rhetoric and treatment of all refugees.
The following page is an introduction to the ACE funded R&D thus far, and the development and collaborative process of bringing these humbling accounts to a wider audience for an ambitious touring work in 2024.
"the effects that noise possesses and passes to its subjects alter their perceptions, leave them differently and move them to action.."
The sounds and resulting score created by the generative sound sculptures transfers to a series of loudspeakers which run along a one hour coastal route. These speakers call out across the sea and participants/ audiences are invited to walk the siren border together.
There are two parts to the work, the inside sound sculpture(s) which generates a 45 minute soundscsape culminating in a siren sound, and the external loudspeakers marking a coastal border which takes this unique sound and pulses it along a section of UK coastline.
Audiences can attend both parts of the work or just one. The inside sound sculpture allows audiences to sit or stand watching the sculptures movements and generative sonic creation, listening to the soundscape as it develops.
The siren walk will start at a specific time once a day where audiences/ participants will actively engage in a guided communal walk between the siren calls, mapping and collectively allowing the powerful sonic capabilities of these voices to empower those experiencing the work.
Konstiantyu Tereschenko
In 2022 we worked alongside wonderful Ukrainian artists in the far north of Sweden who had recently fled the war in Ukraine.
These artists shared with us both their art and their recent personal experiences of the war in their homeland. It was incredibly humbling to spend time with each artist and their familes, to listen to their stories of the homes, lives and families they had to leave behind. We are very conscious in this work to make sure we give justice and find a way to echo their voiced experiences into a sound installation that respects their stories and resonates with audiences.
Pulling on the religious iconography we have seen repeated through the work and testimonies of our Ukrainian friends, our work has led us to examine not only MAS as 'Make A Stand', our original title, but to look at the MAS(S) as a word that encompasses a reflection on how we interact with the works themes as they develop.
For us MASS denotes the joining of the people into a group, the crowd, and the build up of voices together. It also suggests a religious MASS, the musical setting for solemnity and song.
The Ukrainian artists involved in this project are:
Alexandra Paranchenko
Belousov Mykyta
Kateryna Seheda
Kostiantyu Tereschenko
Liubov Babichenko
Olga Yurasova
Svitlana Scherban
Vitalina Maslova
"The very form of sound itself can be disruptive since it can transgress borders, barricades and blockades"
Christopher Cox
Liubov Babichenko
A modified / custom rotary speaker. Any kind of sound can be played through this speaker (mono only) and easily integrated into the composition. This final prototype has arms on the side that will lower and raise specialised microphones which will pick up the sound of the speaker's AC motor.
This self-noise, and rich harmonically distorted drone, will feedback, disintegrate and agitate the sounds being played through the speaker, gradually overtaking it.
We are also interested in the possibility of using these custom built rotary devices as the main multi-channel speakers in the installation space. Spinning imperceptibly at certain moments, and then in others rotating faster in response to the score. We are interested in how the sound might change in response to proximity to each speaker, and how details will change as audiences navigate the space.
Generative sound sculpture: Development and prototypes
The word machine is a portable word selector based around a rotating disc and slightly larger than a record deck. The machine will begin the score, randomly triggering banks of words and their order, setting in motion a new cycle and score each time.
This is an ominous, silently rotating perpetual motion machine, signally when the siren ends in the installation space and is sent to loudspeakers to be pulsed along a stretch of UK coastline.
A skeletal scaffold like structure supports a 2 metre long brass rod, which appears to move effortlessly with no apparent power source. A ticking sound might be all we hear from this machine as it signals the beginning of the siren and the end of a 45 minute soundscape cycle.
This is one part of an idea for a tape loop bank. A large bank of audio cassette players, each with a tape loop triggering certain words/ phrases, slowly disintergrating sound as the single words transition into ambient tones/ drones.
We had the idea of displaying this in a dark space with a movable spotlight that would scan over the tape decks. Whichever deck the light is on will be the loop you hear. It will fade between them as a automated light over them in response to audiences movement in the space.
Early designs for choral tilting device as the stretched words/ phrases slowly evolve into a choir of voices singing the words, testimonies from our recorded interviews with Ukrainian artists.
These designs reflect a sense of perpetual movement in line with many of the generative sculptures such as the rotary machine/ speaker.
Siren
In Ukraine the drone of sirens has become a continous soundtrack. Each siren on average rings out for one hour per day.
"The waxing and waning wail of a siren has truely embedded itself in the human psyche as a warning of impending danger".
National Geographic
The air raid siren is a sound usually denoting fear, panic and action in the listener, a sound that often becomes an eternal alarm in war torn countries. In creating a siren sound from the artist's voices the power and fear are taken back by the people and the noise becomes a communal outcry and human call.
"..to be subjected to noise, made to listen, is to be controlled by a force that diminishes and impedes us from inside..
The act of producing noise, which you (and others) are then subjected to, is empowering"
Steven Connor
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This is a design for the outdoor loudspeakers that will be placed along the coastline. This design has the possibility of the 2 loudspeakers slowly rotating during the 15 minutes each siren plays.
We are interested in the work touring coastal sites and venues around the British Isles.
Each performance will leave a trace, an active mapping through participation. As audiences move along the coast through time and space they come together, reflect, talk, and instigate change.
Sharing events in 2023
We openly invite people to come to sharing’s in England and Scotland in October/ November 2023 where you can talk to the artists, find out more about the project and actively help shape the creative aspect of the final work.
Sharing dates:
The Anatomy Rooms, Aberdeen – 6th October
The Lengths, Fort William – 7th October
Brighton Dome – Nov (tbc)
We would like to give a huge thanks to all those have been involved so far and given their time and considerable energies to this project.
Special thanks to Arts Council England, Counterpoints Arts and Brighton Festival for supporting and partnering with us on this period of research and development.
