Dr Louise Harris, a lecturer in Sonic and Audiovisual Practices at the Music subject area, will work in the multi-channel/Ambisonic studio at Bowling Green State University (Ohio USA) during Spring 2016 as the recipient of a Klingler ElectroAcoustic Residency (KEAR). Dr Harris explains that her project for the residency ‘will be concerned with realizing the sonic illusions I am keen to work with in such a way that they will sound interesting and sonically appealing over an extended period of time and allow for subtle and gradual transformations into (and from) other forms of non-illusory sonic material. There will also be in-depth consideration of the spatial positioning and motion of the sonic material’. The completed audiovisual work is expected to function on four large screens in a square configuration, in which the audience is contained within and can move through the space.
In other news, Professor Bill Sweeney’s St. Blane’s Hill will be broadcast on Saturday, 23rd October, as part of BBC Radio 3’s Afternoon at 3, starting at 2pm. St. Blane’s Hill was commissioned by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (currently Royal Scottish Conservatoire) in 1991, and premiered by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
The title of the piece is a reference to St. Blane’s Hill at the south-west tip of the island of Bute. Next to it is the site of a sixth-century religious settlement established by St. Cattan raided by the Vikings, but later re-established and in use until about 150 years ago -and pointing towards Ireland, which would have been at the time the high point of Celtic culture. Professor Sweeney describes the piece as a metaphor for the RSAMD and Scotland too: ‘apparently at the periphery, but at the centre of its own culture’.
