Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival - radio programme transcripts (8)

Programme 8

The Colne Valley Listeners sound installation

(Matthew Sansom)

Two rather large aluminium parabolic dishes. These act like giant ears which when you put your head in the dish you experience a kind-of strange amplification of the soundscape that’s around you.

The second part is the River Colne Soundwalk. There’s a map you follow and there’s some audio that you either download or you listen to from an MP3 player that you’ve picked-up from Slaithwaite Library. And you follow the map listening to the recordings I’ve made from the area.

The idea of active listening is to think more deliberately and become more conscious of the act of listening. So you become more of a participant.

By actively listening you become more aware of your presence in that space. And it helps you to attune more deeply to being there and listening and experiencing.

You have to walk towards them and then you have to interact and experiment by putting your head in various places in relation to the dishes. With the walk, you’re making the action of listening to the soundtracks and also the layering of the everyday ambience that interacts with the tracks I’ve made.

As a piece of art it’s a response to the place. When I first went there to look at the location, I was really struck with just the beauty of the place and a feeling that it didn’t really need anything. That everything was there. So, the idea is that the walk and the dishes point of the unique and also the universal qualities of the valley.

(Heidi Johnson, Festival Outreach)

Colne Valley Listeners is a co-commission with the River Colne Sculpture Trail. And it’s one of a series of works which follow the course of the river. It’s a permanent installation at Rocher picnic site just outside Slaithwaite. And if you want to go on the Soundwalk, you can borrow an iPod with Matthew’s Soundwalk on it, free of charge, from Slaithwaite Library during opening hours.

(Voice over)

Contributor: Matthew Sansom, sonic artist, speaking from Surrey University. The sounds are the Colne Valley. Festival Shorts are produced by Beaumont Street Studios.