Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
justin morey
This project has been my first experience of practice-based research, with my previous academic outputs all being either journal articles or book chapters.Â
. The project began as a collaboration with Dr Paul Ratcliff (a field recording specialist at LBU, now retired) which led to three sound pieces being performed at Spurn Bird Observatory Trust’s autumn migration festival, Migfest, in 2023. Through the help of seed funding and research cluster funding from LBU and LARC, and with interest and support from our eventual partners Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, I was able to collaborate with visual artist Ruthie Ford to create two audio-visual installation pieces in the lighthouse at Spurn Point.
The larger second floor installation combines interview extracts from conservationists, wildlife and nature sounds, as well as the sounds of the lighthouse itself, processed and reimagined through a combination of analogue and digital synthesis techniques to create an immersive four channel ‘double stereo’ soundscape; the visual art uses acrylic panels etched with Ruthie’s responses to Spurn and my sound work, and covered in dichroic film, which changes colour as the light changes and is both translucent and reflective. The fourth-floor piece, just below the lens room, features a smaller sculptural piece from Ruthie using the same materials, and a musical/tonal piece created from the sounds of the sea, the lighthouse and simple instruments such as gongs and singing bowls recorded in its spaces.
One of the joys for me of working on this site-specific project was the access to the lighthouse, and to be able respond to its spaces and the sounds it makes when creating the soundscape, key parts of which were composed on site, and I feel that the work sits well in its spaces as a result. Ruthie, as a professional visual artist with a background in staging and installations for outdoor festivals, is very used to working with clients and understands the amount of planning, organisation and admin required to create public facing art. This was new to me, and as a first foray into art practice, it left me with a new-found respect for amount of time and effort required from artists to work on the aspects of an art project not related to thinking about or making art to make it happen.
As the lighthouse is two miles from the nearest road and can be cut off at high tide, I also learned to be well prepared and not forget anything I needed.
Spurn: Rhythms and Reflections runs from 3rd May-21st September at Spurn Point lighthouse, East Yorkshire.
