babblesnatch
award-winning 8-channel sound installation created entirely from two voices
"A surprising submission...such a superb piece containing wordplay and a text that was put into ever-changing contexts, sometimes sung but constantly varied. A great work and a real discovery." (Olaf Nicolai, Chair of Jury, Karl Sczuka Prize 2023, SWR)
"A surprising submission...such a superb piece containing wordplay and a text that was put into ever-changing contexts, sometimes sung but constantly varied. A great work and a real discovery." (Olaf Nicolai, Chair of Jury, Karl Sczuka Prize 2023, SWR)
babblesnatch is an 8-channel fixed media audio installation designed to play in a lowlight space where Listeners can wander or be still between loudspeakers as the space comes alive with Sounds. The work:
- is an abstract montage entirely created from Leona’s audio recordings of two Voices performing an original script (a text for our fast-changing times). The recordings were then used both as unmanipulated and digitally manipulated Sound to create sonic colour, texture, vertical time, sense and nonsense
- cracks open conventional language to create a ‘snowglobe’ of cascading, undulating, rebounding Sound as Voices dart and fly, recognisable words erupting from aggregated clamour to take on significances Listeners have to decide for themselves
- invites Listeners to use their imagination and consider what it might be like to experience the usually non-audible digital voices and moods continually enveloping us.
Caroline and Leona's conversations followed many paths and explored complex questions. Questions that generated babblesnatch with its concern not just for Sound and Listening, but what it might mean for someone or something to be listened to.
|
During the Covid pandemic lockdown Leona and her mentor composer/researcher Dr Caroline Wilkins had long-distance discussions about the rush on-line and the torrent of digital information forced to substitute for so much previously gained from live events and gatherings. Everyone virtually listened to and watched each other even more than previously, creating an overwhelming digital infostorm. |
Listening itself is now being understood as a holistic act, a back and forth between Listeners, rebounding in the wider socio-political context. The lazy binary of active speaking and passive listening is being questioned and analysed. Importantly, as part of this movement, babblesnatch embraces Sound and Listening as artforms, placing them centre-stage. It celebrates our capacity to go beyond what is visible - so critical in a digital world where fact increasingly downplays the importance of communal experiential life – and seeks to re-balance the dominant bias of eye over ear.
Leona was awarded a grant from PRS Foundation's Women Make Music in order to create babblesnatch. The work was supported and premiered by Somerset Film's Engine Room, with people listening intently and some responding creatively within the installation. The genesis of the text for babblesnatch was a performance script embedded in an earlier published academic paper by Caroline and adapted by Leona during lockdown to create the recording script. Voices are Caroline Wilkins and Leona Jones.
samples from babblesnatch (5' 23" of 26' 16") use headphones or external speakers for best effect
Developments
The Karl Sczuka Prize for Works of Radio Art was established by the Südwestrundfunk (SWR - the second largest broadcasting organisation in Germany) in 1955. Leona was awarded the Grant prize for babblesnatch and attended the prize ceremony at the Donaueschingen Contemporary Music Festival in Germany in October 2023. It's an open international call-out with three awards being made annually for the best productions of radio art using musical material and structures in an acoustic performance.
|
For the fourth consecutive year one of Leona's soundworks was chosen to be broadcast on Radiophrenia, the temporary radio art station broadcasting all day and night for two weeks from the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. A two-channel compacted version of babblesnatch was submitted in response to an international open call and was aired in August 2023. |
The venue used to be the main Post Office in the city, a site that reflects the work's exploration of mass communication, both formal and informal, individual and societal, as Post Offices were major centres of information dissemination in localities and communities.
|
The full 8-channel version of babblesnatch was installed in Tin Shed Theatre's The Place, Newport, South Wales in November - December 2023.
|
“Fully embodied in the FULLest way!” “It’s so strange and makes me feel magic inside.” “Like an adventure book. Makes me feel like I’m in a story.” “So atmospheric, unnerving in a wonderful way!” “Not often I focus on one thing with such focus. It was magical.” “Very atmospheric, spooky, surprising.” Listeners in Bridgwater and Newport |