CORA LINN

Recently I made a trip to Scotland to make field recordings and a 16mm film of a series of waterfalls on the River Clyde an hour south of Glasgow. 

Cora Linn at 90ft is the highest waterfall in a series of three which break the course of the river in New Lanark, South Lanarkshire. Widely recognised as an area of natural beauty, the waterfalls were used as a subject in the Romantic era by William Wordsworth in the poem Composed at Cora Linn and J.M.W Turner in the painting Falls of Clyde.

Falls of Clyde - J.M.W Turner

The area is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the town of New Lanark was reformed as an experiment in Utopian - Socialism by Welsh philanthropist Robert Owen during the Industrial Revolution. The power of the water harnessed to drive cotton mills and the adjacent buildings housing mill workers and their families. Today the force of the water continues to run Bonnington Power station, the first hydro-electric power station in Scotland.

When we arrived in New Lanark it was covered in a blanket of heavy snow and resembled a winter scene the likes of I'd only ever witnessed on a Christmas card. Fortunately the falls were still roaring as I had been worried they would be frozen, putting an end to my hopes of recording their sound. We took a walk from our hotel along the path upstream to look for possible locations for the film shoot.

 

During our walk I made field recordings using bi-naural microphones to record the waterfalls and an elecro-magnetic coil to pick up the hum of the power station. The recordings will be recomposed into one track which will exist as a CD and constitute as part of the soundtrack to the film.

Busby Berkeley

Reconstructing geometric shapes and patterns using the body can be seen in the large group routines of choreographer and film director Busby Berkeley.

Laban & Geometry

Rudolf  Laban (1879  - 1958) was a dance artist and theorist who inventented a graphical system of analysing and recording movement known as Labanotation. Laban describes the area surrounding the body as the Kinesphere, the lines of extension that trace movements to the dancers' furthest point produce a diagramatic representation of movements which resemble the geometries of crystalline structures.

In Labanotation the directional movement of parts of the body in space are represented by symbols which convey the transition from one movement to another and can be read in linear way, from bottom to top. The system allows a notation of movement from a basic description of which way a part of the body is moving to more complex anotations of facial expressions, transference of weight and quality of movement.

Burton Beach (Tango)

Burton Tango from Sybella Perry on Vimeo.

The video was shot on the Dorset coast with the soundtrack consisting of contact mic recordings from Musical Moving sessions and locational contact recordings of the beach.

DANCE & ART

There are a few exhibtions and related events coming up over the next few months concerning dance and art.

MOVE:Choreographing You at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre


ROTOR at Siobhan Davies Dance

AWAKENINGS

Since I have joined Musical Moving I thought it necessary to educate myself a bit about Parkinsonism and was kindly lent the book 'Awakenings' written by physician and neurologist Oliver Sacks. Although the book is primarily studies of patients suffering from a sleeping - sickness, who have been awakened by the administration of a new wonder drug L-Dopamine, there are sections which describe the Parkinsonian condition in great detail as in the 1960's patients where also administered the same drug.

Sacks' writes particularly about the Parkinsonian experience of space and time and the neurological manifestations of the disease, he recalls the work of Dr James Parkinson who defined Parkinsons as a singular condition in which there are forms of behaviour, rather than a symptomatic disease. Tremor or shaking commonly thought of as the most obvious symptom, is rarely constant and by no means an isolated characteristic of the condition. It is not merely motor, the resistance to movement, the speeding, slowing, stopping and starting also occur in the mind throughout thought patterns. It is apt then that dance and also singing are activities in which Parkinsonians find spirit but also strategies to master certain behaviours.

'We must come down from our position as objective observers, and meet our patients face-to-face; we must meet them in a sympathetic and imaginitve encounter: for it is only in the context of such a collaboration, a participation, a relation, that we can hope to learn anything about how they are."
Sacks.

DANCE FOR CAMERA

I have recently joined the Musical Moving session at KTHC, a dance class for people with Parkinson's lead by professional dancers with live musical accompaniment.  The group has links with Brooklyn Parkinson’s Group, a chapter of the National Parkinson’s Foundation in the United States and has previously had classes lead by members of the Mark Morris Dance Group. 

 Film and dance are interesting counterparts, early films often used dancers as a subject, their movement displaying films amazing ability to reproduce action in real time. Since taking part and recording the classes I have been thinking about dance as a discipline in relation to cinematography; movement as an expression of/reaction to form, timing and space as a control or a measure. When dance is filmed the camera itself may be choreographed to move in way which reflects the dimensions of the dancers' movements, and the dance choreographed for the dimension of the screen rather than the stage. The musical element may appear to invite and sustain a particular movement or equally jar and unravel the synchronisity.

A fine example of this approach to dance for camera can be seen through the work of choreographer Merce Cunningham and his collaborations with composer John Cage and filmmakers such as Charles Atlas, Elliot Caplan and Tacita Dean.

Follow the link below to watch him in action...

Merce Cunningham - Points in Space BBC Documentary


Film can also manipulate how we percieve movement through editing techniques, it may play with our sense of time, speeding up or slowing down to emphasize movement. It may play with our spatial perception focusing on only one part of the body or movements may begin in one location, extend beyond the frame and finish in another. An example of this approach can be seen in the work of filmmaker Maya Deren.


Maya Deren - A Study in Choreography for Camera

FIELD STUDIES

Last week I attended a four day course at London Met on the subject of field recording in the city,  Field Studies is an offshoot project led by Joseph Kohlmaier, lecturer in Architecural History &Theory.

The course was an interesting introduction into the practice of recording the activity of particular environment, each tutor offering a different approach and various methods. Attending the course has been invaluable in terms of the technical and theoretical knowledge I have absorbed, it will duly have an impression on how my work continues.

HIGH KELLING

During the TB epidemic in 1930's specialist isolation sanitoriums were set-up in rural locations around the UK as exposure to fresh air and the outdoors where thought to aid the patients' recovery. 

Pine trees where planted around the site as pine air was though to be cleaner, patients would spend long periods outside in rotating summer houses which would be moved depending on sunlight and wind conditions.

Although the main hospital has been developed there are still some original buildings remaining and  the surrounding pine forests are an indication to its' previous use.

This short clip was shot in a pine forest close to the site of the hospital, the camera is panning to reflect the movement of the summerhouses. The soundtrack is from contact microphone recordings from an origami class at KTHC, it is best heard through headphone or external speakers.

High Kelling (Swan) from Sybella Perry on Vimeo.

WHITE NOISE & WATERFALLS

Since discovering the Sound Conditioner in the upstairs waiting room I have become interested in the conflicts between how interaction with the natural world can positivly influence health and wellbeing, and the actuality of such experiences. 

There are definite biological effects from sunlight and oxygen rich air but how does viewing nature have a positive impact mentally? As increasingly the majority of the population around the world are living in built-up areas the chance of engaging with natural spectacle becomes more remote, and often abstracted as a result of the way we live, for example when the sun sets over a city the sky turns a nice shade of pink or red as a result of pollution.

 In researching further into sound conditioning I found a whole range of sounds produced to relax the listener/block out the immediate environment. The majority of which are sounds of the natural world but others noises that become such a part of everyday experience they are found to be comforting such as air-conditioning, note that often these are used by people who have some form of tinnitus. The variety of sounds available to buy at www.whitenoisemp3s.com are from instances in environments that are so remote few have experienced them, but  somehow feel satisfaction through an indirect engagement with the sound and the idea of the location. It reminded me of  reading about the NYC Waterfalls Project by Olafur Eliasson in 2008.

There were four waterfalls in total located through-out the city, in relatively close vicinity. The scale of the cascades are somewhat spectacular and the industrial materials used compliment the infrastructure of the city, in many photographs the falls seem dwarfed by the scale of the architecture.

New York state is not short of waterfalls but if we imagine New York  City as a rockery these do seem  rather like over-sized water features. Unfortunatley the time the falls were operating had to be reduced by half due to  the public notifying the Pulic Art Fund that the falls where producing a salty mist, which when it landed on surrounding plants prevented photo-synthesis and killed them.

SOUND CONDITIONER

 Whilst recording sound in different locations in the health centre, I noticed this little machine in one of the smaller upstairs waiting areas.  It is a sound conditioner, it plays sounds that are supposed to relax the listener and block out other undesirable sounds. The sounds are all from the natural world and come in two tiers

Base Sounds                               

- Lake Shore
- Rain
- Country Eve
- Surf I
- Surf II
- Thunderstorm
- Brook
- White Noise

Overlay Sounds

- Frog
- Seagull
- Owl
- Song Birds
- Hawk
- Loons
- Buoy
- Dove

Yesterday it was set to brook with the over-lay sounds of frog and dove, this a recording of sound from the waiting room. It is the sort of interfering sounds which the sound conditioner is intended to block, doors abruptly shutting, people coughing and chatting. These are the sounds of the center at work, staff accessing different parts of the building and patients waiting for appointments.

   Waiting Room w/ Doors & Coughs by Sybella Perry

M I S S I O N

The conception of these Health Centres is fascinating because they are spaces engineered to instil and propel feelings of wellness within the people that use and work in them. 

These factors are environmental - through the architecture; the use of open space, light, accessibility, colour, material and acoustics but fundamentally it is the effect this has on the interaction between people that use and work in the centre that is most influential in sustaining what it sets out to do.

The Sun Room and Gym are spaces in KTHC which house social activities on a regular basis for the community in and outside the centre. This offers the users of the centre a time and space for recreation and interaction but also an opportunity for contemplation. The activities range from antenatal classes, group family therapy, yoga, origami, singing, dancing and a once a month one on one with the local Camden MP. The importance of these activities in relation to well-being relies on the fact that they help the individual to foster a self-directive approach to health and allows them to build stronger relationships with their community.  

Medically our health is measured by listening to and observing our bodies on quite a rudimentary and relatively surface level through stethoscopes and the X-rays to deeper levels using more modern technology such as ultra-sound, CT Scans and endoscopy.

In my attempt to extract environmental factors which harness well-being I will also be using instruments to observe and listen to particular environments, namely microphones and cameras. On Wednesday I made my first recording in the Sun Room of an origami class using a contact microphone to record the sound of paper being folded on the table.

ORiFish by

You can hear the recording best through headphones or speakers rather than the speakers in your computer.

D E S I G N H I S T O R Y

The building in its' design and social intentions, reminds me of pre-NHS, modernist health centres which considered our health to be directly influenced by how we live our lives, not just medicinal treatments to stop disease. Wellness became a keyword in encouraging individuals that they could have a positive impact upon their own wellbeing in regards to their diet, exercise, environment and relationships with others.

The Peckham Experiment which took place at the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham from 1926 - 50.  The new centre, built in 1935 was funded to sustain the research into social medicine made in previous years.

As the experiment was founded on an interest in the affects of our interaction with the world around us and prided itself on open observation, the building was designed accordingly. A minimal amount of internal walls and large windows allowed for both members and docters to observe each other. Windows could slide open allowing in natural light and fresh air. Great importance was placed upon physical exercise, a swimming pool lay at the heart of the building and sports and leisure activities were also encouraged.

The Finsbury Health Centre, Clerkenwell was designed by Berthold Lubetkin the Russian-born architect who also designed the famous penguin pool at London Zoo 

The open-plan H building incorporated glass brick walls to allow sunlight in all day long and also housed a solarium alongside its' clinics.  The buildings' internal walls were covered with murals designed by architect Gordon Cullen, author of The Concise Townscape 

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Kentish Town Health Centre was designed by local architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and was short-listed for the Sterling Prize 2009. Their brief was to create a health centre with integrated facilities, using the design model of a contemporary art gallery.