SENSIBLE ACTIVITIES
Ongoing nomadic project
Sensible Activities is a project centred around exercises, instructions, and performance strategies which transpose mediated ways of seeing and hearing - informed by the ubiquitous presence of screens, speakers, and edited media in our day to day lives - into environments one step removed from digital technology.
Springing from from a place of equal fasciation and nauseation then, these activities are not simply listening experiences, but are designed as unusual, active excursions into natural or outdoor environments; a practice that requires little external infrastructure to be realised.
Many are available for anyone to try themselves, but as as body f work have also cohered as a series of carefully and precisely designed excursions. Indeed, when thinking about accessing these intermediated states I am drawn to the outdoors; spaces explicitly divorced from media-saturated domestic and urban spaces. There’s also just something about stepping into nature, into the forest, or the silent midnight city that is genuinely transformative. Our senses are naturally heightened. We see and hear in new ways, but also feel subtle changes in the air, or the texture of the ground underfoot. Natural spaces are not bound up like galleries, theatres, and concert halls with codes and rules of behaviour. Time functions differently away from Acts and Intervals in favour of more unpredictable forces; the length of a day, the fork in the road, the serendipitous encounter, the turn in the weather, hunger, naps, or any number of our own whims. It is more dreamlike, perhaps.
Sensible Activities has been developed with the support of many people, principally my collaborators Athina Vahla, and my ensemble ARCO, i conjunction with a PRSF Composer's Fund award.
Also huge gratitude to Monika Czyzyk, Cameron Dodds, and several international residences at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Mahler & LeWitt Studios, and Kinosaki Arts Centre Japan. The publication of the work was supported by Joseph Kohlmaier & Cours de Poetique, and Accidental Records.
SPOLETO 2024
In May 2024 I led an hour long walk at night through the historical centre of Spoleto, Italy. Around 20 participants were led through four new activities designed in, and for Spoleto responding to the built environment. The city at night allows for a variety of listening ‘perspectives’. Tight, high walled medieval streets lead onto wide open piazzas, all surrounded by the mountains and valleys of Umbria.
We performed a variation of an analogue VR onboarding exercise designed for the Venice Biennale. We played local horse chestnut leaves in reverberant spots of the eco-chamber-like Cathedral Square. We conversed and sang with the city’s public fountains, and explored echolocation pockets by playing privet leaves around the archways of a Roman aqueduct.
Sensible Activities in Spoleto, Italy. Devised through Mahler & LeWitt Studios Andrew Mangold Residency programme.
May 2024. Photographs by Guy Robertson, Claudio Sica, Neil Luck.
EPPING 2024
In March 2024 I led a 2 hours long walk through London’s Epping Forest with around 12 participants, 3 members of ARCO, and Athina Vahlar. Taking a largely ‘off-piste’ route, we enacted 8 Sensible Activities at various stages in the forest. We tested simple perceptual exercises, formed a telepathic choir (with two passersby joining), projected affects onto focused grape-eating, formed a leaf choir, and channeled the spirits of Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze through bird interactions.
Sensible Activities in Epping Forest. Devised in collaboration with Athina Vahla. March 2024.
Photographs by Dominick Tyler.
STUTTGART 2022
In December 2022 I led a prototype walk "Lust Lake" for around 4 hours, at night, through the forest at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. Devised in collaboration with Monika Czyzyk, and with textual contributions from Athina Vahla and Peter Wesley Gray, the walk happened with around 7 participants and 3 members of ARCO. We explored a series of perceptual exercises, explored different ways of walking in silence and blindfolded, performed scripted moments of theatre, formed telepathic choirs and leaf choirs, danced with wild boars, ate and drank at a tavern in the centre of the forest, and followed voicemail instructions from an absent choreographer. Some further info can be found here.
First iteration, Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart Germany. Devised in collaboration with Monika Czyzyk, with contributions from Athina Vahla and Peter Welsey Gray. December 2022. ALl photographs are video stills by Adam de la Cour.
Lust Lake film, by Adam de la Cour
Cross-cut Finger Pressure on Salthom Island, Copenghagen
Traveling bodies. Neda Kovinic, Neil Luck, Simonida Zarkovic, Nevena Radulovic. Production Tarnby Park Performance Festival and Stanica. Photo Max Morris Doherty
OTHER APPLICATIONS
Sensible Activities have also been used, and introduced into a variety of other situations and projects. These include workshops with university students, applications on Salthom Island in Denmark, and as an intimate 1-1 experience at the 2024 Venice Bienale opening week in conjunction with a showing of the VR work Mycelium Orgasm Report.
LEAF PLAYING
In tandem with Sensible Activities, i've developed a practice of leaf blowing; exploring the possibilities of different trees, bushes, and other plants as noise generators. I am interested in creating sounds that feel almost synthetic or processed, rather than playing conventional melodies. Leaf blowing has now become a key part of several organised events.
I have been cataloguing these sounds since 2022, and have produced a body of scores, recordings, and videos outlining various techniques.
Ensemble leaf performance with Musarc, June 2023
