The performance and installation Earth Din aims to provide the experience of the far reaches from which sound comes to our ears: from the other side of the earth through its’ fabric and above our atmosphere from the stratosphere. We are in touch by ear with an extended environment and respond to its energy.
For the opening performance, via a handful of subwoofers and spatially placed speakers, Pegna’s recordings will be accompanied by Dominic Lash – double bass and the artist on cello. The installation, which will run through out the week, has visuals created in collaboration with artist printmaker (and son) Louie Pegna. Following her studies around our perception of environmental sound via her PhD at Oxford Brooked University, Shirley Pegna has been working with data recordings
collected during The Unsettled Planet project with Bristol University Brigstow Institute and Earth Sciences Department. Sound waves, audible and inaudible, are a rich source of exploration for the artist and have instigated several avenues of work.
The installation and performance Earth Din uses recorded sound from autumn 2018, picked up through the stone of the Wills Tower in Bristol University from sources travelling through the ground from Greece (2,170 miles), Indonesia (7,306 miles), and Fiji, (9,827 miles), as well as sound from the 9 ton bronze alloy bell in the Wills Tower chiming for Armistice Day. Recordings played through a wooden sub woofer – 22” cone and coil. Sounds recorded via Nanometrics Trillium 120 P 3-component broadband seismometer along with a Taurus datalogger. [Thanks to Bristol University Department of Geophysics].
Additional recordings were made on The Arctic Circle – Artist & Scientist Residency Program, 2018. Pegna took a number of differently sensing microphones [thanks to SARU at Brookes University] including geophones and hydropnones that could listen into ice and rock as well as under the three-masted boat they were sailing. Electrical currents can be heard from naturally occurring sferics, picked up via a WR -3 ELF-VLF Handheld Radio receiver far above the top mast, and plucked from the Ionosphere 30 miles above the boat travelling up the north coast of Svalbard, Norway.
Working with these elemental sounds has inspired other collaborations and sister pieces: All Terrain Training which reflects the combined workings of mum and son artists Shirley Pegna and Will Pegna; where Will Pegna creates a Dojo like situation in the gallery space for physical contact and endurance to occur. 7 Dancers take it in turns to exert force against each other. Using physical and vocal signals the dancers maintain tension throughout the duration of the performance. Also Rock Record is in development: an attempt to etch data recorded from a seismometer of earth activity into rock, which will have its own geological lifetime beyond our human span.
https://www.brookes.ac.uk/school-of-arts/research-groups/saru/
shirleypegna.com/the-unsettled-planet/
bristol.ac.uk/brigstow
thearcticcircle.org
dominiclash.blogspot.com
cargocollective.com/louiepegna
Earth Din- Installation runs at Ovada Oxford 17th - 20th March as part of audiograft Festival 2020
Performance 17th March
