Frances Crow & David Prior

Bells have had a central role in the formation and solidification of communities. They have animmense power to evoke, to impart a feeling of time passing, foster reminiscence and to consolidate an individual’s identification with a primordial auditory site.The idea of a “Parish” – a common device used to delineate territory while also defining a sacred community – was an articulation of acoustic space : the Parish was the zone in which a church bell could be heard. This notion of “Parish” as phonosphere is the point of departure for our proposal; a piece which would explore the relationship between various acoustic spaces : the personal and the shared, the secular and the sacred, the near and the distant, the historical and the contemporary. During the residency the artists will devise four sound walks to be under taken simultaneously by four synchronized sound recordists. The walks will start from a church, to the sound of its bell being tolled. The recordings will be played back simultane ously, possibly within the church itself. At the beginning of the walk, the recordists will be standing back-to-back, each facing inthe direction of the four compass points. When played through four corresponding pairs of loud speakers arranged around the perimeter of an installation space, the recordings will begin with this integrated 8-channel surround recording; each recording rendering the acoustic scene from an only marginally different perspective to the others. However, as the recordists begin along their respective walks, only sounds loud enough to permeate each local environment – such as the church bell – will permeate all four recordings. As each walker reaches the point at which they can no longer hear the bell, they send an SMS message to the remaining three but will continue walking and recording until the last person is out of earshot of the bell.

Liminal is a partner ship between architect Frances Crow and sound artist and composer David Prior. They began working together in 2003. Their work focuses on exploring the relationship between sound, listening and the environment. It encompasses site-specific interventions and sound walks, gallery installations, performances, research and consultancy as well as sound and music environments for exhibitions. In 2010 Liminal won the prestigious PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music Award for their piece Organ of Corti, an acoustic instrument which mediates the sound of the environment. Organ of Corti subsequently won the John Connell Innovation Award 2011 and received an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2012 in the Digital Musics and Sound Art category.