Skip to main content

Wet Sounds

If you fancy a wet weekend at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, you
could do worse than dive into Wet Sounds, a truly immersive experience
that involves listening to sound art underwater, where sound travels
four and a half times faster than on terra firma. The last time Wet
Sounds floated into view was in Leith Baths in Edinburgh, where a
none-stop electronic pulse added momentum as well as meditation to the
daily work-out. This time out, curator Joel Cahan has enlisted the
skills of site-specific specialist Eric La Casa and electro-acoustic
composer Adrian Moore to add a different element to Wet Sounds, which
this session uses two different sound-systems, one above water, the
other below.

“The event on Sunday will be quite different to the one on the
Saturday,” Cahen points out. “The one on Saturday will be pretty
similar to what we did in Edinburgh, but on Sunday with Eric and Adrian
we’re going to have the whole place lit up differently, so that becomes
part of the experience as well as hearing different sounds depending on
whether you’re underwater or not. The mixer allows us to route the
sound anywhere we like, so it’s actually a split composition in two
parts.”

Since Cahen began Wet Sounds in 2008, it has become something of a
global operation, capturing the imaginations of novelty-seeking
swimmers as well as more serious minded avant-garde music buffs.
Hearing such seemingly highbrow artists wares in a local leisure centre
too is a mouth-watering prospect.

“You only normally get to hear a lot of electro-acoustic work in an
academic context,” Cahen points out, “so to get Eric and Adrian inside
a swimming pool is a real treat. I think we’re lacking in venues for
listening to things that aren’t just concert venues to watch bands in,
but where you can go to listen to things outwith a purely social
context. I quite like the possibilities there are of using the pool as
a total art space, where it becomes a completely different world you’re
experiencing.”

Just remember, though, as the signs used to say, no dive-bombing and no
petting. Especially not the noisy kind.

Wet Sounds, North Woodside Leisure Centre, Glasgow, February 19th,
2pm-4pm; February 20th, 5pm

The List, February 2011

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL