I have great pleasure in announcing that this blog has recently been voted ‘Best Artist’s Blog of 2010′ by the Arts Media Contacts organisation.   Of course, this is wonderful news and has given the project a very welcome new lease of life.  As a result of this the project has now been featured on numerous sites across Europe and Asia, from the Liverpool Daily Post to the Israeli ZooZ Magazine.

Because of this increased interest, I have decided to open up the possibility for people beyond the City of Armagh to purchase our limited edition Armaghoclock CD (lasting exactly one hour and featuring all the sounds as they would be heard in the installation) as well as the even more limited edition hardback book.  For further information, please email your interest here.

Nearly a year in the making, the project has involved a wide cross-section of life in Armagh as we have sought to understand the City through the ears of those who live there and record our sonic minutes for our virtual timepiece.  At every stage of the way, people have been supportive of the project, and the variation of the sounds that are featured in the work really reflect the generousity of everyone’s  time in helping us capture the different sounds.

The recordings range from the intimate to the well-known – from pre-natal ultrasound to grave digging – referencing local trades, leisure and nature.  A visual element in the centre of the gallery provides a guide for listening, and together the sounds combine to give their own account of the City’s identity, the people within it, and our changing soundscape.

The work will be on show at  the Main Gallery at the Market Place Theatre, in Armagh from Friday 16th April until the Saturday 15th May, 2010.

Currently I am experimenting with different setups to play the sound installation.  My plan is that armaghoclock will make use of twelve loudspeakers positioned around the gallery in similar manner to the numbers around the circumference of a clock face.  Each sound will begin at the “Twelve O’Clock position and then pan around the gallery space imitating the sweep of a clock’s secondhand.  When it has done its full revolution, the next sound will start, and so on.

With all sixty sounds recorded, cleaned, edited and posted on this site, armaghoclock is now poised to move into its next stage.

We began collecting our sonic minutes over six months ago, not really knowing where the project would take us.  We knew that we wanted to speak with people who lived in the City to find out how they thought about their soundscape and we were especially interested in documenting those sounds that we felt in some way said something about life in Armagh.  Since that time we have met a wide range of people, all of whom have been generous with their time as well as enthusiastic to support our quest.  We have gone to prison, entered astronomical domes, waded through rivers and climbed bell towers; we have met sportsmen, scientists, talking birds, nurses, shop owners and even the local grave digger.  All had their own sound and all had a story to tell….

Over the next few months I will begin designing the actual physical sound installation itself, working with the recordings, collecting the necessary audio equipment, and testing the installation ready for exhibition in the Market Theatre Arts Centre‘s  Main Gallery next April.

Not all of Armagh’s sounds happen at random.  In fact most have a pattern to them – in the sense that they generally occur at a certain time of day or under certain circumstances.  In this sense, therefore, it is possible to think of the City’s soundscape as a sort of musical score – not in order for one to direct the sounds, but certainly as an aid to retrospectively understand them.

The inference, of course, is that anyone who contributes to this composition by making any sort of sound is therefore also a musician within this score.  And also, that the people who have specific responsibility for the design of the City and therefore the sounds that emanate as a result (for example, those involved in urban regeneration, management of population density, organisation of green spaces, traffic flow, and so on) are actually the piece’s composers.

Now, it’s obvious that as the City is being regenerated a lot of thought is being put into how the centre of Armagh looks.  I wonder though how much musical training these planners have?

The postcards are well-and-truly distributed throughout the city now. We have been back to many of the places that have so far contributed sounds and given them their own cards in order to also encourage others to become involved, as well as letting them have a CD of their sonic minute. The theatre has also agreed to give the postcards out to their audiences, and so this will also greatly help to spread the word.

On the front desk of the Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre we have a collection box for people to put their completed suggestions for further recordings, and so we will be looking forward to seeing what sort of public response this generates….

As Julie and I have been collecting the various ‘minutes’ for our Armaghoclock installation we have been delving deeper into Armagh culture, and as a result we are meeting some quite extraordinary people who have a passion for the City and what goes on there.  We now have quite a list of recordings to do, and so there is much work that needs to be done.

Today we also have extended our call for sounds to the local newspapers in order to help us reach our target of sixty sounds and ensure that our work is as representative as possible.  We have also had 5000 postcards printed up to be distributed throughout the City over the next month to further encourage people to jot down their recommended sound to be featured in the final installation.

Over the last month Julie and I have been collecting sounds and images from around Armagh that we hope will eventually become part of our virtual timepiece.  The research that we undertook at the beginning of the project where we sought to try to understand how the people heard their City has proved very useful as a legitimate starting point for exploration, and it has been interesting to see how our initial investigations have developed.  Over the last couple of weeks it has felt that we are beginning to delve deeper into the acoustic world of the City and are beginning to connect with all sorts of interesting people.

As the sounds are recorded, they are also documented through photography and then edited and prepared for possible inclusion in the final work.  Our aim is to collect at least sixty sounds (one for each minute), and as we do we will post them on the Minutes page of this weblog: descriptions first, and then the photographs and then eventually the sounds themselves.  The piece will finally take its place at the Market Place Arts Centre when it will be exhibited between 16th April – 23rd May 2010.

As I have been investigating themes related to the various clocks and chimes around the City, I have been surprised to discover that they all seem to be electronically driven.  Of course, it is good that Armagh is up-to-date with its technology, although I must admit I was disappointed as, selfishly, I was hoping to obtain some good sound recordings of the giant clock mechanisms.  Instead of the dramatic tocks, clicks and whirrs of ancient timepieces then, I had the continued buzz of the motorised mechanism that powers the Cathedral Church of St Patrick’s North Tower clockface, or the completely silent “BellTron DMC2000″ that not only plays the chimes of St Mark’s but gets it’s time from Frankfurt, Germany.

It was this revelation that led to the idea that an appropriate focus for this project would be to create a timepiece that was special in some way for Armagh – something personal, that begins with the City itself, its people and its sounds….

The people in Armagh speak very highly of The Mall – a green area just outside the main shopping area that is used for a range of recreational activities.  People jog around the central grass area, take their dogs for walks, sit on the parkside benches, whilst others use the space to kick a ball around or to throw frisbee, or perhaps just sit on the grass to relax and eat a packed lunch.  At the end of the day however the ground is strewn with litter for the park attendants to clean up.  A passer-by saw me looking in disbelief at the amount of rubbish left by those who had used the Mall throughout the day and said he could see that I was shocked.  In his opinion this treatment of such a lovely space was an awful reflection of today’s society.

I wondered what factors might be related to the way that the Mall was treated by those who so obviously loved to use it.  I had previously noticed the amount of noise from the road surrounding the Mall.  Whist the area may look like a peaceful idyll, the noise from the cars and articulated lorries permeates the space with an almost constant rumble during the day.  To investigate further, I did an early morning recording – between 6am and 8am, with a microphone positioned in the middle of the Mall’s green space.  I wanted to capture the optimum sound of the Mall, that is without the traffic noise and then to observe how the noise level rose as the morning began.

My findings were that before the traffic began, the natural ambience of the Mall on my recording appeared to be around -24dB, whereas by 8am it had risen to -9dB.  In layman’s terms this means that the noise sound level had intensified by a factor of almost 32 which equates to a tripling of perceived increase in loudness – and this was the reading for just when rush hour was beginning, and so it wasn’t by any means at its loudest.

I then started thinking of other littered places and the associated ambient noise level.  All the places that I could think of that were likewise littered did also appear to be linked to a noisy environment.  Conversely, it was the the quieter places that were cleaner.  When was the last time you went to a place with a naturally quiet ambience that was strewn with litter?