Trading Places/CR.E.A.T.E. Programme

The Residencies

Periodic updates from the journals of the artists involved in this project. Back to residencies

Sounds from the factory floor

Written by artist Yvonne on 28 November 2003

Our final week in Darley saw us put finishing touches to our fine-tuned human machines. We combined invented sounds…whirrs, beeps, clacks and whooshes… with our previously silent movements, and some improved ones, to create noisy active machines based on looms and wheels etc.
We worked on ‘switching on’ the machines and having them slowly, component by component, swing into motion and rhythm.
We then combined all our machines, lining them up and switching them on, one after the other, until we had an entire factory floor in the classroom. We recorded the sound from this separately from our video and played this back with eyes closed to see if it did indeed conjure up a factory floor environment. The piece began simply and quietly and gradually built up to an orchestra of machine sounds. We agree that there is good potential in this recording for making music in our next residency.
Next we tried a little performance exercise using the recordings from a previous workshop to react to sound through movement. This worked in a similar way to the video-sound-drawings a few weeks back, but this time we used our bodies to ‘draw’ in the class room space. Finding a space in the room where we would not be disturbed by or disturb others, we closed our eyes, kept out feet rooted to the ground and reacted to each sound as we heard it with our arms, hands, faces and bodies! Interesting!
After a viewing of the past few weeks work and a general chat about the residency, we brainstormed a little on other ideas for the next residency. The most prominent idea, which seems to have stemmed from all the machine movement workshops, is to build robots!! We also discussed animating our machines through drawings and other materials. Look forward to that.

human machines

Written by artist Yvonne on 19 November 2003

This week, using our trip to Lisburn and what we heard there as a base, we created sound-scapes and reacted to them through movement.
We began by trying to aurally recall our time at the Museum, discussing the machines we saw, how they moved and what sounds they produced. We then had a listen to recordings taken at the Museum and worked on breaking the sounds of each machine down to the ‘component sounds’ and concentrated on the rythm of those sounds working together.
Splitting into groups and choosing either the loom or the spinning wheel, we spent the afternoon working on recreating the machine sounds using various objects, limbs, fists on desks, voices etc. The members of each group had to work togther to synchronise the elemental sounds they were making to form the rythm and overall sound of their chosen machine.

After some very successful recordings, we limited our tools to voices and hands only. Each group then gave a recital of their composed machine sound!

In today’s session we used those our recordings as a starting point. This time we discussed the parts of the machines - how many parts made up the machine, what movements each part made and how those parts worked together to make up the moving machine. Listnening to the previous days recordings helped with this.

We began with some movement exercises - one volunteer making a continuous random movement, a second finding a space around him/her in which to ‘fit’ and make another random movement and so on until a little human machine is formed!
When we finally got the hang of it we set to work on creating the silent physical machines to correspond to our sound recordings.

Again each group had to concentrate on synchronisation, rythm and positions around eachother, and were given 30 minutes to produce a machine that would run for 90 seconds without breaking down!

Feeling our way.....

Written by artist Yvonne on 12 November 2003

This week we had two half-day sessions in the Darley. Our group has grown to the grand number of 27 and now includes 4th, 5th and 6th. Following our tour of the Linen Museum in Lisburn last Wednesday, which included a workshop on natural dyes, we decided to mix up some concoctions of our own! But it wasn’t all just messing with color…we began our session by discussing how different characters within the linen industry may have felt about their jobs and their lives. We then began to associate certain colours with the feelings we found.
Keeping the feelings of our chosen character in mind we created color pieces to express how he/she felt.

Some groups were given pieces of linen and various natural dying materials eg red cabbage, fruit teabags, coffee etc. While they worked their team-mates recorded the process on camera and asked them to describe what they were doing and why - what the marks and colors symbolised.

Others were armed with digital cameras, food dyes and water to create ever changing scenes of color.

Our third method was to create ‘dyed’ and marked scenes on screen through PhotoShop using brushes, pencils, eraser, text and layer tools.

This morning we had a look through the imagery from yesterdays session. We discussed certain pieces - how they made us feel based on the colors and shapes within the image. We drew some general conclusions about certain colors and the emotions they commonly provoke - red = danger, green = ghostly, black = poor.

We then split into groups and set about expressing our own feelings. Some were given color only and asked to express in color and marks. Others used pencil only to express through marks and the remaining were given colored clay and were asked to use shape and color to express.

At the end of a ‘making’ session we had a discussion on a few of the pieces with some holding up their expressive work while others guessed how they felt by the marks, shapes and colors they had used.

A day out

Written by artist Yvonne on 12 November 2003

On the 5th we set off to the Linen Museum in Lisburn. 4th class had just joined the project so it was a great way of ‘catching up’ on the background. We had a very informative tour of the museum concentrating in particular on the sounds of the various machines or tools. We stayed silent to record the noise of the spinning wheel, the loom and the Jackard Punching machine. We also took a workshop on natural dyes. In groups the kids recieved strips of linen, recipies and ingredients (which included beetle shells much to everyone’s delight). We mixed, boiled and dyed creating yellows, browns and pinks. We then had a go at making patterned strips using pebbles and pegs in a tie-dye method. Plenty of questions were asked and we gathered a lot of ideas for the next few sessions.

Closing eyes & opening ears!

Written by artist Yvonne on 23 October 2003

Tueday was a pretty noisy day all round! 5th & 6th class had produced some wonderful sound poems with Evelyn that just had to be ‘brought to life’. Jars of coins, rice & water, stones, sticks, ping pong ball (!) & voice were all combined to create soundscapes for our poems. The poems, based on the hand-processes, contained the moans and groans of tired workers, whish and whoosh of wheels and streams, plomps and stomps of flax holes and stones, and more.
While some groups were busy recording their carefully and noisily planned sounds, others were prone to sound-drawing experiments with Orla from Kids Own.

Pretty soon the whole class were charcoal in hand listening to their recorded soundscapes and concentrating on keeping their eyes closed, their ears open and their hands free to react to the sound. Some of those who hadn’t peeked, were quite surprised by what appeared on paper!

An interest emerged in covering the walls completely in paper and having a full-on ‘expressionist art’ day reacting to sound through movement and marks. Sounds good to me!

Printmaking & Poetry..

Written by artist Yvonne on 15 October 2003

This weeks workshop was a continuation of printmaking. Firstly we took our 3D collages from last week, which were now completely dry, and using some heavy off-white printing paper and a lot of pressure on the printing press each person struggled with the wheel to make an embossment. What we didn’t bank on was accidently producing linseed oil in the process! (We had used an abundance of flax seeds for the collage, and could hear them crushing under the pressure of the roller!)

Next step was to take this same collage and ink it up with various colours, rubbing in the ink with rags, fingers and brushes and painting on some parts. In a race to print before all the ink had dried, we produced some unexpected textured images.

In the final part of the day I introduced drypoint to the class, using a nail to scrape images into the acetate and showing how that can be combined with painting on ink and placing on inked up pieces of paper/textured paper. The class had done some poetry work with their teacher outside workshop hours. The results of which are some really wonderful, odd and funny short poems based on the sounds of the linen processes, the sounds of the machines and the characters involved in the processes. We read through these and I asked each person to plan an image based on their poem using the printing techniques we had learned. We then set about a combination of monoprint and drypoint to conjure up the characters and objects of their poems.

Smelly Flax & Inky Fingers

Written by artist Yvonne on 8 October 2003

This week the 5th and 6th classroom was converted into a busy printmaking studio - complete with a table-top printing press in the corner. Despite the amount of ink everywhere we managed to keep relatively clean - old clothes, overalls, aprons and gloves were put to good use. I brought in a selection of prints for demonstration and we discussed how they may have been made, what methods made which marks.

We began with an embossed image, discussing how it was made - using card as a base and creating a 3D collage with various materials, then running the collage through the press to make an imprint on paper. The second stage - collograph - sees the same collage, with water based printing ink of various colours rubbed in, again run through the press. Each person took to making their own collage using linen sacking of various textures, linen threads, flax (which we discovered doesn’t smell so good!!) and flax seeds (which don’t taste great!) amongst other materials. We set these aside to dry for another days work.

After a rest we started some monoprints, using acetate sheets inked in various colors and wiping away the ink in areas to make images. We moved on to various ways of making marks on the inked plate with brushes, cloth, fingers etc. and placing textured papers on top before running the plate through the press. It took a little while to get our heads around using two colors and thinking in reverse.

Most of the children got a chance to ‘ink up’ the plates using rollers and everyone ran their own images through the press - a few remarked that printmakers must have very big muscles in their arms!! Looks like we’ll be getting some more exercise next week then!

Accidents, fire and theft!

Written by artist Yvonne on 1 October 2003

Yesterday 5th and 6th classes at Darley had their first 'hands on' workshop. We began in a very relaxed way by gathering around a laptop where I had stored images of my own work. As my work is mostly abstract there were many strange and interesting interpretations!

Next I showed a small illustrated animation that I had prepared on something I had heard during the previous week's fieldtrip and lecture. It depicted a man working away in a scutching mill and becoming gradually more enveloped in dust and chippings until nothing could be seen but his eyes peeping out through the dust. I hoped that it would get the class thinking of other visuals.

We began in groups, each choosing something unusual that they remembered hearing and sketching or noting down scenes for animation. I set up a table with all sorts of materials and within seconds they were transformed into various mad and wonderful characters - a Looney Lady who subsequently set fire to a mill, Jimmy Puetron (Boy Nutter), who has a nasty accident with a scutching wheel, Ralph who tries to copy a travelling fire-eater using the Anglo Celt (local newspaper) as a prop and the unfortunate Jessica Hall, who attempts the unmentionable... stealing linen.

We then set to the task of scanning and saving to which everyone adapted quickly. The groups chose titles for their animations and wrote a short story for each one. We began recording the stories but by then it was time to call it a day!

An early start...

Written by artist Yvonne on 24 September 2003

The Darley Residency had an accidental early start on Tuesday! Myself and Evelyn Frank, teacher of 5th & 6th classes, bundled a 17-strong bunch of welly-totting pupils into the school's van for a day of exploring old mills, flax holes and more. Luckily the sun kept shining down through the roofless old mill, keeping us dry as it shed light on some rusty scutching and bettling equipment. The wheel was long gone but a small stream still trickled by and the track of its former glory could still be traced in the field.

The mill owner give a demonstration on the tying of rushes into a specific kind of knot, used to keep sheeves of flax together...he did it with such swiftness and ease that it seemed a small feat - however attempting to duplicate it left us all in a knot of our own!

Giving up on that, the kids dispersed around the ruins of the mill armed with paper and crayon to take rubbings of the old equipment, walls... each others faces!
The flax holes, it was unanimously agreed, were not the in place to be at the time if it could be avoided! Scutchers were a luckier bunch we discovered, as, although they couldn't see each other for dust in the mill, they were often rewarded with a drop of Guinness for their labour.
After some confusion over the job carried out by the Streaker at the mill, we all bundled into the house of a local 92 year old, a flax grower in his earlier days, to hear stories of how things were. Plenty of singing and drinking went on, we heard, during the communal pulling of flax and eggs were often used as hard currency. What grabbed the most attention though, was Mr Carolan's statement - the women of that time were stronger and more efficient than the men... we have it on tape!!