PALE BLUE DOT COLLECTIVE/ FERMYNWOODS CONTEMPORARY ART

March 6, 2024

Of Immeasurable Consequence

I am over the moon to reveal a project Louise Beer and I have been working on for the last four months. Under our collaborative name Pale Blue Dot Collective, we have been in residence with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art to create ‘Of Immeasurable Consequence’, an immersive photographic and sound based installation that will be installed in All Saints Church, Aldwincle from Sunday 24th March until Sunday 7th April 2024.

‘Please join us for a launch event from 6:30pm on Saturday 23rd March, featuring insight into the work by Louise Beer and John Hooper and an informal, interactive telescope viewing with an astronomer. The event is free, however please register your place from the link below.

The artists use installation, film, photography and sound to examine our place within the universe, framing the impact of the climate emergency through the eyes of evolution and the immense time period it has taken for each form of life to arrive at this point.

Funded by Northamptonshire Community Foundation's Creative Climate Action Fund, the work combines images, sound and light to transport the viewer to an imagined forest environment. With the artists' interest in the deep time nature of our existence on the planet, they have developed an installation that explores both the fragility and the miraculous nature of life on Earth.

Sound recordings from Fermyn Woods, made with a variety of homemade and professional microphones, are combined with their own archive of field recordings collected from around the world. The final composition transports the audience to a forest outside of our experience. Images taken under moonlight during their residency are installed in the central body of the church, juxtaposed with astronomical imagery that prompts us to consider our own place in the wider Cosmos.’

* In the event of bad weather, the astronomer will deliver a talk inside the church.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/of-immeasurable-consequence-launch-event-tickets-857074883047?aff=oddtdtcreator

Pale Blue Dot Collective/ Art in Romney Marsh 2023

Last verse, film still, 2022

I am delighted to share that Pale Blue Dot Collective has been included in Art in Romney Marsh’s Sirens Call upcoming exhibition in St Mary the Virgin’s Church, St Mary in the Marsh, near to Dungeness in Kent. We will be displaying Last verse, as a dual screen installation, which was made during our BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency in the Blue Mountains in Australia, where we spent June and July in 2022. Thank you to Arts Council England for supporting this project and for the Romney Marsh community for allowing us to display this work in such a beautiful church.

Dates
16 September - 8 October
Saturdays and Sundays 1 - 5pm

Artists
a:dress, Kimberley Cookey Gam, Pale Blue Dot Collective, Roxanne Simone, Jo de Banzie, Rebecca Elves, Sarah Karen, Liv Pennington, Clare Unsworth

Art in Romney Marsh 2023 is a celebration of exciting perspectives on the title A Siren’s Call. The works address issues of the climate crisis and the threat of rising sea levels. The range of approaches includes sculpture, performance and the uniqueness of each artists creative, site specific installs. Each creative commission invites our audiences to explore the medieval church spaces with a new and artist led experience. The selected artists have responded to so many influences including local history and heritage, through to the perils we face from climate change and the need for taking a Carbon Net Zero pathway.

Art in Romney Marsh was founded in 2003. The organisation has delivered a varied programme of exhibitions centred on 8 medieval churches located on Denge and Walland marsh. Art in Romney Marsh continues to support artists to experiment and make site-specific work. Since 2011, AiRM has delivered a wide range of learning programmes that engage community groups with their local heritage and history.  Creative, partnership and educational opportunities are organised by Susan Churchill.

Find out more information here.

Lom +You Award

We are delighted to share that Pale Blue Dot Collective was selected as one of 20 awardees to be supported by Lom, from 170 proposals from more than 50 countries around the world. We will be given a Lom Geofón microphone.

Geofón is a sensitive omnidirectional geophone adjusted for field recording purposes. Originally designed for seismic measurements, it can be used with regular field recording equipment to capture very faint vibrations in various materials and even soil.

We will use our Geofón mic to record the vibrations of and around the sea defences on the island of Great Britain. We will let the recordings dictate a process of composition, layering them with recordings from our catalogue of sounds from around the world. Our work will explore the urgency of our environmental situation and investigate how rising sea levels are and will continue to affect ecosystems in many different ways.

Supported artists
Alexis Perpelycia (Argentina)
Anmol Tikoo (India)
Arielle Estrada (Senegal)
Chris Dooks (Scotland)
Jami Reimer (Canada)
George Moraitis (Greece)
Kosmas Phan Dinh (Germany)
Lisa Schonberg (Brazil)
Nithin Shamsudhin (India)
Viki Arvay (Slovakia)
Cia Himiân Lí (Taiwan)
Cosmo Sheldrake (UK)
Douglas Tewksbury (Arctic)
Frontyard space (Australia)
Chris Myhr (Canada)
Eleni-Ira Panourgia (Germany)
Leonard Maassen (Switzerland)
Mafalda Ramos (Brazil)
Pale Blue Dot collective (UK)
Raphaële Dupire (France)

Lom Geofón

BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency

We are very pleased to share that we will be in residence at BigCi Australia for our postponed BigCi Environmental Art Award Residency 2022, from mid June to mid July this year. We will be based in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.

During our residency, we will be exploring the environmental challenges that the Wollemi National Park has faced and will face in the future. This award offers an opportunity to share the complexity of the irreplaceable ecosystem of the National Park, utilising the expert knowledge of BigCi and to draw attention to the fragility of this rich and diverse ecosystem by employing a cosmic perspective. 

From a distance, we have been overwhelmed by the recent ecological crises in Australia and will create an immersive sound and visual experience that invites international audiences to create a meaningful connection to the individual life forms that dwell in the Wollemi National Park. Through video, photography and sound recording, we will create a time capsule of a moment in history that seems to be a tipping point in the human created deterioration of millions of years of successful evolution. 

We will photograph and film the night sky, the flora and fauna and landscapes. Using field recordings, we will create a complex narrative sound piece that echoes the sounds of the Blue Mountains. Through presenting the area with a deep time perspective, we will invite viewers to consider the incomprehensible value of the ecosystems of fire and flood endangered areas of Australia.

BigCi - Bilpin international ground for Creative initiatives

‘BigCi is an independent, artist run, not for profit artist residency program focusing on artists’ professional development and facilitating their projects.

BigCi has been established and run by Rae Bolotin, a practicing artist, and Yuri Bolotin, environmentalist and wilderness explorer.

Because of our location on the edge of Wollemi National Park within the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains and the knowledge base of our team, many of our resident artists are particularly interested in projects that explore environmental or ecological issues, although many others use our beautiful natural surroundings as a source of creativity for a variety of different artistic pursuits.

All residents have opportunities to take part in bush walks conducted by Yuri Bolotin, an experienced mountain guide and author, and to learn first hand about the unique natural environment of the area.

Artists-in-residence are able to present their work during a BigCi Open Day that usually takes place at the end of their stay.’

*We are conscious of the air travel to do these projects and have considered it a lot. We believe that the work that we produce during the Australian residency will be disseminated to a wide audience in the UK/ internationally, and will help to highlight the climate events that are happening in the Blue Mountains, from our own perspective, living on an island with differing environmental issues.

Images are from Google Earth of Blue Mountains, Australia.

Bodleian Library: Audioscripts

Listen to the audio on our website palebluedotcollective.org

My collective with Louise Beer, Pale Blue Dot Collective was commissioned by Bodleian Libraries and Fusion Arts in Oxford to create a sound piece to accompany the Sensational Books exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries, which explores the experience of the book beyond reading. The exhibition opening has been delayed by the pandemic.

The resulting sound piece, Audioscripts, is a sonic investigation into the physical sensation of reading a book and an exploration of how our minds transport us into the pages of its contents. Using a variety of microphones including stereo mics, a condenser mic and hand-made contact mics, we have recorded the physicality of these important books to create three sonic interpretations.

We were particularly inspired by Ernst Haeckels ‘Creatures of the Deep’, ‘Birds of America’ by John James Audubon and the illuminated manuscripts included in the exhibition. 

The sound comes from a combination of new recordings and sounds from our archive, recorded in Windwhistle and Horomaka/ Banks Peninsula in Aotearoa New Zealand and Margate, Minster, Oxford with vocal recordings by Gillian Hurst in Bristol.

Audioscripts

Pale Blue Dot Collective

Sensational Books Exhibition
27 May - 4 December 2022

Designed not only to celebrate the sensory appeal of reading physical books but also to explore the accessibility of reading today to those who are sensory impaired, the exhibition features books and items from the Bodleian’s collections that invite a sensory response across the five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch and beyond.

As e-books continue to grow in use, this exhibition celebrates the material book and the ways in which readers have enjoyed them. Alongside the five senses, this exhibition asks visitors to experience proprioception, the name given at the start of the twentieth century to the sense of self-movement and body-perception.

The exhibition features an extraordinary selection of medieval, pre-modern, modern, and contemporary books, drawn from a range of cultures and in a variety of formats. The exhibition will also feature, for the first time at the Bodleian Libraries, an audio guide that has been made in partnership with people who are visually impaired. This has been led by a group of local people who will give you an insight into how books can be experienced when a sense is changed.

Sensational Books is co-curated by Kathryn Rudy, Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford.

Read more here.

Auckland University of Technology/ The World of Light Exhibition

Visit the exhibition here.

Under the Fading Light has been selected for the Auckland University of Technology The World of Light Exhibition. The exhibition is currently online until next year when it will move to a physical space, due to Covid restrictions.

The World of Light (2021) is a forum for creative expressions, understandings and enlightenment across design, science, Māori and indigenous development, education, art, creative technologies and transdisciplinary research. Hosted by Auckland University of Technology in association with Artweek Auckland 2021.

The other wonderful artists in the exhibition are:

Alex Billingham
Aurelie Crisetig
Ayshia Taskin & Daniele Bongiovanni
Bharati Kapadia
Bob Bicknell-Knight
Carol Sowden
Caroline Areskog Jones
David Anthony Sant
David Ian Bickley
Hye Rim Lee
Jonathan Armour
Kate Aries
Nicola Rae
Robert Jarvis
Shahar Tuchner
Yula Kim

Overland, Undersea : Ramsgate Festival of Sound 2021, Sonic Trail.

Overland, Underwater

10.33m

This piece was commissioned by the Ramsgate Festival of Sound 2021, and developed for high quality speakers or headphones. It has been produced by Louise Beer and myself under our Pale Blue Dot Collective.

This sound piece is created from a collection of field recordings taken in Thanet, Kent.

Our life by the coastline has helped us to reconnect with the inhabitants of the natural world that we spend so much time thinking about. As we look out our window at the water, we are witnesses to the ebb and flow of the daily tides, the same tides which have risen and fallen over millions of years, helping to shape the geological structures and the life forms which exist in and around them. The fragility of these life forms is so apparent as they swim, fly and nest in and around our pollution. We keep coming back to this quote from Rebecca Solnit:

‘We need a new word for that feeling for nature that is love and wonder mingled with dread and sorrow, for when we see those things that are still beautiful, still powerful, but struggling under the burden of our mistakes.’ Our climate change turning point is right here, right now by Rebecca Solnit, 2021.

As we face the overwhelming and complex nature of the climate crisis, it is an important reminder to do everything that we can as individuals to improve the lives of the creatures that we share our local environment with, alongside trying to undo the damage we have collectively done to the wider ecological system.

This sound piece includes the recordings of bats, birds and shellfish. 

Spectrum Art Award : 2021

Photo @louise.beer

I’m very pleased to announce I am one of the judges for the Spectrum Art Award. Alongside Larry Achiampong & Alison Wilding I will be joining Mary Simpson, Sacha Craddock @sachacraddock and Professor Simon Baron-Cohen.

The Award was established in 2017 to create a platform and a professional network for autistic artists to enable them to access opportunities that might otherwise be closed or difficult to access.

Autism creates challenges but also a unique perspective on the world. The Award recognises this; providing a public platform for creative individuals on the spectrum to articulate and define their life experiences - and an opportunity for them to reach their full potential.

The first Spectrum Art Award achieved more than we could have hoped for. Culminating with a critically acclaimed exhibition in 2018 at the prestigious Saatchi Gallery, London, it generated coverage including T.V, national press and specialist art journals, reaching a global audience in excess of 374 million.

https://www.thespectrumartaward.com/

Disquietude Podcast 0005

Marc Weidenbaum from Disquiet asked if he could include one of my Landsounds tracks for the Disquietude Ambient Podcast. It is an honor to be played next to the other artists on the podcast and hope you enjoy listening to them too. click on the logo to go to the Disquiet site and below that is the podcast.

“The goal of the Disquietude podcast is to collect adventurous work in the field of ambient electronic music. What follows is all music that captured my imagination, and I hope that it appeals to your imagination as well.”

The sound piece is the result of my ongoing Arts Council funded DYCP, completed on the Goldsmiths short course Field Recording: Soundscape Composition.

Goldsmiths short course Field Recording: Soundscape Composition

Since the 13th January I have been doing a short course at Goldsmiths lead by Marcus Leadley, not actually at Goldsmiths because as with almost everyone else in the world I have been restricted in movement in the hope we will one day get “back to normal”. Anyway this post isn’t about that.

Last year I successfully applied for Arts Council National Lottery funding to develop my creative practice. One of the things I wanted to do was develop a more academic approach to the sound recording I have been doing for a while (since 2014) under the moniker of Landsounds . I had found out about the Field Recording: Soundscape Composition course and on successfully securing funding I booked to start in January.

The course took us through so many elements of sound recording I won’t list it all but I wanted to touch on some of the sections which have been most influential so far. I say so far as I am still digesting much of it and I am sure it will all eventually permeate my practice.

Contact Mics

I have made 4 now and love how simple they are. The sound below is recorded using two of them.

Binaural Mics

Listening through binaural mics has opened up a whole new experience for me. When I began sound recording the first thing that amazed me was the altered perspective of the sound, binaural mics appear to bring another dimension to that sense of perspective. I have been using a matched pair of mics from FEL Communications Ltd, they are small and sound amazing and were recommended by a fellow student on the course.

Reaper

Until starting the course I had been using Audacity to complete my sound recordings. I had tried using Garage Band, Logic and more recently Qbase as these have been free with hardware but I never really clicked with them. Reaper seems more intuitive for me and I have picked up the basics very quickly.

The following composition was made using many of the things I learnt on the course

It was a pleasure to be taught by Marcus and look forward to using the information I gathered on the course in future sound work.

PALE BLUE DOT COLLECTIVE RESIDENCY AT THE MARGATE SCHOOL

As part of the organisation Louise Beer and I run: Pale Blue Dot Collective, we are pleased to share that we have been selected for the @themargateschool Art, Society, Nature: Photography Residency 2021. We will be working on our project titled 'Floating in Space'.

Pale Blue Dot Collective will create a series of images depicting how solitary beings are all connected, using images of under the water surface shot in Walpole Bay, and the night sky shot in Margate and Minster.

We will create a photographic folio that examines the parallels between floating in the ocean and Earth moving through our solar system. The work will be contemplative in nature, as we investigate the giant landscape of the sea-life and plant-life that lives in Walpole Bay, removing our human-centric scale, to the glittering dark skies of Margate. We will invite the viewer to imagine how we fit into our ecosystem, and how our ecosystem fits into the cosmos. This work will explore the fragile nature of our coastal area. For some, the virus has been an incredibly isolating experience. This work will show the connection between all of us, as we stand and gaze over the horizon, or towards our galaxy.

Alongside this photographic work, we will create a soundscape using a hydrophone to record the movement of the waves and sound recorders for life above the waterline. We will also record the movement of the trees that we view the stars through at our studio in Minster.

The residency will allow us to use the darkroom facilities at the Margate School for eight weeks. Read more about The Margate School here.

PALE BLUE DOT INTERVIEW/ SVOX.TV

I am thrilled to share that the organisation I run with Louise Beer, Pale Blue Dot Collective has been interviewed on SVOX.TV, an amazing new platform for film and video arts.

Read the full interview here.

SVOX.TV is curated by Daniel Hawley-Lingham. Have a look around the wonderful collection of artists films!

The Royal Photographic Society, Science Photographer of the Year.

I am very proud to have been shortlisted for this important award. To commemorate this I have produced a limited edition 10x8 print of my shortlisted image available Here it has been printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper and is shipped in an archival sleeve with a certificate of authenticity.

Science Photographer of the Year: Winning Images Throw Light on the Climate Emergency

The Royal Photographic Society is delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 Science  

Photographer of the Year competition which can be viewed from today in an online exhibition which  

headlines Manchester Science Festival: scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/msf-spoty.  

British photographer Simon Brown has been named Science Photographer of the Year in the General  Science category for his photo Orthophoto of SS Thistlegorm, an intricate reconstruction of a  

shipwreck using photogrammetry as his imaging technique. The Young Science Photographer of the  

Year is awarded to Katy Appleton for her image Rainbow Shadow Selfie that captures the beauty of  a common phenomena.  

For 2020/21, the category Climate Change was introduced to reflect this year’s theme of the  

Manchester Science Festival which is taking place digitally from 12 - 21 February. Sue Flood FRPS  

wins Science Photographer of the Year in the Climate Change category for her striking photo North  

Pole Under Water and the Under 18’s Young Science Photographer of the Year in the Climate  

Change category goes to Raymond Zhang for his image Apollo’s Emissary, one of the largest solar  power stations in western China.  

Originally planned to be shown at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, the four winning  

images will now be displayed alongside 75 selected photographs as part of an online exhibition for  

Manchester Science Festival, which is produced by the museum. It will lead the event’s digital line-up,  launching on 12 February, and continue running beyond the festival dates, until 2 May. It is the first  

time an exhibition between the two organisations has been showcased digitally from the city. 

The Science Photographer of the Year competition celebrates the remarkable stories behind scientific  exploration and application, depicting its impact on our everyday lives and illustrates how photography  helps record and explain global issues and scientific events.  

The selected images were chosen from over 1,000 entries submitted for free by both amateur and  

professional photographers. This year’s selection document our fragile planet, the human cost of  

global warming and actions being taken by communities around the world such as innovative  

irrigation methods and solar and turbine energy sources. They reveal incredible imaging techniques,  

from microscopic observations, medical examinations, fossil evacuations and kaleidoscopic patterns  

of refractions, oscillations and crystallisations.  

Dr Michael Pritchard, Director, Education and Public Affairs at the RPS said: “This year’s Science  

Photographer of the Year is more relevant than ever before in documenting how science and climate  

change are impacting all our lives. The selected images are striking and will make us think more  

about the world around us.”  

To support young people and schools, the RPS has created educational resources in collaboration  

with PhotoPedagogy. The Science Photographer of the Year competition was supported by Olympus,  who provided camera prizes to both Under 18 winners.  

For more information, visit: rps.org/spoty 

Visit the online exhibition: scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/msf-spoty 

Royal Photographic Society and The Science and Industry Museum: Science photographer of the year: Shortlist

I am very pleased to announce I have been shortlisted for the @royalphotographicsociety & @sim_manchester
Science Photographer of the Year, I did not win but being placed next to some of the amazing entries is a great honour.

The image chosen is of an Iceberg, broken off from the
Haupapa / Tasman Glacier in Aoraki/Mount Cook.
Since the 1990s the terminus has retreated about 180 metres (590 ft) a year on average. The iceberg seen here is from a calving in February 2019.
The lake started to form in the 1970s as the glacier rapidly retreated - a phenomenon thought to have been largely caused by global warming.

Shot on Fuji Pro 400 H on my Mamiya RZ the film kept hold of the Misty atmosphere in a way the digital files couldn’t.

From The Royal Photographic Society

The competition celebrates the many realms of science and the powerful role of photography in its development. We have gathered a collection of outstanding images that show science in action, telling stories behind scientific exploration and application, and illustrating the many fascinating and crucial ways that science impacts our lives, and our natural world, every day.

From The Science and Industry Museum

We received over 1,000 entries for this year's competition from photographers of all ages and abilities, who captured images that show science in action, depict its impact on our everyday lives and illustrate how photography helps to record scientific events.

The shortlisted photographs will be used to create an exhibition for Manchester Science Festival, bringing together science, climate and art in a stunning showcase of images. After its first showing at the Science and Industry Museum, it will tour the UK and internationally.

To find out more about this exhibition, and to be the first to hear about the rest of the Manchester Science Festival 2021 programme, sign up to our newsletter.

BigCi Environmental Art Awards 2020

I would like to share some wonderful news in this strange time. Louise Beer and I have been awarded a BigCi Environmental Award 2020. For this award, we will be participating in a month-long residency at BigCi under our collective name, Pale Blue Dot Collective. BigCi is situated on the edge of Wollemi National Park within the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia and offers artists the opportunity to immerse themselves into the Australian bush.

During our residency we will create an immersive sound and visual experience that invites international audiences to create a meaningful connection to the individual life forms of the Wollemi National Park. Through video, photography and sound recording, we will create a time capsule of a moment in history that seems to be a tipping point in the human created deterioration of millions of years of successful evolution. We will photograph and film the night sky, the flora and fauna and landscapes. Using field recordings, we will create a complex narrative sound piece that echoes the sounds of the Blue Mountains.

We are deeply honoured to have received such an award and can’t wait to get there and immersive ourselves in the environment. We will continue our research until we get there.

Source: https://bigci.org/new-news/

Picture of me by Timothy Foster

UPDATE

We have rearranged our residency and hope to be there in September 2021