Dolphinholme

Yesterday I went on the trip to Dolphinholme House Farm. Rather than going ahead with what I had planned to do, I had the opportunity to work with a sound artist. A group of us worked with Justin for a good majority of the day. It opened my eyes to a new way of expressing art and it made me realise that sound is everywhere but our brains learn to block it out. We started by drawing with our touch rather than our eyes. We drew our teeth by feeling with our tongue. I'd never thought about anything like that before, everything is always visual we always forget about our other senses. Then, we each got a voice recorder and we each got given a word. My word was 'Together'. I spoke this word in numerous ways - shouting, screaming, talking and whispering. As well as working independently, the group also collaborated to create sound together. This included doing a range of techniques from all speaking our words above one another (which I was surprised at how much concentration was needed to do this) to sitting in a circle and passing the words to each other. It's difficult to explain what we did and how it was effective. In my opinion it was more like a kind of meditation, we were using our other senses and learning how to control them. We got left to roam for an hour to collect sound from objects in our area such as leaves, rocks and grass. (In this time I took the opportunity to sit down and do some painting as that is what I love to do.) Once we had accumulated enough sound between all of us, we went to a yurt and wrote a short poem reflecting what we had done today including the word we had been allocated. A lot of artists express that it is good to destroy the work you have created. After writing the poems we burnt them whilst listening to our recordings (pictures soon). This was all extremely surreal for me. I was out of my comfort zone yet at the same time learning how artists express their mind in different ways and how I could be open to it in the future.

My poem:
Today, I made sound,
I screamed noises at the ground. 
Together, we did. 

Although I didn't do a lot of visual work, I know I can go out and do that at any time. My tutors reminded me that I didn't want to pass the opportunity to work with artists. In the evening we had a musician play, it was a great end to the day and I enjoyed it a lot.

First and second attempt of drawing my teeth.