Audio Experience- Sample Demo
'Silent Witness'
Artistic Statement
“The streets of London have their map, but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?”
Virginia Woolf
How do people live together, how do they move, what they do, how do they do things and how do they do them together? All that informs what a city is. A city is more than just the buildings in it, the movements within it and the actions and pursuits of its inhabitants. The city is a living experience.
The city is a big production machine that is always performing. It is a producer of knowledge, it is a manufacturer of goods, it is an agent for all the unique ways of organising its inhabitants from cultures to laws, and economy.
The city is a relentless storyteller telling the stories of the realities they engender. When we talk about a city, we talk about the affection we hold for it, the places we love to visit and the things we like to see and draw our own stories from them and attach our memories to them.
The Monument to The Great Fire of London has been one of the edifices of the city of London and a talking point for over three centuries.
This piece of work is an audio experience about the city as narrated by the Monument. It takes a form of a soundscape that tells stories of hope, grief, resilience and connecting memories of the past to the changes taking place in the present.
The Monument views the city from its pedestal, it breathes its air, it scopes its geography, it hears its sounds, it observes its movements and more importantly, it archives its history and re-tells its stories from a learned perspective. It offers wisdom, laughter, empathy, comfort, and time.
I have created this audio experience for a wide audience and since inclusion is very important for creating social cohesion in cities, this work offers the opportunity to educate and inform as well as entertain.
I have included in my sample script and audio demo several stories and transportive soundscapes that are grounded in history yet leave room for imagining other realities and events that take place and go unnoticed. It celebrates the common struggle of the inhabitants of a city and their shared experiences.
I aim to develop the central concept of the Monument as a silent witness through further research, and ambient sounds that explore time-scape, the changing population demographic and new ideas influencing contemporary placemaking.
*Image: Digital Illustration with flame and Arabic lettering.
* Silent Witness is narrated by:
J-C Bateman
+44(0)7708907292
http://www.spotlight.com/interactive/cv/5094-1273-8531
https://sohovoices.co.uk/artists/john-christian-bateman/
https://e-talenta.me/john-christian-bateman
JCB on Vimeo
JCB on IMDB
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