In May and June 2018 I had some public sharings of works made with materials from Dyffryn at Strix Gallery , Birmingham

This is the link to the page with the shows on

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This is the link to the introduction page

This will be the link to the book made through late 2021 as a re visiting of materials from the site.

Speculative research:

My approach and methodology – is always a tangle of stuff viewed from multiple points concurrently –, this is a non linear way of knowing and experiencing which is very probably linked to my neurodivergency? I don’t really know – but I do know that the world around me in all its small and insignificant bits is a constant encounter of interest and excitement, that I see and am aware of constantly shifting pattens and changes in the stuff of the world around me, and at times I feel a hyper awareness and pressure from the sounds and visuals I constantly encounter. I am not so interested in the dramatic, but the generally quotidian stuff of the world. It excites me and makes me feel alive when I pay it attention - in an almost breathtaking way. My research, is concerned with the construction of affective sound & visual artworks which create new spaces of embodied encounter using materials I gather within my surroundings. With this section of research, I knew I wanted to work with a space / place that I could re visit – I was interested in the multiple viewpoints, and extending this across periods of time. I wanted this to be space and situation orientated research, developing ideas through being there, experiencing the spaces and gathering. I wanted also to continuing to develop and refining a subjective, response driven system of working; one which looks at the micro and macro together, is layered and iterative. A way of working that is developed from and informed by the precedence of, and unpicking my longstanding practice. I wanted to utilise those existing approaches and methods that I had been extending holistically through all the gathering, be it materials, ideas and through texts. exploring, and then working with and through them, editing and constructing new works and ways of explicating my thinking and process. I am edging towards a description of what that might be, which might sit somewhere in the ideas of a Neurodivergent, new materialist, feminist, praxis? Based around a speculative approach, using mutable structures to support the developing / development of ideas. In very simple terms - a finding of a location that seemed to have some interesting things going on (to me), gathering materials and then exploring those through a following of my nose (one attached to affective response?), using forms from the location and pre determine elements such as time scales and numbers of elements as structuring mechanisms, that are mutable and changeable through the process. This for me is very much linked to affect – in terms of affectus – from Spinosa – those things that we know (experience / feel But are not feelings?) but that sit outside of conscious knowing and so on the edges of language and description. I am interested in Affective atmospheres and encounter – in lots of ways the sort of event, Yves Lomax might describe – the sort of thing that once recognised is possibly passed and gone.. I very much agree with Ursula leGuine use of the carrier bag theory (of evolution / of fiction) – and the importance of gathering. That I gather things up - and then utilise them later as stuff to construct things with - but there is also the idea that as we move around the world, we gather things up - we carry them with us. Experiences? And these are what makes us in part, or in certain ways, respond to things in teh future, with a memory of things experianced / known previously? That this prior knowing informs future knowing and informs how we respond. And on teh edges of affect, these glimpses of things redolent or reminding us or other past things - that gives us a response - an affective response to things we encounter now?…. And Brian Massumie’s writing on permeability and seepage as an extension of Deleuze and Guattari’s theorising of affect and micro shocks and smooth and striated spaces. I am going to outline through speaking of my own process, methodology and systems of responsive making and researching, and my own reactions in teh moments there and since. For the first few visits to Dyffryn I concentrated on the house and areas within that and parts of the extended conference centre that were not accessible to the public. I photographed and sound recorded, drawn initially to what these spaces had been, and now were in places, becoming overgrown and forgotten. But it was when I was going back through these materials, I also noticed other things. One of the recordings from the top floor of the house, when I had microphones at a window – held the sounds of inside (myself and a conservator moving away - later coming back) a fly buzzing around (the nonhuman users of the space), but also sounds from the terrace below as people began to come onto the site - I was not aware at the time, but I was recording the transitionary point when the visitors began to arrive on site, and also later on, when people beginning to come into the building. It made me very aware of the permeability of the spaces - of the window initially, this indoor / outdoor ness – and the through the building, the listening through the house - body's coming closer and moving away, a fly, the drips and cracks, the many elements making up the atmospheres and details of the spaces. And the first short test combined a still of a top floor room - with audio that had all these other things going on in it, things not in view in the frame, but from all around the image. My process, very subjective, very much based around my own response to what I found as I listened and looked back, some things I knew were there, some I only noticed in the reviewing. My gathering was based around where I thought I might find things of interest. What I found, what triggered my hum of reaction, where the things I then followed into the next stages of the research.

Research building on previous doings:

 am interested in finding sites and exploring them and the activity within them. This has taken many forms over the years; I have researched people who lived in an area, I have collated information about businesses that have existed over generations on a street and use the information to create something that explores and tries to suggest what makes a place like it is. More recently and through the PhD I have been exploring spaces through current and momentary activity, I see the things I make not as documentation of a place or event, but as an unpicking, an exploring, a sharing of experience, something that comes from the activity and happening in the moments I am in those spaces. From the material gathered – I make constructed things, that is then in itself experienced by the viewer, gives them an understanding of some of my frission’s from my encounter – but also a space to engage with the materials and bring their own selves to the experience. Following previous works and experiments, I was interested in how sounds interacted and moved through the spaces that I put work into. Dyffryn as a whole location had a lot of this seepage and slippage between areas, the first tests using sounds from the top floor of the house, mixing with the sounds of public on the terrace below highlighting the permeability of the glass. And there are many other permeable ‘boundaries’ and spaces; doorways, corridors, stairways, a pools surface, areas 'between’ environments – outside / inside, public / non-public areas. Recording in one space, but with the seepage of another always present. Slippage and seepage – things informed by other sounds around – in my making, but also this permeability of ideas – Massumi thinking in the parable of the virtual? The things just out of view – audio off stage? The gathering became about developing the ideas of permeable boundaries, the seepage and the slippage of sound between areas, time, seasons…. Things (just) out of view – spaces you could look into but not enter. Florence's room which is on a corner of the building has windows along 2 sides and then doorways on the other 2 wall - one to a dressing room which leads to the landing and the other to a corridor, which leads to the same landing. Recordings in Florence's room gave me seepage from; the house filling with visitors and things happening on the Floor below, also the activity in the garden and on the terrace below. The ceiling below the room was too delicate to allow visitors to enter - but it was full of sounds through the windows and doorways and even the floor. This was very much Massumi’s seeping edges, the in-solidity of materials and time, that memories are things that cross these boundary's, are triggered and get mixed up with this now and that past; the audio in these spaces felt already like parts of these entanglements; and something I should explore more. I was also gathering in the gardens, there are images or films, and then sounds that are ‘off’, out of frame and view. At quiet points (no visitors) this might even be gun shots and aircraft, ride on mowers, chain saws, but as visitors began to arrive, you hear them in the recordings, getting closer, exploring through spaces, passing near. Because of the ways I was filming and photographing, they do not appear visibly - but in the audio they are very present, just out of view – again as Massumi might describe ‘on the periphery of vision’ - on the periphery of (my) auditory ‘vision’ - and as I looked back at the materials for the book, I had the feeling of wanting to turn and look - to see just, over there, the activity. The pool room gave me a very obvious permeable surface, the above / below. When you have a microphone below water, you get the sounds from above as well. So the permeable surfaces, shifting moments and things just out of view - came to the fore in my thinking. and the seepage and the slippage through them. And that is linked with memory and also affective encounter - if you see something full on, it is clearly known. But the things on the periphery of vision, not quite clear, on the edge, - they seem to trigger more, something else, in a different way. And the amount of information the audio gave which was outside the frame of the image, this disturbance in the audio visual contract - the feeling of wanting to shift and look, that for me correlates with Massumie’s description of affect being on the periphery of vision - if I can construct that feeling of something, just out of view, a wanting to catch a glimpse - can that then be part of the making of an affecting encounter for another? And a being aware of things happening in the spaces around - a smooth space, which is indicated if not fully there?

Spaces changing across time and situation:

Later in the research, I could begin thinking about the changing of the spaces across time, gathering the times when the public came into spaces and at the ends of days when everyone left. The waking up and shutting down points of the days, when the spaces open up and become a visitor attraction and when they are put away again. Time permeating, there are shifts in a moment, but also a building up, an accretion of sounds with activity and population and of course convexly an being away - or and also a changing, the differing sounds of differing times. And because I made repeated visits over a prolonged period, there were the changes in season and year. There were developments and works undertaken, new exhibitions and events. I experienced the difference in spaces of different seasons, in the winter, a greater awareness of the surrounding activities as there were less leaves on the trees so a lot more traffic sounds and a lot less insects and birds. And one night in December after a choral evening - I left recorders running into the night and recorded a storm blowing in, the rain and wind, dripping guttering and creaking house. These differences and similarity, shifting and changing - and the links of that to memory, to having known something similar before, so a recognising of what is hear now. The links between affect and memory, a feeling of something felt before, not the same, but a knowing of it to bring with the body to now.

Introduction:

In 2018 I approached a National Trust property, Dyffryn House and Gardens, in the Vale of Glamorgan about undertaking some gathering of materials, with the aim of creating some new work exploring the spaces and ideas that were developing through the research I had already undertaken. This section outlines that work, the approaches taken and how the work developed the ideas I am exploring. I will give a brief outline of the site and the form that the gathering took. I will also outline the research in terms of exhibitions made, other ways I worked with the materials and ways that I have shared the research as the process has unfolded and developed. The central body of the section will look at ideas of speculative research, how that has worked in the context of this area of research, why this seemed the most appropriate approach and how it has fed into my continuously developing methodology. I will outline how this research links to and develops ideas on from previous work. My research at this site spans a number of years and many visits, this was different from previous gathering trips and this different duration / time period over which I visited and gathered meant there are things that happen and change within the spaces across those time periods. There was also a pausing of the work due to Covid, which meant some things could not happen - but also resulted in a re visiting and exploring again / anew the materials with the decision to put them together as a book. The creating and reflecting process involved with the making of the book brought to light the foregrounding and backgrounding of elements, the shifting and moving of focus and how this works across colour in images and tone in the audio. Impact of covid on what was going to happen to what has– and how this covid situation probably impacted / informed my response in the re visiting I will also talk about the exhibitions that happened at Strix in Birmingham in 2019 as part of testing things out and reflecting on those.

Dyffryn House and Gardens: A Site For Speculative Research 

                (and Exploring Permeable Boundaries)

Forms of Gathering:

I made a number of visits to the site and recorded in different areas, in different seasons and at different times of day, I gathered still images, audio and video with sound, I made notes, drew diagrams and made short test pieces, to better understand what I was getting and what I felt might be of interest within it. I met with and talked to different groups involved in the Dyffryn, volunteer archivists, gardeners, house guides, conservators etc… but it was the use as a place to visit, a place to explore that I was interested in – it’s odd and particular current use as a visitor attraction. The spaces, these rooms, inside and out – that are at times so empty and at others so full, exploring and recording in these across days, seasons and times of day, gave me a view of ‘their’ everyday. Link to the man with the movie camera and gathering what is there - and what heard. The quotidian stuff of this specific space - collected with a sort of kino eye and ear… But I am absolutely recognising the subjective - the decision making of me in the processes, while finding useful ideas in the chapter 1 of Videophilosophies…. I spoke about the early stages of the project as parts of a talk on practice, at Newman University for the humanities research group, which helped me clarify some of my thinking and gave me a chance to share some short test pieces I had developed from early visits (still with fly) In 2019 I made a work in progress show at Strix and was invited to do another shortly after, which allowed me to consider the materials in another space and ways of mapping the environments as a structure or form to explore the potentials of the affective atmospheres I could put together with materials from across time periods. Then Covid happened and everything everywhere changed – In late 2021 – I decided it was time to sort of wrap up the work for now – and I began re visiting the materials as part of that process and make a book, which developed into sequential, date ordered still images with text relating to the audio recordings gathered on the same days and also the process of revisiting the materials. In February 2022, I gave a presentation to MA FA students as an exposition on the practice research I had undertaken - and that is in part the basis for this chapter, I said in that talk, that that in it self was part of the process - and it was.

Impacts of Covid:

The specific nature of this Covid situation, and my specific situation within that - meant the research that I was undertaking at Dyffryn House and gardens was paused, the exhibition put on hold, and then as it became apparent that this was going to be longer than any of us could have imagined at the being, I decided to call a halt on it, for the time being. I might go back and re visit it after the PhD is completed, but for now - or then, I decided to stop. But Covid, or the situation around it, also posable gave me a very particular position from which to re encounter it. A very particular way that I chose to do that through an immersing of myself in it – and that I did it at a point where I had not travelled or been in spaces with others in any meaningful way for 18 months. So I responded to the materials, at the point of re visiting, in a way greatly influenced by this very specific time. I went through the material day by day, over a few months in the late summer and autumn of 2021 - and it was a very powerful re encountering. What happened through the doing, were points of wondering what were memories for me of being there and what were more bodily responses to a feeling of almost being in the spaces, being near others, being in this other place outdoors or inside. But when I had not moved really from my key locations of home, garden, allotment and studio in nearly 2 years. It was strange to hearing people being very easy, not being concerned by being around others. Talking, chasing, laughing, moving through spaces with others in … it made me very aware of the things we / I have / had not been doing. It made me very aware of where I have not been, not having travelled further that those key spaces and only just now, beginning to go into the building I work in. There was also a permeability between the listening and looking at the materials - and my studio. There were moments, listening to the audio through headphones - that I felt I was in that space, but I could hear myself type, I could hear my own movements. I could hear people off to my right and could not be sure if they were in Dyffryn and the recording or outside my studio window in that moment. I was not sure, I felt unsettled. There were moments it felt like such a beautiful thing to be doing, some of the spaces I had not ever been in - such as the ones overnight - the weather, a storm. I had listened back to some parts, but I was not in that building at that point of recording, so it was new sound in its particulars to me, but known in the ways of memory and commonality of an emerging of past experience and now and then… It was quite a deep dive into the materials and an exploring my way through it as I re visited. Nothing particular to work with – so many particulars to experiences through the process. It also gave me a way out of the space I was in, a way to ‘visit’ on the re visiting - a different place and that is something that audio very strongly does (or can do), it takes you places, make you feel like you are somewhere else, feel like you are in that other space. And for me that has been such a useful thing to also do. Useful in the re exploring and thinking about, but also useful in the remembering how to be in spaces with others. I have never liked just being somewhere as much as I liked being there as I was re visiting. I had and didn’t have a purpose for my visit. I also at moments just played things back for the pleasure.

Overview of the site:

When I initially approached Dyffryn House and Gardens, which is a site that had been taken over by the National Trust a few years before, I was looking for a place to record and gather materials, ideally over a longer time period that I had been working at the sites I had previously recorded at as part of the PhD. I went to Dyffryn, very much with the idea that it might hold something I could gather that would be of interest - and help inform me about the idea of affective encounter and ways to gather that up and then utilise it. I didn’t know what those things might be - but I had an inkling that I may find something through the doing. So, my proposal to the national trust really was speculative. I was hoping to find a site at which I might find materials that had possibilities and potentials for affective response; I was thinking of these in part as the sorts of everyday, general, nondramatic things that remind or make us consider the other experiences we have had, I was also thinking about the part known feeling that I personally equate with a type of sensed, felt, response - almost like a da ja due feeling and was wondering if this sort of site might elicit something of that. I knew the site, I had visited a few times over the previous year, as a child I had also visited the grounds many times, and knew of the house as a conference centre. I liked that the site felt like many spaces and that they were all in a state of transformation and flux. The National Trust had not long taken over the running and the house, especially, is full of residues and remnants of its former uses. The grounds felt like the main attraction, the house a bit of a secondary concern. It didn’t feel like a very formal space. You could play the piano, there was croquet and billiards - there were / are things to look at and lots of information, but a lot of it is almost empty space that feel like routes and corridors to somewhere else; and this feeling of spaces as ways to other places is enhanced by the ‘garden rooms’ - a number of linked outdoor spaces designed in different styles and planting, the pool room, the Italian room, the rose garden, the long boarder etc…these were designed and developed in the 1920’s and were / are being restored. I did not know what I was looking for - or might find. I did not know if, or how, it would be useful. I met with people who worked with visitors and engagement, who were house conservators and gardeners, I met archives volunteers and a group who run a small observatory at the site - which has links to Cardiff University. There were huge amounts to explore and things to consider, the archives showed much of its historic industrialist family ownership and also its use through the later 20th century as a study and conference centre. The grounds, thought the time of municipal control, had been a park and a site for events, outdoor theatre, and music. The observatory was fascinating - but these were not the sorts of things I was looking for. I realised that I needed to think more about the current activity at the site, the ‘everyday’ things that took place, not its historic use and situation.

Conclusion – things to carry forward:

The approach to the activities around Dyffryn have all been speculative. The original premiss to directly look at and explore the space and possibilities that arose from it speculatively, while also considering and developing ideas from ‘early tests and experiments’, has allowed me to see and reflect on the usefulness of this speculative approach + how that has allowed me space to ‘utilise’ my neurodivergence. I have beeb able to see my own ‘use’ through this - that my sensitivity to sound and light, my big picture viewing while also benign constantly ‘caught up with’ a detail or colour, my non linear viewing of situation and event. So, this has allowed me to ’see’ the ‘use’ (Sarah Ahrmed) of my neurodivergence ‘in practice’; embodying it, rowing it to lead me through the spaces initially, the test pieces developed and the shows made and then most particularly the process of re visiting the material later. The possibilities of looking at / gathering many views from the same points, and over an extended period of time has allowed me to explore the time based / session and situation changing nature of these micro environments. It has also allowed me to linger and consider the time based nature of sound (Salome Vongeler) and the permeability, the seepage through spaces, but also across time. This has also brought me back to Massumies ‘Parables for the virtual’ and made me consider the permeability, not only of spaces + time - but also between the edges of my gather images and the less ‘framed’ soundscapes. There has also been in the revisiting, the seeing / hearing of the creators of the gathered materials as a parallel of the changes in activity, use of the spaces, the visits of people, what we all travel with and bring with us + ideas of memory and the triggering of remembrance. The Covid pandemic, having to change plans for the research, was difficult, but probably made easier by the speculative approach. I just had to find a new way to approach the materials. At first the ‘book’ seemed like a way of wrapping it up - being able to ‘complete’ it in some form, for the time being. Now it feels like a multifaceted, development and really ‘useful’ thing to have done, it opened up the materials, and through them the / my thinking, also giving me ‘spaces’ to ‘be’ in at a time when I was feeling very confined. Working with the images and audio files to develop the book, meant I could see /think about / experience / be aware of the similarities between the visuals and the audio, and the differences. There is something interesting between and in the relationship between the locked off video / stills and the audio that is so much more expansive and gives a much wider ‘field of view’. At moments when I was putting the book together I would catch myself wanting to look - look where the sound was coming from, look at the happening over there, outside the frame of view. This interplay is maybe part of an affective response? If you just have the audio, you don’t really know where to look, or where you are looking, but with both, you have a ‘frame of reference’, and then you have this expanded field of encounter? With this wider (audio) view you have diegetic / non diegetic encounter and this expanded view from the audio gives a multicoloured collection of ’stuff’ that the image cannot on its own. There is a subversion of the audio visual contract (Michael Chion) - not completely broken, but there brining things you can hear but not see. This links to something I wrote early on in the PhD about Edward Bond’s sound notes in scripts, very specific, very directed, sounds off stage, outside of the field of view - but informing understanding of the actions on stage. This also links to the odd relationship between sound and text - which the ‘book’ is full of - the always subverted audio / text contract? Massumi also describes affects of/as things on the periphery of vision, things of which you are aware but cannot quite ‘see’ or focus on - and maybe that’s part of what I am doing with these works? Things you can hear but not quite see, that slip out of view as you turn to look? Things that are redolent or remind you of something - but you cannot quite grasp, that are in that slippy space at the edge of the frame / not directly in the line of sight. That these / this is a making of spaces where people might potentially encounter things in an affective / affecting way. A seepage, an unsettling? Something that disturbs / disrupts what you are looking at / where you are? The images / audio also have elements that are foregrounded / backgrounded - In the images more statically through DofF, but still a shifting of view for my never static eye, finding other ’stuff’ in the images… In the audio, it shifts more, what you notice in the sound changes as the sounds move and stuff comes and goes. The exhibitions at Stryx had been a beginning of this frame of view / expansion of sound - I had just not been quite so aware of what it was that was interesting me as I have been since my working on the book. I am also very aware that the Covid situation probably meant I revisited, and in those weeks and months of working with the materials, experienced them in a way I might not have if the situation had been as it was. For Gathering close, this has given me a clearer view into the importance of the expanded audio in relation to the ‘framed’ image and it has helped me see the use of building on previous doing and also the ‘use’ of me in what I do + my doing.

Foreground and background / atmospheres and details:

So many little details and bits of stuff gave me a frisson of excitement in the revisiting, in the exploring. I felt moments of experiencing through the looking and listening, I was there, feeling, wind and sun on skin - things that were not, but were, so present for me in that now. The process helped to clarify some of the things I had been thinking about in relation to the visits and the activities in the first, pre Covid, part of the research. This, the listening back, was really the third part, the second being the exhibitions, and maybe the talk given, which is the basis for much of this text, the fourth and the reworking and developing into the ‘chapter’ the fifth - But I digress I think. The permeability became very noticeable and clear, the windows, through the doorways and through floors via stairways, the pool surface, the hedges and spaces - this permeability of the sound into and through spaces - and the permeability of the edge of the image. Of equal interest, through the re viewings and listenings, the foreground / background – became clear. The tonal qualities of the blur - and aligning that with the atmospheres of the sound - then the sharper details…in both. It was the listening and looking, that being in dual mode that made all of these things clear. A knowing through the doing, the practice research being clearly in view to me in those moments. The pull of focus in the imagery, being this elongated and shifting thing in the audio. And it was a process which helped the things to come into view, come to the fore. I had made decisions on the importance in a moment of what was sharp details and what was atmosphere - and even in the static images, there is a between ness of them collectively which means that there is a shifting. Or maybe it is a shifting that happens when the audio and visual are experienced together? The slippiness, the shifting, this is part of a moving that makes everything active, and this activity is what makes me never quite know where I am in the moment, not know next and only remember before, which positions me with an alertness to feel, to experience the elements of stuff, for them to become something.

Revisiting the material – making a book:

It became apparent through late 2020 / early 21 that I could not finish the work I had planned at Dyffryn, the exhibition was put on hold, and it became something I decided I could not continue as part of my PhD research as I could not plan when things might be able to happen again. So I made the decision to wrap up the research, with the possibility of going back to continue some work there after the PhD is completed. In the summer of 2021, I decided to re visit the materials gathered, with the aim of making a book. I was thinking of it as a way of drawing together this unfinished project and understanding what it was I had gathered and what knowledge had been developed through the processes. I have also looked at writing sounds previously, and from Dyffryn I had a lot of still images and audio, so this seems like a way to also re visit that interest while also thinking about how I could possibly put some of the materials into to a ‘book’ form as I will need to (posable) for my final submission. The processes of making the book was again using a speculative approach, which was really the only way to undertake it, and see if it was a useful way to do things. The book has become something I didn’t not foresee, because of this following of my affective nose, because I was putting together and writing in response to the materials, a revisiting and reflecting for me, a remembering of being there and the feelings of being in those environments at those times (so different still from now). And it was a useful process. It was informative to see and be able to explore the material in a way that meant I could give it all a bit of time; I could see how much stuff there is in the material and unpick a bit how or why some of it gives me a feeling of something being there that I can use and build with. There is so much within all the bits of material gathered, it was like a journey, a voyage back to another time and place. I went through the material day by day, ended up laying it out as still images mixed with my responsive texts to listening to the audio. I wanted to try and gather a sense of my own response to the materials. When I began to put the book together, as I worked through the materials day by day. I became very aware of the foreground / background in the images - a drop off of focus that was intentional, that some images were through a window and that then shifted the image. And that there was also this foreground / background in the audio. At its most exaggerated the image become a detail in sharp focus, then colors and tones of the space - and this is so redolent of the audio. For me - the detail draws me in, then I am swallowed into the colour, light and tone. In the audio, there is an atmosphere of the space its tones and shapes, and then a detail, in a moment / for a moment, and that makes me listen deeper. With the audio there is also the across time shifting. The photographs catch it, hold it still. In the audio it is held momentarily then shifts and changes. This links to something Saloma Vogala says in new philosophy for sound art - about the much more time-based relationship within sound - and possibly how this shifting through time relates to memory - she is brining this through from deluze and guatari, Bergson, so similar routs to Brian Massumsi thinking but talking more specifically about how sound works and sound art. The foregrounding and back grounding, what I am trying to bring into focus, stuff which in some ways is the not focused; moments + atmospheres and shifting. The unapparent things that I want to make apparent?