Sound Art | Craig Gell

Holywell Coombe (Sweeping Filter)

This piece consists of a field-recording made in Holywell Coombe, an area of countryside on the outskirts of Folkestone town which is part of the Folkestone to Etchinghill Escarpment SSSI.

A steadily oscillating band-pass filter explores the variety and interplay of sounds concurrent in the landscape (from aircraft to insects) as it passes through the frequencies within which each sound operates.
A similar use of this technique can be heard in the previous work Green Language.

Holywell Coombe (Sweeping Filter) was broadcast on Radiophrenia, Glasgow CCA, September 2023.

Great Orme Copper Mine (Auto Filter)

This piece uses a short field recording made at the Bronze Age copper mines at Great Orme, Llandudno, North Wales. As the original recording repeats, it is side-chained to a series of automated filters of varying sensitivity, transforming the sound of dripping from the limestone tunnels into an array of synthetic voices. On the third repetition the source audio is muted, leaving just the synthetic signals.

Broadcast on Radiophrenia, Glasgow CCA, September 2023.

Lithoscapes

Lithoscapes is a library of acoustical Impulse Response recordings made at a number of important geological sites found within the Kent Downs AONB. At each location a sound recording was made of a balloon being popped. This sonic information is processed to create a reverb effect, encapsulating the acoustic space, so that it can be reproduced when applied to other sounds. The web app allows the user to compose patterns of sound and play them into their chosen lithoscape.

>> Go to Lithoscapes app (online) << _{*Headphones recommended}

Incantations

Exploring the mysterious energies and effects of sounds invoked by ancient symbols and sacred geometry.

Imogen Holst’s Kitchen / Imogen Holst’s Kitchen In Retrograde

A room tone recording made in 2019 while on artist residency at Church Walk, Aldeburgh, former home of Imogen Holst – daughter of Gustav Holst, composer, conductor, arranger, musicologist, and assistant to Benjamin Britten. The modest kitchen, where Imogen could famously ‘only cook eggs’, is set within a 1960s modernist bungalow designed by H.T. Cadbury-Brown.

Pent Happenings

In response to the question “What’s happening, exactly?” posed by Folkestone Fringe, and as part of the MagiC Carpets platform, Pent Happenings comprises a series of audio-visual artworks, workshops and events drawing on field studies, geo-scientific data and research concerning Folkestone’s Pent stream and its environs.