The Listening Group #3 - Curated by David Beattie

Artist David Beattie curated this third edition of our occasional sound art gathering, inviting the audience on a guided walk to explore his 2019 work Reflectors, a permanent Public Artwork that consists of four individually engineered and cast terrazzo sculptures of varying sizes placed along the walkway beside the River Dargle in Bray.

Joined by guest artist and educator Dr Sven Anderson, the pair discussed Reflectors and invited the audience to interact with the works during a slow stroll from the meeting point beside the Dargle river to Bray Harbour. 

At the end of the tour the audience joinedthe artists for an informal discussion, tea and coffee upstairs at The Harbour Bar, where topics ranged from past works and influences. 

Some resources from this discussion include:

Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros (1932 - 2016) and her theory of Deep Listening
Excerpt from “Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (To Practice Practice)” by Pauline Oliveros. SoundArtArchive, December 1999. (Via The Centre for Deep Listening)

David Beattie - Slowtime

• Slowtime (2022), commissioned by Void Gallery in Derry-Londonderry and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (UK). The website acts as an archive of the audio recordings taken during the sound walks and workshops held along the River Foyle in 2021. Slowtime addressed place, the environment, and our relationship to time through the rhythm of the tides. Beattie placed community participation at the heart of the project; inviting the local community to consider the ebb and flow of the river, encouraging participants to rethink their relationship with the river and their natural environment, prompting introspection and an examination of personal and collective histories. 
• Slowtime project and sound archive, containing sounds contribted by members of the public using equipment from the Slowtime lending library
• Listening to Places, Robin Parmar (2022). Commissioned to accompany SLowtime, Parmar devised this manual of listening exercises 

Sven Anderson - The Office For Common Sound

The first instance of the OCS took place in Bray, County Wicklow in 2016, and was supported within the Strategic Arts Projects initiative by The Wicklow County Arts Office, Wicklow County Council, Mermaid Arts Centre and The Arts Council.

The Office for Common Sound (OCS), is a nomadic project space devoted to researching the role of sound within different communities initiated and managed by the artist Sven Anderson. The OCS occupies street-front properties for durations ranging between two weeks to two months, using this concise timeframe to generate specific outputs in response to its surroundings, through methods developed in cooperation with a range of participants.

Biographies

David Beattie is an artist and lecturer in Art and Research Collaboration at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology. Beattie’s sculptural practice explores the material world through experiential, physical engagements with objects and non-objects. Recent projects have focused on the social and environmental impact of digital technologies, haptic robotics and machine learning. He was awarded the Harpo Foundation Award in 2010 and was a recipient of the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA Collection, 2016. In recent years, he has been commissioned to produce a number of temporary and permanent public artworks including VOID Commissions, Derry (2021), Reflectors, Bray, Co.Wicklow and Patterns of Illumination, Griffith Barracks Multi-denominational School, Dublin.

Solo exhibitions include Berlin Opticians (2019), NUI Maynooth (2017), CCA Derry-Londonderry (2017), Temple Bar Gallery and Studios (2011), The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh (2010), Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Visual Art, Toronto (2010) and Oonagh Young Gallery (2009); Group exhibitions include Circadian Rhythms, The Glucksman (2019), Berlin Opticians (2018+2019) TULCA Art Festival, Galway (2017), As above, so below, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2017), In the Line of Beauty, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013), O Brave New World, Rubicon Projects, Brussels (2013) All Humans Do, The Model Sligo and Whitebox, New York (2012); Feedback, Galway Arts Centre (2011); Holding Together Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2010); La Part des Choses, Mains d’Oeuvres, Paris, and Quiet Revolution, Hayward Touring, UK (2009).

Dr. Sven Anderson is an artist, researcher, lecturer and architectural consultant based in Dublin. He is Assistant Professor of Film and Course Director of the M.Phil. in Digital Arts and Intermedia Practices at Trinity College Dublin. His research and practice explore the intersection of digital art, sound studies, architecture and critical spatial practices.

In 2021, Anderson was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship to develop action-led research advancing the emergent field of urban sound design with the London-based research organisation Theatrum Mundi. He is the co-editor of the books States of Entanglement: Data in the Irish Landscape (Actar, 2021) and Signal Spectre System: A Late Evening in the Future (Verlag Für Moderne Kunste, 2018).

Anderson holds a BA from Cornell University and a PhD from the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) at Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin). He has developed courses at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and has delivered lectures at universities and design institutions around the world.