Radio talk and sound walk
The Somerset Dispatches from the Air Series Launch.
Saturday 6 July, 18:00
Gallery 1, East Quay, Watchet, Somerset TA23 0AQ
Book you free ticket here.
Inspired by WWII-era BBC recording practices and celebrating the collection housed at Watchet’s Radio Museum, we are inviting you to take part in a series of talks and recording sessions exploring the soundscapes from opposite sides of the U.K.
This summer-long project of listening, recording and exchanging sounds is kicked off in Watchet, Somerset. We invite you to be part of this sound exchange between West Somerset and Bloomsbury, London, one mile from where the BBC started.
The launch event will take place at East Quay Gallery at 6pm on Saturday 6th July, where Neil Wilson (curator, Watchet Radio Museum) and Emily Best (sound researcher, Birkbeck, University of London) will lead a discussion on how we think about sound across space and the messages it carries.
After the talk we will take you on a guided sound walk, where you’ll be invited to listen to the environment around you and even make some sound recordings on-the-go. The walk will finish at a local pub (location tbc) for those who want to continue the discussion.
Over the summer we will run a series of sessions that invite members of the public in Bloomsbury and West Somerset to make and share their own sound recordings. These may include ambient sounds (rural, coastal and urban), local voices, sounds of motion, and music. Recordings will then be mixed in an open mixing session at Birkbeck’s labs. The final mixes will then be showcased online, demonstrating how merging distant and varied landscapes in a shared aural experience changes the perceptions of distance and fosters relations.
This project is a collaboration between the Watchet Radio Museum, East Quay and BIRMAC (Birkbeck Centre for Research in Media and Culture, Birkbeck University of London)
