Sonic Ghosting: interrogating space/place/memory through multimodal sonic fracture

This practice-based PhD project develops a ‘Sonic Ghosting’ practice through a portfolio of compositions, installations and performances. Sonic Ghosting, as a mode of creative endeavor, offers a way to interrogate the relationship between space/place/memory and sound/music/noise by fracturing the soundscape of the present with the echoes, phantoms and potentialities of the soundscapes of the past/future. In one sense, it is ventriloquising the material/space/landscape that it engages with, extending it beyond the bounds of its normal sonic existence, and blurring the horizon between what is unheard/unseen but felt, and what is actually present. To achieve this, there is a creative and compositional employment of fracture, degradation and performance interruption – both temporally and spatially. Where sonic material is gleaned from on-site field recordings it is manipulated, cut-up, processed, delayed, moved in time and space. This process creates layers within the fabric of the work, between the memory of sound onsite, the recordings, their fractured remains, electronic and acoustic instrumentation, and the multiple modes of presentation and iteration: performance, installation, documentation, image, text. In some examples the resulting work is also presented in-situ alongside the soundscape of the place/space about which the work is made, or contextualised, with text/image/materials. The included portfolio contains documentation of a series of experimental works that explore a number of different creative modes, forms, and stimuli. These are: Chalk Pit, an installation and improvised performance interruption exploring the post-industrial landscape of the Sussex chalk industry; Ghosting the Periphery, a four channel presence-responsive installation exploring the gallery and peripheral spaces of the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Branch Lines, a composition and graphic score for Violin, Cello, Clarinet and Piano, exploring experiences of Causey Arch railway bridge in County Durham; Thrumming Halls, a movement/noise responsive installation presented binaurally, reflecting on the Barnsley National Union of Mineworkers Hall, inhabitants and spaces; Underdrift, an electroacoustic composition reflecting on the spaces around the Co-Operative Pioneer's Museum, Town Hall, and streets of Rochdale, Greater Manchester. In addition, the portfolio contains documentation of the final exhibition, Sonic Ghostings, presented at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, which incorporates the portfolio works alongside working materials, and brings the principles of a Sonic Ghosting practice to bear on the broader research project itself through a final composition: Fractures and Fragments. The accompanying commentary provides a critical and conceptual outline of a Sonic Ghosting practice, a reflective commentary on each of the portfolio works, and an overview of the experimental and creative research process undertaken over the course of the research project. It explores a range of relevant critical theory in order to consider how a Sonic Ghosting practice, and the specific portfolio works in question, interrogate the role of sound/music composition in exploring memory, space, place, ruin, landscape, hauntology and the spectral turn. It draws reference to a range of sources including key texts from sound and music studies (Salomé Voegelin, Sabine Vogel, Bennett Hogg, Anna Friz, Curtis Roads), cultural studies (Jacques Derrida, Fredrik Jameson, Michel de Certeau, Rebecca Solnit), and human geography (Tim Edensor, Nigel Thrift). The commentary also considers the artistic contexts of Sonic Ghosting, with a review of work by Jimi Hendrix, Robert van Heumen, and Chris Watson, as well as influences on specific works such as Kurt Schwitters, William Burroughs, Hildegard Westercamp, and John Cage.