Field Trips & Workshops

In celebration of International Dawn Chorus Day, we have teamed up with sound artists Chris Watson and Pascal Wyse.

With human society slowing down, the dawn chorus is louder than ever, especially in the urban environment of North London. Chris and Pascal have produced a narrated sound piece from the dawn chorus, recorded live at OmVed Gardens on the mornings of Friday 1st and Saturday, May 2nd 2020.

Garden, Exhibition Space and Food Project in North London: www.omvedgardens.com/

For the workshop with legendary field recordist and former Cabaret Voltaire member Chris Watson at the 2018 Meakusma Festival, there are still a few places available.

Chris Watson needs no introduction. After leaving Cabaret Voltaire in 1981, he set out on a career as a field recordist specialized in natural history. His work is mostly released on the Touch label. He also works for television, radio and makes installations. He also does work for computer games.

Participants to the workshop will meet with and be taken on a sound walk and night recording session in the High Fens by Chris Watson and Mike Harding of the Touch label. Afterwards, an audio CD will be published using the recordings.

We are proud to have Watson and Harding over at the festival as their presence and the planned CD with audience participation is very much what the Meakusma Festival wishes to stand for.

www.meakusma-festival.be/news/chris-watson-workshop-update/

Glenshee, Scotland

with

Chris Watson
Jez riley French
& guest artists

A unique gathering of listeners in this area of stunning Scottish landscapes and diverse recording opportunities. Geographically Glenshee offers Munros (mountains over 3000 feet), loch’s, rivers and glens. The trip promises to be a rich source of inspiration, listening and recording possibilities and a chance to discuss and share knowledge around the subjects of located sound, acoustic ecology and contemporary sound practice in its varied forms. Additionally for this trip each of the guest artists will offer their insights into the relationship between located sound and the image (still and moving). We’ll have talks, q&a sessions and a highly enjoyable 16mm found footage workshop.

cost: £795 per person (which includes 6 nights full board accommodation in Glenshee, on the edge of the Cairngorms)

for more information and to secure your place please visit the website:

jezrileyfrench.co.uk/murmuration-2019.php

VOICES & BORDERS

The Multicultural Festival of Dance, Music, Images

With Chris Watson, Ariella Vidach, ZimmerFrei, Carlos Casas, Fondazione Nazionale della Danza

Opening nights, shows, free workshops and performances

The sounds of the planet’s oceans in an unpublished live and the rhythms of the city to run after in the Sempione park, the bodies of migrant women coming from the southern shores of the Mediterranean in a dancing ritual. Then documentaries on popular tales born in suburban bars and in ports of the seaside towns and artistic walks through Milano Chinatown Via Paolo Sarpi.

Voices & Borders is the multicultural festival of dance, music and images, promoted by Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli from 11 to 15 July in Viale Pasubio 5 in Milan.

Five days with five artists: Chris Watson (sound recording), Ariella Vidach and Fondazione Nazionale della Danza (dance), ZimmerFrei and Carlos Casas (video art); a key word for every artist – water, democracy, rebellion, city, diversity – able to tell to the public some of the most important topics addressed Stagione Ribelle, the program of initiatives of Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli that has animated the research center spaces by September 2017 to July 2018.

Full programme can be downloaded here

SATURDAY 21ST OCTOBER 2017
THE 2017 WIRED OPEN DAY FESTIVAL & The ‘agri(culture)’ Project

WEDNESDAY 25th OCTOBER – SUNDAY 29th OCTOBER, 2017
WILD LAB : KOSCIUSZKO – ENVIRONMENTAL SOUND RECORDING MASTERCLASS WITH CHRIS WATSON (UK)

The Wired Lab is hugely proud to be presenting the first Australian Wilderness based workshop with Chris Watson (UK), a seminal field recordist and sound artist.

This four-day intensive field recording masterclass explores audio documentation in a range of natural habitats via various recording techniques and technologies, through to the application of these sounds in fields spanning the arts, film/screen, environmental sciences, gaming, VR, music and sound design.

Co-facilitating the workshop will be David Burraston. David is a recent Watson collaborator, 2017 Create NSW Fellow and founding member of The Wired Lab.

Joining Watson and Burraston will be zoologist and acoustic monitoring guru Chris Watson (AU) who was part of the team that recently re-discovered the Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis), a bird endemic to Australia that was thought to be extinct.

CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER WORKSHOP AND BOOKING INFORMATION

In May 2018, Chris will run two sessions at CAMP, a new residential arts centre in the high Pyrenees. Almost a kilometre above sea level, surrounded by snow-capped peaks, glaciers, forests and waterfalls, CAMP is a new project by Fuse Art Space. The sessions are run from a renovated 19th century hotel in the mountain hamlet of Aulus les Bains, updated to house Pro Tools studios, editing suites, multi-channel listening environments, AV classrooms, cinema, arts library, rehearsal and performance spaces, gallery, dark room, fine art studios and accommodation.

The sessions will blend field work carried out day and night in the rich natural landscape with critical listening and discussion, spatial audio recording techniques such as spaced stereo microphones, surround sound arrays, ambisonic techniques using a Soundfield ST450 microphone, Schoeps double mid side arrays and Sennheiser middle and side systems, experimentation with contact microphones, hydrophones and parabolic reflectors, surround sound playback and multi-channel systems, and decoding techniques. Peak-season trips to spectacular high-altitude locations along the frontier chain between France and Spain will yield diverse opportunities for field recording and sonic exploration.

All sessions at CAMP are all-inclusive, with room and full board included. Places are extremely limited – see https://www.campfr.com/chriswatson for more details.

This course will focus on all factors of working with environmental sound – recording, production, decoding and critical analysis. Taking place in the forests, mountains and high-altitude plains of the Haute Couserans, with field trips to some of the regions most spectacular locations, the course will cover:

Fieldcraft and microphone techniques
Spatial audio recording techniques such as spaced stereo microphones, surround sound arrays, Ambisonic techniques using a Soundfield microphone ST450, Schoeps double mid side arrays and Sennheiser middle and side systems
Experimentation with contact microphones, hydrophones and parabolic reflectors
Surround sound playback and multi-channel systems
Decoding techniques
Listening sessions and discussion of critical analysis
Technical operation and specifics of location recording equipment

The sessions will be accompanied by optional outdoors activities led by CAMP crew, including guided mountaineering, visits to local beauty points, and downtime to hang out, relax, enjoy the local food and wine, and learn informally from Chris, the CAMP crew, and your fellow students. Following the course, we will invite students to submit work for release on Language, our in-house field recording label.

www.campfr.com/course/3

2-5pm – donations and all faiths welcome
London Buddhist Centre
51 Roman Road
Bethnal Green
London E2 0HU
contact@lbc.org.uk
020 8981 1225

Chris Watson will give a talk on his work and perform “Okeanos”, an underwater journey from Antarctica to the Arctic, using 4 x Genelec 8050 speakers in immersive surround sound.

More info: www.lbc.org.uk/calendar/day-events.html?d=2017-04-23

We’re pleased to announce the annual Wildeye overseas sound recording field trip / workshop which will be led, as usual, by Chris Watson and Jez riley French. Plus, our special guest, Jana Winderen, will join us for a day or so to show us some of her approaches and talk about her work. 

We will be staying in the region of Västergötland, close to Vänern, Sweden’s largest lake and home to an abundance of bird and sub-aquatic life. We’re also close to some other important environments such as the Göta river and canal, Vänern, Kinnekulle, Hornborgasjön, a smaller lake famous for its colony of cranes, and of course vast areas of forest and national parks.

www.wildeye.co.uk/sound-recording-in-sweden

Field Recording by Chris Watson

Orford Ness on the eastern coast of England is the longest shingle spit in Europe. For twelve miles this lichen-colored tongue of shifting sand and pebbles curls out into the North Sea. The Ness is a remote and isolated place, an uninhabited no-man’s-land, for decades occupied solely by the military for practicing the dark arts of war.

bombmagazine.org/article/09571210/field-recording

With Pip Norton and Chris Watson

This two-day course explores techniques of editing audio files on a computer and mixing soundtracks. Through demonstration and working on practical tasks you will learn how to create, edit, manipulate and improve sound recordings, and also how they can be effectively combined and mixed together to produce a soundtrack. This could be for a television or radio programme, for installations, movies, video games, CD/audio-file releases or for your own enjoyment.

The course includes the creation and production of Foley sound and sound effects, how to record the perfect voice over/narration, and covers the growing area of multi-channel mixing.

It is suitable for those who have already taken our Introduction to Wildlife Sound Recording course, or those who already have some experience of audio work. It will also be invaluable for video editors and producers who oversee the post production process.

The course is taught by Pip Norton, a highly experienced re-recording mixer and post production specialist, and Chris Watson, one of the world’s top wildlife sound specialists who regularly works for the BBC.

The location is Whitwell Hall Country Centre in the centre of Norfolk, UK. Accommodation is shared rooms (or there are nearby bed and breakfasts/hotels if you prefer), and there will be excellent home-cooked food.

It is recommended that you bring your own laptop/computer with editing and mixing programs installed and any sound recording equipment you may have. (If you have yet to invest in any audio software, one recommendation is to try Reaper – this is an excellent digital audio workstation which you can try free for 60 days, and if you wish to continue you can buy a license for just $60 (about £40)).

www.wildeye.co.uk/audio-post-production

„Ich habe im Laufe meiner Arbeit festgestellt, dass es Orte gibt, an denen eine besondere Atmosphäre herrscht, eine besondere Klangfarbe oder ein besonderer Rhythmus“, erklärt der britische Klangforscher Chris Watson. Der Peterlunger-Teich auf der Seiser Alm ist so ein besonderer Ort, sagenumwoben und inmitten einer viele Jahrtausende alten Kulturlandschaft gelegen. Ausgehend von der Bergstation der Seiser Umlaufbahn wandert das Transart-Publikum gemeinsam mit Martha Silbernagl dorthin und lässt sich von Chris Watson in eine Klangwelt der Vergangenheit zurückführen, als die Dolomiten noch der Meeresboden eines riesenhaften Ozeans waren.

Nach der Performance führt die Wanderung zurück nach Compatsch, wo das diesjährige Abschlusskonzert des Festivals stattfindet.

www.transart.it/event/oceanus-tyrol/

Exhibition: 21 June – 24 July

Free in The Gallery, Mon – Sat 10:00-16:00, Sun: 11:00-16:00

The Gallery Tyneside Cinema is delighted to present The Town Moor – A Portrait In Sound, a sound installation by Chris Watson, one of the world’s most esteemed and successful wildlife sound recordists.

The starting point for the exhibition is material recorded for a BBC Radio Newcastle programme, for which Watson documented one year in the life of the Town Moor, capturing the sounds, birds, beasts and people in the ‘green lungs’ of the city. The material has been reworked and new recordings added in order to create an exhibition in The Gallery using 3D ambisonic sound to make an immersive sound work, and a ‘dark’ cinema experience. You are invited to experience the piece as if it was an image-less’ film, using the sound narrative provided by the seasons to create an acoustic picture of the Town Moor. The exhibition gives you the chance to discover the importance of sound within the cinematic experience.

The exhibition runs from 21 June – 24 July in The Gallery on the third floor of Tyneside Cinema.

Tyneside Cinema

Features:

The Monocle Weekly:
“Restaurateur, writer and food specialist Henry Dimbleby discusses the virtues of London’s food markets, typographers Nadine Chahine and Malou Verlomme of design agency Monotype explain their new font ‘Johnston100’ and Chris Watson, the pioneering musician and sound recordist for natural history programmes, tells us about his new event ‘The Town Moor – A Portrait in Sound’.”

The Creators Project
“Watson was a founding member of experimental Dada-influenced band Cabaret Voltaire, and as a sound recordist has worked on numerous Sir David Attenborough-narrated nature docs like Life in the Undergrowth and Frozen Planet. Now he’s chosen to turn his expertise and microphone-wielding skills to the moor, capturing its micro and not-so-micro-sounds…”

Other press coverage:
The Guardian ~ G2 | New Scientist | Caught by the River | Port magazine | Chronicle Live

Several times a year, Chris leads sound recording courses organised by Wildeye, a UK-based company which specialises in wildlife film-making processes, including sound recording.

The courses have recently been extended to include overseas destinations, including France, Sweden and Iceland, but they take place twice a year in Norfolk, on the east coast of England. The courses are almost always over-subscribed, so it is recommended that you sign up to their newsletter…

www.wildeye.co.uk