Based in Lincoln, UK, I work in the audio medium. My work reflects a deep interest in voices both literal and metaphoric and I create pieces to represent people, communities and issues, exploring and stretching the audio palate making use of both found and designed sounds, in addition to vocal interview and composed content.
If a picture can paint a thousand words then A SOUND CAN TRIGGER A MILLION MIND IMAGES.
'My aim, in producing sound-centred work, is to stimulate an absorption in and appreciation of the many and various ways in which sound can be used to represent and illuminate ideas, issues and voices. I hope to make my audience laugh, cry and think, through their ears (so to speak!) ...'
Artist's Statement
Please follow the links to each piece for further project info, articles, photos and weblinks
A stereo piece embedded and playing back from within an Army bugle, and the plinth on which it is mounted.
Call Up The Men focuses on the calls used by the British infantry to issue orders, sounding through this handsome artefact.
From the plinth comes the voice of a singer, giving us the very human and illustrative lyrics, set to the bugle calls by players and troops who have lived by them through the centuries.
Click here for full project info and here for the full tour schedule.
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Previous Shows
Lincoln's biennial festival of Sound & Music – inaugural programme 23-26 October 2014
www.sonophilia.co.uk Director: Amie Slavin.
Sonophilia is a brand new festival of Sound and Music, presenting a wide range of abstract and experimental work, including installation and performance, amidst a packed programme of live music and participation. We cross style, genre and discipline with this joyful celebration of Sound and everyone who revels in it.
Taking place from October 23 to 26 2014, in over a dozen venues and public spaces across Lincoln, Sonophilia was a new and exciting opportunity for our region’s artists, students and audiences, with a packed four day programme featuring local, regional, national and international acts.
Whether your favourite thing is Folk, Indie-rock, HipHop, Barbershop, Ambient or Experimental, we had something you'd have liked and something you’d have been pleased you tried for the first time.
Running alongside the performances and installations, Sonophilia presented the Sonophilia Conference, two days of Professional Development and networking for students and established practitioners in music and audio-related industries, at Bishop Grosseteste University on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 October.
Sonophilia combines a belief that everyone has a sound worth hearing, with a deep commitment to audio excellence. Our programme opened on Thursday October 23, with the Big Ran-Tan, a street procession welcoming bands, soloists, and anyone up for making a noise, of any sort. Sonophilia is all about the people who take part in it.
Our closing show, at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, Sunday October 26, featured three outstanding acts, headlined by Fractal Sparks, a stunning cross-artform collaboration of music from Air Piano pioneer, Jo Hamilton, with an immersive lightscape, premiered this year in Durham Cathedral. Fractal Sparks came to Sonophilia with a unique adaptation, to climax our first ever programme.
Fractal Sparks and Lanterns ON The Lake; Durham Cathedral.
Commissioned for Brass: Durham International Festival 2014: I was tasked with production of 2 new cross-genre commissions,bringing pop artists in to make work with traditional brass players.
I worked with bands, Lanterns ON The Lake, Jo Hamilton, the Durham Music Service Big Band and the Corps of Army Music, creating a spectacular show-case in July 2014.
SoundSpiral, a "London 2012 Inspire Mark" project, continues to deliver its legacy offering workshop and listening activities and challenging producers to create work for its unprecedented 52 speaker system. This year it has worked across education with everyone from 5-year-olds upto post graduates, and as well as appearing as part of Sonophilia, has also been at Lindhu Festival, Lincolnshire One Venues Music Festival and later in the year will be at GNARL Fest.
Exploring potential unity, within the diversity of human culture, making beauty from our differences.
The inaugural piece for the SoundSpiral, Babel Spring is 42 voices speaking the same, competitively selected original prose, in 42 languages, with 6 of the SoundSpiral’s main speaker channels reserved for public uploads, which were processed live and integrated into the piece as it played. Babel Spring showed inside the SoundSpiral through 2012, celebrating the London Olympics and show-casing the Spiral’s technical capacity before it moved on to deliver its legacy in the form of new work by emerging and established artists.
Click here to read more…
Sophia's Web was most recently installed as part of Shape in the City, GraceChurch street London; 2012/2013.
It has previously been seen at :
Lincoln Drill Hall Armoury Cafe, September 2010.
The Catmose Gallery, Open 6 exhibition, Oakham, Rutland, November-December, 2008.
The Beldam Gallery, Brunel University, as part of the Essence Exhibition, July-September 2008..
'SightSonic' - The York International Festival of Digital Arts - from 14th to 17th March, 2008. More info here The Collection, Lincoln's newest museum, July 16/August 16 2007. More info here.
This work is an audio representation of an extended family web, demonstrating the simultaneously unique and universal qualities of the human family, in all its forms. Ninety-two family members are represented, either by personal interview or other means, distilled into ten second samples, triggered by simply pressing large and friendly green buttons, positioned, in a regular pattern, on all four sides of an alluminium pyramid, just under a metre high.
"Sophia's Web was source of a great deal of fascination and curiosity, the piece was very well received and became a real talking point for our audiences, further underlining Amie's reputation for thought-provoking, challenging and fascinating work." Simon Hollingworth, Manager : Lincoln Drill Hall.
Yan Tan Tethera.
I was commissioned by Motiroti, to contribute Yan Tan Tethera to the What Counts project, reflecting and commenting on the UK national census, 2011. What Counts is a live and virtual project, with a show at The Rag Factory, off Brick Lane, London, June 2011. Further project events took place in other live settings, and the project blog gives WhatCounts an interactive and participatory online life.
Lincoln Digital Arts : AudioVisual Evening
This first group show by Lincoln Digital Arts includes my piece Audience along with eight other works from Lincoln-based Digital Artists. Click-through on the thumbnail or use this link to go to our facebook page.
Space Dust : Sound Fjord, Seven Sisters, London, April 2011.
I was commissioned to take part in Exquisite Corpse, a game of sonic consequences, in a chain of artists, selected by Sound Fjord, for a 3-week show and electronic release.
download : Space Dust by Amie Slavin (audio file only; no sachets of fizzy candy cascading from your disc drive; hope you enjoy, nonetheless)
A twenty-two speaker sound work, devised and designed for playback on the Sound Wall, in the Orientation Hall, The Collection, Lincoln. 'Audience' is a designed representation of ... an audience, putting the visitor to the installation onto a virtual stage. Where better to consider what we mean when we refer to the 'observer' and the 'observed'?
Amie Slavin's ground-breaking sound work 'Audience' premiered with great success at The Collection in 2009. This challenging piece turned the tables on audiences by putting the listener in the place of the performer. Audience provokes powerful emotional and intellectual responses.
Maggie Warren, Community Engagement Officer, The Collection
Huge thanks to the following funders who made this project possible :
A joint show with conceptual street artist, Mike Marcus, at the Jealous Gallery, Crouch End, London, from 06 to 16 November, 2008 press release here (.doc). Mike's Larger than life cut-out figures embody vulnerability and exclusion, set within a depiction of urban alienation and desolation, in 8.2 surround sound.
"Amie Slavin's intriguing soundscape of late night revelers and ambient urban background noise interacts with Marcus's over life-size paste up figures to transform the space into an unsettling and disorientating exploration into the sociology and psychology of modern urban life." : Vandalog
ResonanceFM in London, and during their temporary relocation to the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) as part of the 'A/V 08' festival. More info here.
2757 on SirenFM 107.3 throughout July 2008.
Art In Liverpool FM, September-November, 2008 - part of the Liverpool Biennial.
This work is a two-track, stereo mix, created using a combination of interview-derived voices, collected sounds, original music and studio sounds/processes.
It is an exploration and celebration of the relationship we, as a society, have with the wave form, including sound, radio and electrical waves, and focusing
especially on ocean and sea waves. The piece explores, using multiple, often simultanious voices and sounds, the potential energy resource to be harnessed
from our oceans and seas, flagging up the huge reliance we already have on the wave, in all its forms, and taking a look at the case for using wave power
for sustainable energy production. Wave Power has a duration of twenty-five minutes, five seconds, and is suitable for the radio medium, as well as being
compatible with domestic cd-playing stereo equipment.
Amie's excellent contribution to 2757 - "WavePower WavePlay WavePower" is narrative and creative, informative and imaginitive, serious and playful. She creates complex pieces offering the listener a portmanteau experience carved from a blend of found-sound, carefully sourced interviews, and creative sound design; the results of which can be taken at several levels - a surface listen reveals factual information and interesting voices, whilst more in-depth observation rewards the listener with a meticulously constructed collage creating a fluid dream-like experience with multiple layers of factual, personal and emotional content woven into a dynamic backdrop of music and ambient soundscapes. Daz Disley, Series Producer, 2757.
Wave Play.
MP3 - right-click to download :
Wet Sounds Under-Water Sound Festival, touring during 2008, this is a ten-minute, two-track mix, designed as a companion piece for Wave Power. Wave Play combines 4 voices: sine, saw, triangular and pulse waves. The piece was created with a specifically designed studio plugin, built to the artist's specification by engineer Daz Disley; the Wave Play plugin is now available as part of the White Label VST plugin range. Wave Play (the piece) also stands alone as a piece of abstract, contemporary music. .
Previously shown at
the YMCA, St Rumbolds Street, Lincoln (September 2005), the
Usher Gallery, Lincoln (January/February, 2006) and It's An Occupation (exhibition) Lincoln, December, 2007.
