Lewisvale Park Musselburgh

AS I WALK. I GLIMPSE. I HEAR.

The bandstand has long served as the public site for community music occupying many of our public parks and promenades. This project invites us to once again find music as we stroll our public parks, to search out the music we hear, focussing on places where bandstands once stood, and a few that still do.

This project commissioned composer Ross Whyte to create a soundscape, one for each of the eight sites of the bandstands, with vocals recorded and performed with Portobello Community Choir. Lyrics and project concept/curation from Rosy Naylor.

A navigational app was produced working with web developer Steven Park which showed archive footage of many of the sites which no longer had physical bandstands. Whyte’s soundscape was then heard, increasing in volume as one walked their way to the location of the bandstand, or previous site as was the case for five of the sites. Each site was marked by a physical bandstand soundpost created by Orocco Joinery.

Leith Links

Ross Whyte is a Glasgow-based composer, sound artist, and arranger. His composition, titled ‘The Great Exhibition’, is inspired by the early 1900s era of seaside entertainment and end-of-the-pier entertainers such as Harry Lauder.

‘The Great Exhibition’ combines recent sound recording with both archival and newly-composed material to present an abstract reimagining of the kinds of sounds and music that might have been heard at the various bandstands around Edinburgh.

The work contains 8 melodic lines performed by the Portobello Community Choir, with lyrics by Rosy Naylor. For the Bandstand App, the melodies can be ‘unlocked’ by visiting each of the 8 bandstand locations. They can be listened to individually or layered on top of each other, as each new melody is discovered. Together they form a complete song: ‘The Great Exhibition’.

‘The Great Exhibition’ is romantic, sentimental, light-hearted, and hopeful, and aims to evoke an atmosphere of a more innocent time.

Using the App

You can use the App to help you to find each of the bandstand spaces.

Once at each location you can listen to the track relating to that location, as well as view relevant archive material about its history.

Live Performances

with Portobello Community Choir:
Portobello Prom (previous site of bandstand) 1 Sept 2018
Ross Theatre Bandstand, Princes St Gardens Edinburgh 8 Sept 2018

View accompanying newspaper 

Funded By:

The BandStand Project was supported by funding from The Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo Culture Fund and the City of Edinburgh Council.

With support from Orocco Joinery for the building and installing of location soundpost markers.

The post Bandstand Project appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Chris Dooks

A trilogy of works from artist and researcher, Chris Dooks.

Stations of The Lost is a story-cycle of six semi-fictional narratives written by Chris Dooks. The pieces take place across a constellation of locations in Portobello and environs. Designed to be read or heard in the locations, the works take the form of printed texts alongside a downloadable cluster of narrated stories, read by screenwriter and actor Colin McClaren. Written during four weeks of artist-led research, which culminated in dementia awareness week, these stories have a loose theme of confusion and insecurity and are (lighthearted) accounts of being lost, unsure or passing through changes.

Audio available at:
http://stationsofthelost.bandcamp.com/

Station of The Found is an audio installation featuring several local voices speaking phrases that have been isolated from interviews conducted by artist Chris Dooks. A lone loudspeaker will randomly choose audio from over five hundred files, continuously and uninterrupted for several days.

The Skylark during 8.08.16 to 15.9.16
[headphones, downstairs]

St Marks Church 29.08.16 to 4.9.16
[sound installation]

Station of The Sound is a soundscape, designed for headphones, one may wander through the locations in the stories and at the same time hear a unique travel-orientated meander through Portobello, Brunstane and Joppa

A449 Architects 2-10.09.16

Deirdre MacLeod

Park + Ride

A collection of observational drawings recording the activity of the ‘Park & Ride’ at Newcraighall Station during August and September 2016. The drawings created, around 40 in total over the two month period, are based on the volumes, distributions and colours of commuters’ cars in the 560 parking spaces at the ‘Park and Ride’ site at Newcraighall.

As a visual artist with a background in urban geography, Deirdre Macleod is interested in drawing attention to aspects of our experience of cities, such as car parking and train travel, to which we often pay little attention. Her project is a form of urban drawing; her drawings will show the unnoticed patterns that result from the individual actions of private car drivers as they become public rail passengers.

The drawings were exhibited online, as an animated time lapse series, as well as at the group project exhibition at A449 Architects from 2-10 September 2016, 266 Portobello High St.

Andrew Pringle

A Seam through Time

Landscape architect + artist, Andrew Pringle, created two installations: ‘A seam through time’ exploring the themes of time, memory, transit, providing a tangible visual connection to Portobello and the seaside. The installations take the form of land, environmental and visual art exploring the idea of a continuous seam that travels through the landscape and provides a glimpse into the past and present, reinforcing the historical links to Portobello and referencing it’s social history.

Brunstane Station installed work:

Joppa Terrace installations, off Brunstane Road, by the site of the old disused Joppa Station, including plantings:

Felicity Bristow+
Mark Timmins

Art on the Train

Sun 21 August, Sat 3 Sept, Sun 4 Sept
Tweedbank to Brunstane, Borders Railway

Take the train:
10.30am from Tweedbank to Brunstane – Sat 3 Sept
10.45am from Tweedbank to Brunstane – Sun 4 Sept

Both trains will be met by Twig Champion for an artist led walk into Portobello (Leaving Brunstane Station – 11.20 (Sat 3rd) and 11.35 (Sun 4th).

Artists, Felicity Bristow and Mark Timmins, ran a mini ‘artist in travelling residency’ on the train journey between Tweedbank and Brunstane on the Borders Railway on Sunday 21 August and during the Art Walk (2-4 September).

Their residency explored railway tickets, their graphics, colours, lines and the marks of the ScotRail ticket inspectors and those made by passengers as they travel between the Borders and Edinburgh. Used and recycled tickets were collected from passengers to form a ticket inspired installation at A449 Architects as well as an installation at Waverley Station Edinburgh.

Passengers were encouraged to participate by writing on, stamping and marking the tickets with their own #journeylines whilst taking their journey, helping to rework the discarded tickets.

Each afternoon during the Art Walk Porty Festival they additionally held a ‘Ticket Office’ on the Promenade, with the artists inviting visitors to write about memories of trips to the seaside on the train and stopping at the stations no longer used – remembering and reconnecting with historical #journeylines

‘Journey Lines’ was curated + produced by Rosy Naylor as part of Art Walk Porty 2016.

Thanks to ScotRail, A449 Architects, Land Use Consultants, Portobello Library,The Skylark, St Marks Church, Portobello Baptist Church, Portobello Older People’s Project, Portobello Older People’s Project, Murray Buchanan, Mary Florence, Ian Fyfe, Pippa Goldschmidt, Mary Hutchison, Joe Madden, Dr Rev Sophia Marriage, Colin McClaren, Ron Moule, Peter Stubbs, Betsy Thom, John S Wilson, and all participating artists.

The post ArtRail appeared first on Art Walk Projects.