Urban Resonances

Urban Resonances is a site specific sound installation using church bells as both instruments and microphones, amplifying their natural resonance and using them as a method of recontextualising the sounds of the inner city.

The first instance was held in St John the Baptist Church in the city centre of Newcastle upon Tyne. This church has a wonderful bell tower with 8 tuned bells and being in the city centre close to the main overground train and underground metro stations it is surrounded by sound from people, traffic and the city wildlife constantly during the day and night. This makes it an ideal venue for debuting this installation by providing a wide range of natural and human-generated interactions with the bells to punctuate their inherent sound and energy.

Bells are amazing feats of instrument engineering and spending time working with them is a humbling experience. Alongside their designed pitch and complex musical timbre, their individual tone and character is shaped through centuries of interaction with their unique environments. Continually energised by the motion of the earth and going unheard to our ears, the entire history of these instruments resonates subtly through them, regularly being modulated by subterranean vibrations generated from transport systems. Simultaneously they act as pickups able to capture and translate the constant flux of the local soundscape, again imparting unique timbral characteristics to the accents provided by man and nature.

Amplifying these sounds gives people the ability to really hear how these resonant bodies are constantly interacting with their environments and adding to their own story. Hopefully in tandem this will engage listeners more deeply with the concepts of how different materials can translate and affect our perception and interpretation of sound.

By then placing these micro-level sounds back into the environment in which the bells are traditionally played, the combined interaction of the acoustic space below intends to provide them with an appropriate sonic context. This also helps to link the sounds back to their origins through the use of other sensory experiences, for example, seeing the lights of an ambulance, or a bus flash past a window, or feeling the ground vibrate whilst hearing these sounds, amplified and altered with the textures added by the bells.

The 8 Bells @ St John’s