In January 2011 I was awarded an artist residency with Landguard Arts in Suffolk. 

Bastion - A sound installation made with sounds collected from Landguard Fort and the surrounding peninsular. Found materials were transformed into an interactive sculptural speaker through which the sounds were played.

Exhibitions:
1-30th October 2011 - Landguard Fort, Felixstowe 

23rd December 2011
Bastion

Sound artist, composer and DJ Stuart Bowditch is well known for using foundsounds – noises recorded in their natural environments – in his work, whichever professional hat he may be wearing at the time. It is a technique he has employed for single releases, albums, live performance, art installations and even soundtracks for short films and dance. What sets Stuart apart, as an artist, in this field is the way he offers these recordings back to audiences with creative and unusual installations that generally employ at little bit of maker-style home electronics and some Linux friendly open source software. His previous installations (some made in collaboration with profoundly deaf artist Damien Robinson) have used weather to trigger sound playback, or have made use of vibrational speakers to make sound a touch sensitive experience.

For this solo piece entitled Bastion, Stuart has combined sounds collected in and around Languard Fort in Suffolk with a sculptural speaker fashioned from some simple audio electronics and a found object from within the Fort – creating a piece that is integrally related to the space environmentally, physically, historically and atmospherically. Languard Fort is an English Heritage site, maintained and run by a mostly volunteer team – all keen and enthusiastic supporters of this individual, iconic building from England’s naval past. There has been a fortification of some sort or another on this location for the Coastal Artillery since 1543, now decommissioned the fort is a popular tourist attraction for those interested in military history.

The sounds Stuart has collected at this historic location include visitors, wildlife, Morse code, tug-boats, a minute’s silence, historical re-enactment of battles, the Lord’s Prayer and even ghost hunters late at night in what is a rather creepy, eerie building after dark. These sounds have then been reassembled to create an ambient soundtrack that itself feels like a ghostly presence as you approach it through the corridors of the fort. Visiting the installation on preview night only added to this feeling, as shadows combined with sounds and an active imagination to bring the past, once more, to life. One sequence in particular aroused the atmosphere of pre-battle anticipation and the steeling of nerves, segueing seamlessly through the point of no return to when men throw themselves into the fight.

In an upper chamber of the fort, in a numbered room, was the source of the sound. An old wooden shelving unit, usually used to display pamphlets and brochures had been transformed into a speaker unit by an octopus mass of cables running across its surface, connecting vibrational devices to an arduino unit hidden inside a cigar box. This strange intermingling of wood and electronics sited within the heavy stone walled room was a curious but candid approach to presentation, creating a sculptural identity that marries different eras without integration but at the same time communicates a sense that the object is far less important than the soundscape it delivers.

Bastion is a piece that successfully adds to the atmosphere of the building from which it was created, recalling the ghosts of its past, combining them with the present, and steering the audience to reflect upon the many lives that have passed through there.

http://davidvalentine.co.uk

A big thank you to all who came along to the private view of the Landguard work on Friday night. Here are a few photos taken by Terri Bowditch, with a few more to follow when they come through.

You are cordially invited to the private view of the culmination of the project on the evening of 30th September 2011, between 7 and 9pm.

The exhibition will also contain photographic works 'Yarn' by Eleanor Cleasby. Entrance to the fort for the private view is free and hot drinks will be supplied. 

View Point Rd, Felixstowe, Suffolk IP11 3TW



Interconnecting trains from London, leave from Ipswich to Felixstowe at 58 minutes past each hour arriving in Felixstowe at 24 minutes past. 

Bus 77 stops running after 17:00 (not very handy) but the 3 mile bike ride through town along the seafront is very pleasant and there is plenty of provision for bicycles on the train. 

Local cab numbers are: 
Coastal Cars 01394 277777
Felixstowe 01394 275555
Aero 01394 670666
I'm not sure of the prices as I always go by bicycle.

Return trains leave Felixstowe at 28 minutes past each hour until 21:28 then 23:01 (last train).

There will also be a few car loads of people heading out to Landguard Point so let us know and we'll try and get you a lift if you need one.

More info at www.landguard.com

With a project of this length a majority of the time is spent with the notion of completion being a long way in the future. Inevitably there comes a time when the climax suddenly comes into focus and you realise that time is of the essence and you better pull your finger out. Even though the Arduino and sensor have been up and running for a few weeks now, the box in which to house them hadn't been started. So we scouted the house for boxes I could commission into service an a box used to hold old coins seemed like the best option. So I cut and filed a hole in the base to house the PIR sensor, cut another hole to poke the cables through and fixed the Arduino inside. I also added in a cable fixing (stolen from an old plug) in case someone pulls on them or it falls somewhere, which of course it won't. To fix the amp in a devised a system utilising the battery compartment on the bottom of the amp, which helped the amp sit firmly in the bottom. Hereafter came the first problem in that when I switched everything on it started working, but after a short while, there was the feint smell of smoke and I noticed a small, but definite, plume coming form the box. There then came a small pop and the sound stopped. On further inspection it seemed that I had used the wrong power supply. Luckily we have a couple more of these amps knocking around as we've used them on several other projects so I retrieved one form upstairs. This one only seemed to work some of the time, at times playing the sound it was being sent, the other giving out a rather quiet repetitive clicking sound, and there seemed to be no way of knowing which would happen when. So, another amp was required so I fetched it from the studio we have at TAP along with a proper power supply. This one seemed to work fine, especially when turning on and off from the mains, which could, and has, happened in a gallery space. The on/off switch on these amps stays permanently on which is a great feature for this reason, and the Arduino will automatically start up as well, meaning minor amounts of reliance on gallery/fort staff. The only problem now was that the new amp was 5mm to wide for the box. So after two days of building MKI, a MKII had to be started. I looked at the boxes Damien had shown me before and decide on a nice cigar box in which everything fitted much more snuggly. IT also took much less time to fix everything in place as I'd done it all before and within a few hours I had it all up and running perfectly. Then I had to test the different functions of the code using the PIR sensor, which I used a short piece of test sound for to save me waiting til the end of the full, much longer, audio track. 

On Saturday, Damien and I took a trip to the Fort to test out the equipment, installation set up, sound and placement of the work within the space. We placed the work in various places in each of the three casemates that we have been allocated, tested the quality of the sound when played through the shelf unit using the NXT transducers and also the acoustics of the spaces. I need to build a housing of sorts for the electronics and decide how I want that wires to be displayed on the work. I also need to finalise any information panels and start promotion of the exhibition and the private view. Also at the Fort was Ellie, who will also be showing some work in the space a the same time. We took some time to discuss how our projects have been developing, how we'll use the space and arrangements for the private view, which will be between 7-9pm on Friday 30th September. Admission to the fort will be free. 

So, there is a bit of work left to do but things are progressing well and it was good to see an actual representation of the work in the space as all I have had for the past 8 months is the image in my mind.

I have spent quite a lot of time over August and September working on the coding for the Arduino board. There are two fundamental elements to the process: the first is that I need to play sound from the wave shield, and secondly, I need the PIR sensor to activate it so that it only plays when it detects someone moving in the space.

I tested code that did each of these functions, and they worked, confirming that the equipment was set up and functioning properly. But I needed to combine these two pieces of code so that all of this worked harmoniously. This is where my inexperience became apparent as I couldn't assimilate the two correctly and found may errors in the code, some of which I couldn't fix. So I had to go and see my friend Anthony Shaper, who has helped us with coding on projects in the past. He is a regular attender at SoSlug so I headed down there for a few meetings and within two weeks we (well, Anthony!) had resolved the problems. I have since been running some tests at home and everything is working fine. So now I need to build the housing for the Arduino and Amp.

The last few days I've been tinkering with the Arduino...I had a couple of jumper wires to make and solder in, and then I started on the next stage (following these instructions) which was to format the SD card and a test piece of audio, which was relatively painless. Next was to start using the code, which was all going fine until I tried to use the first patch to check that the Arduino was reading the SD card ok. So, I needed to get some advice. Tonight I headed over to see my friend Paul Malone as he has a lot of knowledge in electronics and also some experience of Arduino. So after helping him with a bit of home DIY, we set up the kit. He figured out that I had the libraries folder in the wrong place and that was causing the error. So we amended that and tried again. We followed progress using Hyperterminal on his PC as we couldn't find a similar free programme for OSX, and within a very short time we had sound playing out of the mini jack socket on the board, evidence of which you can see on the above... the sound file is called 'Something More..'. I was really happy with this as it meant that all my soldering and following of instructions has been good and it more importantly meant that we had no problem solving to do. Paul then set up a small circuit to test the PIR sensor, which I now have to write the code for and test functionality on, before connecting it to the wave shield and combining the sensor and play back code into one patch.

Yesterday I conducted my sound walk around Landguard Fort and the surrounding nature reserve. The turn out was pretty low, which was a shame as we had an extensive roam around, and great conversation about the location with Sarah Wynne, the Ranger at Landguard Point. The first half an hour I ran through the process of how I work, sounds I've already recorded, and where I am up to with the composition so far. We then followed Rob G exploring and recording the fort between the paying visitors, as it was his first time there. After we had recorded the bell striking 1pm (it would have been better at 12 obviously), we headed outside and spent nearly two hours exploring the variety of habitats on the peninsular. Sarah's knowledge and expertise was really inspiring and we discovered a lot, including many rare plants. As you could imagine it was quite windy here so less sound recordings were made but we did make some interesting finds. Back in the Fort we had a good chat with Brian, a very dedicated volunteer at the fort, and took a photo of the shelving unit that I'll be using for the speaker (see slideshow), when the work is installed at the end of September. 

I haven't been back to the fort for quite some time so I was really looking forward to going to the Darell's Day festival. It was a gorgeous day and plenty of people turned out to see the days events, which included several displays by the Royal Marines, music by the 901 Troop Marine Cadet Band and a fantastic period display with muskets. I spent nearly the whole time there recording (no photos I'm afraid) and now have plenty of military sounds to use in the work. I was particularly looking for these as they will give a sense of history and depth to the finished piece. 

In the past few weeks I have been working much more on the sound composition, which is shaping up nicely. It did however need these historical sounds to balance of the more abstract and contemporary sounds I have been working with so far. I can now push on with more composition and of course, prepare for Saturday's sound walk.

Things have been a bit slow on the Landguard project of late, as I've been concentrating on different musical things. But today I eventually pulled my finger out and got on with the soldering of the wave shield that will be attached to the Arduino board, for use in the Landguard installation. It took a little while to get into the flow, but things went pretty smoothly and after a couple of hours soldering I finished getting all of the components onto the board. There were a few big blobs that I had to reheat and remove with the solder sucker but this worked well and was good practice. I haven't got a Voltmeter so will need my friend Paul to test it for me to see how good the connections are and whether it needs some more work. I now need to work on the coding and try to run some audio from an SD card that inserts into the top slot. Then I need to attach the PIR sensor and run some tests on that, so there is plenty to do, but I've got past this soldering hurdle at last. I'd like to thank Damien for the borrowing of her soldering kit and the very handy vice, and also for Paul and Tony for the advice and soldering tips.

Last night was my fourth trip to Landguard Fort and the third to make recordings. It was also the first time of attending the fort at night. I My visit also coincided with an event organised by Compass Paranormal ghost hunters. Although I didn't take part in the ghost tour I did have a chat with the guys about what they do and the equipment they use. They had 15 guests which spent a long time exploring the fort whilst I made several hours worth of recordings in different areas of the building. I also took the chance to have an extesive chat with volunteer Brian about the fort, it's volunteers and history. He also helped me to find an artefact to use as the body of the installation. I took along my NXT transducers and a portable amp to test a variety of objects in Brian's treasure trove. We tested the audio quality of many objects but one stood out far above the rest for the quality of sound it produced. So we're earmarked it for use in the exhibition. Brian also gave me a selection of postcards that have been filled out by many visitors to the fort, which I'll attempt to track down over the summer months. Many thanks to Mollie in her enthusiasm in handing these out for me.

I also had a go at soldering the wave shield that is to be fixed to the Arduino for playing back sound...but with rather poor results. More practice is going to be required to complete it without destroying it completely. Failing that, some delegation might be needed. More on that as it transpires. 

Today I visited the fort for the third time (second recording day) as it was the Volunteers Festival. It was a good chance to get some more recordings whilst the Fort was being used for an event, and also a chance to chat to the volunteers and other enthusiasts. I handed out postcards to ask visitors whether they knew of any sounds in particular to the Fort and it's surroundings and also put up a couple of posters requesting the same thing. I find however that people are much more comfortable in just talking about their thoughts in person rather than trying to express themselves through writing, if given the chance. So, I spoke to as many people as possible between 10am and 3pm. These included Ken, John and Geoff from Felixstowe and District Amateur Radio Society who found plenty of sounds whilst searching the radio waves from all over the UK and Europe. They also communicated using morse code machines, which I also recorded. Eileen from Felixstowe Radio also made some suggestions including the yachts radios and machinery at the docks. Sarah the Ranger also made some sounds with objects that had been found on the peninsular, which included a seals skull and fossilised wood. Many volunteers had suggestions for recordings, which included tagging on to the Ghost Tours, the halyards on the flag pole, the ships klaxons, fog horns and front door bolt. Mollie, one of the volunteers, very kindly offered to give out the postcards for the project when she is working at the entrance, which is nearly every weekend, and Brian who sometimes stays over night whilst the Ghost Tours are being conducted said that I could stay with him the next time they run one, which is in April...I think I might have to get the sleeping bag out.

Many other people chatted and shared information and ideas through the event and I'm grateful to everyone for their input, and for Jo Whittle for helping make it possible. I also learned just how dedicated twitchers are as hundreds were drawn to the peninsular to see a rare UK sighting of a Short-Toed Eurasian Treecreeper.

Today was the first day spent recording in the Fort. As well as Jo who works for the Fort, there were a few volunteers who were doing valuable maintenance jobs on various ares. Most of these chaps are retired and are keen supporters and/or trustees, who generously lend their time to helping keep the Fort up to scratch. They were very friendly and after describing what I was doing they were keen to point out and demonstrate some sounds that they liked and would be of use. I hope to build on these relationships over the next few months to learn more about the Fort, its sounds and the volunteers.

A curious part of the morning was when I heard this bang on a window that I was passing. It made me jump and stop to look at the window. Just as I was looking at the window and running through all of the possibilities that might have made such a sound, it happened again. To my astonishment a bird was trying to fly out of the window, which was very firmly closed. I peered through to try and see what kind of bird it was, but could only see the contents of the room. I tried the door handle but it was locked, so I went to get Jo who might have a key. As luck would have it, Sarah the Landguard Warden was in the office and so the three of us went to investigate. Sarah quickly saw bird like marks in the dust on the windows with her expert eye so we were sure there would be something in side. All three of us slowly explored the room but couldn't see a bird. We saw a couple of droppings and a feather but saw or heard nothing else. There were some old doors leaning against the wall so I slowly leaned them forward one by one...and behind the last one, standing very still on the floor was an owl, with its big eyes looking up at us. Jo ran off to get a sheet or something to try to catch it with but whilst she was gone the bird tried to escape, once again through the closed window, unsuccessfully of course but then through the open door, and flew away. I left the recorder on so I may have a recording of the owl, but as it was so quiet I may only have the thud that it made against the window. Sarah and Jo said that there were owls known to be nesting in the Fort somewhere and that this was their territory, but they'd never seen one get trapped inside before. A happy ending anyhow. 

I got plenty of recordings over the few hours I was there so have a good body of work to start from. But I look forward to going back, learning more and experiencing some of the activities that take place over the spring and summer months.