ASHEN:
Independent Creative Project

About

Our Body Our Music

This project was part of my music course at Canterbury Christ Church University in a module called Independent Creative Project. As a musician and artist, the most exciting thing to hear is creative freedom and to be given the time and space to create work in a subject you're interested in. I have always dreamed of having an exhibition with an immersive soundscape combining visual arts and sound. I'm always a little disappointed visiting exhibitions that don't utilise sound as it can feel as if something is lacking and as if a layer of art has been missed. I'm very lucky and extremely grateful to have a lot of people around me to help me make things like this possible. 

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Always having an interest in the human body, I knew this were to be the basis of my project in some way but I was unsure of the complete direction in which I wanted this project to head in. I conducted research into the ways in which music has been able to help people physically and mentally. This led me to become interested in human experiences and how this affects how our own body's function too.

Many state that we are the same however, have differences, and those are the things that make us unique. All of our experiences differ but we have similarities. With this it felt important to explore first hand research through interviewing people who were willing to be recorded and discuss their opinions and experiences. People began discussing the connections between their body, their organs and experiences and I had feedback that the interview felt like a really freeing therapy session. These interviews were then edited and chopped up to move between a 4 speaker soundscape to create the world of 'Our Body's'. Each speaker played a separate track that is linked to a sculpture of an organ built using willow. The organs featured were: The Heart, The Stomach, The Brain and The Lungs.

People who visited the exhibition had the experience of being the in-exhibition audio mixers, due to the separate speakers, they were able to move throughout the space to hear one track more than the others or stand in the middle of the room to hear each speaker evenly.

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As within the arts, collaboration is a big part of growing as an artist, I partnered together to work collaboratively with a local community artist Nicola Priest who works within many disciplines in the arts including but not limited to: Fine Art, Sculpture, Collage, Watercolour and Carnival builds. It would not of been achievable for me to work alone to create all of the visual arts that were needed for this project. 

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After such a successful exhibition, I now know that I would like to work on bigger, long term projects like this and that I'd be capable of delivering this in the future. I hope to receive public funding for community art projects and exhibitions to connect people together through art and music.