B A R R O W A F C D I G R E S

Aurelie at ROH2 Firsts '09

2010-07-07T12:52:00.001-07:00

Aurelie presented the latest incarnation of their open-scored Barrow AFC drone opera 'An Unorthodox 1-2' at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre in November of last year.
performances from some of the most diverse and genre-defying artists in the UK today.

Firsts is an annual programme of performances from some of the most diverse and genre-defying artists in the UK today.

Originally commissioned by Bifocals Community Arts in 2008 as part of a residency at Barrow AFC, a twenty minute version of the piece was performed over two nights on 24th and 25th November to a full house of 400 people.

Aurelie captured in a rare moment away from the impressive ROH Canteen...

The lineup (left to right) featured the return of Barrow based actor Damian Rose (voice and live manipulation) and artist John Hall (Laptop and samples) in addition to Aurelie stalwarts Glenn Boulter (guitar and samples), Euan Rodger (percussion and electronics), Dave Dhonau (cello and guitar) and Ola Szmidt (flute and vocals).

The whole thing was captured for posterity by Endgame's Jim Tetlow, so watch this space for upcoming footage and details of a planned DVD edition compiling several performances of the piece.

With thanks to Rebecca Hanson for selecting us for Firsts, all of the crew and the receptionist for her entertaining anti-operatic diatribes.

2009-08-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

Post-Grimeborn Musings

Aurelie members convened in the capital this Monday for a performance of their football drone opera 'An Unorthodox 1-2'. Sharing the bill with composer Jenni Roditi, the piece was selected for the gala night of the Arcola Theatre's annual festival of alternative opera, Grimeborn.

Regular members Glenn Boulter, Dave Dhonau and Euan Rodger were joined by Barrow-based actor Damian Rose and artist/musician John Hall who was responsible for commissioning the piece as part of a residency at Barrow AFC in 2008. Endgame's Jim Tetlow was also on hand to document the performance.

The show played to a sold-out audience (including Swiss Aurelie fan Aurélie Emery and long-time anti-guitar campaigner Leon Cole) and featured some dextrous live looping from Damian accompanied by cello, crowd samples and electronics. The piece was warmly received, with the only dissenting voice coming from the Independent's hilariously ill-informed theatre critic Michael Coveney:

'Sounds of the terraces have twice been excitingly evoked by Andrew Lloyd Webber in Evita and The Beautiful Game, but Boulter and his gloomy half-hour serial score concentrates on the anomie of an abandoned pitch, wind rustling in the grass, a reiterated litany of unknown players, a solitary fan. We see all that on film while Damian Rose sits hunched over his paper in Barrow's blue-and-white strip and four musicians mix cello and percussion scratching with taped fragments.'

As Euan put it: "If we'd only had a glossy programme and someone ex-eastenders-now-secondary-character-in-the-Bill as the lead. Or perhaps we should try a bio-opera of Madonna in bronze age Britain?"

Luckily the North West Evening Mail were on hand to big us up:
(Click here to read)

Watch this space for news of further performances at the Royal Opera House 2 in November!

Aurelie woud like to thank to Alex Sutton and the Arcola for all their hard work in organising this event. Special thanks go to Nick O'Donnell Smith for his pre-show demonstration of the iPod trombone.

2009-01-28T02:00:00.000-08:00

An Unorthodox 1-2 at Last FM

A full length preview of An Unorthodox 1-2 is now available on Last FM (www.last.fm)

Click here to listen to tracks from An Unorthodox 1-2

Or contact aurelie@aurelie.org.uk to order a hand-finished limited edition CD
(Priced at £8 inc. P+P within the UK)

‘An Unorthodox 1-2’ combines field recordings, spoken word, and instrumental material to explore the aural environment of the ground from the physical sounds of the game to the emotional response of the crowd and the acoustics of the site. Inspired by his visits to the Holker Street ground, Glenn Boulter produced a series of texts that he later recorded with Barrow-based actor Damian Rose. Drawing on early radio dramas, these fragmentary monologues collage together adverts for defunct local businesses, found text from programmes and details of local geography.

Edited and looped, the spoken texts form the starting point for three instrumental pieces, performed by Aurelie members Francis O’Donnell Smith (guitar, laptop, production), David Dhonau (cello, bass), Euan Roger (percussion, electronics) and Ola Szmidt (flute). Combined, the two elements attempt to capture the unique aura of match day in a Cumbrian town and to make explicit the idea of the game as a performance in its own right.

2008-11-25T04:33:00.000-08:00

Mogwai at the Canteen 22/11/08

Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite and Barry Burns get their hands on Aurelie's recent Barrow AFC drone opera An Unorthodox 1-2 and John Hall's book, The Al Mobility Story following their DJ set at the Canteen on Saturday night. The Scottish band are no strangers to mixing art with football having contributed the soundtrack to video artist Douglas Gordon's Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait in 2006. More info at: Mogwai.co.uk

2008-11-19T04:50:00.000-08:00

BAFC Night at the Canteen Cinema Room 13/11/08

Work from the Barrow AFC Digital Residency received a second showing last Thursday at the Canteen Cinema Room on Barrow Island. The evening included presentations of research materials and documentation from throughout the project as well as film screenings, a 'Bluebirds' DJ set and live performances.

Francis O' Donnell Smith's video installation based around an interview with life-long BAFC fan Geoff Payne screened to a live accompaniment from Glenn, Damian Rose and project organiser John Hall that reworked material from the spoken word and music piece An Unorthodox 1-2. This was followed by a live set of Bluebirds inspired music and video projections from Damian performing as Mondo Bongo. Each set was interspersed with scenes from two silent films from 1920's Germany (both amongst the first football feature films ever produced).

Tracks from the Bluebirds DJ set:

Jandek - Blue Blue World
Sun City Girls - Blue Mambo
Captain Beefheart - Dirty Blue Gene
Cocteau Twins - Bluebell Knoll
Gastr Del Sol - Blues Subtitled 'No Sense of Wonder'
Good Brisk Blue - Mayo Thompson
Neil Young - Birds / Danger Bird
Diamanda Galas - Birds of Death
Smog - Blood Red Bird
Public Image - No Birds
The Residents - Birds in the Trees

2008-11-19T04:49:00.000-08:00

Barrow Island Primary School at the Canteen Cinema Room 13/11/08

Children from years 5 and 6 at Barrow Island Primary School visited the Canteen last week for an exhibition of the music, collages and poetry they have produced with artists Glenn Boulter and John Hall. Making use of the Cinema Room's projection and sound facilities, works on show included a series of poems, collages and sound pieces made by the children during workshops with John Hall, poet Kate Davies and musician Sean Blezard as part of the Sightlines Project. The children also had a chance to hear rehearsals and live recordings from the graphic score-based BAFC Orchestra sessions that Glenn led as part of his residency at the club (see previous entries for details). The exhibition concluded with a short live music performance by John and Glenn, feedback and free orange juice.

A selection of the children's feedback on the BAFC Orchestra sessions:
What do you remember about the project? We drew a musical picture. (Reece – 10)
Playing football, conducting people. (Jack –10)
4 People passed the ball while music was playing in the background. (Joe –11)
We used different instruments to make an orchestra. (Jordan –10)
What did you enjoy about this project? All the funny sounds, like the frog. (Jack –10)
Finding out about all the instruments and all of the sounds they made. (Mason –10)
That we got to use different objects to make music. (Chloe – 11)
When we got to do it at Barrow AFC. (Sarah –10)
I liked playing the music and listening to the rhythms. (Lucy –10)
The music and the co-operation. (Jake –9)
What was your favourite instrument? How did you play it? What sound did it make?
The pebbles. We banged them on top of each other. A noise like the sea. (Ross – 10)
The radio. By turning the buttons. Like people talking. (Jacob –10)
White computer keyboard. Typing my full name. Tapping and banging. (Jordan –10)
The electric guitar and the wooden guitar. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. (Bradleigh–9)
What was it like to play at the football ground?
I enjoyed the background music, going to the Barrow AFC football pitch and everything else. (Emily –9)
It was noisy, exciting, loud and fun. (Brandon – 9)

2008-11-19T04:47:00.000-08:00

PRESS - October / November 2008

Press leading up to the Barrow AFC Residency night at the Canteen from the official match programme, Barrow Island's Community newspaper Island Eye and the North West Evening Mail.

2008-11-01T05:11:00.000-07:00

BAFC at the Canteen Cinema Room 13/11/08

2008-10-24T06:23:00.001-07:00

Live Event / Exhibition (2)

The live section of the event consisted of a talk by John, Francis and Glenn about their work at the club, followed by a live performance of Unorthodox 1-2. This used a series of recorded texts as a starting point from which to improvise a series of drones based around the notes BAFC.

Differing considerably from the recorded version, the set featured Dave Dhonau on samples, thumb piano, radios and drum machine, Francis on laptop, guitar and effects and Glenn on prepared guitar.

Look out for further posts on how to order the CD and upcoming performances.

Aurelie in BAFC mode (clockwise from top left), Damian Rose, Francis O'Donnell Smith, David Dhonau, Glenn Boulter.

Many thanks to all who attended. Special thanks to Thorncliffe School and to the Canteen Media and Arts Centre and the Heron Corn Mill for the loan of audio-visual equipment.

2008-10-24T06:22:00.001-07:00

Live Event / Exhibition (1)

Aurelie performed live at Barrow AFC on Friday 17th October as part of an exhibition presenting work from throughout the residency.

On display were selections from Francis' video installation Unbridled, prints, hand-packaged Unorthodox 1-2 CD's, tracks made by Glenn with local schools using graphic notation and project organiser John Hall's edition of books and CD's charting the career of fictional Barrow player Al Mobility.

2008-10-24T06:21:00.002-07:00

North West Evening Mail 09/10/08

2008-10-24T06:21:00.001-07:00

Tent Show

Recordings from the residency were featured during September in an open air sound installation at the Heron corn Mill in Beetham, Cumbria. Curated by project organiser John Hall and housed in a series of tents in the grounds of the mill, the piece also featured sounds made by children from Storth School and John Ruskin School as well as a track from mysterious Leeds-based group, the Wendigos.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALBERT MOBILITY?

2008-10-04T06:26:00.000-07:00

Years after his mysterious disappearance, they still talk about Barrow AFC'S Al Mobility, his goalscoring feats, his huge appetite and the sacred potted plant which he always carried under his arm on the field of play during his short but triumphant career at Holker Street.

The Al Mobility Story was devised and recorded by girls from St Bernard's RC school at various Al-related sites around Barrow's ground , with the help of writer and broadcaster Ian McMillan, writer Kate Davis, Teacher / AFC Director David Ingham and project Co-ordinator John Hall.

Through interviews with Mobility's family, schoolfriends , fans and team mates we hear the story of his exploits, his struggle to continue playing while carrying a shrub, and the controversial sending-off which hastened his disappearance.

The piece was broadcast on Abbey FM earlier this year, and meanwhile a trawl through the local archives has unearthed clippings and ephemera that put a face to the legend, and provide a taste of the esteem with which this clean man with short spikey hair was held.

2008-09-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

Live Event & Exhibition 17/10/08

2008-09-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

The Barrow AFC Football Orchestra -
Live at Holker Street

Nine children from Barrow Island Community Primary School brought experimental music to football fans at Holker St. on Saturday 20th September with the first performance by the Barrow AFC Football Orchestra.

Leading in to the match against Kettering Town, the orchestra performed three 5 minute pieces of music that turned the Holker Street 5-a-side pitch into a giant piece of graphic notation. Orchestra members alternated between roles, taking turns to play football and their instruments respectively.

Instruments included guitars open-tuned to the notes BAFC, egg timers, a drum machine, a thumb piano, a small wooden frog and a contact miked (and heavily reverbed) computer keyboard. See the video clip below for an excerpt from the performance.

Screening of Unbridled at Holker St 20/09/08

2008-09-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

2008-09-29T12:36:00.002-07:00

The Barrow AFC Football Orchestra
(Pt. 3)

Children from Barrow Island Community Primary School picked up a selection of instruments and household objects in preparation for a performance at Holker Street that took place on Saturday 20th September. During the rehearsal sessions pictured here, the children concentrated on playing together and communicating as a group as well as looking at ways of introducing contrast into the music they had been making. All of the sessions have been recorded, and a selection will be transferred and given to orchestra members as a CD in the near future.

2008-09-29T12:36:00.001-07:00

Limited Edition Barrow AFC Poster

A limited edition of 150 screen printed posters, produced to accompany the forthcoming live event at Holker Street in October, are now available from the club shop, priced at £5 each with all proceeds going to the club.

The print was recently featured in an exhibition of contemporary poster art at Portsmouth's SPACE gallery as part of the city's annual art week events.
Visit: http://art.route.dream.googlepages.com/grossclinic
for more details.

2008-09-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

More From Barrow Live

Damian Rose performing as Mondo Bongo at the Barrow Live festival.

2008-09-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

Barrow Live Footage

Excerpt from part three of An Unorthodox 1-2.

2008-09-02T03:13:00.000-07:00

Barrow Live 24/08/2008

Barrovian music-lovers were treated to a sneak preview of Aurelie's forthcoming football drone opera An Unorthodox 1-2 on Sunday 24th of August at the annual Barrow Live festival.

Glenn performed a (very) rough version of part three of the piece, consisting of looped adverts for defunct local businesses and bits of feedback that drifted seagull-like from the acoustic tent.

An earlier slot featured another BAFC-related performance from Damian Rose on laptop and guitar with crowd samples and lyrics inspired by the Bluebirds.

2008-09-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

An Unorthodox 1-2

Over the last two weeks, Glenn and Francis have been recording and editing the raw material for their Barrow AFC sound piece. The piece combines elements of spoken word, music and field recordings and is intended to be performed live, broadcast via radio and to exist as an edition of CD's.

The script, written by Glenn, consists of three parts describing a) a walk across Barrow to Holker st. stadium, b) the atmosphere of the crowd during a match and c) the experience of hearing the match in a domestic environment via radio. The script was then recorded by local actor, musician and BAFC supporter Damian Rose.

Following this, the recordings were broken up into individual sentences, looped and processed to determine the rhythm and tone of three instrumental compositions. These were composed and recorded by Francis in collaboration with members of Aurelie David Dhonau (cello, bass, production) and Ola Szmidt (flute). The three pieces of music varying in tone from steadily building drones to minimalist cello melodies will then be edited together with the spoken word element and a bank of recordings made at the ground and from around Barrow to form the final recording.

Keep an eye on the blog for previews of the sound piece as well as details of a free Aurelie live performance taking place at Holker St. later this month.

2008-08-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Unbridled

Video stills taken from a work in progress, Unbridled, a multichannel video installation soon to be screening at Holker Street Stadium.

2008-08-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Geoff.

Following a world-wide BAFC support call via the unofficial club forum (www.barrowafc.net) and the Holker Street Newsletter, we would like to thank all Barrow AFC fans who responded and offered their support to this project so far.

During the 15th August Francis and Glenn had the pleasure of meeting up with Mr. Geoff Payne, a lifelong BAFC supporter, for an insightful interview and film shoot high in the Main Club Stand. Stories of Emlyn Hughes, dubious referees and digital technologies were shared over delightful prepacked superstore baguettes, before cruising the far reaches of Walney Island caravan park. We would like to give Geoff our gratitude for his hospitality, time, and a day well spent in the gale-force capital of the North-West.

The full interview with Geoff can be found here.

2008-08-11T02:28:00.000-07:00

North West Evening Mail 09/08/08

2008-08-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

North West Evening Mail 07/08/2008

2008-08-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

Programme: Barrow vs Oldham Athletic 30/07/08

An article summarising the project so far was included in the match programme for last Wednesday's game against Oldham Athletic (see above).

2008-08-04T02:28:00.000-07:00

Limited Edition Barrow AFC Prints

An Unorthodox 1-2 (1)

An Unorthodox 1-2 (2)

From Friday the 8th of August, Barrow fans will have the chance to to own their piece of art with a limited edition of prints that will be available to buy from the club shop.
The first in a series of works to be presented at the ground during the next six weeks, these limited edition lino prints depict two different views of the ground. Both images come in an edition of ten and are priced at £30 each, with all proceeds going to the club. Individual prints measure approx. 56 x 46cm, are signed and hand-numbered and come packaged in cellophane with a window mount . A larger edition of screen-printed posters priced at £6 will also be available later in the month.

Prints can be sent to UK and non-UK addresses with an extra charge for postage.
Contact the club shop for further details or email Glenn at: gkboulter@googlemail.com

2008-07-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Barrow AFC Football Orchestra pt.2

More BAFC-inspired scores and music from the children at Barrow Island Primary School. The crowd may have dwindled, but the percussion section are still going strong as proceedings draw to a close. Listen out for the final whistle (egg timer) and a slightly annoyed referee.

2008-07-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

Project Summary (3 of 3)

To accompany this, there will be also be an edition of books that will be available to buy from sellers around the ground and from the club shop. Examining the role of printed matter in recording transient events, this will be inspired in terms of its aesthetic by those obsessively encyclopaedic club histories produced by fans. Current favourites include: The Holker St. Greats Pt.2., The Definitive Barrow AFC, and The Colin Cowperthwaite Testimonial Programme. This idea follows on from earlier editions of artist’s books produced as co-founder of Earwig Books, a book arts imprint and studio originally based in London. Publications such as Walks in Leicestershire (2004), The Negative Album (2005) and Census (2006) have all taken specific geographical situations as starting points for investigating themes of locality and memory and how these affect our perceptions of a particular landscape. These works have all been made directly available to the non gallery-going public, being catalogued in public libraries, secreted in park bandstands and sold cheaply in village halls in order to make direct contact with the environment they address. Similarly, the outcomes of the residency will be presented as a series of events and documents rather than as a traditional exhibition, and will require viewers to become an active participant in the work, whether it requires them to go for a walk around the pitch, play an instrument during a match or knit a scarf. The results of the Barrow AFC Digital Residency will be presented at Holker St. in late August / early September.

Contact John Hall at bifocart@aol.com or Glenn Boulter at: gkboulter@googlemail.com for further information.

2008-07-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

Project Summary (2 of 3)

The start of the residency coincided with me relocating from Leicester and has come as a welcome introduction to the area. Working from my studio space at the Canteen Arts Centre on Barrow Island and at the Bluebirds Study Centre, the project so far has seen me giving talks about my practice to members of the public and to students at Barrow sixth form College, being interviewed by the North West Evening Mail and running a workshop with children from Thorncliffe Secondary School, making postcard books in which to record the final matches of the season. Though trained as a printmaker, I currently work across a range of media and decided to approach the brief - to create a piece of digital (i.e. non-permanent) art - through a mixture of sound-based work and performance, using publications and print as a way of documenting and complementing this. The sound pieces will explore the aural environment of the ground from the physical sounds of the game to the emotional response of the crowd as well as the acoustics of the site. These are being produced collaboratively with Midlands-based artist and musician Francis O’ Donnell Smith, with whom I started working during a residency at Leicester’s Haymarket Theatre. This saw us jointly develop a series of multi-media improvisations based around the city’s vanishing industrial architecture and has since led to us performing regular shows with a shifting cast of guest musicians and delivering a series of workshops for Creative Partnerships teaching methods of composition that rely on creating systems and parameters to generate music. Before starting the project, I was especially keen to get back to working with text and spoken word and have since been looking at early experimental radio dramas with a view to eventually having a piece broadcast on Radio Cumbria during or following their regular match coverage. The written texts will be read by a local actor and will be made up of collaged sponsors’ adverts, transcribed commentary, fixtures and lists of players. Ideas that may feed into this include a composed piece of music based around the team’s history. This involves a series of simple musical motifs derived from past and present league tables, resulting in a compressed musical timeline with each group of notes following league positions for every year of the team’s existence. Another idea will see us recruiting an amateur orchestra (i.e. anyone who owns an instrument – they don’t necessarily have to be able to play it). We will then line up two sets of musicians along opposite sides of the pitch and asking them to make sounds in response to the movements of their team. The emphasis would not be on melody, but on the back and forth motion of the music, with the instruments being selected and/or open-tuned to create a general sound and to avoid ‘virtuoso-ism’.

2008-07-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

Project Summary (pt.1 of 3)

As someone whose work in the past has taken inspiration from my local Co-op supermarket, a group of ramblers and a singer in a working men’s club, being chosen for a residency at Barrow AFC Football club has provided a valuable opportunity for me to further develop my interest in localised culture and models of social interaction.

Barrow AFC is a semi-professional football club, based in Barrow In Furness, South Cumbria and playing in the Blue Square Conference North, best described as Division 6 in the football pyramid. For a club of its size in a town of approx 70,000, the club is very well supported. In a moderately successful season the Bluebirds can expect an average gate of over 1000, double the average for the level at which they play. The project’s theme is Football, Art and Community and is being led by artist and Barrow supporter John Hall with the support of the Arts Council England, Cumbria Arts In Education, Aim Higher, Barrow Borough Council and partner schools across the county. The residency involves researching and developing a piece of work for installation at the start of the 2008-9 season.

Despite not being a football supporter and having never attended a match as an adult, I was nonetheless interested in exploring objectively the idea of the game as a form of performance with its own attendant set of rituals. The Holker Street ground with its array of textured concrete surfaces, layers of royal blue paint and walls topped with broken glass, has a strong physical presence. Geographically situated at one of the town’s highest points, it looks out over the Duddon estuary, across to Black Combe fell and takes in housing estates, a cemetery and an Asda supermarket to its rear. Though relatively small compared to many football clubs, it is clearly an integral part of the community. This became clear from an early stage when myself and other short-listed candidates were invited to watch Barrow vs. Gainsborough Trinity (Barrow won 4-1) before being interviewed at the ground the following afternoon. Since beginning the residency at the end of January, I have regularly donned extra layers of clothing and journeyed to Holker Street on Tuesday nights and Saturday afternoons to see Barrow play, with the players often battling against fierce coastal winds and driving rain. As the season has progressed and the weather improved, I’ve gradually watched the crowds swell from 500 to almost 3,000, culminating in an open top bus parade through the town centre that celebrated the team’s promotion into the Blue Square Premier League earlier this month.

2008-07-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

Workshops at Barrow Island Primary School

During two sessions on the 15th and 16th of July, children from years 4 and 5 at Barrow Island Community Primary School were asked to compose and perform music based around a game of football. Using a variety of instruments and amplified objects, they were asked to respond to the movements of the ball and the players around the pitch. The majority of the children were non-musicians and were asked to play instruments including: open tuned guitars, a drum machine, an amplified computer keyboard, two large pebbles and a piano. Graphic notation was used to allocate sounds to different areas of the pitch in order to alter the tone of the music over a series of performances. Each group was given the task of devising their own score and organising the players accordingly.

2008-04-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

Barrow AFC – the Artists’ Book

Another outcome of the project is to be an edition of books that will be available to buy from the club shop. This may take the form of a book/CD/DVD package that straightforwardly documents the work made during the residency or it may constitute a piece of work in itself. Examining the role of printed matter in recording transient events (such as a football match), this will be partly inspired in terms of its aesthetic and content by pre-existing fan-written histories and biographies of the club and its players and partly by the ethos of early avant garde publications such as Mayakovsky and Burliuk’s A Slap in the Face of Public Taste with it’s sackcloth binding and hand-stencilled lettering.

The contents will include a mixture of written texts, visual scores and photographs. These may be bound in separate sections and held together in a hard jacket similar to a library-bound musical score. Other possible formats include that of a broadsheet newspaper to be handed out at matches, following in the foot steps of the little-known journal Jeder Mann Eigner Fussball (Every Man his Own Football)… ‘Walter Mehring claimed to be responsible for the unusual distribution methods used for ‘Jedermann Sein Eigner Fussball’, dated 15th Feb. 1919, costing 30 Pfennigs… “We hired a char-a-banc… and also a little band, complete with frock coats and top hats, ho used to play at ex-servicemen’s funerals. We, the editorial staff, paced behind, six strong, bearing bundles of Jedermann instead of wreaths. In the sophisticated west end of the city we earned more taunts than pennies, but our sales mounted sharply as we entered the lower-middle class districts of North and East Berlin.” This combined the ambition of a newspaper with the niche marketing of an artists’ book. However, it was surpressed immediately and remaining copies destroyed.'
From ‘Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text’ by Alan Bartram (British Library, 2005)

A comprehensive selection of dramatically titled, fan-produced books on the team can be found in Barrow reference library. These range from simple photocopied and stapled books to the more luxurious hard bound (in a uniform royal blue). Some of my favourites include:
- The Definitive Barrow FC. This one has a list of every player ever to play for the team.
- The Holker St. Greats Pt.2. Brilliantly concise statements summing up each player, such as: ‘Steve Brooks always gave 100%’, ‘Peter McDonnell, always a crowd favourite’, ‘Mick Richmond a popular attacking full back’, ‘Kevin Thomas the Jolly Juggler’ etc.
- Wembley 1990 FA Trophy Final – spiral bound scrapbook.
- The Colin Cowperthwaite Testimonial Programme
- A Dream Weekend
- Barrow AFC: In the Beginning There Was the End - BAFC: The Postwar Years has some excellent chapter headings:
The Saddest Season Ever, We Battle On, Pitch Ultimatum from League, Hughes Lasts 24 hrs Before McManus Steps in, 3,500 Witness City Thriller, Bring on the Wolves, Cup Dream Shattered, Two Out of Three In, Another Woeful Season, Gillingham’s Nightmare on Holker St., Vickers Steps in With Financial Help.

Another current influence is The Unfortunates by B.S Johnson. A sports journalist, sent to a Midlands town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the railway station and attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a football match. The book is contained in a box, with twenty seven sections presented, unbound, to be shuffled and read in whichever random order the reader happens to take them.
“And what would the ‘bleeding librarians” do to The Unfortunates, Johnson wondered. “Would they bind it up like a Proper Book, the sods?” Some did of course.’
Quote from ‘Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text’ by Alan Bartram (British Library, 2005)

Miscellaneous ideas:
- Produce a book printed on a series of microfiche films so that people have to go to the reference library in order to read it.
- Get fans and small children to draw portraits of every player who ever played for the team from imagination and compile them into sticker album.
- Make a special edition of the programme that is written entirely hand written / hand drawn.

2008-04-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

More Music...

“Music is something one takes before or after the meal, but never the meal itself.” Giorgio De Chirico, No Music (1913).

Below are some of the ideas we have come up with so far for creating a piece of music for the ground with the aim of exploring an overall concept of football as a performance involving players and spectators. Utilising a mixture of field recordings, music and spoken word, we are looking at ways of using the ground as a place to experiment and ultimately as a stage in itself.

1) One idea is to develop a piece of music based around the team’s history and current fortunes. This would involve creating a series of simple musical motifs derived from past and present league tables, resulting in a compressed musical history with each group of notes following league positions for each month of every year of the team’s existence. Breaking each season down into a series of mathematically generated musical modules with major and minor keys representing success or defeat. An alternative (and perhaps more manageable approach to this would involve creating a smaller set of musical narratives based around famous players, events and goals in the club’s history. This draws upon the idea of an ‘Oracular lyre’ featured in the story ‘Ka’ by Russian futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, using a pythagorean correlation between musical tones and historical chronology. Taking this one step further, it may be possible to generate a short piece of music that changes every week with the team’s fortunes throughout the year, and is performed at each match by a volunteer instrumentalist/soloist drawn from the supporters, reporting musically on the previous match.

2) During the residency so far, we have been experimenting with using contact microphones to record otherwise undetectable sounds. “By attaching it to a flat surface, the mic transforms vibrations in materials into audio signals and, just as the positioning of an acoustic mic will affect the sound picked up, so the sound from the contact mic can be changed with different positioning.” (We got these from Bugbrand.co.uk – a great site for anybody interested in analogue effects units and circuit bending). As well as applying these to instruments, we have been using them to record the sound of everyday objects and recently led a series of school workshops in which we created an entire orchestra with items from Wilkinsons’ gardening section. Over the next month we intend to apply these to a game of football, including feet stamping on the terraces, the ball hitting various surfaces and the monitoring and sound experimentation of players’ heartbeats/respiratory systems as well as the possibility of placing a device inside the ball itself during a match or training session. The resulting sounds may then be manipulated and/or looped in real time before being relayed back to the tannoy for live playback.
3) A third idea would see us recruiting an amateur orchestra (i.e. anyone who owns an instrument – they don’t necessarily have to be able to play it) by handing out leaflets at a match. We would then line up two sets of musicians along opposite sides of the pitch (East and West, not goal ends). They would be asked to play a certain note or a specified key corresponding to the movements of their team. The emphasis would not be on melody, but on the back and forth motion of the music and the instruments would be tuned or chosen to avoid ‘virtuosoism’.
4) Miscellaneous ideas:
a) Sound experiments with crowd recordings – Chants and songs.
b) Make a list of every player ever to play for the club. Ask fans to recite them.
c) Old adverts for defunct local businesses – sing/recite these.
d) Scarves with texts woven in to be chanted by the wearer.
e) Pitched rattles / pint glasse.
f) Use specially designed ground markings to paint a graphic score directly onto the pitch.
g) Find early silent films of football and perform live soundtracks. E.G. Die elf Teufel / The Eleven Devils (1927)

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Four Four Two Magazine, May 2008

2008-04-15T04:07:00.001-07:00

Music / Graphic Scores

Though it is intended that the residency will have several outcomes, its main aspect will be the creation of a piece of experimental music based around the idea of a football as a performance. Below is some background information and links to a few of the artists and composers who have influenced our thinking on the project so far:

Dick Raaijmakers – Ping Pong. This is a piece of music made by attaching two contact microphones to a table tennis table. Each side of the table is pitched a semi-tone apart and the piece is performed through the act of playing a game of table tennis.
Graphic Scores - examples of many of the most pioneering graphic scores can be found at the Pictures of Music site.

One score we have been particularly looking at is Treatise by the english composer Cornelius Cardew.“There are few more impressive-looking conceptions than Cornelius Cardew's Treatise (1963-7), a 236-page graphic score of exquisite intricacy. Questions of what to play and how to play it are left to the performer(s)' discretion; though, as here, a degree of pre-performance planning helps reinforce the very definite continuity in texture and dynamics that the individual pages suggest. ”
"Robert Rauschenberg's Open Score was performed on October 14th, 1966. It began with a tennis game between Frank Stella and his tennis partner, Mimi Kanarek, on a full-scale court laid out on the Armory floor. Rauschenberg had adopted one of the oldest forms of performance that everyone recognizes, a tennis match, and made it into dance. He also used the game 'to control the lights and to perform as an orchestra.' Each time Frank or Mimi hit the ball a loud BONG vibrated around the Armory and the sound of each BONG switched off one of the lights illuminating the court..."

Trevor Wishart “began working with recorded sounds in 1969. In reaction to death of father, a factory worker, abandoned conventional composing, bought small portable tape-recorder and collected sounds of machinery in workshops, foundries and power stations. Set up directed improvisation route-map (Machine 2) for small chorus to imitate, then transform, these sounds. Recordings of the improvisations, plus machine sources and contemporary news items (Apollo 11 moon shot) formed basis of Machine, an electronically preserved dream (1970).”
French composer Eliane Radigue's graphic scores for Trilogie de la Mort are a set of logarithmic curves printed onto transparent paper then overlaid onto manuscript paper to create a series of sustained rising tones.
Alan Tomlinson is a trombonist who performed from a mobile chip van in Yorkshire. "In November 2003, artist and promoter Simon Thackray created a new duet. He put London based Improvising trombonist Alan Tomlinson together with a Fish and Chip van. Alan was booked to blow the horn to herald the arrival of the van and perform a short concert to the Fish and Chip van queues in each village."
We have also been looking at other pieces that use the human voice in innovative ways, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen's Stimmung and Gesang der Junglinge and Einstein on the Beach by Phillip Glass.

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Evening Mail Article 14/02/2008

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Barrow vs. Northwich 22/01/08

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SIGHTLINES Digital Arts Commission
at Barrow AFC

After considering applications from over 40 artists, the Sightlines selection committee comprising John Hall, David Ingham, Supporter and Unison rep Alec Proffit and photographer Stuart Clarke from The Homes Of Football Gallery in Ambleside, have chosen Glenn Boulter to work in around the club over the next few months and to deliver a piece of work for installation at the start of the 2008-9 season. The project is being led by artist and Barrow supporter John Hall with the support of Arts Council England, Cumbria Arts In Education, Aim Higher , Barrow Borough Council and parner schools from accross Cumbria.

Says John "We were impressed by the quality and scope of Glenn's work which includes Printmaking, Sound Design and editions of Artists books and CDs, and with the imagination and wit with which he approaches his subjects. I'm really looking forward to working with him and watching things develop."

Sightlines' theme is Football, Art and Community, and the project so far has seen John exhibit his own work at Barrows Artgene gallery, present a series of experimental music pieces drawing on the sounds of matchday at Barrow, Kendal, Carlisle, and Workington. There has also been an exhibition of giant Subbuteo players made by local schools at The Nest and The Homes Of Football gallery.

This second phase of Sightlines has been running since autumn, and has seen John work with locally based artists Kate Davis and Shaun Blezard on a variety of football related sound recording projects in schools , including a session with Poet and Broadcaster Ian McMillan who worked with a group of St. Bernard's students on the mysterious history of Barrow AFC legend, Al Mobility.

Glenn saw the 4-1 win over Gainsborough the other week, and was taking photographs during last night's game against Northwich. You can follow the progress of the project on this blog and if you have any questions or comments on the project, contact John at bifocart@aol.com

John Hall

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Barrow vs. Gainsborough Trinity 12/01/08

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Welcome to the Blogspot for the Barrow AFC
Digital Arts Residency!

During the residency, artists Glenn Boulter and Francis O' Donnell Smith will be posting work in progress as it develops in the form of photos, videos, sketches, sound and music.

We will also be using the blog to recruit participants and collect views and opinions on the project, so please come back regularly to see what we’re up to or contact us at: aurelie@aurelie.org.uk with any comments or questions.

Please see below for full details of the residency and the Sightlines project in general.