Event
The North West Arts & Health Network, alongside the Manchester School of Art Future Technologies Research Centre and Arts and Health Research Centre present Sound – Arts and Health with artist Vic McEwan and Dr. Toby Heys on anchester School of Art – Benzie Building – Boundary Street West, Manchester, M15 6BR, United Kingdom.
Australian artist Vic McEwan is the Artistic Director of The Cad Factory, an innovative arts organisation based in regional New South Wales, Australia. He is the recipient of the Inaugural Arts NSW Regional Fellowship and was the 2015 Artist in Residence at the National Museum of Australia. Vic is in the UK over the next two weeks in residency at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and with Clive Parkinson at the Manchester School of Art where we’re collaborating on joint work over 2015/17. Dr. Toby Heys is an artist working through and with a large range of electronic media technologies, mostly with a sonic focus. He is a Digital Technologies Researcher and Leader of the Future Technologies Research Centre at the Manchester School of Art and will present a project called ‘Furniture Music’, which is currently exhibiting at the Level Centre in Derbyshire. The project stemmed from working with people with Williams Syndrome, and more specifically from investigating their relationship to the soundscape given that many of those with the condition have a heightened sensitivity to music, noise and rhythm.
Vic will be giving a presentation about his recent arts practice focusing on 3 major projects:
Buckingbong to Birrego – A 3 day walk over 55 km’s that commissioned artists to create work along the way. This project started in collaboration with local Aboriginal Elders, at a place of historic Aboriginal Massacre and ended on a farm that is leading the way in environmental farming practice. Artists, community members, farmers and academics walked and camped and had discussions over three days that embraced tragedy, climate change and complexity.
Haunting – Vic’s major outcome of his residency at the National Museum of Australia was a project that explored the consequence of advances in technology that allowed the expansion of people and agriculture into inland Australia. This body of work was created by projecting large images over the Murrumbidgee River into shifting environmental conditions such as fog, mist, smoke. ThIs created a stunning series of images which propose to allow new understanding to emerge about the consequence of human decision making.
Re-Hearing – This project is currently under development at Alder Hey Children’s hospital, and will see Vic, Clive and Arts Co-Ordinator Vicky Charnock working together to explore the negative effects of sound in hospitals and how artist led interventions might allow a process of education, understanding and rethinking.
Click here to register for this event.
