Invisible Dust

Electronic Symphony to Tackle London Air Pollution

in clean air we fly, a sound installation by Kaffe Matthews

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The first Invisible Dust enquiry by artists and scientists into air pollution, health and climate change

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Sunday 6th December – 12.00 noon-9pm

One day open air CYCLE POWERED audio installation in:  Gillett Square, Dalston, London E8

6-9 pm -Press Drinks Reception at the: Ochre Works Cafe, Gillett Square

7th-11th December- Installation continues at The Vortex Jazz Club 12.00-6pm

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Sound artist Kaffe Matthews has made a new eight channel audio work inviting the audience to reflect on her ‘clean air paths’ playing through the polluted London air.

The movement of air in these ‘paths’, caused by the vibrations of music sent from eight speakers projecting across the square will slice through the polluted London atmosphere from 12 noon to 9pm on Sunday 6th December.  The speakers will be mounted around Gillett Square’s large public space in East London, an inner city area in close proximity to a heavily polluting major London trunk road.

The work plays with the analogy between sound and invisible airborne pollution.  Although we are immersed in both, by its very nature pollution always degrades an environment, but sound has the ability to enhance and transform space.

Kaffe Matthews, a world-renowned sound artist, has worked locally with school children together gathering sound recordings, inventing carbon free transport solutions and logging air pollution statistics to filter and process the material of a new music composition.  This experiment has produced music with no beginning and no end, the resultant multi-layered work a shimmering symphony of melodic lines and clusters of voice and tone that will collide in ever changing combinations, altering the vibrations of Gillett Square’s air in pools as it plays.

Staged on the weekend before the UN Climate change conference in Copenhagen, In clean air we fly seeks to re-engage people in the issues around UK air pollution. Central to Matthews’s current work are her environmental concerns, and so the installation will only play if visitors to the event cycle its bicycle powered, Magnificent Revolution, audio system.

BACKGROUND

• in clean air we fly is commissioned by Invisible Dust and produced by Hackney Cooperative Developments Gillett Square project.  It is the inaugural event for Invisible Dust, an organisation set up by curator Alice Sharp and supported through a research grant from the Wellcome Trust to involve artists and scientists in highlighting air pollution, effects on health and climate change.  Atmospheric Chemist, Professor Peter Brimblecombe, from University of East Anglia, who measures air pollution through measuring the components of dust, has inspired the Invisible Dust project and as part of working with Matthews he made presentations in the two Dalston schools.

• The power is provided through bicycles for the in clean air we fly event on Sunday 6 December which are provided by Magnificent Revolution.  The work continues indoors at the Vortex, London’s world-renowned jazz club at the end of Gillett Square from 12-6pm each day 7th-11th December.

• To make in clean air we fly, Matthews collaborated with 40 children from Shacklewell and Colvestone primary schools in Dalston to explore the possibilities of city transport without pollution and its related health and environmental effects. Together they investigated the local streets, identifying the air pollution hotspots and mapping the results at both street and sky levels to build a musical score from the local airspace. The children recorded neighbourhood street sounds, played instruments and wrote songs also exploring the tones of the ancient Solfeggio series which Matthews has combined to create one shifting multilayered audio work.

• This project seeks to highlight the urgent need for people to reduce their car use. Manmade air pollution has many effects on health as well as contributing to climate change. It aggravates Asthma, currently 5.4 million people in the UK are currently receiving treatment for asthma, of these 1.1 million are children (1 in 11) and 42% of people with asthma say that traffic fumes stop them walking and shopping in congested areas (Asthma UK website)

• Gillett Square in Dalston was the first urban square to be completed in the ‘100 Public Spaces’ for London Initiative. Since 2006 a cultural programme has explored how the square can function as an inclusive public arts venue. This work is led by Hackney Co-operative Developments in collaboration with a range of local partners. Gillett Square Art Commissions 2009 includes Mezzo Moderno, Mezzo Distrutto 11th – 14th November 2009 that is a large scale Video installation by artist Larisa Blazic who has worked with local community groups to present their images of local regeneration.

KAFFE MATTHEWS BIOG

Kaffe Matthews has been making and performing new music via all kinds of digital gadgetry internationally for fifteen years. She is now most known for her live sampling performances of events and places in real time and the collective project “music for bodies” which makes sonic furniture and music to feel rather than just listen to. Recent works include The Marvelo Project,(2008), a Folkestone Triennial commission, which enabled visitors to cycle their own path through the work from specially made GPS linked stereo bicycles, and Fathers (2009), an audiovisual opera with the Lappetites, just premiered HKW, Berlin.

Currently she is working with the Gluts to make the musical performance Café Carbon for the Copenhagen climate summit, and Symphony Hammerhead, an ambitious collaboration with shark scientists to make an audio visual work for 2011, after a recent Gulbenkian Galapagos Islands residency. Her 2004 collaboration Weightless Animals was awarded a BAFTA, she received a NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship in 2005 and an Award of Distinction, Prix Ars Electronica 2006 for the work Sonic Bed London. In 2006 she was made an Honorary Professor of Music, Shanghai Music Conservatory and in 2009 a patron of the Galapagos Conservation Trust shark project. Her stereo solo works are available through: www.annetteworks.com

LOCAL PARTNERS

Colvestone Primary School, Jenny Staff, A Space, Shacklewell Primary School and is supported by the Wellcome Trust, the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Hackney Council.

WEBSITES

Kaffe Matthews: http://www. kaffematthews.net

http://www. annetteworks.com http://www.musicforbodies.net/

Invisible Dust: http://www.invisibledust.com

The Vortex Jazz Club : http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk

Gillett Square: http://www.gillettsquare.org.uk

TRAVEL TO GILLETT SQUARE

Gillett Squared, Hackney Co-operative Developments, Dalston, London N16.

Dalston Kingsland London Overland Station, Buses: 149, 243, 76,67

For further press details please contact:
Simon Steven
Gillett Squared Press Office
Tel: 01843 596 194
simon@simonsteven.net

Planetary and Atmospheric Research Scientist

Dr Hugh Mortimer will collaborate with the artists and curator to further his research into aerosols critical to the quality of people’s health and our understanding of climate change.

Mortimer directs his own research and has developed his own miniaturized spectrometer for the use in Earth based observation. This is to be used specifically for space based and in-situ monitoring of atmospheric trace gases. Mortimer is also part of a team responsible for the calibration of a future Climate Change monitoring instrument; the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) based on the satellite Sentinel 3. This is to be launched in 2012.

The above image is a 12 micron night-time image acquired on 7th September 1991; the area covered is 512 x 512 square km.

Obtained from the  ATSR (Along Track Scanning Radiometer) instruments produce infrared images of the Earth at a spatial resolution of one kilometre. The data from these instruments is useful for scientific studies of the land surface, atmosphere, clouds, oceans, and the cryosphere.

The first ATSR instrument, ATSR-1, was launched on board the European Space Agency’s (ESA) European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1) in July 1991, as part of their Earth Observation Programme.

London and many other English cities can be seen as bright thermal `footprints’ in this night-time image of England, France and the English Channel. In the false-colour representation used here, temperature increases through blue and yellow to orange over a temperature range of 278-288K.

The River Seine is the most prominent feature on the French landscape, but Paris is just beyond the lower extent of this image. The temperature gradients seen in the North Sea are characteristic of that region ranging from 290K in coastal waters to about 280K mid-channel.

The clouds in the image are about as warm as the land and are thus indistinguishable by their colour. However they are immediately apparent to those familar with the local geography or indeed no Channel Tunnel would be required!

(This is a 12 micron night-time image acquired on 7th September 1991; the area covered is 512 x 512 square km.)

“The work of  Ian Rawlinson and Nick Crowe is a poetic exploration of cultural values. Their work addresses questions around faith, politics, national identity and the environment. Often built around pairings and oppositions their video and sculptural works create an encounter with the viewer that focuses on the complexity of objects and actions in relation to their social contexts. Works like The Fireworks, The Carriers’ Prayer or The Four Horsemen operate though an unravelling of the social and ideological consequences of an action in regard to its apparent spectacle. This interest in consequence is reflected in the aesthetics of spectacle and excess that sit at the heart of their practice. In this sense the visual and aural intensity of much of their work can be seen as the discursive opening in its conversation with the viewer.”

Ceri Hand Gallery (2009)

The Four Horsemen – War (2009)

Loop (2007)

Peter Brimblecombe is a Professor in Atmospheric Chemistry at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia and was appointed senior editor of Atmospheric Environment in 1990. Working with contemporary artists and writers will give a new depth to Brimblecombe’s research, which has previously examined historical cultural treatment of air pollution in paintings, film and literature.

Brimblecombe has been involved with projects ranging from a recent European Community (EC) project NOAH’s ARK looking at climate change and heritage damage, work on the effects the environment, and artistic expression in literature, painting and cinema. Brimblecombe has worked within European Commission, EC cultural heritage projects in FP4 FP5 and FP6. He has advised the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the House of Lords on heritage science. He has had many projects funded by UK research funding bodies (e.g. NERC, EPSRC, Leverhulme Trust) and most recently the AHRC has funded a project “preparing historic collections for climate change”. He is also involved in the EC Network of Excellence ACCENT, where he is active within the teaching and communication module and is an external assessor for EPISCON, the European PhD in Conservation of Art. He is frequently involved with radio and television and radio and has produced a “scientific” colouring book for children called The Colour of Time.

Peter Brimblecombe

Here’s a brilliant idea that functions as both environmental pollution monitor and thought-provoking urban art installation: a floating LED light system embedded in bodies of water to warn of water pollution (in addition to creating an ethereal glow at nighttime). A great way to be more green is simply to be more aware

Read more at www.inhabitat.com