Come Together: West Street Story
Sound affects us: Music in clubs can make us feel connected but this can unravel when we leave and enter the cacophonous urban soundscape. This revolutionary experiment will explore whether extreme behaviours in public spaces can be influenced by an ambient soundscape.
West Street Story is an original 3D soundscape transforming the atmosphere and ambience in the heart ofBrighton’s cacophonous clubbing area. The composition is being created byMartyn Ware of The Illustrious Company. Martyn, a founder member of The Human League and Heaven 17, is a musician committed to helping the public understand positive soundscaping. He will create an ambient soundtrack in the city centre through which people will walk. Martyn will use both recorded and live sounds to present a contrast to the raucous disharmony so frequently heard in lively areas at night, which will be designed to connect with visitors to the area and residents, as well as those exiting the clubs. The piece – and its effects - can be experienced at the Sallis Benney Theatre in surround sound and with live film footage of people moving through the soundscape – broadcast by Driftwood Productions.
There, in Come Together, psychobiologist and communications expert Dr Harry Witchel will facilitate two entertaining, interactive, masterclasses about Body Language, Music and Social Territory to help participants analyse the effects of the soundscape on the body language and behaviour of people moving through the commission and during their daily lives.
Dr Witchel, from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, is also well known as a media personality and body language commentator for Big Brother. He is author of You Are What You Hear: How Music and Territory Make Us Who We Are.
Come Together: West St Story Programme (PDF 210kb)
8pm Live broadcast of ambient soundscape from West St beamed into the Sallis Benney
9pm You Are What You Hear:
How Music and Territory Make Us Who We Are (and Influence How We Behave)
Is it possible to make the most notorious and most policed street inBrightoninto a place of togetherness using music and a 3-D soundscape? In this first of two talks with audience participation,
Dr. Harry Witchel explains how music influences us – how it can bring us together. By talking about how music works with territory, he gives you the background to understand what music can do to us, so you can interpret yourself the West Street Story experiment later that evening.
9.20 – 10pm Live broadcast of ambient soundscape
10pm Instant Body Language Experts:
The 10 minute Guide to Reading Nonverbal Signalling in a Public Space
Is it possible to “read a crowd”? In the second talk with audience participation for White Night’s Come Together / West Street Story, Dr. Harry Witchel gives you direct experience for interpreting the body language of power and affiliation. From dominance to desire, he shows you how to read the way people stand, how they place their hands, and the distance they maintain from one another.
10.20pm – 11pm Live broadcast of ambient soundscape
11pm West St Story Live: Interactive commentary
At 11pm Martyn Ware will take to the computer for a semi improvised live soundscape creation – a composition of sounds responding directly to the behaviours of those onWest Streetat that moment in time. The effects will be analysed live with commentary at the Sallis Benney Theatre by Dr Harry Witchel inviting you to give your opinions about how the soundscape is effecting behaviours and why.
Midnight til 2am live broadcast of ambient soundscape
2am Close
SOUNDING BRIGHTON is a co-commission from Brighton & Hove White Night and the Noise Abatement Societ: a series of sonic artworks, produced especially for the occasion, will challenge notions of sound in public spaces. The works will extend the Noise Abatement Society’s pioneering initiative, Sounding Brighton: they will provoke debate and initiate innovative explorations to help solve noise disturbance in urban environments.
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