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Wetland Project

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Saturday, April 21, 2018
 to 
to
Friday, May 18, 2018
11am
 - 
5pm

Opening Date
Fri, Apr 20, 2018 - 7pm

To mark Earth Day 2016, Brady Marks travelled to Saturna Island to help fellow artist Mark Timmings capture the sounds of the wetland beside his home. With recording engineer Eric Lamontagne, equipment to make a five-channel, surround-sound recording was set up on a fallen tree at the centre of the marsh. It recorded continuously for twenty-four hours, collecting approximately one terabyte of data. Working with computer programmer Gabrielle Odowichuk, the artists then developed an algorithm that metamorphosed sound frequencies from the wetland recording into pure colour fields based on the spectrum of light. The recording and algorithm are the foundation for the soundscape visualization installation being presented at VIVO.

Spectators enter the Wetland installation to witness the unpredictable flow of sounds and colours in a strict correspondence the technology makes possible. The spontaneity and vitality of the wetland creatures are revealed as the twenty-four-hour sound loop follows a full cycle of the circadian rhythm. Three critical pathways are explored: soundscape and its importance to environmental awareness; visualization and its connection to traditions of landscape and colour field painting; and algorithms and their impact on authorship.

The Wetland Project commemorates the 50-year anniversary of the founding of the World Soundscape Project (WSP) by Canadian writer and composer R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University. WSP members initiated the discipline of Acoustic Ecology by studying, through active listening, the relationship between humans and their environment.

The artists will lead a soundwalk through Still Creek, followed by a lunch and brief talk about their work on May 6.

Details and required registration found here: https://wetland-soundwalk-lunch.eventbrite.ca

Radio Broadcast, Monday, April 22 2018

Celebrate Earth Day 2019 with Vancouver Co-operative Radio’s third annual Wetland broadcast. Connect to the circadian rhythm of a Saturna Island marsh. The voices of creatures — frogs, birds, insects and more — take over the airwaves for this twenty-four-hour experience in “slow radio” created by artists Brady Marks and Mark Timmings.

Musical Performance, Saturday, April 28, 2018

Hear acclaimed vocal ensemble musica intima perform Wetland Senario, a new musical work comprised of sounds transcribed from field recordings of a Saturna Island marsh.

  1. Griffin Art Projects, 1174 Welch Street, North Vancouver, BC, 12 pm
  2. Griffin Art Projects, 1174 Welch Street, North Vancouver, BC, 4 pm
  3. Contemporary Art Gallery, 555 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC, 7:30 pm

Soundwalk, Lunch and Talk, Sunday, May 6, 2018

  1. Soundwalk along Still Creek with Brady Marks and Mark Timmings, 11 am
    Meet on the east side of Renfrew Street at East 14th Avenue, Vancouver, BC
  2. Lunch and Artist Talk with Brady Marks and Mark Timmings, 12:30 pm
    VIVO Media Arts Centre, 2625 Kaslo Street, Vancouver, BC

Presented by Vancouver New Music and VIVO Media Arts Centre

24-hour Exhibition, Sleepover and Breakfast, Friday, May 18 to Saturday, May 19, 2018

Spend the night camping in the Wetland installation. Bring a sleeping bag and pad. Fall asleep to the sound of singing frogs and awake to the dawn bird chorus. Breakfast and snacks will be provided.

  1. VIVO will open to the general public for extended hours, Friday 9 am to 11 pm and to registered sleepover participants, Friday 11 pm to Saturday 9 am
  2. VIVO Media Arts Centre, 2625 Kaslo Street, Vancouver, BC

Free event. Registration required for sleepover.

Wetland Project official website

"Wetland Project: Painting with Microphones" / VANDOCUMENT

Venue Accessibility

VIVO is located in the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in a warehouse space at 2625 Kaslo Street south of East Broadway at the end of E 10th. Transit line 9 stops at Kaslo Street on Broadway. From the bus stop, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight decline. The closest skytrain station is Renfrew Station, which is three blocks south-east of VIVO and has an elevator. From there, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight incline. There is parking available at VIVO, including wheelchair access parking. There is a bike rack at the entrance. The front entrance leads indoors to a set of 7 stairs to the lobby.

Wheelchair/Walker Access

A wheelchair ramp is located at the west side of the main entrance. The ramp has two runs: the first run is 20 feet long, and the second run is 26 feet. The ramp is 60 inches wide. The slope is 1:12. The ramp itself is concrete and has handrails on both sides. There is an outward swinging door (34 inch width) at the top of the ramp leading to a vestibule. A second outward swinging door (33 inch width) opens into the exhibition space. Buzzers and intercoms are located at both doors to notify staff during regular office hours or events to unlock the doors. Once unlocked, visitors can use automatic operators to open the doors.

Washrooms

There are two all-gender washrooms. One has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The other is a single room with a urinal and is wheelchair accessible: the door is 33 inches wide and inward swinging, without automation. The toilet has 11 inch clearance on the left side and a handrail.

To reach the bathrooms from the studio, exit through the double doors and proceed straight through the lobby and down the hall . Turn left, and the two bathrooms will be on your right side. The closest one has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The far bathroom is accessible.

About the 
Instructor
Mentor
Artist
(s):

Mark Timmings is a multidisciplinary artist who explores perceptions of place by appropriating data and enfolding them into the domain of art. He creates works that intimate an infinite and vital web of interconnecting natural cycles and human patterns by transforming field observations and aspects of science into aesthetic considerations and contemplative experiences. His bodies of work operate as conceptual machines that are driven by algorithmic systems. They are ultimately transferable and open-ended. Ongoing projects include Meteorologic (2010–), print works that conjoin grids and colour fields to track temperature patterns and personal memory; and The Tide Songbook (2012–), musical compositions that transform tidal predictions, moon phases and the solar calendar into illuminated scores and multilayered sonorous performance art. In 2014, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, under the direction of Jon Washburn, presented a performance of Mark Timmings and Stephen Morris’s algorithmic musical composition Narvaez Bay: Tidal Predictions for 2012 aboard Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s floating art installation Deadhead. The performance was commissioned by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. In 2015, an audio installation of Narvaez Bay, including Timmings’s monumental illuminated score and a recording of the Vancouver performance, was exhibited in Montreal at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.

Timmings is also a graphic designer specializing in visual arts and cultural projects. His design career spans over three decades and includes collaborations with artists, writers, curators and cultural institutions from across Canada. In 1991, Timmings served as a board member and director of communications for the Congress of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations in Montreal. From 1994 to 1997, he taught design and graphic standards at the Université du Québec (Outaouais). Timmings has received over 100 international awards for his publication designs. He has recently collaborated on artist book projects with Roy Arden, Hank Bull, Geoffrey Farmer and Etienne Zack.

Mark Timmings lives and works on Saturna Island, British Columbia, where he is a member of the local community choir.

Website

Brady Ciel Marks is the lead mentor for this project. She is a digital media artist who works with Sound, Light and Kinetics. She holds a Masters in Interactive Arts from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and an undergraduate degree with honours in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

In conjunction with VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), Brady received Innovations grant funding from the British Columbia Arts Council for the research and creation of a Volumetric Display Device that generates interactive 3D sculptural images using light. The device was presented at the 2015 International Symposium on Electronic Art and at Science World at Telus World of Science. As a graduate of Simon Fraser University taught by faculty including original members of the World Soundscape Project (WSP) including Hildegard Westerkamp. Recently she presented a 24 Hour broadcast of a Saturna Island Soundscape, on Earth Day in sync to local time as part of the Wetland Project. She is a frequent host of Soundscape on Co-op Radio, as well as a member of the Vancouver Electronic Ensemble and a DJ working under the alias of furiousgreencloud.

As a teacher, Brady has guest lectured in SFU’s School of Interactive Arts & Technology, Film Program, and School of Communication, where she also served as an external examiner. She has lead workshops in physical computing and digital media manipulation at VIVO Media Arts, where she also led the Still Creek Salmon Soundsmentorship in 2018.

Website
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About the 
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