#caveofsounds

In Dialogue | Tim Murray-Browne / Cave of Sounds

Can you give an overview of your project?

TMB: The Cave of Sounds is an interactive sound installation formed of a circle of eight original musical instruments, inspired by ideas of prehistoric people using music as a means to form a sense of collective identity. The instruments were all created to exist together as an ensemble, but were each made an individual over a period of ten months with regular meetings and jam sessions forming a key part of this process. As an exhibition, audience members are invited to experiment and play with the instruments and connect with others around them through making music.

I was really intrigued with how Cave of Sounds is something without structures yet is aware of community? That is at least the sense I had when observing and playing in the installation.

TMB: Yes, one of the ideas behind the Cave of Sounds is to dismantle the distinction between performer and audience to some extent. Like many things in our society, music has become a specialised activity performed by professionals and consumed by the masses. But for many (perhaps most) cultures throughout history, creating music is something a group does together rather than for the benefit of spectators.

Following on from this, I was intrigued by the remarks you made in the film for Cave of Sounds about prehistoric music making. Could you expand on this briefly and are there any references for the project?

TMB: A big inspiration behind the project was Werner Herzog's film The Cave of Forgotten Dreams that documents 30,000 year old paintings in the Chauvet cave, as well as the remains of ancient stone circles across the UK. I was also influenced by Christopher Small's ideas in Musicking, where he considers music as an activity rather than an artefact and the social consequences of this. These ideas resonated when we were first getting to know each other as a group, as well as theories about the evolution of birdsong - how bird species evolved to sing in different areas of the spectrum to make it easier for those within a single species to hear each other.

Additionally, I was interested in how individual sound artists / composers (if that is the correct terminology?) produce new instruments to be used within an environment that could be orchestral but, is obviously lacking in that formality. How do discussions work around how they blend together or is that even important? Are you a composer or a facilitator?

TMB: Creating instruments that fitted together was one of the biggest challenges of the project - particularly given the diversity of different sounds everyone in the group works with. It formed a big part of the process - every few weeks we would meet and listen to each other's work and different sound references people wanted to share. Any kind of musical collaboration involves a process of finding the balance between individual ideas and the sound of the ensemble, and seeing if we could do this with a set of original instruments was a key question we were exploring with the project. Even so, the final third or so of its development was mostly focused on improving the collective sound, both by modifying individual instruments and by increasing the scope of the networked component to keep them more in sync with regards to rhythm and harmony.

How do you define the word hack and how do you relate that back to Cave of Sounds?

TMB: I'm actually not that keen on the word myself as it's used to mean so many different things, although I'm composer in residence at the Music Hackspace so obviously I can't avoid it. However, I would say a key part of the stuff going on with the Music Hackspace is creating new music by using existing technology in original and personal ways. So perhaps, I would go with that. I think the personal element is key though.

Early on with the Cave of Sounds, it was occasionally referred to as the Hacked Ensemble which captures the fact that each instrument is an original personal technological artefact from a different musician or artist. But calling them 'hacked instruments' also seems to imply that they were hobbled together last weekend which is definitely not true! Fundamental to the Cave of Sounds has been the gradual co-evolution of the different instruments that form it and the formation of a single unified work out of many individual's personal practice.

How did you find the process of working within / with the Barbican Centre?

TMB: Architecturally, the Barbican remains one of my favourite buildings in London and it's been amazing to be there. I was really happy to get the cavernous lower ground floor with the stairs leading down to the installation. It doesn't look like a cave but the lighting, concrete multitude of surrounding passageways creates much of the same essence.