‘Soundness’ is an online collection of digital artworks created by artists and visitors to 20-21 Visual Arts Centre.
Soundness builds on 20-21’s award winning presentation of Luke Jerram’s Of Earth and Sky project, where poetry by the local community was written large across the landscape of Scunthorpe. In this digital programme we have continued that local involvement, and the themes of home and wellbeing.
The project has been curated by four young digital ambassadors with links to Scunthorpe. You can find out a bit more about Rio, Henry, Harry and Bradley here.
The works created explore different digital worlds through interactive visuals, interactive writing and sound. We are pleased to share the works by Stuart Faromarz Batchelor, Pamela Crowe and Lucy Cunningham. Find out about the artists as you scroll down this page. Thank you to the online visitors to 20-21 Visual Arts Centre who created drawings, sounds and creative writing for our programme. We invite you to explore and maybe experiment with digital creativity yourself.
- Shape of Scunthorpe by Stuart Faromarz Batchelor
- Tactile Optic Shock by Pamela Crowe
- Paint Mixing to the Sea by Lucy Cunningham
- Explore your Digital Creativity
Shape of Scunthorpe
by Stuart Faromarz Batchelor
Stuart Faromarz Batchelor’s ‘Shape of Scunthorpe’ project incorporates shapes of Scunthorpe contributed by digital visitors to the gallery. These digital drawn shapes were taken from online maps and street views of Scunthorpe. Interact with Shape of Scunthorpe to create your own digital drawing from the shapes created and save your designed pieces. Thank you to people who submitted their shapes and the reasons for choosing them.
Click here to view Shapes of Scunthorpe full screen.
The interactive is inspired by shapes from:
- Kingsway Nature Reserve
- Scunthorpe Central Library
- Henderson Avenue
- West Common Lane bridge
- Scunthorpe High Street
- The Close, Cottage Beck Rd
- Gallagher Retail Park
- Sands Venue Stadium (Formerly Glanford Park)
- Church Square – Library Building
- Behind Melior Academy
- Windsor Crescent
- Ashbyville
- UCNL
- Laneham St
- The Pods
- Scunthorpe Central
- Roads connecting Lincoln Gardens and Revesby Avenue
- Edwards Rd
- Ennerdale Lane
- Steelworks – Turbo Blower tower
- Knight’s Court
- Scunthorpe Steel Works
- Connaught Rd
- Central Park Entrance
- Frodingham Grange
- Lincon Gardens
- Lakeside Drive/ Silica Lodge
- Scunthorpe High Street
- Lindsey Lodge hospice
- High Leys Road
- Scunthorpe Market- old market now demolished
- Central Park
- Scunthorpe Central Mosque and Madani Masjid
- Westerdale Rd
About the Artist
Stuart Batchelor is a software artist who combines computer graphics and creative coding with drawing and painting to make visuals, applications and installations.
Using textures, dynamic compositions and vibrant colours, Batchelor’s style explores the space between computer and human, gestural and algorithmic. He applies his knowledge of building experimental software to new mediums and collaborations. His work often centres around the subconscious, creativity, modernity and our emotional response to art, patterns and structure.
Batchelor also publishes research on enhancing creativity with computation – developing tools and technology alongside art that aid in the expressive potential of computers.
Instagram: @sfbatchelor_
Tactile Optic Shock
by Pamela Crowe
Tactile Optic Shock was developed from workshops led by Pamela Crowe, an artist working with text. When you read the text you will get a sense of place. Take your time as the stories created by visitors take shape in your mind. The spaces described were inspired by the application ‘What3Words’, which defines space and place with three random words. Pamela shapes directions and we move around our imagined space, returning when we feel ready.
Click on the image above to enter Tactile Optic Shock.
While exploring the work, wait for the linking words in bold to emerge – there is a small delay
The poems created in this interactive are by:
Julie Surname, Lennie Varvarides, Leanne Garzi, Julie Devon, Julie Corbett, Casey Cousins, Stephen Thompson-White, Sarah Drury, Sam Hewson, Rachael Patterson-Cooper, Bradley Mell, Amy B Garratt, Kat Spence, Graeme Williams, Paige Hickson, Pamela Crowe and Sam Metz.
How to do creative writing using word prompts
Perhaps you’ve been inspired by the poetry in Tactile Optic Shock to have a go at creative writing yourself, but don’t know quite how to get started. In this short video Pamela talks about the creative processes involved in using What3Words to spark originality in your writing.
Podcast
Digital Ambassador Bradley Mell recorded this podcast with Pamela Crowe as she was working on Tactile Optic Shock. Listen to her talking with Bradley about what poetry means to her, the background to the project and how this collaborative work has come together.
Soundness Podcast: Pamela Crowe in conversation with Bradley Mell
About the Artist
Pamela Crowe is an artist and writer based in Leeds. Her work uses text, photography, video and live art to explore the act of writing, power, and the self-fashioning and projection of identity via text, performance and voice.
Her work often involves co-created projects where the process and exchange are valued greater than or equal to material form. Her work has featured in The Poetry Society’s Poetry News, The Poetry Archive, Leeds Museums & Galleries, Leeds Summer Group Show and Soanyway Magazine. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2019, longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2020 and her pamphlet The Bell Tower is forthcoming with The Emma Press. She’s currently collaborating on Personism, a dual-mono video and image exchange with artist alabamathirteen and writer Rebecca Faulkner. She is Lead Artist on #23PRESS, commissioned by LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture.
Instagram: @crowe_pamela
Paint Mixing to the Sea
by Lucy Cunningham
We asked artist Lucy to draw together visitor submitted sounds from in and around their homes. The curated sounds connect us to a sense of place. Some of the sounds are recognisable, some of them make us think. Lucy has created a text work that describes the sounds submitted by the participants. Perhaps you could listen to the sounds with and without the text. How does the text change the way that you listen?
Listening time: 13 mins 38 seconds
Pieces and contributors, in order of play:
- Stove – Rio Rawlings
- Stepper – Rosi Smith
- Piano Stool – Rio Rawlings
- Merce’s Kitchen – Merce
- Bathroom Fan – Josh Philpott
- 2/ Steel Works – Brad Mell
- Rob Singing – Luka Abeywickrama
- Paint Mixing – Luka Abeywickrama
- Hungry Tummy – Georgia Taylor
- Cat Asleep – Amani Talheth-Fell
- Lamp, solar panel, motor, wood – Sunny Vowles
- MONO-010 – Henry Cottam
- MONO-007 – Henry Cottam
- Beautiful Lidl – Amani Talheth-Fell
- MONO-004 – Henry Cottam
- Bath Water – Rosi Smith
- Toilet Refill – Luka Abeywickrama
- The Sea – Isabelle Pead
- Ironing The Peaks – Lucy Rose Cunningham
Linked Event: Listening to Soundscapes – a guided drawing workshop (Online event)
19 May 6.30-8pm FREE
Responding to Lucy Cunningham’s soundscape ‘Paint Mixing to the Sea’, join artist Sam Metz via Zoom for an online guided drawing exercise. We will consider how we might interpret sound through exploratory mark-making, using line and shape to create abstract forms that relate to our listening. You will need paper and pencil
Artist Sam Metz is the curator for 20-21 Visual Arts Centre’s Soundness programme of original digital works.
Advance booking through ArtTickets essential to receive the link to join the Zoom session.
How to create your own Soundscape
If you like Paint Mixing to the Sea and would like to have a go at making something similar yourself, Lucy has written a how-to guide. Download her instructions and see what you can create.
Podcast
Bradley Mell find out more about Paint Mixing to the Sea in this podcast recorded with Lucy Cunningham. Listen to her talking with Bradley about why she works with sound and how her soundscape work was created.
Soundness Podcast: Lucy Cunningham in conversation with Bradley Mell
About the Artist
Lucy Cunningham is an artist and writer based in Leeds. Her practice looks at the performative use of audio-visual art. The works she makes emerge as performances or soundscapes utilising voice and movement, and as written words in the form of publications and print. Exploring language, she seeks to use voices and field recordings to reflect the mutuality between people and the spaces they dwell in. Spaces and bodies interact as a feedback loop, collecting and exhaling each other’s rhythm. Memories are activated, and connections between people and sites of emotion or action are formed.
https://cargocollective.com/lurose
Instagram: @lurosecunningham
Published pamphlet: https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/lucy-rose-cunningham-for-mary-marie-maria
Explore your Digital Creativity
In this section, our artists and Digital Ambassadors share some of the methods that they have used in this project, and other ways to explore your creativity using digital technology. Why not have a go at recording a podcast; create your own interactive story or poem; try mixing recorded sounds creatively; or perhaps create a digital illustration based on creative writing. Watch this space for new resources as they are added.
First up is Digital Ambassador, Bradley Mell with how to plan a podcast.
In this next video, Harry Barnes, another of our Digital Ambassadors, shows you how to create digital drawings using creative writing as a prompt.
Meet the Digital Ambassadors
Our small team of Digital Ambassadors were gathered together following a call out on social media and our website for people who had an enthusiasm for digital creativity and were interested in art. Those who answered the call out have brought with them a breadth of knowledge and experience which has been invaluable in the project. Here they introduce themselves.
Bradley Mell
Through training with the National Youth Theatre in 2015 to graduating with a Master’s degree in English from the University of Lincoln in 2017, the creative process is something that has always interested me.
Despite this background in text and performance, over the last few years I have made a shift towards a more digital process. Since 2018 I have hosted and edited over 200 episodes of the Iron Bru Podcast, focusing on Scunthorpe United, this has allowed me to interview people at the very top of the game, including International managers and Champions League players. Within the last year I have also written and produced my first short film and will next be acting as the Digital Supervisor for the National Student Drama Festival in April for their 66th year.
Harry Barnes
Hello, I’m Harry (he/they), a queer creative from Scunthorpe now residing in Leeds. My art practice mostly revolves around the creation of off the wall creatures, my experience with mental illness, and exploring the often overlooked joy in small things- through various mediums such as illustration, video, and needle felt. Experimentation and childlike expression are very important in what I do- the most accurate description of my art can be summed up by just two words; Art Clown.
Find me on Instagram: @harry.gloom
Henry Cottam
Henry Cottam is a visual artist based between Scunthorpe and Leeds, working across sculpture, moving image and collaboration. For the past three years his artistic practice has explored Scunthorpe’s steel industry & history, inspired by his experience working at the site since 2018. Through methods of documentation, excavation, archiving and material investigation, he explores new ways of experiencing Scunthorpe’s steel industry and preserving it’s unique history.
Recent selected work & projects include; Showing Up (serf, Leeds 2020); In-Habit (Index Festival & Yorkshire Sculpture International, 2019); Yoo-Toh-Pee-A (2019); Remembering Mabgate Townhall (2019); Rebuilding Magbate Townhall and Mabgate Annual Festival (2019). He is currently working on a new body of work supported by Arts Council DYCP grant.
He is a founding member of Freehold Projects, an artist-led group which previously operated a free and inclusive project space situated in Leeds City Centre.
Rio Rawlins
Digital access has allowed me to give direction to my exploration of creative ideas, whether scientific, philosophical, musical, artistic or any other manifestations of creativity. I haven’t felt bound by geography, despite being confined to my own very small, physical world; the democratisation and globalisation of information has encouraged me to confront complex and nuanced ideas with more rigour than I perhaps would have if the world had continued at its previous pace. Digital communication has allowed my relationships to grow in ways I would never have given myself time for. And while this has allowed a great deal of personal, emotional growth, it has de facto provided distractions from studies, and created a very special, small world around me.
As we move out of staying at home, allowing the digital and physical worlds to enhance each other, I have begun to recognise a healthier balance between the two. As I finish school and move on to exciting new opportunities, the digital has allowed me to have a greater depth of understanding of many aspects of my life and realise ambitions I previously wouldn’t have had.
The Soundness digital programme is presented with the support of Arts Council England.
