Bank Street Arts

A new work by resident artist Ian Baxter, revealing the sounds of building.

‘Listening to the Building’ is the first work of Ian’s residency at Bank Street. His practice involves creating gradually evolving soundscapes that subtly effect the environments in which they are placed. His work will be reflexive in nature, using the character of the spaces in Bank Street to shape the work created during his residency and in return using the work to re-create the spaces themselves. In this piece, Ian uses contact microphones to listen in on hidden sounds made by pipes, windows and other resonant surfaces; these sounds will then create a sound installation in one of the Basement galleries, where a continually evolving musical piece – played by the building itself – can be heard.

Baxter, who lives in Sheffield and is studying for an MA in Sonic Art, has been composing and recording in an experimental fashion since he was a child, making collages of guitars with his Amiga 500 and sampler, and carrying out primitive overdubbing experiments by linking 2 tape decks together. Around 2001 he found his main inspiration – Brian Eno and his ambient experiments (particularly Discreet Music and Music for Airports). Picking up on these influences led Baxter to a whole world of experimental music, including Cage, Feldman, Reich, Young and others, which shifted the artist’s musical interests away from traditional rock instrumentation and towards creating gradually changing soundscapes made with sound materials mostly assembled and manipulated in the studio. Discussing his process Baxter says: ‘I often begin with some kind of framework, deriving tones by chance, exploring a certain tuning or a chord progression. In this respect I see my work as composed rather than improvised.’

The results of his efforts to compose the melody of Bank Street Arts will be presented during the private view – on 18^th of November, 2010, from 6 pm to 8 pm.