Field Trip to Bervie Brow Research Station
Workshop hosts: Louise K Wilson with David Chapman
Facilitators: John Levack Drever and Helen Frosi
Friday 31 March - Sunday 02 April 2023
This fieldtrip offers an exciting opportunity to spend time in a small group exploring a variety of richly and contextually resonant environments. We will be based at Bervie Brow, a 28-acre research field site and creative habitat at a historic Cold War radar and listening station on the north-east coast of Scotland. It was built in the 1950s as an RAF Rotor early warning radar station, and later used by the US Naval Security Group as a listening station, and finally by the British Army as an emergency communications centre. The large underground bunker on site is a unique and distinctive environment to consider sonic traces, acoustic phenomena and the palimpsests of Cold War sites.
We will be spending time undertaking group and individual work: engaging in listening, recording (visual and auditory) activities - with plenty of time for discussion and presenting ideas and material. While we will primarily be based at Bervie Brow, we will be making use of the locale with trips to the Craigiebarns ROC site; Wormit Reservoir or Cupar Silos (TBC) and to the coastal area near Bervie Brow.
This field trip is open to CHASE Studentship holders and all Arts and Humanities PhD doctoral researchers at CHASE institutions.
AuralDiversities III
An interdisciplinary programme addressing the ‘auraldiverse turn’ in Arts and Humanities research and theory, questioning how and what we hear, what we listen to and why, as situated within our contemporary milieu and its associated crises.
These multimodal sessions trouble accepted norms in audio technology, sound culture and Western epistemologies and question the extent of human perception, our relation in and through the vibratory world, and whether hearing and listening is ever an individual act.
Research Strand: Place
For the past few years, many of us have paused our fieldwork or reconfigured methods by practising at a distance. For some, our domestic situations have become the in situ of the field, unavoidably blurring the “out-there” with the “in-here”. This workshop is a wonderful occasion to get back into the field and to share and be guided on sonic methods, through exploring a number of subterranean locations that are resonant with meaning and affect.
How to participate:
Please sign up via this eventbrite link, selecting the relevant ticket type: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/auraldiversities-place-field-trip-to-bervie-brow-research-station-tickets-570036854577
Send a 200-word expression of interest to helenfrosi[at]mac[dot]com by 10 March 2023.
You will receive an email confirmation with travel schedules and locations thereafter.