VIV CORRINGHAM

singing - walking - listening

Biography
Recordings
Shadow-walks
Contact

Viv Corringham is a British vocalist and sound artist, currently based in Minnesota, USA, who has worked internationally since the early 1980s. Her work includes music performances, audio installations and soundwalks.  She is interested in exploring people’s special relationship with familiar places and how that links to an interior landscape of personal history, memory and association.

In 2006-2007 works appeared in MCAD Gallery Minneapolis, Grand Marais Art Colony MN, Women in New Music Festival, Fullerton CA, Spark Electronic Music Festival Minneapolis MN, Rochester Art Center MN, Soundworks Festival, Cork, Ireland, and Midsummer Festival, Cobh, Ireland. Her work has been heard in Britain on BBC radio, Resonance FM radio and Channel 4 TV, and in the US on WFMU, WLUW, WMSE, MPR and other NPR stations.

Articles about her have appeared in Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), and For Those Who have Ears (Ireland). She has been artist-in-residence at Sirius Art Centre and Art Trail (Ireland), Art Colony (Minnesota) and Cal State University (California). She received a McKnight Composer Fellowship in 2006.

You can listen to extracts of two sound works at mnartists.org .

Sound Replaced - MCAD Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, USA, June – August 2007

A sound installation of ten white boxes, each containing a unique composition heard by raising the lid. Objects inside the boxes were based on what was found on walks with local people in different parts of the US during a 2006 McKnight Composer Fellowship year.

Visitors were invited to open and close lids as they wished, making new and changing compositions from the overlapping mix of sounds.

Shadow-walks in Grand Marais – Grand Marais Art Colony, MN, May 2007

An installation featuring the composition “At The End Of The Road” and a display of found objects based on a two-week residency in Grand Marais.

(See Shadow-walks)

Women in New Music Festival - Cal State University Fullerton, CA, USA, March 2007

A lecture/ performance at the festival to present the work “In The Machine” which derived from work with students and recordings made during a composer residency at CSUF.

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Headphone Festivals - Rochester Art Center, MN, USA, August 2006 and 2007, and at Spark Festival, Minneapolis, MN, February 2007
Curated by Viv Corringham and Scott Stulen, the inaugural annual Headphone Festival at the Rochester Art Center was the first event of its kind in the Midwest and perhaps the United States. Experienced entirely through headphones, musicians (including Viv Corringham) performed original works, ranging from field recordings, live improvisation and samples, plus video clips. The audience brought their own headphones.

Sounding The Town- Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Ireland, June 2006
A collaboration with leading Irish sound artist Danny McCarthy resulting from a two-month artist residency. More than 100 people from Cobh ranging from eight to eighty years of age were asked the question: If you had a magic wand, how would you transform your town? Their answers and the unique sounds of the town were combined with improvisations and compositions to create an engaging sound installation with a built-in random factor to ensure that no two visits sounded the same.  In an associated walking performance, 8 people carried the sounds through Cobh, making the town whisper with voices as this living installation took to the streets.
 

Shadow-walks (solo exhibition) - Rochester Art Center, Minnesota, USA, November 2005 – January 2006
An audio-exhibition based on walks with six Minnesotans- 3 in Rochester and 3 in Minneapolis. 12 different soundworks were audible through headphones, each piece combining conversation, singing and environmental sound.  Objects found on each walk were displayed in evidence bags.

Shadow-walks in Cobh - Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Ireland, September, 2005
This offsite installation project was located at 4 listening posts in different sites around Cobh.  The project was the culmination of interactions with residents of Cobh during an artist residency in April, 2005. The work combined personal reminiscences with other audio clips giving the audience a chance to participate in their own experience of these shadow walks. (See Shadow-walks)

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Shadow-walks in Cork - Art Trail Soundworks Festival, Cork, Ireland, June 2005
An artist residency in October 2004 led to the creation of audio-walks in which individuals could follow a route that had been selected by a Cork resident. Each walker received a portable CD player, a route guide and a set of plastic bags in which they could collect objects on the journey. They were also invited to contribute their response to the walk. Responses and found objects were displayed, creating an expanding visual exhibition. The audio-walks are archived in the public library, Cork. (See Shadow-walks)

Pipes Have Ears, 6000 Chairs Live Art Festival, London, UK, 2004
A sound sculpture based on the sonic potential of drainpipes for both listening through and sounding, built in collaboration with Dave Laurence and commissioned by 6000 Chairs, a 3-day festival held in the grounds of Crystal Palace Park, London. Audiences were encouraged to interact with the sculpture. It was re-commissioned for the Colourscape Music Festival in 2005, and now resides permanently in Exeter, UK, at a school for the blind.

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BIOGRAPHY

Viv Corringham is a British vocalist and sound artist, currently based in Minnesota, USA, who has worked internationally since the early 1980s. Her work includes music performances, audio installations and soundwalks.  She is interested in exploring people’s special relationship with familiar places and how that links to an interior landscape of personal history, memory and association.

Her educational background and awards include an MA Sonic Art with Distinction from Middlesex University, London, England and a BA Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University, England. She is a certified teacher of Deep Listening, having studied with composer Pauline Oliveros. She is a 2006 McKnight Composer Fellow. Other grants and awards have come from the English and Irish Arts Councils, Jazz Services, Millennium Funding, London Arts Board, Chisenhale Awards, Creative Partnerships and Awards for All.

Performances at Music and Sound festivals:

2^nd Annual Headphone Festival – Rochester, MN 2007

Women in New Music Festival – Cal State, Fullerton, CA 2007

Spark Festival of Electronic Music – Minneapolis, MN 2007

Deep Listening Convergence (with Pauline Oliveros) - Concert Series, NY 2007

1^st Annual Headphone Festival – Rochester, MN 2006

Women’s Electro-acoustic Listening Room - Cal State, Fullerton, CA 2006

Soundworks - Cork, Ireland 2004, 2005, 2006 & 2007

Strange Strolls - Fremantle, Australia 2005,

Heritage Festival - Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Ireland 2005

Colourscape Music Festival - UK 2003, 2004 & 2005,

Drift Sound Art Festival - Scotland 2004,

Placard Headphone Festival - London, UK 2004,

6000 Chairs Festival of Live Art - London, UK 2004,

Hearing Place Sound Art Festival - Melbourne, Australia 2003,

San Francisco Alt - 2003,

Freedom of the City Improvised Music Festival - London, UK 2003,

London International Festival of Theatre - 2003.

Exhibitions and Installations:

Sound Replaced – MCAD Gallery, Minneapolis, MN 2007

Shadow-walks in Grand Marais – Grand Marais Art Colony, MN 2007

Shadow-walks – Rochester Art Center, MN 2006

Sounding the Town - Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Ireland 2006

Shadow-walks - Sound 323, London, UK 2005

Shadow-walks in Cobh – Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Ireland 2005

Shadow-walks in Cork – Art Trail Soundworks Festival, Cork, Ireland 2005

Pipes Have Ears – 6000 Chairs Live Art Festival, London, UK 2004

Published articles:

Urban Song Paths: Place Resounding, Organised Sound, Cambridge University Press, UK 2006

Singing-Walking-Listening, For Those Who Have Ears, Art Trail, Ireland 2005

Vocal Strolls, Musicworks magazine #83, Canada 2003

Presentations:

AIS2 Intersections Conference, University of Regina, Canada, 2007 – lecture

Women in New Music Festival, Cal State University, US, 2007 – lecture/ performance

Grand Marais Art Colony, US, 2007 – artist talk

Tuesday Salon, American Composers Forum, Minneapolis, US, 2007 – artist talk

Sound Art Class, University of Minnesota, US, 2007 – lecture

Sound and Anthropology Conference, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK, 2006 – lecture

Sound and Place Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, 2005 – lecture

Radio and TV broadcasts include Vocal Strolls, a solo project in which she sang live with the London soundscape weekly on London Resonance fm, 2003, British BBC Radio 3’s Mixing It, 2005, BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, 2005, and British Channel 4 TV’s Richard and Judy Show, 2004. In the US, she was a featured guest on London Underground, broadcast on WFMU and WMSE radio stations. Her music and soundworks have been played frequently in Europe and the US.

Shadow-walks were broadcast weekly on London Resonance fm, 2005, and on WFHB radio in Indiana, 2005. Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a feature on a local shopping mall Shadow-walk in March 2005: http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/03/28_baxtera_corringham/

Collaborations in the realm of experimental and improvised music include Pauline Oliveros, Gino Robair, Milo Fine, Mike Cooper, Torsten Muller, Pat Thomas, Eddie Prevost, Peter Cusack, Ansuman Biswas, Lawrence Casserley, Maggie Nicols, Lol Coxhill and Paul Burwell. She has also collaborated with visual artists, filmmakers and dancers.  

As a workshop leader for community groups, activities include a site-specific sound project in which 8-year-old students investigated listening through recording the sounds of their London school, UK residencies with Colourscape, the multi-chambered walk-in sculpture of colour and light, in which improvisations and electronic soundscapes were created with young people, and Deep Listening workshops held in Ireland, UK and US for children, adults and seniors to encourage awareness of everyday sounds and the benefits of active listening.

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Recordings

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Shadow-walks

James Joyce wrote that places remember events, and I found that idea very interesting- that everything that happens leaves traces that we might be able to sense. I wondered if it was only the large events that we call history that places remember, or if they also remember the small events of ordinary lives.  If a person throughout a lifetime walks through certain places over and over again, along the same route, does that ground retain traces of the person’s own history and memories? This question led me to the project I call Shadow-walks.  It is an attempt to make a person’s traces, their shadow, audible.

The process of a Shadow-walk is reasonably straightforward.  I request to be taken on a special walk with an individual, a walk that has been repeated many times and has distinct meaning or significance for that person. An initial walk with the person along their selected route, in which environmental sounds and conversations are recorded, is followed by my solo walk in which I attempt to sense my previous companion’s tracks on the walk and to make audible their memories and feelings through improvised singing in the location. Recordings are later combined and edited to become the final work, the Shadow-walk.

Shadow-walks have been disseminated as audio-walks through which other people could follow the route and add their own traces and memories, as listening posts at public spaces in a town, or in an art gallery via headphones, along with objects found on the street while walking.

Found Objects

As I follow the person’s route, I collect what I find there. I was inspired to start collecting by the work of the British walking artist, Richard Long.  His walks are rural so he collects stones and mud and natural things.  But I walk mainly in urban areas so what I find is usually debris and litter.  Sometimes these objects seem poignant and relevant to the walker. For example, on a walk in which a historian had spoken about the hidden layers of history we walk through but often do not see, I found a length of film, something recorded but also invisible to the naked eye. These easily ignored objects exist as traces that others left behind, as if allowing the environment to remember that they were there.

The first Shadow-Walk project- Cork, Ireland

During my three- week residency in Cork in October 2004, seven people led me on walks.

In June 2005 I returned with a series of audio-walks in which members of the public could choose to follow one of these routes selected by an inhabitant of Cork as  “special” in some way. 

Each Shadow-Walker received a portable CD player, a leaflet on their selected route, an invitation to contribute words, drawings or other responses to the walk, and a set of plastic bags in which to collect “found objects” on the journey. These responses and objects were shown in the space, (the post office) along with those made and collected by me, and created an ever-increasing visual documentation and display. They prompted a great deal of interest from people calling in to buy a stamp.  An article on this work appeared in For Those Who Have Ears, an Art Trail publication.

I am delighted that the central library’s music department have archived the entire collection of Cork Shadow-walks and so they will be available to the public permanently.

Here are some comments made by participants:

In one and the same second to be in the past, in the present and a little bit in the future too.  Fascinated and grateful.  Thea

Wonderful project, I really enjoyed listening to walk/sound piece and taking part in the sharing of memories. Maryann

This project makes visible/audible the liminal spaces, poetic spaces that are always around/ within but rarely articulated.  Beautiful work. Molly

What was is gone, just traces of memory.  I felt close to the memories of old Cork.  Max

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Contact: vivdc@aol.com