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A Space for Sound - The Arches Sound Project

Usue Ruiz Arana and Dan Hill's "The Old Pottery Murmurations" project features in the first week of the sound installation

10 January 2023

A Space for Sound – The Arches Sound Project is a listening space located in the historic centre of Newcastle University. The space brings together temporary sound pieces from a range of practitioners and researchers working across the University. 

This series of temporary sound installations is a project led by the Institute of Creative Arts Practice and brings our Arches to life throughout the term – read on to find out what you can expect to hear as you walk through campus. 

Each piece will be played on the hour, with the first iteration at 6am and the final iteration at 10pm.

During the first week of the project, January 9th-15th, the project will feature The Old Pottery Murmurations installation from Dr Usue Ruiz Arana and Dan Hill.

The Old Pottery Murmurations

The Old Pottery is a Scheduled Ancient Monument in Corbridge, a former family-owned fireclay pottery that produced a wide range of goods including firebricks, pipes and tiles, from the 1840s to 1930s.  The complex includes two imposing bottle kilns, and houses a cottage, home to the Goodalls, who are currently devising possibilities for the site with the help of a team of architects, landscape architects…and listeners. 

The Old Pottery is also our sonic laboratory where we are testing the different roles that listening and sounding can play in landscape design; from listening as a vehicle to unearth the identity of a place, to listening with non-human others and designing from an established kinship.  The soundings included in this piece move us away from the familiar comforts of top-down mapping, planning and drawing, which, although useful tools for any spatial designer, can also provide a distance from the experiential aspects of a place. Instead, we work from an internal position, listening and sounding outwardly to narrate the Old Pottery’s story experientially. These experimental soundings neither document the site nor represent landscape proposals, rather, they are situated in between; speculations that helps us relate to the site and its inhabitants whilst we envisage potential futures.

Find out more about the Arches Sound project