Sit with us for a moment and remember

Pinchbeck, Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8444-5549 (2021) Sit with us for a moment and remember. [Performance] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Drawing on images from the University of Nottingham's archives, Sit with us for a moment and remember (2021) is a 45 minute immersive sound experience that involves audio walks around a lake and tracks to be experienced sitting on four benches installed with plaques titled: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Each track explores the different seasons and how the landscape changes over time and uses DIY audio AR technology by placing audiences in archival images taken from their perspective via their mobile phone. Music creates an evocative ambient space for the listener to inhabit whilst they are directed to the surrounding environment and its history. Drawing attention to, and animating, different views across the lake and the way benches are often associated with acts of remembering, the piece invites its audience to encounter the history of the lake, to inhabit the past, to reflect on the present and to look forward to the future. Commissioned by Lakeside Arts to commemorate the centenary of the park, Michael Pinchbeck (theatre-maker) worked with Chris Cousin (composer), to create content that could immerse the audience in the site’s history, its digital archive and the soundscape. During the pandemic, the piece was designed to be accessed via QR codes on visitors’ phones and they could look at images of the site, taken from where they sat, whilst listening to the immersive audio narrative experience. The project has now been downloaded over 1000 times and has increased access and engagement with archives, whilst also enabling an audience to experience a form of storytelling they may not have encountered before. Initially designed in this way because theatres were closed during the pandemic, this ‘one-to-one performance’ has led to Cousin and Pinchbeck creating new site-specific audio experiences. Inspired by artists like Janet Cardiff and Adam Alston’s notion of immersive theatre as an ‘experience machine’, the portfolio proposes that this digital heritage model, fire-forged in the pandemic, has far-reaching potential. Sit with us for a moment and remember More information: https://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/visit-us/explore-the-campus-highfields-park/Sit-With-Us-For-a-Moment-and-Remember.html Video: https://vimeo.com/595461279