Siân Lyn Hutchings & The Noematic Collective present COBRA, a brand new workshop that draws from the work of experimental composer John Zorn, fostering an acute awareness of our surrounding sonic ecologies and the inherent musicality of day-to-day objects. 

Using the Bold Tendencies site as a base to generate experimental compositions, objects will be chosen by The Noematic Collective for their predominantly visual function. These objects will then be transformed into instruments, changing the way we perceive those objects into sonic forms. 

Following John Zorn’s 1988 album ‘Cobra’, we will generate a composition with participants using visual references as symbols to conduct with. The workshop will look to foreground our sonic awareness of objects and build on alternative ways of understanding daily experience, particularly within a museum context.

Without the prerequisite of formal training, our participants will organise sounds around themselves through experimental conducting techniques, providing them with the ability to remediate the surrounding soundscape of their day-to-day lives.

This workshop will be held in response to the larger project title of Siân Lyn Hutchings and The Noematic Collective’s Bold Tendencies 2018 commission: ‘The Dominant Eye’. 

Siân Lyn Hutchings (b. 1994) 
Siân Lyn Hutchings is an artist concerned with understanding environments through the process of ‘active listening’. Her work approaches experience through an equality of the senses, using sonic representation to present site-specific work through a form of aural architecture. Through her work, Siân aims to highlight the importance of sonic understanding, acoustic ecologies, and our capacity to navigate experience through a multitude of senses beyond the West’s ocular-centric lens. 

The Noematic Collective
Founded by Siân Lyn Hutchings in 2016, are a collective who explore how we understand place, environments and social impacts through sound. The group currently consists of practicing artists, students and graduates from Arts University Bournemouth: Charles Pritchard, Georgie Ryan, Tobias Gumbrill, Oscar Lockey, Oliver Matich, Maddison Collymore and Siân Lyn Hutchings. They have exhibited in BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, The Drawing Studio, Arts University Bournemouth and have run sonic-based workshops at Goldsmiths University, Northumbria University and Arts University Bournemouth.