Euphonia is based on the premise that when we engage in friendly interactions – chitchat with friends – we unconsciously make music through interlocking rhythms, pitch and tone. Supported by The Wellcome Trust and working with a team of world experts on psychology, music and the brain, Smith is extracting this music of social communication to create an interactive sound work. As part of this process the artist has created a new form of musical scoring to share the sound of human relationships.
In the lead up to the exhibition Smith is developing her research through public facing experiments and workshops, working with many of the long term communities of interest who visit Bluecoat on a daily basis – the parents and babies who come here for weekly sessions, visitors talking informally in the café and the choirs and groups who rehearse here in the evenings, including Liverpool’s Choir With No Name set up for pe ople affected by homelessness and marginalisation and 20 Stories High an award winning youth theatre group. The full civic, social and artistic breadth of Bluecoat as an arts centre is indirectly captured in these recordings. Also working further afield, the artist is creating workshops and online experiments to capture and understand the musicality of social interactions in a range of languages.
The exhibition is the first of its kind in Liverpool and has been developed through collaborative research with Professor Robin Dunbar (University of Oxford), Professor Lauren Stewart (Goldsmiths) Professor Ian Cross (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Victoria Williamson (University of Sheffield). An events programme accompanying the exhibition will share the research behind the making of the work and invite the public to undertake their own vocal experiments and add their voices to the show.
Mary Cloake, Chief Executive, Bluecoat said, “ We are delighted at Bluecoat to continue to break new ground through artistic and cultural commissions. After the Philosopher in Residence (2015) and Sociologist in Residence (2017), both unique ventures for a UK arts centre, we turn our attention to the music of communication through the groundbreaking work of British artist Emma Smith and collaborating academics. This exhibition is the first of its kind at Bluecoat and in Liverpool.”
Marie-Anne McQuay, Head of Programme, Bluecoat said, “ Bluecoat was originally founded by artists in the early twentieth century who were interested in establishing a centre for ‘Art, Literature, Science for Adult Instruction and the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’. This interdisciplinary spirit of enquiry continues today with Emma Smith’s exhibition Euphonia, which also provides a partial sonic portrait of the communities of interest who visit Bluecoat on a daily basis”.
Biography: Emma Smith (1981) is a British artist currently based as a studio resident at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, and works internationally. She has a performance based social practice, creating public platforms for experimentation and research through site-specific actions, events and installations.
Recent projects include: touring exhibition material / rearranged / to / be with Siobhan Davies Dance that premiered at the Barbican before traveling to Tramway, Glasgow; Whitworth, Manchester; and Bluecoat, Liverpool (2017) ; Hunch – a major public performance work and installation in Cambridge city centre (2017) ; The Whistling Orchestra – that premiered at Primary, Nottingham before traveling to Nottingham Contemporary and Wysing Polyphonic Music Festival (2016) and which has subsequently won an award to be re-commissioned in the USA ; as well as projects for Art on the Underground, London (2017), Tate Exchange, London (2017), MAAS, Sydney Australia (2017), Delfina Foundation, London (2016), B-A-U, Italy (2016), Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2015), Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland (2015), and Arnolfini, Bristol (2015) , among many others.
