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Mantis Festival @Manchester

MANTIS first ever Audioguide Tour in Collaboration with noTours and Escoitar.org!
A project supported by CITIES@MANCHESTER and the MANTIS Festival at University of Manchester.
more details: http://mantisfestival.com/
This year´s Manchester Mantis Festival was dedicated to the concept of  ‘Sonic Meta-­‐ontology‘, encapsulating a number or newly created compositions, sonic events, plus binaural and ambisonics field-­‐recording trip
compositions across the City of Manchester and the North West of England. ‘Manchester’s Sonic Meta-­‐ontology‘ explores whether there is really such thing as a ‘Manchester sound’ and if so, what is it, can we experience it, and can we understand it? Substantive empirical investigation takes place in partnership with local agents and artists in the region, who are looking into the creation, identity, and survival of the real truth of Manchester’s Sound.
Fancy to know your city through sounds rather than visuals? Then this event was for you.
Six MANTIS composers and NOVARS Resident Artists have joined forces to create the first ever MANTIS Audioguide Tour with out platform: noTours!
 

This prototype experience (hopefully more to come!) have presented a number or compositions and soundwalks across Manchester’s city centre.
For example, a contemporary sound version of 1819’s ‘Peterloo’s massacre’, recreated by Mark Pilkington, a ‘Manchester bus sonic experience’ by Brona Martin, Ricardo Climent proposed you ‘Hu’, or how to solve a radiophonic puzzle in China Town, Manchester, a visit to Picadilly Gardens Experience to ‘improvise’ with non existing street musicians, and a ‘sonic walk alongside the Canal’ with composer Suk Jun Kim.

Let me giving you some more details about these works:

Peterloo (2011) Mark Pilkington (audioguide version)
A 5.1 acoustmatic piece based on the historic event that happened in Manchester UK in 1819. The piece is a sonic reflection of the events that unfolded on that fateful day in August. A peaceful social protest of 60,000 people gathered at St. Peters field Manchester to represent to the nation that ordinary people had the right and ability to discuss social reform issues in public. A political standpoint for citizenship, that would inspire a change that would give people the right to vote for political change. Unfortunately what transpired was a miscarriage of justice in which the local authority ordered troops to disperse the crowd resulting in the Peterloo Massacre in which 15
people lost their lives and 300 people were injured. The piece is in-­‐respect to the people who died on that day and the effects it had on changing the face of political balance within the UK as we know it today. With the help of historian Robert Poole, University of Cumbria and the Peoples Museum Manchester, I have managed to acquire historical factual information in order to accurately convey the sound events as they happened. The sonic material are transformations of recordings made at the recent students protest that happened in Manchester 2011.

‘Sonic walk alongside the Canal’ with composer Suk Jun Kim
I arrived at Telgwahve, which in the tongue of Hasla means “Weeping River”…
Manchester´s sonic experience by Brona Martin was created to connect the listener to the busy city environment that surrounds us here in Manchester.
Recordings from many bus journeys throughout the city were used and manipulated in a way that brings the listener closer to these sounds. This augmented sonic experience will allow the listener to get inside and connect with the sounds that we tend to ignore on our daily journeys throughout the city, such as the tones and rhythmic patterns of a bus. This piece represents the various layers that may often be hidden or ignored amongst the dailysoundscape of a bus journey.
‘Hu’, or how to solve a sonic puzzle in China Town by Ricardo Climent.