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... the pickle jar is her home ...

Lane, Cathy (2010) ... the pickle jar is her home ... [Show/Exhibition]

Type of Research: Show/Exhibition
Creators: Lane, Cathy
Description:

Sound composition in Soundwalk editions - issue 6

... the pickle jar is her home ...

This composition is an multi-faceted exploration of food as a material, a commodity and as a sounding substance. It also aims to explore the many relationships between food and sound from their basic ephemerality to the links and metaphors that tie them as materials to be processed and transformed – from ideas of “mixing”, “chopping”, “cutting” and “blending”. Mixed, cut and blended together in this ‘ear-piece’ are sound recordings, from both the UK and India, of food being prepared and cooked, of the places where food is grown and sold, of people and companies selling food and food products and of people talking about food that reminds them of home and childhood and foods that they like to cook and how to prepare them.

The research for this piece into personal and global food culture included looking into how food, spices and materials have been and are still central to colonialism and how political exchanges have influenced food, food preparation and taste. This seems particularly pertinent in India where battles between small producers and agribusiness which have, by and large, been long lost in Western Europe are very much current and where strong regional food cultures seem to still be holding up against and possibly enriched by cultural invasions from Europe and the US. I am also interested in people’s emotional investment in food – as a carrier of memory and of ideas of “home”. Composing with spoken word material and with ‘real world’ recordings have been long held practices of mine combined with an interest in memory and how this can be both triggered and preserved in sound.

The links and metaphors between food and sound have also been used structurally in the compositional process particularly in the spatialisation and movement of sounds where gestures and spatial motifs used in cooking and preparing food have informed the organisation, distribution and movement of sounds between the speakers. This is part of a long held practice based research trajectory into gestural metaphor as a structuring process in sonic composition.

Additional Information (Publicly available):

Thanks to all the interview participants, Srishti College of Art, Bangalore, London College of Communication, Sujata and Anurag at Rainforest Retreat.

Keywords/subjects not otherwise listed: spoken word, field recording, memory,sonic documentary india, food
Your affiliations with UAL: Colleges > London College of Communication
Research Centres/Networks > Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP)
Date: May 2010
Related Websites: http://www.soundwalk.com/blog/cathy-lane-editions-issue6/
Related Websites:
Related Exhibitions: "Material Texts", Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi, India Curated by Meena Vari and Arvind Lodaya. Anant Joshi, Ayisha Abraham, Biju Joze, Cathy Lane, Justin Ponmany, Mili Tharagan, NN Rimzon, Prajakta Potnis, Sumedh Rajendran, Vivek Vilasini and Yashes Shetty
Related Publications: Sound Walk Editions, Issue 6
Projects or Series: Research Outputs Review (April 2010 - April 2011)
Material/Media: sound composition
Measurements or Duration of item: 10 minutes 27 seconds
Date Deposited: 02 Nov 2011 14:53
Last Modified: 09 Nov 2023 04:46
Item ID: 3753
URI: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/3753

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