The installation works of Coryn Smethurt are often drawn on his recordings of Malaysia’s natural environment, frogs, insects, birds, bats, and gibbon all feature in this hour long selection from his installations.
Traditionally wildlife sound recordists have tried to create a world devoid of humanity, Coryn does not do this. The motorbike passing as frogs call in a ditch at the side of the road, human footfalls, or a call to prayer with insect rhythms, a guide’s cough in a bat cave in the middle of a forest. As this selection of recordings progresses through sounds which are both beautiful, and sometimes almost synthetic to his western ear, the sound of humanity becomes less incidental, and more pernicious. Cicada beating themselves to death on a lit open hotel walkway as human footsteps are heard, a gecko electrocuted on a UV fly killer situated outside a hotel kitchen window, as a motorbike arrives, and finally another form of electricity.
About Coryn Smethorst:
Coryn Smethurst is a composer, improviser, multi-award winning wildlife recording engineer, philosopher, photographer and film maker. He gained his MA in Philosophy and Visual Arts from Essex University and his PhD on the Philosophy of Music from Warwick University. His piece Birthday Picnic on the Mudflats – A Postcard From My Childhood was featured on the Sonic Postcards CD. His work has been performed in Europe, America, Australia, Canada and Asia. He has collaborated with the visual artists Duncan Marshall (‘Black Sun Bloody Moon’ for percussion, fixed media and slides) and Dave Griffiths (‘Symbolic Exchange and Death’ and ‘Some Late Turners’ for film and fixed media). He has also set up several installations, most recently in the Penthouse Gallery (Manchester) and Manchester Museum as well as providing the sound material for Ewan Stefani’s Type-writer installation at Leeds University. As a keen vocal improviser Coryn recently led a workshop on field recordings and improvisation. He chaired the in/from the out sound art conference held in Manchester. https://metanast.wordpress.com/coryn-smethurst/
