As day turns to night, immerse yourself in a captivating sound world and ever changing outdoor live performance. Using an ensemble of visually striking mechanical ‘instruments’ - gongs, bells, whistles and explosive events - Warning Notes creates a rich and powerful soundscape that gives voice to the current social and ecological alarm that ripples across our world.
A new show by international artist Mark Anderson, created in collaboration with Liam Walsh, that is improvised and responsive to audience and environment, Warning Notes is playful and hypnotic, inviting us to listen to the present and contemplate both personal and global stories - and our future together.
“A pulsing, gorgeous and threatening world woven out of sound sculptures and beautiful, rhythmic notes” - Audience
“The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon.” - Ursula Le Guin
FREE OUTDOOR EVENT: 12+13 APRIL, 2024 @ 5PM FOR APPROX 4 HOURS - drop in any time during the performance and stay as long as you like!
Funded by the Arts Council of Wales. Co-commissioned and co-presented by OCM.
ABOUT WARNING NOTES
Warning Notes is a medium-scale outdoor production for up to 500 people per show that takes place over 4 hours from day to night, with audiences able to come and go over that period, staying for as long as they like, on a greenfield or hard standing site. An ecologically sustainable outdoor sound installation performance, it works in a diversity of public areas - from common land, and parks to courtyards and venue grounds - ideally with low ambient sound and light conditions. Warning Notes uses an ensemble of mechanical, kinetic sculptural ‘instruments’ set in a circular arena, including gongs, bells, whistles and explosive events that creates an ever changing unique composition of rich, dense visceral sound. Many components in the show reference non-art, the hand-built, using recognisable recycled and re-used elements. It is a show that is part installation and part live performance - improvised and responsive to the audience and the environment.
AUDIENCE
At the heart of Warning Notes is our shared and growing anxiety for the future, on many levels: personal, social, cultural, economic and ecological.
The show provides a safe, playful and reflective space to sense, sit, and discuss this - a space for everyone - from children to adults. Warning Notes therefore works best in familiar public spaces which a diverse audience can access free of charge.
WARNING NOTES TEAM
The Warning Notes production team is an accomplished team of specialists. It is led by lead artist Mark Anderson who is based in Eryri National Park in Wales and has worked internationally over the last 30 years to create multi-media and site specific performances. On Warning Notes Mark is working with long-time collaborator Liam Walsh. Together their previous projects have included ‘Power Plant’, an immersive sound and light show that has sold 100,000 tickets worldwide as part of the programme of leading international festivals, and ‘Furious Folly’ - a large scale show about the futility of war. They will be working with Mathew Olden, who will be creating bespoke software for the show, and Ezra Gray, a sound designer, who will lead on the workshop element.
Audience reactions to WARNING NOTES
“Visually the work was beautiful, but walking through the continually evolving, never repeating soundscape was enthralling, at times soothing, then tense, then invigorating, then calming again”
“Crossing the threshold into the show was an instant immersion into another dimension....throwing the audience into a pulsing, gorgeous and threatening world woven out of sound sculptures and beautiful, rhythmic notes”
“Listening for the Warning Notes’ appears to tell a very clear story whilst allowing imaginations the freedom to create their own”
