Growing Up Hackney < 27.07.09 - 22.08.09 >

As part of a collaboration between Discover Young Hackney, Hackney Museum and Iniva, this was a 5-week course where a group of young people 17-21 had the opportunity to explore and rediscover their domicile of Hackney - the music and arts venues and its vibrant communities. Participants were given a chance to learn to how to take photographs and sound recordings with professional equipment as a means of re-presenting their environments in a personalised way.

Taking inspiration form phtographer Dennis Morris' photographs of the community he grew up in, participants collaborated with artists Othello de'Souza and Obinna Nwosu [blond02] in exploring how the visual and the audio create indentity, using photography and sound recordings to examine what it means to be Growing Up Hackney.

Participants showcased their work in an exhibition at Rivington Place on Saturday 22 August 2009. See below for samples of their work.

This will be followed by their work being exhibited alongside the Dennis Morris: Growing Up Black exhibition at Hackney Museum from Thursday 01 October 2009 to Saturday 23 January 2010.

Sonic Windows 0.2 < 09 - 10 July 2009 >

Working with students from The Petchey Academy we embarked upon a journey much like the one travelled in Sonic Windows; featuring an elicitation of responses to the Zineb Sedira 'Currents of Time' exhibition by Iniva and also an augmentation or learning of new IT skills.

Technology proved no barrier to the creative process. The group in general were able to command the various featured softwares/ computer programmes (iMovie, Still Life, iPhoto, GarageBand, Quicktime) with relative ease. Consequently the group was able to explore in depth the textural, compositional, sonic and narrative possibilities apparent and hidden in Still Life in the creation of their micro-short movies.

A good time was had by all involved and the two days proved to be highly productive and yielded high quality expression/ creativity, which given the constraints of time and resources is most notable. See below for a sample of the work produced:

Sonic Windows 0.1 < 25 - 26 June 2009 >

Working with students from Newham Sixth Form College (New Vic) doing the National Diploma in Music, the challenge was to respond to Iniva's exhibition, Zineb Sedira's 'Currents of Time' and in the process augment existing skills, learn new skills, encounter alternative ways of seeing and doing, and to work and be productive working to deadlines within strict time contraints. Using still photography and sound recordings and editing and production softwares: Still Life, Photoshop, iPhoto, iMovie, Logic, Garageband and Final Cut Pro the directive over the two days was for the students to create a new or alternative narrative by giving shape to an assemblage of movements around a frozen moment. To create additional layers of meaning and/ or new meanings by surfing the detail in a photograph(s), and crucially animating it by adding a sound collage.

The workshop proved inspiring and very productive. It also suggested new ways to use musical instrumention and composition abilities. The micro-sonic short movie below by two of the participating students illustrates the creative possibilities referenced above:

Inter(me)zzo 0.2 17 - 18.04.09

The second in a series of two workshops took place with 12 students from NewVic College - Newham Sixth Form College - on a multi-discipline media course. The workshop was expanded over two days to accommodate work experience requirements necessary for the course. Consequently, the editing and music/ sound making elements were explored more deeply than in Inter(me)zzo 0.1. Here, we constructed a Logic station with 62key midi keyboard; a GarageBand station with a mini midi keyboard, as well as the usual Audacity software. In addition a recording 'studio' was created on a ad hoc basis.



The students had to be interactive, individually uploading and assigning in Max MSP their edited sounds to the sound sensor patches being used for the sound installation. They also had to physically construct the installation, ensuring adequate coverage and in accordance to Health and Safety directives.



This two-day workshop highlighted the underlying facet of Inter(me)zzo, which is its educational and life skill benefits. The primary aim of Inter(me)zzo beyond the exploration of 'Liminals' themes was to use audio/ sonic interaction as a segue to engaging with the visual technological art making processes and conversations. In essence by making art - engaging with art. However attendant with this conceptual/ intellectual intervention is practical learning, making the participant better skilled and more employable.

Inter(me)zzo 0.1 04.04.09

The Inter(me)zzo series of workshops serve as a gentle invocation of the line enquiry explored by the Liminal exhibition, produced by Iniva at Rivington Place, London, that concerns itself with conveying a sense of alienation and dislocation associated with the modern city through the prism of new visual technologies.


Inter(me)zzo, rather than interacting with experimental moving image forms instead references kinetic audio forms and technologies associated with music culture.


More information on right hand side of screen.









Inter(me)zzo: Connecting Thresholds, seeks to engage people of all ages in exploring their experiences of migration, particularly feelings of alienation and dislocation associated with the city. Every group in the city, whether citizen or new arrival, or what is regarded as indigenous immigrant is affected by this movement of people, culture, tradition and memory.


What our group discovered during workshop Inter(me)zzo 0.1 was that along these overlapping lines from departure to arrival, if all this experienced is illustrated and evinced by sound what is created finally is - music! An amalgamation of single notes.