Llif/Flow :The Showcase!

Six weeks ago, in the middle of writing my blog describing the triumphant showcase of the Pontio Synthesis project, which was already pretty late, I was stopped in my tracks by the vagaries of life. Hospital, surgery, more hospital, crazy drugs (prescribed)……

It’s all been a bit of a blur. However, I can’t leave it without recording the rest of the Llif/Flow story.

Saturday 2nd July, 2016 – Set Up.

Lindsey Colbourne, Jonathan Malarkey and myself arrived bright and early to begin setting up the runs on the slopes of Pontio. It was time to put our ideas into practice, and the prospect was daunting. In the back of my mind, I was convinced we had been over ambitious. The spaces seemed huge, the materials were huge too, but didn’t look anywhere near enough. Could we really make marbles flow through Y Caban? Lindsey was already in the zone, arranging the slate run like a beautiful river down the bottom slopes, so I forced myself to stop thinking and start doing. The first job was getting marbles to flow through Y Caban.

 

Once we got stuck in, it was wonderful. Everything we wanted to do we managed to construct, and the materials looked fantastic in situ. By the end of Saturday, it was all in place. The marble Laboratory inside the PL2 lecture theatre was all in place, the Vorticarium was working, even the marble dispenser that had caused me so much stress appeared to be functioning perfectly. The outside runs were a worry, so susceptible to vandalism or weather damage, it was like leaving a child out in the woods, but there was nothing else to do but trust it would be fine, and go home.

THE SHOWCASE. JULY 3rd, 2016.

Sunday the 3rd was a stunning summer day. Unbelievable considering the variety of rain we had been appreciating up to that point.

THE SLOPES.

There were four marble run routes set up on the slopes outside….and they were all pretty large. One flowed from Y Cegin cafe, zig zagging sharply down the ampitheatre style terraces, along metal offcuts from the Pontio Building’s construction until bouncing and flowing into a delta of slate in the courtyard. Another, a long clear pipe made a looping path beside the stairway until it to became a tributary to the slate below.  The third route also began at Y Cegin, but this travelled to the left, dropping down until reaching a viaduct that took it to Y Caban, into a pipe that wound its way from outside to in, ending at Y Caban’s doorway. The final run picked up at Y Caban and flowing along the tiny gradient from Y Caban to PL2, along first the new materials from the building, and into the slate fencing, such as you may find around the traditional Cabanau.

The first visitors arrived half an hour before the advertised start time, and the slopes came to life as hundreds of visitors of all ages began running marbles, altering runs, fixing gaps and playing in the sun. it was anarchy of the best kind, and it carried on unabated til closing time.

 

 

The weather was amazing, and people were relaxing and having fun.

THE LABORATORY

If the slopes outside were the field study, inside PL2 was the science laboratory itself. It was here where the marble instruments, in both a scientific and musical sense, were recording the flow of the day, and the shape and sound of the flow patterns created by us  participants.

The stagnataphone used stagnation points to create delicate a delicate tinkling.

The Vorticarium is a sit in vortex, the space within the spiral, making a deep, rhythmic percussion.

In contrast, the Vorticiser uses the vortex in a freer way, allowing the energy of the participant to create the speed and success of the vortex, building up a frenetic whirring.

Laminar, trickling flow, dropping and running like city rain in scaffolding was recorded through the K Clampifone.

On the tables, were two smaller and more delicate laminar instruments..The Laminaphone created straight flow using pipes of different lengths…high pitched and staccato or legato, depending on the angle.

The Marbleharp uses tension and angle to create short, controlled flow and waves, reverberating softly beneath the turbulence.

The PL2 lab was also where our more scientific investigations had taken us. There was the ever present fascination of the vortex, which had appeared over and over again in our research phase, which resulted in the vorticarium, and the two table vortices.

In order to track the favoured route of marbles through obstacles, and thereby find the most successful flow pattern, there was a numbered run, also part of the orchestra, with an accompanying map, charting the route of each marble. The slatescape also had a bell on it that was just too tempting, so the new experiment became an investigation into how to find the most direct route to the bell.

There was even some real science, in the form of beautiful, graceful video presentations, by Jonathan Malarkey, illustrating the physics behind  the flow.

THE PERFORMANCE

 

Throughout the day, participants running marbles in the marble instruments were creating sounds that flowed through a multitude of wires into the mixing desk, controlled by the sound alchemist, David Hopewell. From there, through yet more wires, the sounds travelled out of the building and into Y Caban. On two occasions through the afternoon, these marble sounds were joined by the violin of Katherine Betteridge, clarinet of Sioned Eleri Roberts, and the voice of poet, Rhys Trimble. Together, they are The Marmaladies,  improvising and collaborating with the ringing, trickling, jangling flow of the marbles . The Marmaladies wound through the crowds, along the runs and through the building, making their own patterns that ran and wound through the event. Rhys Trimble, cutting up Welsh and English, science and poetry, created both stacatto turbulence and low murmuring, interspersed by silky silences. Katherine and Sioned create sounds on their instruments that I have never heard before, weaving twisting, stretching violin sounds through percussive clarinet sometimes deep, sometimes sharp. The whole performance was recorded, creating a sonic imprint of the occasion.

THE MARBLE CREW

Llif/Flow was in every way, a collaborative work. Starting with Lindsey, Jonathan and myself, we quickly joined up with Rhys, Katherine Sioned and Dave. The day could not have happened with out the technical crews : Iolo, Dic and Iolo from Pontio, who said yes to everything, and made it happen, and Freya, Tom, Heather, and Billy, our assistants on the day, who were everywhere at once, fixing, helping, directing and answering questions.

Tom

Billy, Freya, Heather and Andrea

David Hopewell

Freya

The whole crew.

Photographs by Andrea Thorley, Lindsey Colbourne, Jony Easterby