intro
Sound Aloud
As part of Dudley Creates (creative black country) artist Gavin Rogers Working with women and LGBTQIA+ people living in and around Dudley, UK. Finding our voices together and discovering the possibilities of Netherton Tunnel, a 3 km Victorian tunnel that passes along the canal and under Dudley.
development
Part 1: Empathy Mapping
Working in collaboration with artist and UX researcher Emily Warner we conducted a number of visits between April and June 2022 and created an emotional-physical mapping of the tunnel which was later explored and revisited by participants.
You can download the mapping document here:
collaboration
Part 2: Conversations
On our collective adventures into the tunnel we created a sound scape which was over 2 hours long which contained conversations, spontaneous noises, stories, myths and a lot of laughter.
An edited version of the conversations are here, we hope you enjoy them, they sound best with headphones as it recreates the sound withing the tunnel itself.
composing
Part 3: Sound works
Calling the canal sirens, past, present and future. In a tunnel deep beneath the earth, a place built by man, for power, for money, for goods, for industry, for the empire. Yet over time the water has taken reign over this mysterious 2.7km tunnel, the stalactites and stalagmites have grown, and sirens of the water to allow our bodies to be part of this earth, this space, and feel out freedom.
Listen to our playlist of audio tracks we created below:
future
Part 4: Feedback
This project has been so exciting to work on. Coming together as LGBTQIA+, POC and women – we created a safe space to make sounds together in an environment which was not built for us, it was built for men, for industry in the 1800s.
The participants and facilitators collectively requested that the experiences through audio. There is some audio feedback below from the event and we hope this feedback will inspire lots more art making and viewing in Netherton/ Dudley in the future.
Gavin Rogers 