{"id":73639,"date":"2021-10-06T10:19:40","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T09:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vam.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=73639"},"modified":"2021-11-01T09:05:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T09:05:54","slug":"sonic-and-visual-responses-to-the-vas-glastonbury-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vam.ac.uk\/blog\/projects\/sonic-and-visual-responses-to-the-vas-glastonbury-archive","title":{"rendered":"Sonic and visual responses to the V&A\u2019s Glastonbury Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was written by Dr Adam Parkinson, Senior Lecturer in Sound Design, London South Bank University (LSBU)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2021, students from London South Bank University were invited to create sonic and visual responses to the V&A\u2019s Glastonbury Festival Archive as part of the Glastonbury @ 50<\/em> project<\/a> \u2013 a series of events celebrating 50 years of Glastonbury Festival.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d heard that the V&A had vast archives from Glastonbury Festival<\/a>, but that these weren\u2019t recordings of performances \u2013 no, these were field recordings and film footage that captured the spirit and atmosphere of this cultural event through documenting the way that everyday life unfolded in it\u2019s own strange way at the Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a musician myself, making music under the name Dane Law<\/em>, I\u2019ve always been interested in music and memory, and the role that the rituals of festivals, fayres and raves can play in building communities. The project had instant appeal to me, and I was keen to get my students working with these archives and thinking about how they could ‘remix’ them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working closely with filmmaker and lecturer Stefania Marangoni and our learning and teaching assistant Eleanor Foulkes, we ran a series of online workshops where we explored the history of Glastonbury, watched and listened to the V&A\u2019s recordings, and talked about how the techniques we used to process and sequence sound and image could be used to articulate themes of memory, community and the ‘intangible heritage’ of Glastonbury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pieces that you see and hear emerged from these workshops, and show the diverse ways in which the students explored the meaning of Glastonbury as a national cultural event and in their own lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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