Projects
Immersive Dartmoor Folktales
Immersive Dartmoor Folktales
Exploring digital soundscapes that bring Dartmoor folk tales to life.
Sara, Kerry and Lisa wanted to extend their practice and create a new immersive folktale experience (either indoor, outdoor or online) that allowed people to remain immersed in Dartmoor’s nature while experiencing the tales digitally. They aimed to remove barriers to access to both folktale and landscape, and encourage new audience demographics.
Their intention was to deepen the connection of story to land through use of digital GPS, give insight into the use of high quality field recordings in storytelling, enable them to make more impactful future work for a wider range of audiences and explore options for creating immersive audio experiences.
Explore
£5,000
Aims of the Project
Immersive Dartmoor Folk Tales explored the practicalities and potential of creating a binaural sound experience that combines natural sound with the telling of traditional Dartmoor folk tales.
Two storytellers and a sound artist combined forces to explore the use of this digital technology in the landscape, giving insight into the use of high quality field recordings in storytelling, enabling them to make more impactful future work for a wider range of audiences and exploring options for creating immersive audio experiences.
Through this project, we have discovered our art forms can be enhanced using immersive sound through possibilities we would never have imagined - from recording fungi to layered sounds on story walks, and using surround sound to enhance storytelling performance.
How did they do that?
Kerry, Sara and Lisa explored a number of potential applications of immersive sound in our creative practices of sound recording, outdoor and indoor performance, and storytelling.
We worked with dramaturg Paula Crutchlow to help develop our thinking about immersive sound and provoke our next lines of enquiry, collectively and as individual artists. We held a ‘Sellotape Day’ where we experimented with various ways to experience immersive sound in performance contexts outdoors.
We trained with sound technician Tim Dollimore on use of binaural and immersive sound in performance, including surround sound using QLab; and sound artist Jason Singh, who introduced us to active nature listening with different recording techniques, including hydrophones, phones, binaural, of nature and outdoors. We tried different equipment and explored possibilities for recording sounds in nature.
These explorations have led to all of us incorporating immersive sound into our practice in various ways, including sound walks, enhancement of existing indoor shows, and training.
All of us have learned new techniques of sound recording and using immersive sound as part of performance, and we intend to integrate these and explore further in our work over the next year. We have worked with some really great, local sound artists and technicians, and who hold the potential for partnership work on performance and projects in the future. We’d recommend the Immersive Explore programme to anyone who wants to learn more about these exciting and emerging technologies.
Meet the artists
Lisa Schneidau
Lead artist
she/her
Lisa Schneidau is a performance storyteller, author and ecologist, working with creative storytelling to enable better connection with nature and landscape, including performances, story walks and education.
She is the author of four best-selling books on British and Irish folk tales, including two audiobooks.
Sara Hurley
Lead artist
Sara Hurley is a storyteller, socially-engaged artist and cross artform collaborator.
Audio commissions include scripting an audio tour for Exeter Historic Buildings Trust, Stories of Care from the End of Life with Filament CIC.
She connects people with place through story.
Kerry Priest
Lead artist
Kerry Priest is a poet and sound artist in radio and theatrical sound design.
Previous work includes site-specific operas for Royal Opera House, a gallery installation for Exeter Phoenix, and poetry soundscapes for Soundart Radio.
Her poetic practice is inspired by Dartmoor’s hidden voices and connections.
