Phew, lots of traveling these days…I’m now back in lovely Amsterdam, where it finally feels like summer. I’m here for the very exciting ‘second opening’ for the Paddestoelen Paradijs show, which includes my Secret Sounds of Spores installation among many other amazing fungi-based artworks.
The event will feature a concert by the DNK Ensemble, who will be playing music along with my installation, which is very exciting indeed! I’m really looking forward to hearing what Koen Nutters has arranged. I’ll also be giving a short talk about the work, and it sounds like there will be loads of other amazing things going on.
So if you happen to be in Amsterdam, do come along!
Droplets is a water-reactive art installation which I recently installed in the Travelling Gallery as part of the Alt-w Shortcuts show.
The Travelling Gallery is an amazing project run by the City Art Centre here in Edinburgh, which aims to bring contemporary art to far flung destinations all around Scotland. It does so with a very impressive specially designed gallery bus, which brings the art to you! I’m very flattered to be involved in the current show, which is comprised of artists who have been supported by New Media Scotland with an Alt-w award in the past, as I was with the Secret Sounds of Spores.
For this show I took certain elements of my Weather Gage piece and modified them to work in the Travelling Gallery, this time using water rather than wind. Pieces of hand cut Maryland cherry wood are spread along the wall, each fitted with a custom built solenoid and LED circuit. These are triggered by a watering can which is placed at the base of the installation, allowing visitors to bring the work to life themselves.
I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out, and I’d like to thank Alison Chisholm and Mark Daniels for supporting this project. If you are in Edinburgh today or tomorrow please go and see it down at the City Arts Centre on Market Street, or on Thursday at Waverley Court. Otherwise, check the tour dates to see when it will come to you!
A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at Mediamatic in Amsterdam as part of their Ignite series of presentations. It was Ignite #15 and I had a great time! Many thanks to everyone involved for having me over. Many thanks as well to my friend and sound artist Nanny Roed Lauridsen, who recorded my talk and posted it on her website (a site which is, incidentally, full of great recordings like the sound of ice skaters on a canal in Amsterdam recorded from underneath using a hydrophone).
Here’s the mp3, it’s a very quick 5 minute presentation where I go through the whole story behind the Secret Sounds of Spores and talk about why I did it! Yann Seznec – Spores, Ignite
The installation is looking great, too, here are a few more photos for you…
A few weeks ago, at the end of a batch of One Pig shows in Germany, I went over to Amsterdam to install my Secret Sounds of Spores piece at Mediamatic. You can see the project page on the Mediamatic site here.
It will be in the gallery until around the end of April or so.
What a great place! It was super fun and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. My work is part of the Paddestoelen Paradijs show, which features a number of fungus-themed artworks in their amazing gallery. One huge advantage of this is that there are plenty of mushrooms to use in my piece – so every few days a new one is put in the jar to drop some spores through the laser.
Here are a few pictures of the setting up and final product:
I’ll be heading back next week to present the project at Mediamatic as part of their Ignite series. Please come by if you are able – you can RSVP at that link, it starts at 8:30pm.
A few months back I was invited down to Wales to build a sound sculpture for Bangor Sound City. I hand built a series of solenoid-triggered glockenspiel notes mounted onto cherry wood from the Hicksville Planing Mill in western Maryland. These hung from an alcove on the Garth Pier in Bangor, North Wales. Small propellors mounted outside the alcove were designed to spin in the wind, and control the rate of playback. Here are a few photos from the building phase:
The only problem was that I overestimated how much wind there would be! The propellors didn’t spin like they were meant to. The hanging notes worked really well, though, and the opening day was blessed with glorious sunshine. Here’s a video I’ve made showing it in situ:
The installation was up for several days, and I had a wonderful week in and around Bangor, Llanrwst, and Nebo. I played a super awesome gig in Conwy, spoke to some wonderful students at a school outside of Bangor, and I even managed to catch a very exciting Llanrwst United FC match. Many thanks to northern bloc and Datrys for supporting this project. A very special thanks also to Dominic Chennell and his beautiful family who hosted me during my time there and to Jacqui Banks who drove me all around the countryside!
This blog has seen many many posts about my Secret Sounds of Spores project over the past nine months or so. It’s been an incredible journey and I certainly hope we’ll be able to take it even further in the near future.
In the mean time, here is one more video showing the installation as it happened at Inspace in Edinburgh in January. I thought it worked really well in the gallery space, and we got extremely positive feedback. We’d love to show it at other galleries or shows, so please get in touch if you’ve been looking for a fungi-based sound installation.
Wow. In my wildest dreams I never imagined that the Secret Sounds of Spores Spectacular would be such a success. I’d like to thank everyone who came down, and apologize to anyone who got turned away. It was a brilliant night, and I was so pleased by all of the feedback and amazing discussions I had throughout the night. Special thanks go to musical guests The Dyad, whose swirling improvisational electrojazz combined with the mushroom-spore-triggered instruments with astounding results.
It will take me a while to go through all of the video and audio for the night, but many thanks to all of those who have sent or posted things already. This includes Mark, whose photo is above and has posted a number of videos to YouTube, and Andy and Chris, who posted these photos to Flickr:
Thanks also to all the people who have come into Inspace over the past few days to see the installation. I’m afraid we have to take it all down today, but fear not! It will be back up in Glasgow in a few weeks at the Arches for the Sound Thought Festival, and then again for Maker Faire Newcastle. Much more documentation to come, but a big thanks once again to everyone who helped make last Friday such an overwhelming success.
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 16:41. Add a comment
This week I’m very excited to present the Secret Sounds of Spores at Inspace in Edinburgh. Please come along and see it for yourselves! I think it’s going to be totally gorgeous, I can’t wait to get it all finished up. Just in case you haven’t been following this project at all, you can learn all about it here. In a nutshell: lasers, mushrooms, and handmade electro-mechanical instruments. Sweet.
Patrick and I are busy installing everything in the gallery space today and tomorrow, and starting on Wednesday the show will be open to the public. The installation will be viewable between 4-8pm on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week only, so be sure to come on by!
As if that weren’t enough, we will be holding a very special event to celebrate the Secret Sounds of Spores, on Friday night at 8pm. There will be drinks and merriment, and musical guests The Dyad will join me to play music with a live mushroom or two. I am pretty sure that this will be the world’s very first human-fungi live musical collaboration. At least, the first one with a Fender Rhodes and a laser.
Inspace is part of the University of Edinburgh (and is the headquarters of New Media Scotland, who funding this project) and can be found at 1 Crichton Street, EH8 9AB. Hope to see you there!
For the past few months I’ve been quietly working on a gigantic project with an amazing team of people, and last week we finally went public. The Love Music Festival is a brand-new series of musical events happening in schools all around Scotland. It is comprised of a series of exciting workshops in September and October and culminates in two weeks of concerts in venues from Shetland to Peebles, and everywhere in between.
My job is to build custom software, musical installations, and run creative sound recording workshops in schools…so far I’ve been to Peebles, St Andrews, Barra, Benbecula, and Kilmarnock, and next week I’m off to Shetland and Inverness for a few more. You can follow my adventures on my dedicated Love Music page, where I’ll be blogging and posting software and videos. There is some software for download there already, give it a try!
On a side note, the Western Isles are amazing. I’m glad I got a new raincoat, though.
Posted 2 years, 8 months ago at 10:03. Add a comment
Thanks to everyone who came down to the Botanics last Sunday! Patrick and I had a drop-in session to show off our Secret Sounds of Spores installation, and we both felt that it went really well.
We got lots of great video and photos, which we will be going through in the coming days. In the mean time you can see this video (featuring a glimpse into a fascinating tangential conversation I had with Paul Stamets) that Patrick put together showing everything in action:
The Amazing Rolo is Yann Seznec, an artist, sound designer, musician, and entrepreneur in Edinburgh, Scotland. He specializes in making fun and intriguing musical instruments, software, and installations. He is founder of creative studio Lucky Frame , releases music with The Seznec Bros and is currently on tour with Matthew Herbert's One Pig Live.
A few months back I was invited down to Wales to build a sound sculpture for 
This week I’m very excited to present the Secret Sounds of Spores at Inspace in Edinburgh. Please come along and see it for yourselves! I think it’s going to be totally gorgeous, I can’t wait to get it all finished up. Just in case you haven’t been following this project at all, you can learn all about it 
