Attending A Thousand Words for Weather led me to the work of Tansy Spinks, whose thesis Associating Places: Strategies for Live, Site Specific, Sound Art Performance (2014) provides robust theoretical framework for site-specific work and location selection. She notes three aspects to consider when working with sound on site, the actual, the active and the associated. “The first aspect describes what is essentially inherent to the place, the second can be encouraged to be ‘sounded’ through physical intervention, and the third outlines and forms what I have coined as the wider material of the site”. My interaction with the studying student in the listening booth sits on the parallel between the actual and the activated. One could argue that a student working is of course inherent to Senate House Library, yet could also make the case for the student being a separate entity with agency and autonomy, and only became an active “sounded” participant when encroached upon. While they would be expected to occupy the space, the also do not share the same characteristics as the space. A Thousand Words for Weather feels like public art, in some ways, but manages to incorporate such specific and idiosyncratic spatial elements too.
On page 92 of her thesis, Spinks deals with the initial assessment an artist must make of a site. She argues that, while a sound artist performing in the space cannot embody everything that has goes on before there, they can ensure that some “previous existence or current usage be appropriated and transmitted in performance”. This quote feels so pertinent and empowering to me. It simultaneously accepts the human limitations of our practice, but urges us as artists to respect and value the space, and never to dismiss the inherent artistic and creative capacities woven in to the space and the place. Through A Thousand Words for Weather and Tansy Spinks’ work, I feel I’ve been able to build upon my research into my “sonics of intrusion and privacy” enquiry, and have discovered the theory of space and site, both of which I will be transmitting into my practice going forward.