Below each submission you can find a short explanation of the work written by the creator.
Jordan Holmes
Biology, University of York
Is Self-Isolate Enough?
I made this video at the beginning of April as things were really ramping up in the UK. I love playing the piano and musical comedy, and I’d seen a few of this sort of video floating around on Facebook and I thought – hey! I could do that. So I sat down and quickly wrote the lines (it took me much longer to learn the words than to write them!) and set it to Adele’s Make You Feel My Love for a bit of tragi-comic effect. I only wrote it to make people laugh in a time when most are stuck inside, miserable, but I’m also very aware that it’s a serious subject and those stuck at home are the lucky ones. Just wanted to make my mates laugh, really.
Kate Ledger
Music, University of York
Tappers (2020)
You can read the composition in this file:
Tappers (2020) is the first piece of music I have ever written and is my response to COVID-19. By day I am a pianist who is interested in individual responses: to musical scores (as a performer or composer) and limitations. The diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations that may arise are explored in Tappers.
The piece was written for Texas-based percussion trio Line Upon Line as part of their response to COVID-19, “Quartets For The End Of Time”. Using an international network of friendships and personal recommendations, they seek new artists to write a piece for a separated trio plus the recently-introduced artist. Despite the limitations of lockdown (e.g. low-tech recording equipment, limited instrumentation, lack of physical contact) the results are varied, representative of individual situations, and unifying. Despite our distinctions (composer/performer; pianist/percussionist; York/Texas), our connections remain strong, and are celebrated.
Lynette Quek
Music, University of York
CB
cb is a series of responses towards the circuit breaker period that Singapore is undertaking as part of the lockdown process due to the Covid-19 situation. cb is a series of electronic circuits presented as sculptures, created with materials sourced only during the circuit breaker period.
Singapore is undergoing a lockdown termed as “Circuit Breaker” (CB). How Singapore is using the term is strategic, not causing any panic or unrests whilst taking precautions to curb the spread of the virus. This term that is used to replace “lockdown” in a way is community driven, where every person in the community is playing a part towards minimising infection, keeping friends and family healthy and sane, keeping active and maintaining our everyday activities, as if components in electronic circuitry. The term "circuit breaker", in electronics, means “stopping the flow of current in an electric circuit as a safety measure.” Branching from the term’s original usage as well as circumstances of the current situation, I started to construct small circuits from the start of the CB that somehow reflect my thoughts and desires of making and crafting.
Eli Auslender
Politics, University of York
Clocks and Flowers
Will you see me on the screen
or join me in a silent dream?
Of times we wish we could have had,
of running around and going mad.
Call me through your vacant hours,
time will pass in clocks and flowers
Drunk through our empty wine
the silent streets afraid to chime
Where was the freedom we had
those old times we lived weren't so bad
Stay inside and be like a kid on the sea
In a cardboard box you saved to conquer the waves
On a stormy night deep inside those
dreams you used to believe.
Stay inside and be happy.
Climb the walls and drop the pretense,
free yourself from old sequences
laced in your like old shoes
without a soul, no dreams to lose
Open your eyes and you'll see
a forest can't be just one tree
Stay inside and ride the sunlight on the air
Breathe it deep and rise up to speak
That everything you need won't fall at your feet
Stay inside and fight for you and me
fight for, you and me
fight for, you and me.'
A song I wrote during my lockdown time. I've been stuck in another country with my significant other, away from my actual guitar, which used to be my mother's. It's partly about being inside, and partly about benefiting others.
Sophie Wilson
TFTI, University of York
Drift
You can also read the monologue in this document:
A monologue inspired by my redundancy and the intertwined feelings of disconnection and connection caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.
James Redelinghuys
Music, University of York
Isolation Offices
Since the start of the isolation, the soundscape in York has changed dramatically. Fewer people, fewer cars, and in between, new sounds emerge: birds, wind, distant rumblings of traffic, the beeping of the pedestrian crossing down the road. Environment, cultures, cities, humans can all be understood, all be known through sensing. Our place in the world is produced and reproduced by what we hear; we are not apart from this. A new soundscape both reflects and creates our new situation. Between the quarantinis, the ennui, and a lack of physical interaction, we are afforded an opportunity re-evalute, re-know, and re-critique our environment, and reform our relationships with each other; and to actively listen, and understand our situation not through grand intellectualisation, but mundane sensing.
Stephanie Ornithari Roberts
(lead singer for Everything After Midnight)
English and Related Literature, University of York
Home and All the Spaces In-between
Home and All the Spaces In-between hopes to explore the fondness and repulsion to the spaces we are constantly living in. The video compilation incorporates moments of escapism and serenity, each one of us captured times of naturalistic rest and being detached from our homely surroundings. The idea of home is in flux as the nation is in isolation, it is no longer a place of returning but a place of constant being, one that may warps the fondness people may have originally placed with it. Spaces can become suffocating, so the series of videos hopes to capture when we are able to disconnect from entrapment and simply be. The video’s soundscape uses recorded sounds from our own musical experimentation as well as the surrounding noises of our places of living. Magnifying the sounds we are continually hearing, thus the track illuminates the soundtrack to our isolation period; birds, cars, television dialogue etc. Our compilation hopes to find the spaces between the sometimes detested hated walls that determine the outlook of everyday, finding those moments that exist at home whilst our minds are elsewhere. Discovering the space between home and somewhere else, a place we much rather be.
Ben Eyes
Music, University of York
Quip Quaranstream
The concert was performed as part of Xylem Records Quarenstream series of concerts with musicians from all over the world. https://xylemrecords.bandcamp.com/
About the gig : For this concert I used mostly vintage analogue equipment that I can no longer tour with as it is fragile and heavy so it is very rare I get to play with it live these days.