Output details

Air Pressure

Air Pressure was a research project that focused on the environment of a farming family whose organic small-holding is surrounded by the concrete and steel architecture of Narita International Airport in Japan, one of the world’s busiest in terms of passengers and freight. Primary funding was awarded by two grants from the Wellcome Trust (£28,800 and £21,400), which identified Air Pressure as an arts-science public engagement venture to explore the relationships between noise and health.

Carlyle and anthropologist Rupert Cox (Manchester University) undertook two fieldwork trips (2010 and 2011) during which they made extensive audio and video recordings, contextualised with discussions with farmers and Japanese acoustic /health scientists. A reservoir of recordings was developed to understand the role of sound in the farmers’ lives, particularly in terms of their exposure to persistent noise; to explore the potential of artistic documentary forms to represent environmental experience; to create new approaches to inter-disciplinary creative practice.

Air Pressure was installed in a specially constructed auditorium as a two-screen projection with multichannel sound in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester from 4 November 2011 to 12 February 2012 (56,000 visitors). A film version, Kiatsu ('air pressure' in Japanese) was jury-selected for exhibition at Albuquerque Museum as part of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (2012); at Audible Observatories with the American Anthropological Association, 111th Annual Meeting, San Francisco (2012); the Bideodromo Experimental Film Festival in Bilbao (2012); the 9th Media Art Monographic Show at the International Image Festival Colombia (2013). Kiatsu was also shown by invitation in the Civic Cultural Centre, Narita, in Okinawa Prefecture Museum and in ‘Urban Sounds’, Haus Fur Eletronische Kunst, Basle (all 2013).

A CD and 96 page booklet was released by the German record label Gruenrekorder (2012).

Carlyle and Cox share equal creative responsibility for all aspects of the project.