Reassembled, Slightly Askew : Composition & Sound Design
- Submitting institution
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Queen's University of Belfast
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 94036086
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- RSA is based on an autobiographical account of Shannon Yee’s experience of falling critically ill with a rare brain infection and her journey of rehabilitation with an acquired brain injury (ABI). The project was initiated by Yee in 2010, and brought together a team of five lead artists: Yee (writer, producer, actor), Paul Stapleton (sound designer, music composer), Anna Newell (theatre director), Hanna Slättne (dramaturg), and Stevie Prickett (choreographer). Rather than develop a conventional play to be performed onstage to an audience at a distance, the aim was to create a more visceral encounter with Yee’s experience informed in part by Yee’s hypersensitivity to sound resulting from her ABI.
Stapleton's role in this artistic research collaboration was to provided expertise in sound design (including with his new musical instruments) and the creative use of spatial sound technologies (binaural microphones, ambisonics). The project also focused on developing an interdisciplinary language that would allow the artistic team to move beyond the conventional forms of audio-based dramatic narratives (e.g. radio drama), as well as musical forms that are typically more concerned with sound spatialisation than storytelling (e.g. electroacoustic composition). Stapleton's underpinning research in the areas of improvisation and interdisciplinary practice-as-research aided this process by providing methods for questioning disciplinary norms and extending existing sound recording techniques.
RSA premiered in 2015 at The MAC in Belfast, and went on to toured widely (Canada, England, Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and the USA) in both artistic and medical training contexts, receiving extensive media coverage (e.g. The Guardian, BBC, The Wall Street Journal).
The submitted 48'41'' audio recording was experienced by audience members individually, listening via headphones while lying on a hospital bed, experiencing Yee’s descent into coma, brain surgeries, early days in the hospital, and re-integration into the world with a hidden disability.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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