In Conversation with Marcus Coates

I had the priviledge of volunteering on the first day of this years festival at this event. Thursday 23rd October, In Conversation with Marcus Coates and Geoff Sample. This event took place at MOSI at 7pm. I arrived straight from work  at 5.45pm as the others were getting their briefing. Our new coordinator/manager, the lovely Nichola asked me if I also do evaluations too. Never done it before so this is an opportunity to do something new. This mean't asking patrons to fill in a survey and also logging those who refused to. Doors opened at 6.30pm so myself and 2 other lovely volunteers whom I'd met at our induction course stood near the doors. There was a meet and greet, and a fellow evaluator using a tablet. I had a clipboard doing it the old fashioned way. People were very nice and this made it more fun than I thought. The time went quickly and soon we were seated to watch the event. It was interesting to hear about their careers and how they met and began their collaborations. Marcus Coates is an acclaimed artist who currently has an installation at MOSI called 'The Sounds Of Others' which is essentially what this talk was about. Geoff Sample is a Wildlife sound recordist and these 2 guys clearly love their work. They have spent many many hours listening to hundreds of different animal sounds! We were treat to some of them. Marcus started with a recording of himself saying 'hi' then altering its frequency and it became so distorted that it sounded like an array of wild animals, finally like some sort of bear.Very Funny! He continued doing this throughout the talk and the blue whale got mentioned quite a few times. Apparently their sounds are out of the range of human hearing. The Q&A at the end was fun especially as people asked questions about sounds which aim to mimic animal sounds rather than real animal sounds such as the pelican crossing! The audience were then lead to the 1830's warehouse with Marcus and Geoff to see and discuss the installation. We stood near the MOSI main doors ready to hand out flyers to  the patrons as they left. It was all over at 8.45pm and we went home. I hope to see this installation some time later in the festival week.

    






















I will be back to tell you about the Science Spectacular show I volunteered at on Saturday 25th October. This was a fabulous all day event at Manchester Museum and Whitworth Hall. As if that wasn't enough I then went to a book reading at Blackwells :D Why don't you leave me a comment telling me about any festival events you've been to or volunteered at so far? I'd love if if you did.
Sarah xxx