HARK

Welcome to the Hark website.

Dwell for a moment or two on the flowing image of the wake or the river above. Let go of wondering what it is ‘for’, let your gaze go where it wants to go, feel your attention moving around the frame. Let your interest move where it wants to, on the surface, on the shapes, on the appearing and dissolution of forms and patterns, on colour and contrast. Play with the mesmeric edge of the wake, try to keep up with it, then, perhaps, pull away, experiment by trying not to ‘look’ at anything, unfocus your gaze. Make space and time. Perhaps notice what arises for you when you dwell with this image. Maybe then return to the after-wake and the rolling of the sea that gets left behind. Here is time unfolding before you. — how long have you been looking.

We in HARK explore these lookings and listenings and encourage many responses to emerge. In reacting to the images and sounds our imaginations are aroused; in responding to them we might want to add our own creativity. As we dwell with them we might find this to be a practice of meditation.. As we allow this to develop then we might also find that there seems a ‘fitting spirit’ through which relate to the images/sounds.

The circle drawn in our experience of doing nothing else but allowing this time/space to emerge;, allowing (in)attention and response, might be experienced as a healing process.- making a sanctuary by deep looking and listening within our environing world. We can only inhabit our world not appropriate it but dwelling deeply we make and discover its sacred aspects.

Another invitation then arises: to bring out your response in a co-creative adventure of improvisation. To do this you can come an collaborate with us in a live event working with these images and our musicians, bringing any sounds you wish.

So welcome to HARK a sensory play-space. If this arouses your curiosity then explore here, go ‘wayfaring’, through more images and sounds in various forms.

Welcome

The wayfaring starts with listening to an extract from the Etude ‘Cosmosis’ which is called Porous. This can be found below in Openings. Here you see the surface of water and hear the sounds of stones gathered from across Scotland being struck, played. Two elemental aspects of our world are brought together in co-creation.

Then you can explore in the Openings page further and chose from: short Ikons — sounded glimpses of some feature of our environing world, small passing miniatures — to Haiku which are short, usually 4 minute invitations to dwell a little longer with sound and images.

After each we invite you to muse, to reflect on the experience — just to notice. There is no right or wrong way to engage, there is just the noticing both what we see and hear and what arises in us as we look and listen. Reflections on how we find ourselves looking and listening may also arise.

After Ikons and Haiku there are longer thematic Etudes. These have a theme and focus on some element or object, for example a river and its flow and patterns or an object in a context.

The next shift takes us to Opus, . The piece we are working on at present, Asylum Diaries is a much longer, and concerns exile migration, capture and loss. Here we make a transition in our work to a thematic narrative, whilst retaining the open texture of sight and sound linked to a focus on aspects of the experience of exile. The original title of this work was ‘Hiraeth” the Welsh word for homesickness, exile, the sense of homeland and belonging and this suggests the atmosphere of the piece.

The project as a whole attempts to link experience of images/sound with responses that engender participative creativity and is thereby a healing process.

So we invite you to be curious, to start your engagement with HARK by playing, making a sensory journey, dwelling, attending and wayfaring through Ikons, and Haiku, (and maybe later through Etudes and Opus.)

All the video art and images are created by Huw, as are some sound tracks, when music has been commissioned, composed and played by HARK members then the creative credit is noted on the videso.

The HARK project has other features — participative performance events, and co-production. All our projects are documented and you will find this material on the other pages here. You can contact us through info@hark.co.uk

For the beginning of reflections on our praxis, if you seek a rationale for our work there is a link to the Sounds Podcast by Tom Service on Deep Listening which includes a reference to the work of Pauline Oliveros. The ‘HARK at the Silo’ album below on the Current Projects page comes from Oliveros as an inspiration. For reading ‘Art as Therapy’ by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong is a good introduction.