building of rooks.

The Building of Rooks uses found and site recorded sound with elements of spoken word to produce a piece based on the concepts behind the BBC drama The Stone Tape (1972). The piece explores the notion that sound can be absorbed by a building and ‘spoken’ back out – opening up a dialogue between urban environment and community. The theory also plays on how memory can be retained by environment and projected back into living consciousness as a form of ‘life after death’. Sound was collected on location at Bradford Playhouse, and the Rooks that roost in the graveyard at Haworth Belfry. The collective noun for Rooks is a Building of Rooks, and the piece uses this as it plays homage to Janet Cardiff’s The Murder of Crows.