Barefoot Blindfold - Fruit Routes

Fruit Routes events in May including a daybreak a new way to experience sunrise and the dawn chorus 'Barefoot Blinfold' a piece conceived by artists Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally for Fruit Routes.

Please be aware that during the daybreak piece participants will be blindfolded to enhance the listening experience for a period of time.

Places are limited so telephone 07849073394 or email mail@amculhane.co.uk and come along to this free dawn meets art experience. There will be a chance over breakfast to share thoughts on the experience and gain insights from an RSPB expert on the bird song heard but also whatever emotions and stories rise to the surface during the experience.


More on Barefoot Blindfold
Conneally says (at Artists Talking):

"I see this as another strand of my ongoing Memory Foam series in that within the immersive experience we hope to create, emotions, memories and stories will arise from the sounds and silences weaved through the piece.


'Barefoof Blindfold' is part of Anne-Marie's ongoing work FRUIT ROUTES for at Loughborough University a work that I've been happy to be a part of over the last six months or so.

Barefoot Blindfold will take place on Friday the 18th of May in and amongst the fruit trees planted in and across the Loughborough University campus during Fruit Routes. It's a daybreak exxperience starting at 5am in the morning - dawn.

Exact happenings are not yet finalised but meeting at the Pilkington Library participants (it could be you!) are 'slow walked' to a Fruit Route orchard area. Here each person chooses and sits with their back against a tree and is blindolded for 30 minutes. It will be dawn and the blindfolding aims to focus our senses on sounds and sensations other than visual. It will we hope be a new way to experience the birdsong of the dawn chorus for instance but all other sounds too.

We thought of how one might 'draw' the sound sounds, sensations and emotions in real time while blindfold. The impermanence of dawn, of birdsong, saw us seeking for parallel ways of 'drawing' them as we sit blinfold and barefoot backs against our trees. We think we have it now - to draw in air - to move our hands and arms in response to the sounds and the emotions, memories, srories that arise in us. Let the sounds of dawn choreograph the movement.

I can see it in my mind's eye now a grove of fruit trees each tree with a barefoot blinfold person sat against it, listening and moving their arms arms and hands to the sound of dawn and all it brings.
The second half-hour will be a shift - this time involving the blocking out of sound perhaps - from blind to deaf somehow.

After we have breakfast and share our stories, emotions through the mediation of feedback on the birdsong heard and birds on the campus in general from an RSPB expert on birds.

Any and all of the above is subject to change".