We had made a deliberate decision to go to this festival, sharing several quality acts with the consecutive Cambridge Folk Festival, which we have been to for several years. So what did we miss? A choice of stages (Cambridge has three)…but it did give us the time to get on the bikes and see something of the locality. The beer tent had no peanuts…something I can never understand; the food was not as good (Senor Moon’s veggie chili…); and we missed Proper Records and the musical instrument stalls. But the camp site was quiet (excepting stereo toddlers who whined unfettered from pre-6am), there were hot free showers on site, and the music . More of that tomorrow…

I will be publishing loads of images on here and on my flickr stream. Some might even be nae bad. Here’s a taster of my out-takes (as opposed to the polished, beaming, rule-of-thirds…yep, you’re so right..whaaaat???)… Oysterband’s touring guitarist Dan Donnelly in full flight…

Anyhow, here’s a fun one from Heresy, Shift Time Festival, Shrewsbury:

In the meantime, our absence and the regular application of monsoon-style deluge has rendered the lower reaches of the farm almost impenetrable in places. This has served to bring nature even closer to our portals than usual. First, there was the late-night photoshoot with the hedgehogwho was minding his own business trundling past the back door when nipped by one of the collies returning from their evening constitutional. I expect he was grateful that I removed the revolting bloated sheep-tick from amongst his prickles in lieu of TFCD. More useful I expect.

And second was the event last Tuesday when my newly adult (well 18 anyway) daughter squealed as she spied a mouse in the living room. There followed a fifteen minute episode taking four adults to catch one young field mouse and repatriate it outside. As evening approached I mentioned this episode to my 7 year old: who seemed to know all about the mouse already. The gist of it being that she had rescued a mouse from the Maine Coon on the doorstep on Sunday because her eldest sister had refused to help and had apparently decided that the cat should win. The stunned mouse was then placed in a toy plastic dog kennel with some Double Gloucester. Naturally it escaped….and she had been leaving it little bits of cheese behind the bookcase since then.

What with that and the fact that that particular corner of the living room is piled with woolsacks for sorting fleece and whiffs gently of sheep and lanolin. Occasionally I question my sanity at having spotted sheep only to have to separate their fleeces into chocolate, grey, and white. After all, they do make black sheep quite naturally.

The Shift Time Festival, Shrewsbury staged its final two events last night culminating in “Heresy” by media artists Andy McKeown and Sue Challis.

Festival Programme Director, Anna Douglas, surveys some of the panels as dusk gathers in for the display:

Each of the 14 archways of the Old Market Hall was hung with screens representing sails on The Beagle. The installation projected words and images relating to people in history who had expressed opinions which rocked the boat of mainstream society. The end panels showed a constantly changing lightshow of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species at one end and Elaine Morgan’s The Naked Darwinist, in their entirety, at the other.

Other panels featured the likes of Galileo Galilei “father of modern science”, chemist Linus Pauling and the director of the Human Genome Project Dr Francis Collins. The display ran seamlessly, although I felt that the “cuttings” panels – a feast of randomly projected and patchworked cuttings and photographs – ran too fast to be read successfully and was perhaps not as assessible as it deserved to be. It was clear that a huge amount of thought and work had gone into this installation.

Panel imagery (more to follow):

Image featuring the incognito silhouettes of media artists Andy McKeown and Sue Challis, celebrating the success of the project:

Today I attended the opening of Follow the Voice in the Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury, a production echoing Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Marcus Coates recorded a variety of manmade sounds in Shrewsbury, which, when speeded are similar to noises from the animal kingdom which they morph into in the film. The performance sat comfortably in its surroundings and, following the performance at Theatre Severn returns to the Unitarian Church from 12-4pm Wed-Sat until August 8th 2009.

I was fortunate to get the opportunity to talk to Geoffrey Streatfield, the RSC actor portraying a lab-coated scientist in media theorist Arjen Mulder’s production, in the Lion Hotel as he returned from rehearsal. In progress…

On my way to the dress rehearsal of The Weatherman I stopped off in Rowley’s House, Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery (SMAG) to photograph and video Glissman and Hofflin’s ELF exhibition. In progress…

And to cast a weather eye over progress on Quantum Leap which, sadly due to technical issues has not quite made its hoped for unveiling tomorrow and although nearly joined at the top is still encaged in its scaffolding gantry.

And so to Theatre Severn where I was in time to catch much of the last run-through and then the dress rehearsal of The Weatherman and gain a true flavour of the tour to come. The plot outlines the background to the friendship between Robert Fitzroy and Charles Darwin during their time on The Beagle only to be polarised by their beliefs.

The set, simple and effective, consisting of an outer circle of spotlights, a number of pale wooden chairs key to the performance and a circular central stage, placed the string quartet, conductor, and two actors – baritone and spoken voice – as deliberately equal partners in the production. It was clear early on that the production was open to individual though perhaps not always conscious decision making: the spoken voice and sung voice often competing contrastingly and effectively for attention, the interpretation of the placing and movement of the chairs, and a stunning narrative throughout. It was obvious also that this production will develop organically with time.

The use of a quite muted, subtle, but sometimes intricate score and a small cast consisting of a single baritone and a narrator gives a fresh slant to the meaning of operatic duet. This was effective, and additionally minimizes inertia allowing the staging of single performances. Humour was well delivered and the narrative engaging and easily assessible. The Weatherman moves on to Gateshead, Leeds, and London. Catch it if you can.

And finally I was delighted to be able to spend some time with Dominic Gray, Project Director of Opera North. In progress…

All in all a most stimulating and thought-provoking day.

We need bookcasing. Serious bookcasing. As I’ve said before, I love wood. So wood it is (recycled or from sustainably managed forests), but with the number of books it needs to be open plan but strong and functional. Returning to the above, of course books could soon be destined to be the LPs of the literary world, so, it is hoped that our need here need not be expandable. Rather a shrine to the products of the printing press. Turning pages though still has a calming quality that will be, I feel, impossible to replace with an electronic gizmo. It may look almost like paper, but where’s the tactility? Although I, for one, won’t miss the olfactory experience of newsprint or old sticky library books .

There was almost a shrine-like feeling around Wren and Ray’s Remembrance Path at the Shift Time festival: sad to see so many worn out books (and some with a future through Oxfam shops and similar) and to reflect on things passed. And a future in charged microcapsules.

So, to design. I’m on the trail of my own, simplified take on the elusive and beautiful Massimo Castagna’s Flying Circles.. Why is nothing ever straightforward?

I was fortunate to be able to take the time to watch the final rehearsal for Blue Eyed Soul’s TAKE: a dance in the park late on the first Saturday morning of the Shift Time Festival, Shrewsbury so I had a good idea of what to expect from the point of view of capturing this original performance on the a700. A film crew were also in attendance throughout and I was a little taken aback that, after the first performance later in the day, their cameraman commented to me that it was less aerial than expected so his filming hadn’t gone to plan…I mean he was in most of my rehearsal pictures facing the rig!

The rig itself is an English-made bespoke set-up allowing dance to be much more 3-dimensional using climbing harnesses and ropes, also enabling the performers to use the rig itself as vertical bars. The accompanying soundtrack was imaginative, sinuous, effective, a varied series of music woven with sound bytes of stage commentary and scene setting: would have enjoyed it more but spent much of the performance flat on the grass one way up or the other with a camera. I felt though that the heavy Edwardian clothing detracted from the gracefulness and strength of the dancers a bit too much and were a little incongruous rather than contrasting effectively with the rig, so enjoyed the latter stages much more from an artistic and photographer’s perspective. It was great to see the obvious enjoyment of the performers and I greatly look forward to future performances.

In addition to the sheep and a flock of chickens who lay blue eggs, there is the (what do you do with the) llama herd. They are great to be around, if largely unschooled. I’m hoping that my 15 year old after her impending week’s work experience in a riding school decides to transfer her newfound skills to grooming and schooling camelids. Hint .

We arrived at the launch of Shift Time in The Quarry, Shrewsbury in time to see the evening launch of an unrelated hot air balloon into the blue sky of a summer’s evening. I love the gentle breathing of the burners; never figured out why. An hour later we were seated in The Igloo as Paul Granjon began his offbeat performance: his dubious instrumental abilities making my seven year old sound pretty good on her ukelele at its most out of tune. I was surprised that I thought this at seven yesterday (Sunday) morning as we awoke to a YouTube fuelled serenade.

It was interesting to see the development of Paul’s robots, and however crazy his inventions there was a strong undercurrent of serious scientist. And of evolution, the central theme of the festival to come. The lighting in The Igloo proved challenging even for the handheld a700 with its inbuilt antishake as the images testify; sad to see flash being used though, dazzling and distracting to audience and performers alike.

So, in the next few days – before all the activity of “the second weekend” and maybe an hour or so on Tuesday when I hope to record the ELF project of Pascal Glissman & Martina Höfflin, I might just have to catch up a bit.

High points of the weekend? My interview with Theo Jansen, photographing Blue Eyed Soul and videoing umerus in action; and that my Jacob sheep acted like sheep for Feng-Ru Lee in spite of assorted distractions!