Kathy Hinde & Vicky Clarke - Rose Garden Broadcast

Kathy Hinde is an artist and composer based in Bristol, UK. Through installations, performances and site specific experiences, she aims to nurture a deeper and more embodied connection to the more-than-human world. Composed of hand-made objects, electronics and a blend of digital and analogue systems, Kathy’s work represents a cross between kinetic sound sculptures and newly invented musical instruments. She often creates artworks in response to locations and frequently collaborates with other practitioners and scientists.

Kathy has toured work across Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Colombia, Australia and New Zealand. Awards include an Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art 2020, an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2015, a British Composer Award for Sonic Art 2017, an ORAM award 2017 and a Scottish Award for New Music 2018. Kathy was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in music from Bath Spa University in 2023, is a member of Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (BEEF), and a resident at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol.

Vicky Clarke is a sound and electronic media artist from Manchester, whose work explores materiality, electrical phenomena and ritual. Working with sound sculpture, DIY electronics and human-machine systems, she explores techno-emotional perceptual states through composition and live AV performance. She produces music under the moniker SONAMB and released her debut album SLEEPSTATES, ‘an experimental techno-jerker’ (Boomkat) in 2022, with accompanying net-art piece SLEEPSTATES.NET.

Vicky won the Oram Award 2020 for innovation in sound, and is currently an ‘In Motion’ Composer with Sound and Music UK, developing her Musique Concreté and Machine Learning practice into spatial sound installation, following her AURA MACHINE residencies with NOVARS, University of Manchester and the British Council in St Petersburg. Vicky was formally one half of Noise Orchestra, an electronics duo who created Noise Machines that translated light into sound inspired by 1920s Russian avant garde. Their machines, graphical sound and noise walks were developed through their ‘Play the Collections’ residency at the National Science & Media Museum (UNESCO Year of Light) and toured to Rome Media Art Festival and Spectra, Aberdeen.

About the work

Rose Garden Broadcast amplifies and transmits the hidden elemental sounds below and above the surface of the Rose Garden and the surrounding environment of Mesnes Park Wigan. It is a new collaboration by artists Vicky Clarke and Kathy Hinde for Light Night Wigan 2024, commissioned by Things That Go On Things and co-created with young people from Wigan Youth Zone.

Rose Garden Broadcast invites audiences to wear wireless headphones and tune in to three different ‘earth to sky’ frequency bands broadcast from electronic, illuminated radio sculptures housed in Victorian glass cloches. Though dormant in winter, Rose Garden Broadcast will ‘bring back the blooms’ as digital twins. The cloches will house LED screens displaying pixel art roses, digital doppelgangers of the rose species as created by local young people from Wigan Youth Zone.