Covid Lockdown Breath Machine is a binaural sound project written by
Lavinia Murray and composed and sound designed by Dr. Robert Bentall.
Designed specifically to be experienced in with headphones, alone, with the
lights off and the curtains drawn Covid Lockdown Breath Machine is a fantastical,
transformative and ultimately uplifting journey into the symptoms and imaginings of
a corona virus patient. Take a breath and let this breeze whisk you to a world of
kaleidoscopes, household gods and mushroom spores on a fresh but capricious
westerly wind.
You can hear a teaser by putting on your headphones and clicking here. The whole
piece can be heard here.
Lavinia Murray (aka F.J. McQueen) is an award-winning writer, performance poet,
zinester, illustrator and animator. Close to 100 of her scripts, both original works
and adaptations have been produced by BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, including
Émile Zola’s Blood, Sex and Money, for which she was a co-recipient of the BBC Radio 4 Audio Drama Award for Best Adaptation, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and H.G. Wells’ Ann Veronica. Through which she has built her renown as an experimental writer. Her novel, Out Damned Spot! - William Shakespeare, Crime Scene Cleaner, written under her pseudonym, F.J. McQueen, was published by Urbane Books in 2016.
Dr Robert Bentall is a composer, performer, sound designer and principal lecturer in music production at Leeds Conservatoire. His works, which have been heard across Europe as well as North and South America, are primarily within the electroacoustic sector and hybridise ambient, folk, dance, improvised and experimental music. He has held artist residencies at the Electronic Music Studios, Stockholm, Visby International Composers Centre, CMMAS Mexico, University of Huddersfield and Cryptic Glasgow, and was a finalist for both the 2013 Franz Liszt Composition Prize in Weimar, Germany and the 2014 Oxford/Sennheiser Electronic Music Prize.
He has previously collaborated with Knaïve Theatre, creating and performing the sound design for the play, War with the Newts.
Covid Lockdown Breath Machine, Us, (Post 23/3) and Have Your Passport Ready by Stand and Be Counted Theatre together form our Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund for Non-NPOs funded programme.
To be released as part of Knaïve Theatre: A Digital Lyceum's inaugural season 7th -14th November 2020.
Supported by