This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland
Hannah Tuulikki, Away with the Birds, 2014, Film still, Daniel Warren
Last summer several years’ worth of development culminated in the performances of Away with the birds, written and performed by Hanna Tuulikki and produced by Suzy Glass.
Hanna Tuulikki’s Air falbh leis na h-eòin is a body of work exploring the mimesis of birds in Gaelic song.
Hanna’s vocal composition, Guth an Eòin | Voice of the Bird is the heart of the project. Written for a female vocal ensemble, it reinterprets archival material, fragmenting and re-weaving extracts of Gaelic songs into an extended soundscape. The music emerges from, and responds to, island landscapes and lives. It explores the delicate equilibrium of Hebridean life, the co-existence of tradition and innovation, and suggests the ever-present inter-relationship between bird, human, and ecology.
‘The piece is made from weaving together fragments of traditional songs and poems that imitate or emulate birdsong’ Tuulikki explains. ‘Each of the five movements represents a different habitat and bird community – wader, sea-bird, wildfowl, corvid, and cuckoo. In August we will perform the concert in the historic harbour of the beautiful Isle of Canna, where the music reverberates with the bird-calls and the ebb of the tide. The setting is so important to the piece. The Small Isles are a magical place and, to me, the performance begins as soon as people climb on-board the ferry-boat to make the crossing: the richness of the experience is people sharing a journey.’
Away with the Birds was conceived for and in relation to the Isle of Canna – its ecology, birdlife, history and community. The last custodians of the island, John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw, were renowned folklorists and ethnomusicologists whose extraordinary collection of Gaelic material is housed in Canna House. Steeped in the Gaelic tradition, their hospitality was famous and their home became a hive of creativity, welcoming artists, musicians, scientists and writers from across the world.
Access the interactive score with access to background material, audio and video clips as well as images here.
In this new version of Air falbh leis na h-eòin you become the navigator, steering your own way through Tuulikki’s score. Within its expansive sweep, sound, music, and movement are translated into gesture and precise notation. Words and vocables – sounds without meaning – represent the shapes of individual birds, flocks, skeins, waves and islands, as well as more abstracted forms, suggestive of motion or topography.
You can explore the entire composition in your own time, taking your own course. You can experience the texture of ecology, survey landscape and seascape, immerse yourself in the film, and read detailed notes on the source songs, poems, and birds. This is a prismatic experience that tunes us into a sonic continuum that reaches into the “more-than-human†world.
ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
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As the deadline of handing in my PhD draws closer, I’m excited about uncovering the potential of Ecoscenography. Here, I share a short summary of my research and the possibilities of contributive practice in the performing arts. 
Since starting my candidature, a selection of my creative works have developed under the banner of The Living Stage – a global project that combines stage design, permaculture and community engagement to create recyclable, biodegradable and edible performance spaces. Part theatre, part garden and part food growing demonstration, The Living Stage considers ecological principles and environmental impact as opportunities rather than constraints: ethics that can illuminate, and be integral to aesthetics. At the end of the performances, my living stages are returned to the communities that helped grow them. Physical structures become garden beds and community spaces; plants become healthy food; and waste becomes compost. As each living stage evolves out of a direct response to the localities of site, ecology and community, no project is ever the same.
Loosely based on Jules Verne’s epic adventure, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, starting in Iceland, three ‘wunderkind’ Geo-Scientists (Flavia Bertum, Ayesha Tansey and Sabrina Manach) from ‘MyGeoCorpse Mining Corporation’ set off in search of precious minerals. As they drill down through the earth’s layers their machinery breaks down, finding themselves lost in the darkness. As panic ensues, they continue on foot, delving deeper into the collective unconscious they begin to unearth the complexities of climate change.
It is worth noting that camping equipment is made from synthetic textiles such as nylon, polyester and ripstop derived from the petro-chemical industries (which will take between 20 and 200 years to biodegrade). A sleeping bag is composed of three layers: outer shell (synthetic material), filing (feather or synthetic), lining (synthetic, fleece, silk or cotton), zips – (aluminum, metals, plastic), toggles and cord (plastic and cotton) and polyester sewing thread. It is estimated that 45,000 tents are brought to Reading Festival with 13,500 abandoned at the end of the weekend. The cost of tents (£20) and sleeping bags (£10) has been cited as one of the causes and has changed the nature of camping from a ‘once in a life-time’ purchase to a throw away item.
The good news is that Reading Festival in collaborative partnership with Julie’s Bicycle, 
I believe that there is nothing that can give you a deeper appreciation of the resources that go into the production of an item than mindfully deconstructing it. Initiatives and ‘tear downs’ run by places such as FabLab, Hackerspaces, Makersspaces and Restart are great teachers of this process. Once you have experienced this (which I highly recommend!), it becomes increasing difficult to relegate things to the scrap heap. It is a highly insightful process.
My journey has just begun with HOAX and there will be lots more scope for exciting ecological and creative solutions to inspire the next stages of the design. A work-in-progress presentation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth took place at the Pleasance Theatre, London in October 2015 (as part of ArtCOP21) where I also shared this story as part of a post-show Q&A. The show was a great success, paving the way for a full-length production planned for 2016. My costume also had another outing (worn by Flavia Bertum) at the 
