In December 2024, David and I marked the end of the Sounding the Angel project by contributing a public lecture to Newcastle University’s Insights lecture series. The sound recording from the project was reinstalled in the Arches Sound Project to coincide with the lecture, so that people had the chance to hear it in full before and after the lecture.
David and I presented the lecture together, in recognition that it had been a collaboration between us at every step of the way. We began by describing our own encounter with the memorial at the Angel, which opened out into a broader description of the project and its aims. We then focused on David’s recording of the sounds of the site across the seasons of the year, before letting the voices of our participants lead the conversation with their reflections on what it had meant to them to leave memorial tokens at the Angel. We closed by pulling the different strands together into a reflection on what it means to use sound as a means of recording a spontaneous memorial.
We had some fantastic responses from those who attended the lecture and it was great to see so much interest in the project. Some of those who came had heard about the project from the early radio broadcasts and followed its progress in this blog, while others had encountered it for the first time through the lecture.
We gave the last word to the Angel, playing David’s recording of its metal structure contracting at the end of a hot summer’s day in our last visit to the site together. Amplified through the audio system of the lecture theatre, the sound reverberated through the floor, even as it had radiated out from the base of the Angel on the day that we recorded. It felt like a fitting close to a project called Sounding the Angel!
You can watch the lecture here.