[flickr]photo:3709302925[/flickr]

1. Visit the Leeds City Museum and discuss technicalities with Tom Pace, Senior AV Technician
2. Meet with Sue Ball from MAAP
3. Visit Leeds Parish Church for a practice bell ringing session and meet with Steve Ollerton, Tower Captain and the group
4. Visit other possible churches – time permitting…

Resulting in the following notes (they’re quite extensive – sorry):

1. Leeds City Museum is a grand old building and the Leeds Arena is as impressive in real life as it is in the photos… but they were preparing for a significant externally produced evening event and there wasn’t the opportunity to spec out the space thoroughly.

What I did manage to find out from Tom (who seems nice enough) is:

1. The five in-house projectors are Panasonic PT-D5600E – not a current model and no details on the Panasonic website but details here <http://www.ivojo.co.uk/panasonic-pt-d5600e.htm> – and they’re XGA – 1024×768 – so we’ll not be showing HD video!
2. They’re wired using component cabling – Y, Pb/Cb and Pr/Cr – but Tom also uses the Pr/Cr cable to display composite only – odd but true.
3. Re video playback:
   1. there’s one in-house Windows 98 PC that can drive video to all screens…
   2. or we can send a discreet video to each screen using the in-house Acorn McBride Video Binloop 16 track video player which uses Compact Flash cards – up to 20 minutes of video per card. Tom says that formating the cards and encoding the video appropriately is a bit tricky – but he’s happy to offer advice here. Whether we can actually get more control out the device than just playing the loops might be worth investigating – Rowan would you download the user manual and have a look?
   3. or we can provide our own video playing PCs ??
4. Re audio – there’s an in-house rig of 8 speakers at balcony level (I think there might also be a ring at floor level – but I can’t see any in the photo) which are wired up to a stereo output – either top left and bottom right or 4 left and 4 right I vaguely remember…
5. The circular lighting rig is accessible to us and can be used to mount additional lighting and slide projectors etc.
6. I now have Tom’s mobile number…

2. Sue Ball of the Media and Arts Partnership (rubbish Flash site that won’t work in Safari for me) is a public art consultant working with Sound and Music on delivering Expo. Sue is lovely, really gets the piece, is happy to help and support us in which ever way she can and I think would be a really useful sounding board as the work progresses and we need to resolve aesthetic and interactive development issues. I’ve said I’d cc Sue in key correspondence and keep her up to date with developments via the Monomatic blog.

3. The visit to a St Peter’s (Leeds Parish) Church bell ringing practice was great – a real ear and eye opener and just as informative as I’d hoped. Steve Ollerton (Tower Captain) is very positive, more than happy to advise and help and keen to support us. I even got a chance to ring a bell myself 😉

I’ve uploaded photos from the visit (using the surprisingly good Flickr Uploadr) into a new Monomatic Flickr account and a very rough edit of video footage on the Monomatic Vimeo account – all taken with my Canon IXUS 860 IS.

a) Confirming churches

Steve thinks we’ll have problems finding five active 8 bell ringing groups in Leeds – he’s confirmed this in an email too:

• The St Peter’s (Leeds Parish Church) group is “by far the leading light  in Leeds bell ringing” – with 20+ members its the largest and most active;
• St Annes Cathedral, LS2 – “is second but there is an awful lot of politics between the 2 towers and we do not mix” – an elderly and traditional group according to Steve though it is very close to Leeds City Museum;
• St Chad’s Church, Far Headingley, LS16 – “have a reasonably good band and may well want to be on board” – and it has a nice mix of elderly and child bell ringers evidently;
• and probably St Michael & All Angels Parish Church, Headingley, LS6.
• Steve also recommends the 6 bell St Matthew’s Church, Chapel Allerton LS7 which has a small but enthusiastic group.
• St Matthias, Burley, LS4 – the base of the Leeds University bell ringing group “have a good and enthusiastic band” – but they’re unlikely to be ringing over the summer break.

Steve confirms my assumptions that we’ll have to deal with local politics and personalities in engaging these churches – but he’s agreed to help make connections for us – and confirmed that the St Peter’s group will support us by supplying bell ringers for sessions at other churches if required.

He’s also keen for the St Peter’s group to perform at Expo using our virtual campanile – though interestingly the general consensus is that the bell should sound directly on breaking the beam – and not have any kind of delay as we’ve mooted in the proposal to try and model the natural cycle of the rising and falling rope as in a real bell tower.

b. Accessing St Peter’s

We’ve agreed either Sunday 9th August or Sunday 16th August, 1-6pm as the best diary opportunities for us to film. We can be let in from 1pm to set up equipment and they’ll then start a practice session from 4pm.

Although we can get access to the bells themselves we’ll definitely need lighting (it’s dark and dingy up there) – but access is awkward and cramped and so we should definitely be looking for the most compact solutions at all times…

c. Ringing the changes

I was quite surprised at how hard sonically it was for me to separate the individual bells and hear when they were actually ringing in the cycle of pulling their rope. In the end I just concentrated on the tenor (lowest tone bell) and managed to work out that it rang at the top apex of the sally (the tufted handgrip on the rope) rise and also a little after the start of the rise from the lowest apex of the sally fall (watch the Vimeo video to confirm this). One ringer said it was “as your hands pass your face”.

My difficulty may have been partly due to the fact that the cycle of the smaller bells is actually faster than that of the larger ones – as Steve explains: “You may not be aware that when a ringer pulls the rope the bell rings between 0.5 and 1 second later depending on how big it is and how long it takes to swing round its full circle i.e. at Leeds if you pull 1 and 12 at exactly the same time 1 will ring after 0.5 secs and 12 after 1sec – ping dong. They will not ring together! Your laser beams may not take that into consideration! Tricky tricky.”

From our research to date I understand the principle of following the “blue line” in method ringing with calls from the Captain to interject shorter sections to shift the order of the bells – but in practice the methodolgy of the ringing was totally opaque to me and I really could not make any sense of what was actually going on. As Steve says “you have an awful lot to do and learn about bellringing in a very short time”… how true!

Steve mentioned the definitive bell ringing simulation software – AbelSim – available for OS X as Mabel – which I’ve now bought (£20) and am starting to explore…

I also noted the method ringing book ‘Diagrams’, Jasper Snowdon Change Ringing Series, published by Christopher Groome, printed by MPG Books Ltd – which might be useful to get a copy of…

and the fact that the group noted attendees and the details of played pieces – which each last about 10 minutes – in a log book…

d. Things of note…

The whole experience – from the cramped stone spiral staircase access from the base of the bell ringing tower; the climb up metal ladders to the bells themselves and their sheer size, volume and patently significant inertias; the movement of the ropes and physicality of the ringers; the small details I noticed in the decor and furnishings of the space – was incredibly rich and evocative… its hard to know what NOT to note…

• although larger than most at 12 bells the diameter of the “full circle” of ropes is actually quite big – at least 12ft;
• when playing a simple round – bell 1-12 – the sallys move in a way very akin to a ‘Mexican Wave’… which made me think about the control and effects of the LEDs in our virtual campanile…;
• though not actually much used from what I saw there were carpet circles on the floor for each rope… a lovely mushroom colour 😉 ;
• as well as standing boxes for the larger bells – hand made and worn through years of use;
• benches on two sides for people to sit on;
• a table in the centre with a couple of chairs… overflowing with bits of paper, magazines, old drink cartons etc.;
• spare bells (?) half stored under the table;
• spare ropes wound and hung on the wall;
• two really bright halogen floods in the ceiling that cast hard shadows of the bell ringers movements on the floor;
• the leaded and ornate window;
• the fading boards of special events and people on every wall.

I was also touched by the little things… the small details in the space which might be really nice to capture and reflect in some way in our virtual campanile – perhaps by slide projection onto the floor of the space…

• a stopped clock;
• a first aid kit on the bookshelf;
• a trophy on top of the bookcase next to a game of Twister;
• a baby chair and playpen;
• the central table and chairs with the clutter and detritus of many a bell-ringing session;
• the little nick cut out from the standing box from the largest bell so that it could accommodate the lowest step of the circular staircase.

4. I was a bit too late to visit St Anne’s Cathedral… it closes at 6pm – but took some photos of the outside… and ran out of time to visit any of the other churches Steve Ollerton had suggested.