Andy Cluer is a visual artist based in the South West, UK, working predominantly with sculpture and sound. His sonic work investigates place, both real and imagined, through the mapping of memory, sound and perceptual experience. Andy’s work often questions the relationship between auditory and visual awareness, exploring different ways of listening and how sound can be experienced through non audio mediums and similarly how images can be invoked by sound.

Drift | Hum is a body of audio works which investigates our immediate environments through the relationship between human and nature in our new, unfamiliar landscapes found during the 2020 global pandemic. By exhibiting sounds and words, the artwork focuses on how sound perception, through listening, can invoke visual perception as a way of interpreting subtle changes in our environment.

Through the quietness, intimacy and the return of undisturbed nature, undamaged by human activity in lockdown; to the reappearance of human sounds, the droning of mechanical machineries concealing the emergence of wildlife with the easing of restrictions; and the tensions and anxieties of the long term effects of human habits – these audio works are used to create an auditory visual awareness of the environment and conduct a deeper attentiveness of our relationship with the world.

The arrangement of Hum was composed through Foley sounds and human vocals and continues the reoccurring theme of the relationship between human and nature introduced in Drift. The act of touch and feel against the surfaces of a single sculptural sound object was performed to compose the Foley sounds – resulting in a droning soundscape. The vocals were used to recreate a human interpretation of this soundscape and engage a conversation between person and nature, reflecting on the sounds and our experiences of the everyday. The vocals on Hum were performed by Pete Last.