During a residency in 2022, Nichola Scrutton and Zoë Strachan developed a process called ‘test-pitting’ (a term used in archaeological excavation) to create a palimpsest of sound (composed, recorded, vocal, improvised), found and composed text, and drawing, relating to ideas of inner and outer landscapes. 

Through The Second Life Awards, the Edwin Morgan Trust provided funding for Nichola and Zoë to build on and develop the test-pitting process. Their project, Lying Over Under Another, engaged directly with Edwin Morgan’s scrapbooks and responded through sound, text and mark-making in order to create a new sound art piece. The scrapbooks physically represent the layering and palimpsest that Nichola and Zoë strove to achieve in their sound collaborations, while the verbal disintegration and moments of absurdity and humour that emerged from the test-pitting process echo Morgan’s own poetic practice. Nichola and Zoë’s responses to the diverse materials found in the scrapbooks were woven through the project, which invoked bodies (entities) and their relation to each other.

In the Edwin Morgan Archive

Performances

As part of the Radiophrenia 2023 schedule, on 2nd September Nichola and Zoë performed a version of their sound-piece live in studio at the CCA, which was broadcast across Glasgow on 87.9FM. On 11th September, they performed at the University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections as part of the Doors Open Day Festival, which was followed by a Q & A. Responding to the visual richness of Morgan’s sixteen volumes of unpublished scrapbooks, Nichola and Zoë reimagined the process of scrapbooking through these improvised performances, which combined recorded and live sound with found text from Morgan’s archive.

Project members

About the project members

Nichola Scrutton is an award-winning composer/sound artist, vocalist and artist who works across a range of media. Her work has been broadcast internationally, most recently Dream Stream on Radio Art Zone for European Capital of Culture Esch 2022, and previously, her sound composition PIB#1 won the US IAWM Pauline Oliveros Award. Nichola has extensive experience as a collaborator in a range of interdisciplinary and participatory contexts, and has collaborated with writer Zoë Strachan on several experimental radio broadcasts and performances. Her current work-in-progress includes Night Vision for vocal ensemble, and solo album, Interzone, to be released in 2023. @NicholaScrutton

Zoë Strachan is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and librettist who also works in non-fiction and drama. Her last novel, Ever Fallen in Love, was shortlisted for the Scottish Book Awards and the Green Carnation Prize and her next novel, Lips That Touch, is forthcoming in 2023. Her opera The Lady from the Sea, composed by Craig Armstrong, won a Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh International Festival. She is Reader in Creative Writing at University of Glasgow. For the past six years, she has collaborated with sound artist Nichola Scrutton on experimental radio and performance. @zoestrachan