Yird Muin Starn

  earth         moon         star

O                    (                     *

is a project to design and make shelter for star gazing visitors in the Galloway Forest, Scotland. Shelter that encourages and enables an encounter with the profundity of space enhanced by a heightened awareness of sound whilst immersed in deep nature. The context is the super-dark sky the visitor is enveloped by, turning the forest into a place for recuperation.

Galloway Forest Park, was awarded dark sky park status on the 16th of November 2009, the International Year of Astronomy.  The park comprises 300 square miles of forest and is one of the first wild areas outside the US to be recognized as an exceptional place from which to view our galaxy.  Yird Muin Starn  was conceived and is directed by Scottish artist Mandy McIntosh  who has invited Matthews to design and compose a flexible sonic intervention. Together they will work in partnership with the Wigtown Astronomical Society, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance/Institute for Astronomy, the Forestry Commission, Scotland and sonic interface project music for bodies through Lab Ten.

McIntosh won a Vital Spark Award to realise this work. It will be McIntosh-Matthews first full collaboration since their BAFTA awarded , NASA visited Weightless Animals 2004 and McIntosh’s design and upholstery fabrication for Sonic Bed_Scotland 2007 .

Yird Muin Starn is expected to launch fall 2012.