Occasional posts on subjects including field recording, London history and literature, other websites worth looking at, articles in the press, and news of sound-related events.
A QUICK HELLO to anyone reading this who came along to my two recent talks at the SoundFjord gallery in north London and the Sonic Art Research Unit in Oxford Brookes University.
Last Sunday it was pouring down in London, so before the talk at SoundFjord I was forced to take shelter in The Fountain on West Green Road. This may or may not have affected the delivery of the talk somehow. I’m still not sure how I linked a recording of a tornado demolishing a house to oil refinery sirens at Canvey Island – something to do with, er, chance – but everyone seemed happy enough. Thanks to all of you who turned up, especially with such rubbish weather prevailing, and much gratitude as ever goes to Helen and Andy of SoundFjord for inviting me along.
For the presentation I’d put together a video and copied the resulting MP2 file onto a memory stick. It’s so much easier bringing sound, photos and graphics together that way compared to messing about with Powerpoint. All you have to do is be reasonably quick with the Play/Pause keyboard shortcut. This method was again used (but with a different video) for the talk last Thursday at the You are here seminar on site-specific art at Oxford Brookes University, and many thanks to Paul Whitty of the Sonic Art Research Unit for having me along.
Paul had lined up a diverse range of speakers for the day-long seminar and it was fascinating to learn about so many different practices and approaches. They were: Cressida Brown from Offstage Theatre, sound artist and composer Ray Lee, David Prior of the Organ of Corti sound sculpture project, artist Hayley Newman talking about her Milton Keynes Vertical Horizontal project, and Jane Grant and John Matthias describing their neurally-inspired Fragmented Orchestra.
One date for the diary is the news that the Organ of Corti sound sculpture will be unveiled in Carter Lane Gardens, immediately south of St Pauls Cathedral, on Friday 1st July.
The balloonist in the desert is dreaming
The Binaural Diaries of Ollie Hall
The Ragged Society of Antiquarian Ramblers
Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology