Paper delivered at the conference Sound Thought Signal, University of Glasgow

Farafield is a field recording project at the Slade School of Fine Art. Originally set up with funds from UCL Changemakers in 2016-17, fifteen students were given travel awards to help fund a journey for the purpose of making audio field recordings. This online exhibition includes those works made as a result, alongside other audio works made by Slade students and staff. In time this platform will become an archive of work broadly related to the genre of field recording.

I propose to talk about and exhibit my work Brought in Gobstopper (2017). The work comprises audio, in the form of stream-of-consciousness whispering, from which the title is taken, and text, which is acid-etched into stainless steel plates. These plates form the panels (or stators) of an electrostatic loudspeaker (ESL), from which the sound issues. There are a number of aspects to the work which interlink, including Renku poetry, an anechoic chamber, the thought and handwriting of the philosopher Thomas Metzinger, the voice of a sensorily deprived person, the ‘artificial artificial intelligence’ of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk micro-task service, and a Buddhist Om chant from Youtube. ESL design principles have fostered a pleasing mix of high-end consumer manifestations and a strong self-build scene that has existed for many decades. ESLs work using electrostatic rather than electromagnetic fields, and are capable of reproducing audio of unsurpassed clarity, low distortion, with a flat frequency and excellent transient response. They can be purchased for sums in the tens of thousands of pounds, or be made by the DIY enthusiast for next to nothing. I propose to look at how my instantiation of the ESL design has helped to create an artwork that is about presence, craft, labour, and the self, both in its content and means of production. I will exhibit the artwork itself and talk through how these combine and influence each other to push the work in different directions.

Online resource addressing the physics and technology of audio production

Online exhibition of the collaborative work of students and staff from the Slade School of Fine Art and Digital Anthopology

A workshop exploring the world, broadly defined, of text-based art in a generative context. With a view to the relevant historical contexts, we will explore (by making) text-based artworks... ...involving strategies of: Randomisation Chance Exhaustion Rule making Constraint Games ...using: Drawing materials Newspapers Dictionaries Typewriters Computers Etc. ...employed through: Physical acts Mechanical apparatuses Computer software ...which can: Cut things up Break habits Make up rules Not follow rules Create simple computer programs Use software made by others ...to enable: Chaotic situations Recursive algorithm building Serendipitous data collection Information trawling ...and make: Poems Cut-ups and collages Plays Novels Texts of all kinds ...with a nod to: Dadaist poetry/Tristan Tzara William Burroughs Oulipo Song lyrics (e.g Cabaret Voltaire) Early computer art Net art Post-internet art etc. ...in order to investigate: Creativity Authorship Originality Meaning Politics ...of art and artists (and anyone) working with producing text.