Cast and Figment

Matthew MacKisack

In-house radio

October - November 2021 | online at castandfigment.org

SoundFjord closing celebration for Cast and Figment: Radio as Metaphor and as Such | SATURDAY 05 November 2:30-5pm | RSVP | Featuring live radio broadcasts, audio-visual screening and refreshments (booze and pop!). Featuring performances and work by: Dan Smith, Mikko Canini and Bridget Crone.

Come celebrate ask questions and get your giggles and coughs on live radio!

Read about the project and the radio schedule here!

LIVE RADIO!

Lauren McCullum, Carla Espinoza, Leo Ashizawa | Hal Silver | Homeland

Schedule - Week 3 (Final week)

Saturday 05 November | Closing event - 2:30-5pm

3.00pm: Dan Smith, Modern Conditions (2010/11)

3.30pm: Mikko Canini, White Noise on the Radio

4.00pm: Bridget Crone, EASY LISTENTING MEETS FLICKER-TIME /A conversation between analogue and digital broadcast transmissions about time and affect (2011) Audio/Video work

Saturday 05 November

On the last day of Cast and Figment SoundFjord is open to the public.  

RSVP to info@soundfjord.org.uk if you would like to attend, and please arrive before 3.00pm, when the final transmission will begin with a live reading by Dan Smith.

Modern Conditions is comprised of the words of radio broadcasts made by H.G. Wells for the BBC, drawing out a sense of utopian potential and possibility within these extraordinary recordings made for a mass audience. This is followed at around 3.30pm by another live reading in which Mikko Canini considers White Noise on the Radio.

Most analyses of media draw a historical line from the telegraph, through radio, to the internet, and do so by focusing – for example in McLuhan’s analysis – on form rather than content. Thinking, instead, about the form of the content produced by these technologies would divide the historical stream into two groups: one that begins with the telegraph and leads to the telephone, and one that begins with radio and leads to television and the internet. While these groups might conventionally be distinguished in terms of public versus private receptions, the distinction to be pursued here is the capacity of the latter group to produce noise.

The programme concludes with the 1st screening – and 2nd broadcast of the soundtrack – of Bridget Crone‘s video Easy Listening Meets Flicker-Time, a “conversation between analogue and digital broadcast transmissions about time and affect”.

By 5.00pm we will be ‘off air’. Please return to this website and subscribe to our newsletter for announcements regarding future auditions of Cast and Figment: Radio as Metaphor and as Such.

Wednesday 02 November

The final week of Cast and Figment includes broadcasts from Mikko Canini, Bridget Crone, Karen Di Franco, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Homeland, Hal Silver, and Dan Smith. Cast and Figment ends on the afternoon of the 5th of November with a live public event at - and simultaneous broadcast from - SoundFjord (free, please rsvp here); see also castandfigment.org for  details.

This evening’s broadcast begins at 7.30 with Karen Di Franco‘s Concrete Radio. Concrete Radio attempts to describe the relationship between producer and  the originator by exploring the liminal space of transmission and reception. Broadcasting within the Soundfjord studio, Music for the Next to Die will present a fractured dialogue for two radios, describing the economics of traversing the nameless zones, overlays of the near future and recent past as performed on the gold trading floor of the World Trade Centre and how to make the most of Time. Click here for programme details of Music for the Next to Die.

Next Lawrence Abu Hamdan will introduce a new work from the Aural Contract Audio Archive. Part of an ongoing research project into the politics of language and the conditions of voice faced by the Druze community in Palestine/Israel, On the Borders of Bilingualism, writes the artist, “offers an account of how borders, jurisdictions and colonial occupation become inscribed and worn on the voice of its subjects.” The work will then be discussed within the context of the Aural Contract Audio Archive (accessible here) by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Karen Di Franco and Matthew MacKisack.

Tuesday 01 November

Two artist-groups take to the airwaves this evening. At 7.30, Hal Silver speaks. Hal Silver has collected transcripts from a wide-range of speeches, manifestos and articles of public address, focusing on those whose rhetoric assumes the mantle of speaking on behalf of “the people”, the singular that speaks to and for the plural. Hal Silver will re-make these speeches – edited and redacted – as six voices speaking the terms of collective command and affirmation, sometimes overlapping, sometimes punctuating the silence.

Then, at around 7.45, the collaborative project Homeland will hold A Conversation Around Presence, a broadcast for both analogue and online radio. Depending on their chosen medium, listeners will encounter one half of a conversation which addresses what it means to be live, in dialogue and in occupancy, as well as it’s own fragmented nature. As a framework, the conversation opens up to a range of concerns explored through Homeland including communication across boundaries, the domestic space, utopian potentials and the psychological effects of technology and capitalism.

Monday 31 October

Tonight’s listening begins at 7.30 with extracts from Orson Welles‘s dramatisation of H. G. Wells‘s The War of the Worlds. Welles’s version is notable for its form - the interrupting, then rolling news bulletin – as well as for its effect on many listeners, who, in a tense pre-war atmosphere, took reports of “alien” invasion as genuine. Since the original airing on October 30th, 1938, the re-broadcast of The War of the Worlds  has become something of a Hallowe'en tradition. This includes a live re-enactment of the play in 2002 starring, appropriately enough, conservative radio host and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, whose involvement marks the text as what it always was: an essay on the cultivation and modulation of fear.

Questions relating to such ‘affective modulation’ can then be heard at around 7.50, in the soundtrack to Bridget Crone‘s Easy Listening Meets Flicker-Time (2011). Based in part on Welles’ infamous broadcast, the monologue is “a conversation between analogue and digital broadcast transmissions about time and affect”; the Easy Listening Meets Flicker-Time video will be shown in its entirety at Cast and Figment‘s closing event, at SoundFjord, on the 5th of November.

Schedule - Week 2

Cast and Figment continues into its second week with performances and readings from David Berridge, Claire Chard, Sidsel Christensen and Matthew MacKisack.

Wednesday 26th October

First on this evening, a short work for radio by Andy Weir, The direct result of considered planning churning new courses creating new concepts (2011): ‘Nothing more, we are nothing more of the today of which we are a part. No, we need something more. A call from the future hurtling towards the past and back, picked up on antennae and shot through the city. The air gets thick, so I can feel it, then it gets thicker, so I can’t breathe it. Oohs and Aahs.’

This is followed at about 7.32 by Jonathan Trayner‘s Tales of the Woodland Folk(2011), re-broadcast after technical problems last week. ‘A children’s story, this radio play is the tale of an encounter between Mr Rabbit and Ms Squirrel discussing the best way of governing the Woodland-folk. As the play unfolds the characters argue whether it is better to rule the forest using ignorance; which is Mr Rabbit’s argument, provided by ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tze or terror; which is Ms Squirrel’s preferred option, echoing the words of French revolutionary Robespierre.’ Ms Squirrel: Stephanie Dickinson, Mr Rabbit: Vince Stephen, Narrator: Jonathan Trayner, Music: Vince Stephen, Production: Bill Kenny and Michael Page, Assistant: Jennifer Pengilly, Script: Jonathan Trayner.

A pre-recorded discussion between Jonathan Trayner and Matthew MacKisack followsTales of the Woodland Folk.

Lastly tonight, at around 7.45, a live reading from the writer David Berridge. With A Hedgerow Doesn’t Have to Leave the House, Berridge intends to: ‘… explore the contradictions of radio as a mainstream source of news, weather, DJ and shipping forecast, alongside its role as a model of experimental poetic communication for Marinetti, Khlebnikov and Cocteau. [1] I propose to explore this through an act of storytelling in which a story of the countryside extends its porousness to a Hackney landscape in which it is told again and again. I would like to explore how experimental  ideas of radio can be absorbed into the texture of a written narrative that is then read aloud… I would like to test how much a story of one place can be filled by the details of many others, in a manner akin to moving quickly between radio stations… I would like to explore how much and in what manner this storytelling can open up to reflections upon the role of radio and sound within histories of experimental poetry/ prose. I have been making a study of “silent sound” in Claude Cahun’s Disavowels and am interested how this could be entwined within the narrative I am telling so that each becomes a way of elucidating the other…’

[1] Rubén Gallo, “Jean Cocteau’s Radio Poetry” in Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin eds. The Sound of Poetry/ The Poetry of Sound (The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 205-218.

Tuesday 25th October

Tonight’s broadcast begins with a live lecture from David Howells,  A Voice in the Dark: Rhetoric for Radio. Howells introduces the lecture with the following: “For all our belief in rational discourse, we know that words – the very stuff of thought – are dangerous. They are not only a reflection on the world, they also have the power to change it, to call things into being, for good or ill. And our only defence against words is to use more words in turn.

Rhetoric was – is - the political art of persuasion, born out of the need to make laws and customs, culture out of nature, to civilise men, and to civilise the power of the voice, to make it public. But we have come to distrust rhetoric as misleading and destructive, and it is now difficult to use the word in any positive sense. ‘Rhetoric’, if it does not mean an empty display of language, suggests the use of it to some ulterior purpose.

Nevertheless, my purpose in this lecture is to consider whether artists may not, after all, make something useful out of rhetoric or if – as Aristotle maintained – rhetoric is any case a universal human trait, whether they may at least come to recognise themselves as speaking and working rhetorically. And there are particular reasons for them to do so now: given the ‘performative’ turn of contemporary practice, and a political and economic context which will not leave any public act untouched.”

Howells’ lecture is followed at around 8pm by Claire Chard reading extracts from T W Adorno‘s 1936 analysis of Martin Luther Thomas’ radio addresses.

A product of Adorno’s research into the social reception and significance of radio in the 1930s, The Psychological Technique… analyses the rhetorical devices of right-wing Christian broadcasting: a rhetoric, Adorno makes clear, intended to produce a submissive, psychologically regressed audience. Extracts here are from the book’s fourth section, ‘Ideological Bait’, in which Adorno examines the form and content of Thomas’ claims regarding the contemporaneous economic recession.

Cast and Figment then presents a clip from a more recent broadcast by another right-wing demagogue, Rush Limbaugh, in which he declares that Democrat interest in Darfur is due to the desire to secure the “black voting bloc”. The clip, from 2007, includes a variety of rhetorical devices clearly recognisable from Adorno’s analysis of Thomas. “You’ve got it”, Limbaugh tells the caller, “Now you just have to believe your own instincts”.

Monday 24th October: 

At 7.30, hear Study for Composition I (audio) (2009), by Sidsel Christensen, with Rohid Juneja. In an extract from Christensen’s ongoing experiments in hypnotic regression, the hypnotised artist narrates the rise and fall of a secret cult in ancient Greece. Separated from the video to which it has previously been the soundtrack, the monologue encourages the listener to imaginatively align themselves with the narrator’s psychical explorations. In turn, radio’s atavistic promise, what Gaston Bachelard saw as its ability to evoke collective archetypes in the creation of domestic reveries – effectively relocating the psychoanalytical session to the airwaves* – is made powerfully manifest.

Study for Composition I is followed at 7.50pm by Matthew MacKisack‘s Hörspiel (The Tribulations of Usefulness) (2010): “Looking from one window, you see the Statue of Liberty; from a window in another wall, you see a daffodil. A daffodil is sitting on top of the torch held up by the Statue of Liberty. A daffodil is hidden inside the torch held up by the Statue of Liberty.”**

Hörspiel is a narrative radio play in which ‘remote viewing’ – a form of codified extra-sensory perception –  is presented as a metaphor for radiophonic experience. Based on documentation of British military research into remote viewing***, the play also draws on the histories of radio drama and technology’s interface with the supernatural. The resulting scenario describes – potentially, enacts, for the auditor – the attempt to instrumentalise reverie. The cast of Hörspiel are: Olivia Armstrong as the Supervisor, Simon King as the Monitor and Adam Loxley as the Subject. It was written by Matthew MacKisack with Adam Loxley.

*In his 1951 essay ‘Reverie and Radio’, collected in The Right to Dream, 1971, trans. J A Underwood

** From U Neisser and N Kerr, ‘Spatial and Mnemonic Properties of Visual Images’, in Cognitive Psychology, 5, 1973

See http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FreedomOfInformation/DisclosureLog/SearchDisclosureLog/RemoteViewing.htm

Schedule - Week 1

Saturday 15th

6pm: Richard Hughes / Matthew MacKisack, (A Comedy of) Danger, 1924/2011, performed by Carla Espinoza, Lauren McCullum and Leo Ashizawa.

Monday 17th

7.30pm: David Howells, A Voice in the Dark, 2011. (to be rescheduled)

8pm: Leon Trotsky, Inaugural Address at the First All-Union Congress of the Society of Friends of Radio (abridged), 1926, read by Claire Chard. (NOW BROADCASTING at 7:30pm)

Tuesday 18th

7.30pm: Tamarin Norwood, Musica Practica, 2010-11; contextual discussion.

Wednesday 19th

7:30pm: Walter Benjamin, The Lisbon Earthquake, 1931, read by Katherine Lunney                       

8pm: Jonathan Trayner, Tales of the Woodland Folk (Ignorance or Terror), 2011; contextual discussion.

Opening Celebrations | 15 October 2011 | 5-7pm | SoundFjord | RSVP

Inaugural performance of the Cast and Figment programme, performed live at SoundFjord and simultaneously broadcast here and at castandfigment.org: (A Comedy of) Danger The Radio of the Future – the central tree of our consciousness – will inaugurate new ways to cope with our endless undertakings and will unite all mankind. … The main Radio station, that stronghold of steel, where clouds of wires cluster like strands of hair, will surely be protected by a sign with a skull and crossbones and the familiar word “Danger”, since the least disruption of Radio operations would produce a mental blackout over the entire country, and temporary loss of consciousness.*

The first radio play written for French radio was Maremonto, by Maurice Vinot and Pierre Cusy. Its planned broadcast in 1922 was prevented by the Sea Ministry: the realistic dramatization of the sinking of an ocean-going liner was deemed liable to panic the audience.** A similarly naturalistic disaster narrative, the first play written for British radio was Richard Hughes’ Danger, a one-act melodrama set in an unlit and flooding coal mine. As the author later remarked.

Our audience were used to using their eyes; this was a blind man’s world we were introducing them to. In time they would accept its conventions but how would they react on this first occasion? Better make it easy for them, just this once. Something which happens in the dark, for instance, so the characters themselves keep complaining they can’t see. Perhaps we could get the listener to turn out his lights and listen in the dark.***

‘Listen in the dark’ is exactly what the Radio Times advised its readers to do. In an attempt to foreground the ethics of making it ‘easy for them’, of the naturalistic illusion, and in the spirit of a Khlebnikovian ‘flight from the I’, Richard Hughes’ original script has been re-imagined and edited according to contemporaneous Russian formalist theories – themselves a response to Futurist aesthetics – ofostranenie, or defamiliarisation.

* Velimir Khlebnikov, The Radio of the Future, 1921

** see Tim Crook, Radio Drama: Theory and Practice, 1999

*** Richard Hughes, The Birth of Radio Drama, B.B.C. Home Service, 1956

Written by Richard Hughes | Revised by Matthew MacKisack | Performed by Carla Espinoza, Lauren McCullum and Leo Ashizawa

SoundFjord x The Pigeon Wing, present 

an improvised, live sound art performance by Strange Attractor:

SATURDAY 19 November 2011 | 2pm – 5pm | Venue: The Pigeon Wing | Free event, all welcome | RSVP

After their highly successful gallery residency project in the Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland, Strange Attractor return with a new series of durational, live performances in venues across Ireland and England in conjunction with the publication of a new book and CD about the project.

Following on from the Irish book launch at the Crawford Gallery, Cork, Strange Attractor will travel to the UK for two London-based performances, the first a ‘signature’ durational performance on Saturday 19 November at The Pigeon Wing and following on, a gig at Café Oto on Monday 21 November.

Specific to The Pigeon Wing, Strange Attractor (featuring Anthony Kelly, Danny McCarthy, Irene Murphy, Mick O’Shea and David Stalling), will perform a three-hour improvisational sound performance; an experiment with technology and combined media to explore creative possibilities resulting in an experience that offers multiple points of entry for the audience. Everyone is welcome to come along and encouraged to move freely throughout the gallery space during the event.

These performances are in support of the new Strange Attractor full-colour publication with DVD, which documents all aspects of the project, including images from the live performances and gallery installations, live excerpts and other related recordings alongside specially commissioned essays from the likes of David Toop, Stephen Vitiello, Steve Roden, Jed Speare and Bernard Clarke. Signed copies of this publication will be available from The Crawford Gallery, Farpoint Recordings, The Pigeon Wing, Café Oto and SoundFjord.

The Strange Attractor project began in November 2010, with a series of monthly four-hour durational sound performances within the gallery spaces inviting, international guests including David Toop and Mary Nunan, Stephen Vitiello, Alessandro Bosetti, Rhodri Davies, Lee Patterson, Mel Mercier and Steve Roden amongst others. These performances attracted large audiences who have experienced the artists developing relationships between sound, visual art, music and choreography.

An audio CD Soundcast 4×4 (+1) is currently available from farpointrecordings.com. This CD features audio extracts from the first Strange Attractor performance and comes in an unusual fold-out sleeve designed by Peter Murray (Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland) and Francis Halsall (NCAD, Dublin, Ireland). 

Further info and venue details: http://www.thepigeonwing.co.uk/soundfjord-strange-attractor

Strange Attractor 1: System. Anthony Kelly, Danny McCarthy, Irene Murphy, Mick O’Shea, David Stalling. Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland. (Photo: Patricia Klich; Edited by A Company of Enthusiasts.) 

AudioKino at SoundFjord

Laurent Rodriguez + Axolotl 

MONDAY 21st November 2011 | From 7:30pm for 8pm start | £3 adv/£5 door wegottickets.com/event/143004 |

Refreshment will be available (beer, wine, juice)

Tonight for your aural and sonic pleasure, Laurent Rodriguez will conduct as evening of beguiling sights and sonic exploration with Axolotl, charming you with his enigmatic and poetic imagery, tickling you with the ostrich feather that are his visuals and twisted humour. Together Laurent and Axolotl take you to lucid places you've never before conceived...

Laurent Rodriguez works with improvised audio visual performance, the manipulation of rickety devices and imaginary operations peeking under the veil of daily things... "Interweaving sound, movement and image in unexpected ways, Laurent Rodriguez presents the audience with absurd and dada-esque performances, enacted with beauty, humour, and poetic evanescence. With a range of influences going from experimental cinema to fluxus performance, to pull disparate ideas into new forms of interactive media, striking a peculiar balance between deconstructionist abstraction and primordial weirdness." - Cal Lyal. Website: http://laurenrodz.blip.tv | http://soundcloud.com/laurenrodz

Axolotl is Dafne Vicente-Sandoval on bassoon and Xavier Lopez on laptop. Their work is focused on the use of silence, formal desegregation, and sonic abstraction. The duo was created in 2010 and since then played in the Netherlands, France, Austria, Germany, Spain and Mexico, as a duo or inviting improvisers to join in. Among them: Liz Allbee, Anthea Caddy, Lawrence Williams, Lalli Barrière, Ferran Fages, Pierre-Yves Martel, Olivier di Placido, Dario Bernal Villegas... Website: http://www.trashvortex.info/xavierlopez/axolotl | http://soundcloud.com/xlopez

The Extemporisation Series/No.I: Improvisations

A SoundFjord curated evening during Written on Silence exhibition at GV Gallery

Padang Food Tigers, Tim Yates + Noura Sanatian + Charlie Sdraulig + Russell Callow, Laurent Rodz and Angharad Davies with Stephen Cornford and Daniel Jones.

25 November 2011 | 7pm-late | £4adv/£5door

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/138604

Further information: martinasmith.co.uk/written_on_silence.htm

VISITING HOURS

Mem1 with Special Guests Attila Faravelli + Daniel Thomas Freeman

Performance (Monday 16 January 2012) | Cafe Oto | Doors: 8pm

Tickets : £6 adv / £8 on the door

SoundFjord is delighted to present an evening of new audio work by the US-based electro-acoustic ensemble, Mem1 (Mark and Laura Cetilia) and special guest performers Attila Faravelli and Daniel Thomas Freeman (Rameses III).

The evening will be a showcase for Mem1 to present audio work created during their Visiting Hours residency/exhibition at SoundFjord. The work itself will document Mem1’s experience of London and will utilise location recordings, captured radio spectra and recordings made with their musical instruments (cello, voice, and analogue electronics, as well as custom software/hardware that allow for real-time manipulation of these sound sources). For their associated AV installation at SoundFjord, the audio will also intertwine with locally recorded video footage.

Attila Faravelli will perform works with prepared speakers.

Daniel Thomas Freeman will unveil new works for violin, keyboard, tuned percussion and electronics. Daniel will also perform pieces selected from his acclaimed debut album, The Beauty Of Doubting Yourself (Home Normal, 2011).

Mem1 seamlessly blends the sounds of cello and electronics to create a limitless palette of sonic possibilities. In their improvisation-based performances, Mark and Laura Cetilia's use of custom hardware and software, in conjunction with a uniquely subtle approach to extended cello technique and realtime modular synthesis patching, results in the creation of a single voice rather than a duet between two individuals. Their music moves beyond melody, lyricism and traditional structural confines, revealing an organic evolution of sound that has been called "a perfect blend of harmony and cacophony" (Forced Exposure). Founded in Los Angeles in 2003, Mem1 has traveled extensively, performing at Issue Project Room, Roulette, REDCAT/Disney Hall, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Electronic Church (Berlin), the Laptopia Festival (Tel-Aviv), the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, and the Borealis Festival (Bergen). They have taken part in residencies at Harvestworks in New York, STEIM and Kunstenaarslogies in the Netherlands and USF Verftet in Bergen, Norway. Their collaborative works with media artists Liora Belford and Kadet Kuhne have been screened and installed at venues including the Institute for Contemporary Art (London), the Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen), the Sundance Film Festival, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). Throughout their career, they have collaborated with a variety of artists including the Penderecki String Quartet, Steve Roden, Jan Jelinek, Frank Bretschneider, and Stephen Vitiello. Age of Insects, a full-length album with Vitiello, is now available through Dragon's Eye Recordings. Together, Mem1 curates the experimental music series Ctrl+Alt+Repeat (www.ctrl-alt-repeat.com) and the record label Estuary Ltd (www.estuary-ltd.com). For further information: www.mem1.com | www.laura.cetilia.org | www.mark.cetilia.org LISTEN: Tetra | WATCH: Twilight Hour

Attila Faravelli is an Italian artist. He has and continues to perform with Nicola Ratti and Nicola Martini among others, as well as performing solo. For further information: www.attilafaravelli.com WATCH: Attila Faravelli Solo

Daniel Thomas Freeman is a founding and current member of Rameses III, the South London group that has, over the last ten years, released albums on labels such as Type, Important, Digitalis and Under The Spire, and who have supported such genre luminaries as Stars Of The Lid, Current 93, Murcof, Fursaxa, James Blackshaw, Yellow Swans and Astral Social Club. His debut album The Beauty Of Doubting Yourself was released on Home Normal in June 2011. His recordings have also been included on the fundraiser album, A Silent Swaying Breath. For further information: www.descendingangel.com | www.ramesesiii.com LISTEN: the beauty of doubting yourself

Artist Talk

Graham Dunning | For Posterity

SAT 17 March 2012 | 4pm | Free entry | RSVP essential

In an age of digital media where memories – as photographs, videos and audio recordings – exist only as numbers on hard-drives and CDs, or online on a distant server, For Posterity calls into question the apparent advantages of digital over analogue technologies; the role of physical artefacts in preserving our own histories; and the function of archiving per se. Recent debates regarding online privacy focus on the personal traces we leave behind, the “right to be forgotten”, and the implications of policing this with regard to freedom of speech and censorship. These themes are also explored across the installation by way of the considered presentation of both personal and sensitive material.

Graham talks about his work and the issues around his project. For further information on the artist: grahamdunning.com

Bat Walk

20 April 2012 | 7:30-10:30PM | £4/£2 FOTM Concession | £5 FOTM membership 

Waterside Centre, Tottenham Marshes | RSVP/Booking: contact[@]tottenhammarshes.org

Lead by "Bat Guru" Roger Harvard; organised by FOTM. Informative talk and walk utilising bat detectors. Tea served. Bat detectors provided, audio recorders welcome. Bring you own binoculars if you have them; some will be available to borrow.

SoundShare

SUNDAY 22 April 2012 | 3:30pm-5:30pm

Free entry | RSVP Essential: helen[@]soundfjord.org.uk

A show and tell event for sound artists and those interested in sonic practice. All welcome! FREE. The evening is about shared conversation, and most importantly, a showcase for YOUR sonic art works, research and sound-centric film and performance. Think sound diffusion, radio pieces, multi-channel works, sonic sculptures, AV works, live works, performance, visual scores, research papers, and so on. Works may be finished pieces, works in progress, or simply initial ideas, it's up to you what to offer.

Bird Song Walk

SUNDAY 29 April 2012 | 9am-11:30am | £4/£2 FOTM Concession | £5 FOTM membership (pay on arrival)

Waterside Centre, Tottenham Marshes | RSVP/Booking: helen[@]soundfjord.org.uk

Led by David Chapman and David Cottridge; organised by leaders and SoundFjord. Informative talk and walk focusing on bird species, song and habitat. Tea served. Audio recorders welcome. Bring you own binoculars if you have them. Parabolic microphone available; some will be available to borrow.

SOUND//SPACE

A pop-up record store and community hub, featuring the products of more than forty record labels. Devised and run by Soundfjord as a "gallery in residence" at V22's Summer Club. SOUND//SPACE remains open at the Summer Club throughout May, June, and July and produces live events every Thursday and on other selected occasions. Through performances, workshops, screenings, lectures and invited artists and labels-in-residence, SOUND//SPACE enables aficionados and the public to engage widely with some of the most innovative sound art and independent music being created today.

SOUND//SPACE is contemplative and social: a place where people can share interests and knowledge and where independent record labels can publicise and sell their products. Visitors to the space are able to engage with a selection of literature on sound art, browse the shop, and listen to samples from the albums on sale. The associated programme of workshops will allow members of the Summer Club to try their hands at hydrophone creation, Foley performance, field recording, Arduino and SuperCollider, improvisation with materials rather than instruments, whilst specialists in their field will bring their insider knowledge to encourage members to set up their own label!

May: Opening Event

Performance by Will Montgomery and Carol Watts

7:30-8:30pm | (Cinema Space F3) | Free Event        

06 May: Family Activity

Sonic Scavenger Hunt | Hunt: 12:30-3:30pm | (Outside) | Discussion: 3:30-4:30pm | (S//S Project Space)

£3/2 wegottickets.com/event/165616

10 May: In-store talk 

How to Start Your Own Label: A Brian Records Guide by Jimlad | 8-9pm | (S//S Project Space)

Performance | Brian Records presents Clem Leek | 9-10pm | (S//S Project Space) | £4/3 wegottickets.com/event/165612

11 May: Performance/Installation 

generic666 + raxil4 present empty air | 7:30-9:30pm | (S//S Project Space) | Free Event (Donations accepted)

12 May: Workshop 

Pure Data Starter | Lead by Tom Mudd | 1-7pm | (S//S Project Space) | £20/25 door wegottickets.com/event/165689

13 May: Workshop

Foley Performance lead by SoundFjord | noon-6pm | (S//S Project Space) | £20/18 conc wegottickets.com/event/165618

24 May: Performance

Slip Disc Records | 8-9pm | (S//S Project Space) | £3 wegottickets.com/event/165635

25 May: Performance 

Coterie Collective | Leslie Deere + Riz Maslen + Philip Granell, et al | 7:30-10pm | (S//S Project Space) | £4/£5 door wegottickets.com/event/165644

26 May: Workshop 

Improvisation with Objects: An Introduction with Matthias Kispert, Blanca Regina, Andy Riley | 2:30-6pm | (S//S Project Space) | £5/£4 conc wegottickets.com/event/165764

27 May: Workshop

Improvisation with Objects: Session One (Metal) with Matthias Kispert, Blanca Regina, Andy Riley & special guest, Ryan Jordan | 2:30-6pm | (S//S Project Space) | £5/£4 conc wegottickets.com/event/165767

31 May: Performance (special event) 

Whole Voyald Infinite Light + Tom Settle + Jon Collin | 7:30-10pm | (Cinema Space F3) | £5/£6 door | wegottickets.com/event/165669

"The Manchester imprint Winebox Press releases tapes in rough, elegant wooden packaging, crafted from found objects including ladders, boxes and felled trees, secured with twine, nails, screws and glue. They're made by guitarist Jon Collin, who founded the label in 2007 with a solo tape, Sky-Writings, which, inspired by George Maciunas's Fluxus Boxes, was packaged in wood from an old wine crate. Since then, Winebox has documented the output of a network of artists in the North of England associated with the Singing Knives label." - Daniel Spicer | The Wire (Issue 329)

Winebox Press is a long-term project of guitar player and artist Jon Collin. Taking the form of a DIY tape label, it releases music mainly from the UK underground packaged in single found objects broken down and put back together in limited editions determined by the size/shape of the object itself. It unites Collin's main areas of artistic focus; deconstruction, wood, and 'obsolete' media. Whole Voyald Infinite Light is a slow psychedelic band originally from northwest England. They have released a number of tapes on Winebox Press and Lotus Birth and have an LP forthcoming on the latter. Tom Settle is known for playing guitar in a bunch of northwest psych bands (Serfs, Beach Fuzz, etc.), drums in some more (Former Bullies), and for not playing solo nearly enough. thewholevoyald.blogspot.co.uk  gianthell.bandcamp.com/track/tom-settle (Listen to examples here)

Related Events: Label Showcase: engraved glass/.point engraved | 03 June | S//S Project Space | wegottickets.com/event/165679

Build a Hydrophone | lead by SoundFjord | 20 May | noon-6pm | SOUND//SPACE Project Space wegottickets.com/event/165624

Field recording, in all its forms, has been through incredible creative growth in the last few decades and yet its essential power to engage us in the act and art of listening remains inextricably linked to its subtle simplicity, its ability to make us listen ever more closely to the world in which we move by making us stop for a time....JrF

This two day event, incorporating an introductory talk, recording & listening in the locale, playback, extensive opportunity for asking questions and a live performance, aims to be a sociable sharing of knowledge and a chance for us to listen more closely for a while. The event is open to all regardless of previous experience of field recording. We will be venturing out into the locale to do some recording however so it would be ideal if you had access to a recorder/microphones if you wish to make some of your own recordings.

Day One: Beginning with an informal, illustrated talk covering a basic introduction to such things as: what does field recording mean both as a practice and an approach to a closer relationship to listening?; conventional microphones and audio recorders; extended techniques: contact microphones/hydrophones/coils/bat detectors. Jez will also discuss certain key aspects of his own current work such as: audible silence and his photographic scores. Questions, both during & after the talk will be most welcome & attendees will have the chance to ask anything related to field recording & listening. A sharing of knowledge between the entire group is the intention. We will then venture out into the locale, listening, searching for sounds & dealing with any further questions that arise. Jez will have some spare JrF contact mics, hydrophones & coils with him for those participants who don’t already have some to try on the day.

Day Two: Meeting at the SoundFjord's SOUND//SPACE Project Space, the afternoon will begin with further explorations around the locale. We’ll return to the space later in the afternoon for a playback session of recordings made by participants during the workshop. We will collectively listen & discuss the tracks, offering feedback where appropriate. Folks are welcome to bring another short extract of their work for playback/discussion too & hopefully we’ll have time to hear them all.

It would be helpful if participants let us know in advance what equipment they’ll be bringing with them and also how they wish to playback their recordings during the playback session. Please send this info directly to Jez: tempjez[@]hotmail.com

Alongside his own creative practice Jez riley French also tutors alongside Chris Watson on the regular Wildeye location sound courses across Europe, delivers one-off workshops worldwide, lectures on both field recording & intuitive composition, runs the engraved glass/. point engraved/a quiet position labels and makes a range of specialist audio devices. In recent years Jez has been artist in residence with organisations in Italy, Japan, Korea, Austria, Belgium, Estonia & Portugal. Jezrileyfrench.blogspot.com

NOTA BENE Releases by the artist will be available in-store!

03 June: Performance 

Jez riley French | 7-9pm | (S//S Project Space) | wegottickets.com/event/165679 or free with ticket to A Quiet Position workshop

Related Event: 2-Day Field Recording Exploration | Lead by Jez riley French | 02 & 03 June | 12:30-6pm | project space + environs | wegottickets.com/event/165674

An evening performance by Jez riley French based around recordings from his ‘audible silence’ series of works and incorporating elements from the direct locale (V22 Project Space and Bermondsey).

Alongside his own creative practice Jez riley French also tutors alongside Chris Watson on the regular Wildeye location sound courses across Europe, delivers one-off workshops worldwide, lectures on both field recording & intuitive composition, runs the engraved glass/. point engraved/a quiet position labels and makes a range of specialist audio devices. In recent years Jez has been artist in residence with organisations in Italy, Japan, Korea, Austria, Belgium, Estonia & Portugal. Jezrileyfrench.blogspot.com

NOTA BENE Releases by the label will be available in-store!

07 June: Performance (special event) 

Fluid Radio presents... Pausal + Olan Mill (Film Project) + Simon Scott | 7:30-10pm | (Cinema Space F3) | wegottickets.com/event/165775 CANCELLED*

A night of performance by artists associated with the respected label Fluid Audio.

Pausal is a duo from Hampshire, UK who have been active since Summer 2005. Their micro-orchestral compositions are performed primarily using treated guitar and processed vinyl recordings and have been released through Barge Recordings (US), Students of Decay (US) and Highpoint Lowlife (UK). Both members also play in the band Olan Mill who recently released 'Paths' on Fac-ture/Fluid Audio. Pausal live shows are described as a complete immersive experience, utilising large-scale visuals created by the band.  They have performed in the UK and around Europe with artists such as Mountains, Stars of the Lid, Greg Haines and Chihei Hatakeyama. pausal.net | biglongnow.co.uk | fluidaudio.co.uk

NOTA BENE Releases by the label will be available in-store! 

*The following films will now be shown in the Cinema Space for FREE instead:

Sleep Furiously | A film by: Gideon Koppel; Music: Aphex Twin. 90 minutes. English and Welsh with English subtitles. "The most beautifully elemental documentary film to have emerged in Britain in over a decade... A reminder of the magic of cinema" - Andrew O'Hagan, The Evening Standard. 

La Quattro Volte (The Four Times) | A film by Michelangelo Frammartino. 88minutes. No dialogue. "An extraordinary achievement... it is an essay, a cinematic poem, a spiritual exploration of time and space, and it's designed to make us think and feel about the world around us and our place in it" Philip French, The Observer.

08 June: In-store talk 

Kukuruku Recordings with Tasos Stamou | 8-9pm | (S//S Project Space) | Free with Kukuruku performance (see below)

08 June: Performance 

Kukuruku Recordings presents Tasos Stamou and Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga | 9-10pm | (S//S Project Space) | wegottickets.com/event/165777

09 June: Talk + Films + Performance 

Hibernate Label "All-dayer" | noon-9:30pm | (S//S Project Space) | wegottickets.com/event/165779

NOTA BENE Releases by the label will be available in-store!

10 June: Workshop 

Light-Sensitive Synth Construction | Lead by Mike Blow | 1-7pm | (S//S Project Space) | wegottickets.com/event/166116 

Related Event: Vinyl | Bill Aitchison | THURSDAY 26 July | 7:30-9pm | S//S Project Space |wegottickets.com/event/165704

Soft Wax is an installation in sound by Steve McCarthy. It is an immersive experience, seeking to provide insights into the music, culture and privations of the Jamaican Diaspora in London in the 1950s. The sound performance focuses on a collection of extremely rare acetates from the period. These will be aired on vintage equipment from that time. These are the sounds that the community cleaved to before the birth of Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae. The forgotten history of these acetate mirrors the experiences of the community.  The contexts in which they were originally played has had a lasting impact on street culture. The music that they contain is the root of much subsequent popular music.

Artist Biography: Steve McCarthy is an artist, writer, DJ and vinyl obsessive. His practice has been inspired by cultures of resistance and their musical expressions. Steve’s current fascinations are Jamaican music, Free Jazz, Moondog and Garage Psychedelia. He describes himself as, “lucky enough to divide my time between London and New York these days.” In putting together Soft Wax Steve was ably assisted by Cecile Buxton, Darren Mathers and David Katz.

14 June: Performance (special event) 

Decentred (Tom Chant + John Edwards + Angharad Davies + Benedict Drew) | 7:30-10pm | (Cinema Space F3) | wegottickets.com/event/165743

Improvisations and realisations of indeterminate scores by Michael Pisaro and John Cage. “These four musicians introduce eclecticism and insight to pieces by John Cage, California-based composer Michael Pisaro and to two purely improvised structures; the best part of it all is that their respective vocabularies are so distinctive and versatile that each work is delivered with insight and spontaneity.” – Marc Medwin, Paris Transatlantic

Decentred was first put together in 2006 to play sections of Cornelius Cardew's Treatise for the Cornelius Cardew 70th Birthday Anniversary Festival at Cecil Sharp House in London. Since then the group has created a CD of improvisations and realisations of indeterminate scores by John Cage and Michael Pisaro released on the Another Timbre label. For this concert the quartet will present a completely improvised programme of music. 

Tom Chant, Angharad Davies, Benedict Drew and John Edwards deal with contemporary compositions that demand improvisational acumen. Alternating busy improvised pieces and slowly morphing compositions the composed material is presented with the freshness of improvisation and their music presents engaging and persuasive solutions for score interpretation. Tom Chant - saxophones & bass clarinet tomchant.comAngharad Davies - violin angharaddavies.com; Benedict Drew - electronics benedictdrew.com; John Edwards - double bass efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/medwards.html | Decentred on Another Timbre: anothertimbre.com/decentred.html; Small But Perfectly Formed: smabpf.blogspot.co.uk

15 June: Residency 

Soft Wax Steve McCarthy | 15 June: 5-10pm | (S//S Project Space) | 16-17 June: noon-8pm | (S//S Project Space) | Free - Drop in

For information on the exhibition, Sensational Books visit the Bodleian website.

CHASE Cohort Development Events

AuralDiversities III: Space . Place . Confluence . Entanglement

The third iteration in our interdisciplinary programme addressing the ‘auraldiverse turn’ in Arts and Humanities research and theory, questioning how and what we hear, what we listen to and why, as situated within our contemporary milieu and its associated crises. 

These multimodal sessions trouble accepted norms in audio technology, sound culture and Western epistemologies and question the extent of human perception, our relation in and through the vibratory world, and whether hearing and listening is ever an individual act.

For associated presentations, lectures and workshops see our Workshops page.

By troubling assumptions around a distinct locus for hearing, and the notion of a presumed "singular" or discrete listener, we come to discern a colonisation of the senses, and prickle at arbitrary classifications that categorise and define into a certitute of disconnection. Working outside the assumption of hearing as "individualised" in the sense of separation, and instead vibrating towards the perceived individual’s hearing as necessarily co-constituted and sympoietic, we sit with the notion of hearing and listening as always with…

For Session Three, visit our Workshops page.

Session One: Against Sonic Certitude

Carson Cole Arthur . Dr. Petero Kalulé . AM Kanngieser 

Abolitionary Listening: Propositions & Questions

Wednesday 18 January 2023 . 12pm-1pm. Online

Reservations: http://tiny.cc/Entanglement1

In this free to attend, online session we shall read ‘Abolitionary Listening: Propositions & Questions’, a co-authored text that imagines a listening that is not proscriptive and calculative but unconditional and intervallic. Following this reading and refrain, we strain the limits of listening. This is an invitation for us to surrender to which we cannot understand and ‘hear’.

Please book for access to the accompanying discography, that we recommend should be listened to before the event.

Session Two: Gathering Place

Edward George

Towards Listening, Dub and Memory

Wednesday 25 January 2023 . 12pm-1pm. Online

Reservations: http://tiny.cc/Entanglement2

In this free to attend, online session George will speak on listening, dub and memory, and will reference both his The Strangeness of Dub (Morley Radio) amd Sound of Music (Threads Radio) shows.

These events are curated by Helen Frosi (SoundFjord).

The AuralDiversities programme is partnered with Aki Pasoulas (University of Kent), John Drever (Goldsmiths, University of London) . Alice Eldridge (University of Sussex)

AuralDiversities is supported with funds from the CHASE Cohort Development Fund.