Strands # Radiophrenia Co-Commissions

Strands is a programme of digital radio art commissions available to UK-based sound and radio artists under the age of 28 - supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation.

These works were co-commissioned as part of Radiophrenia 2017.

Tracklist

6.45pm - The Modern Institute

The Modern Institute - a well established, Glasgow based cultural institution recently journeyed into the airwaves with this thrilling lecture series; an exposé into the aesthetics of machine learning, the failures of consumer neural networks and global information technology, presented as a simultaneous live broadcast from Tafi Atome, Ghana and the CCA in Glasgow, Scotland. International Fine Art Expert Ross Little commented, "Excruciating and enlightening in equal parts" after the original airing and other well established international cultural critics were moved to visceral bouts of cathartic anger and physical rage during and after the broadcast. 

7.15pm - Anthony Autumn & Christopher MacInnes - Interior Ocean

Recording of a live broadcast from CCA Glasgow, 12th November, 2017. For their new live performance Anthony Autumn and Christopher MacInnes will be generating a semi-improvised composition of vocality and soundscaping. Drawing on writings and field-recordings gathered over the past year, they will create an immersive and disorientating journey through an imagined sub-aquatic landscape.

Interior Ocean is a slow crawl through the jellied monoculture swamping the petrified machine-scape of global capitalism. Originating from a fascination in the unique biology of jellyfish and the strange relationship they have to globalisation, the performance will explore the complex entanglement between built and natural ecologies. Both collateral interference and agent of globalisation, the jellyfish becomes a parallel entity for the SSRI-infused emotional labourer, the symbiotic host of insomniac-twitching, 24 hour on-screen living.

8.05pm - Luke Fowler & Richard McMaster – The Great Western Road (2017)


The Great Western Road is a collaborative sound/photo work by Luke Fowler and Richard McMaster. Starting at sunrise on Saturday 9th September 2017 Fowler and McMaster walked the length of one of Glasgow’s oldest and longest Roman roads; Great Western Road (GWR). Beginning at St. George’s X they made timed 1minute recordings, every 7minutes, until they reached a point (near Old Kilpatrick) where it became too dangerous to continue on foot. Using identical location mixers and the same Mid-Side microphone configurations – Richard walked and recorded on one side of the road whilst Luke recorded on the other. They both recorded as prompted and by the agreed fixed structure – with no plan or anticipation of capturing any specific sound events besides the road itself. The two discreet, yet synchronised recordings are then brought together in the editing process and panned hard left and right to create a wide stereo image of the road’s soundscape on that day. The Great Western Road documents the city slowly awakening and traverses a cross-section of neighbourhoods and terrains from St. George’s X and Kelvinbridge to Anniesland and Duntocher. It crosses the River Kelvin and passes alongside the Botanical Gardens and Gartnavel Hospital before reaching the A82 motorway. The Great Western Road is a major route for commercial traffic and also the means for the city’s inhabitants to escape on daytrips to Loch Lomond and beyond.

8.55pm - Cucina Povera - ‘I’ and ‘O’ as Compositional Basis

Recording of a live broadcast from CCA Glasgow, 15th November, 2017. In ‘I’ and ‘O’ as Compositional Basis I look at the dual notion of musical empathy and musical tension as two tenets of improvised composition. The formal use of binary notation is inspired by a decorative oak roundel ‘Stirling Head n. 20’ from 1539. Its border shows carved notation used by court harpists. It amounts to some of the earliest courtly notation to have survived from Scottish renaissance. My aim is to follow the notation, incorporating musical traditions I am indebted to – collective, empathy-driven vocal vernacular, harmonies from classical and late modernism, and largely intuitive, found sound percussion. An innate desire, and the immediate possibility to transcend linguistic and epochal boundaries through sound have inspired this work. Cucina Povera is the artist name for Maria Rossi, a Glaswegian-Finnish vocalist and composer currently researching and working on the artistic interface of the grid, early modern binary notation, discordance, language and empathy, and atmospheric, site-nonspecific soundscapes.

All above pieces co-commissioned by Resonance Extra and Radiophrenia as part of Strands, supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation.