what’s up 18 UK whatsupuk@audiomedia.com The great proportion of British people are a little sniffy about art and much to the disgust of the purists, it is no longer just about painting. Photography, video and sound are now the basis of gallery exhibitions, interpreting the media in new ways and <strong>for</strong>ms. This is something that has been happening with photographs and video screen installations <strong>for</strong> well over ten years but more recently audio has become a means of artistic expression that moves the medium away from being about music, conventional composition and tonal construction. The idea goes back to Italian futurist painter Luigi Russolo's 1913 manifesto Art of Noises, which declared "we must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds". This led to Pierre Schaeffer creating musique concrète, which was then further developed by Cage, Stockhausen, Varèse, and others, paving the way <strong>for</strong> the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the industrial electronica movement of the '70s and the synth-pop boom of the early '80s. In the last few years experiments in sound have been staged The Art Of Sound KEVIN HILTON explores the growing acceptance of sound as art in the UK and talks to some of the main players . in galleries, museums and city squares around the world but the UK has been slow to respond. That's changing this year, which has seen significant exhibits based on sound, with more to come. The unlikely starting point was the sedate south coast resort of Bexhill in East Sussex. The 1930s modernist building the De La Warr Pavilion, now an arts centre and concert venue. From January to March it hosted an exhibit by composer Michael Nyman, featuring video filmed over the past 15 years in various locations, with the segment on bell makers coming close to musique concrète, and Anthem, an installation by sculptor, and founder of <strong>Audio</strong> Arts, a CD (previously cassette)-based magazine, William Furlong. Anthem consisted of 48 box-less loudspeakers suspended from wires. Recordings made by Furlong on location at the Pavilion last summer were played around 24 of the loudspeakers, with visitors and locals talking about the venue and reflecting on Bexhill itself. Furlong used his trusty old DAT machine <strong>for</strong> the interviews and passed the recordings on to Sonica Music studios in south London, which he has been using <strong>for</strong> his audio projects <strong>for</strong> ten years. Sonica was founded by electronics engineer Matt Clark and he and his brother Paul have built much of the equipment they use, although the ubiquitous Pro Tools was used to mix Furlong's interviews. The studio's main business is post-production but has been involved in sound art <strong>for</strong> some time. Paul Clark comments that while the artist has the concept, he or she needs someone who knows what to do technically to realise it. Sonica is currently working with Hilary Champion, a Fine Arts Masters student at the University <strong>for</strong> the Creative Arts in Farnham, whose work on war and peace turns recordings of weapons into musical instruments. Sonica's DIY approach AUDIO MEDIA MAY <strong>2009</strong> echoes the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Former members of the Workshop are playing live at London's Roundhouse this month and during August the venue will be a giant musical instrument <strong>for</strong> a project conceived by David Byrne. For Playing the Building: An Installation, cables and wires will be attached to pillars, pipes and beams in the Roundhouse, and then "played" from a keyboard in the UK premiere of an event staged last year in New York. Among other events this month are Futuresonic <strong>2009</strong> and the Social Technologies Summit in Manchester, and Sonic Art at the Blank Gallery in Portslade, near Brighton. This is curated by Mike Blow of Evolutionary Art and seeks to "explore sound in art through recordings, installations, new instruments and visualizations". The coming together of sensory in<strong>for</strong>mation is at the heart of work by Martyn Ware, a founder member of The Human League and Heaven 17. Through the Illustrious Company, which he founded in 2001 with Vince Clarke from Erasure and Yazoo, Ware has developed the 3D <strong>Audio</strong>Scape spatial surround sound program, which he has used <strong>for</strong> the Future of Sound installations and per<strong>for</strong>mances. In June a Ware-designed installation will be running in London's Leicester Square, part of a project to promote the area and help visitors appreciate it as more than just somewhere to go to the cinema. Sound Life London features two rings of six loudspeakers and will characterise the city through sound – the noise of traffic, the River Thames, church bells, the speech and languages of Londoners, material from the National Sound Archive, and songs about the city. "We asked ourselves that if we were creating a composition in sound that was indicative of what London sounded like to someone who had never been, what would you do," Ware says. Ware feels the UK has been behind other counties in embracing sound art but with new media and technologies the <strong>for</strong>m is finally making itself felt. "It's been hard to sell, and has been looked down on, because there's no commercial value to it," he says, "and has usually been publically funded or done by students <strong>for</strong> virtually no money. We are coming out of that phase, thank God." For Ware sound art is as much about the setting, whether in a gallery or a public space, as it is the technology, with the concept feeding off the surroundings. With a new found enthusiasm <strong>for</strong> something that perhaps only other people and countries did, perhaps the UK will become one big sound art installation itself.. �
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