Chiharu Shiota – The Key in the hand @Venice Biennale 2016

The dying refugees . Every soul is a key to a better world..

chiharu shiota weaves an immersive labyrinth of keys and yarn

Aura Satz “Dial Tone Operator” and “Glissolalia” @ “Mirrorcity” Hayward Gallery, London

( Aura Satz profile on Wire // profile on Southbank )

“Dial Tone Operator” (excerpt ) was a binaural sound sculpture exhibited among other “Mirrorcity” works at Hayward Gallery in London. One which left my imagination activated.

It comprised a display of vintage telephone handsets on a wall at the end of a narrow intimate corridor with just one pair of headphones hanging from a ceiling. To put them on was to tune into a passing frequency just like a Telephone Operator. Aura Satz mixed vintage recordings of telephone sounds with a dial tone, spoken word and electric hun, which also bring to mind all sorts of frequencies that pass through us, whether we are able of picking them up consciously or not.

More information can be found here http://www.iamanagram.com/DialToneOperator.php
[On a side note she also put up a “sister” display called “Dial Tone Drone” outside The Royal Academy in London, outside Picadilly, commissioned by Measure. http://measure.org.uk/exhibitions/telephone/]

“Glissolalia”  (excerpt )played on the acoustic illusion known as the Shepard Scale, a ‘sonic barber’s pole’ (or endless spiral) in which a tone continually rises or falls yet at the same time appears to get no higher or lower. I followed the “exhibition continuous” sign and went down a spiral staircase which soon I discovered led to nowhere. It however tempted the visitor to stay and walk up and down to a very subtle background sound coming out from a very small speakers fitted on the hand-rails. It was composed in collaboration with a musician Aleks Kolkowski. Here is how the piece was described ”
The score starting point is a series of vintage test-tone recordings. These are layered with two other non-human instruments suggestive of vocal quantities – a musical saw and a theremin- and a female Barbershop quartet in which the singing produces overtones that seem to take the human voice beyond itself. The sound layout has been composed as an acoustic spiral, reconfigured to fit the Hayward’s one-way corkscrew staircase. This leads down to the fire-exit, and out into the street.”

“Mirrorcity” theme explores fiction and reality and shows recent works of artists based in London today. Haven’t managed to see all the works before the gallery closed, 2 hours is not enough and the tickets are sadly not transferable to another day.

Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich@ Warehouse Project 2013

Info about Lighting:
UK – Manchester- based dbn Lighting are supplied an integrated lighting and visual design plus equipment – including lighting and LED screens – to The Warehouse Project (WHP).
dbn’s Pete Robinson created the production and lighting design for all three rooms in the space.
there is a strip of dbn’s 12.5 mm LED screen 13m wide by 2m deep at the back of the stage flanked either side of the PA wings at front truss level by two vertical LED drops at 1 metre and half a metre wide by 2m deep.
Several panels of LED are mounted on the front truss facing into the audience, and the visual surfaces are completed with a versatile 10 metre wide by one metre deep strip of LED – divided into four sections each mounted on wheeled tank traps – which can be placed onstage in different configurations according to the band or DJ set up.
dbn supplies all the processing, scaling and switching, while the video content for each week is supplied by a third party and/or the performing artists.
The idea is that the LED screen design will work on different perspectives whether you are standing right close up to the stage or right down the far end of the room – there will always be some eye-catching visuals in view.

Little by Little [Shed Rmx]

by Patrick O’Neil

Unofficial Music Video:
Listening to the King of Limbs remix album and I started running an old security camera out of the tv and back into it to create video feedback.

Jonny Greenwood and LCO Soloists @ Roundhouse 28/07/2014

A low key event with good acoustics and amazing hidden visuals/lighting play if you looked up to the the ceiling. Spotted them when I lied back flat on the floor. People circled around the stage which was located just below the Roundhouse dome trying to catch a glimpse of the artists. Initially I tried to sit on some elevated platform but was moved by the security. Sometimes it’s good to be right at the back behind the crowd with the vision of the musicians obstructed it turns out. Big thanks to the lighting guys, made the sonic experience hypnotising and truly unique. Captured with a crap mobile camera so it doesn’t make the show justice of course.

United Visual Artists “Momentum” @Barbican, London

A mesmerising, meditative hybrid of art, science, technology and spirituality. Free entrance.

Conrad Shawcross “Timepiece” & Wayne McGregor “Random Dance”

Quite randomly I decided to go to Camden for an exhibition at the Roundhouse listed on Londonist “Things To Do This Weekend”. My aim was to sit on a lounger at the beach on the venue’s terrace, soaking in those very precious sun rays and having my birthday drink. It turned out the performance juxtaposing the exhibition by the time I arrived made me sit on the cold floor and in the darkness of the Main Space quite happily for as long as it lasted (for me it was couple of hours).