I was delighted to have work recently broadcast in two episodes of Short Cuts on BBC Radio 4.
You can listen to the two episodes below, both pieces are very different - one features whale song crafted from porn, the other explores the dreams of British astronaut Helen Sharman!
Porn Whales featured in Short Cuts episode “Remix”
The Astronaut’s Dream with Helen Sharman featured in Short cuts episode “Dreaming“
Over the last year I've been producing a radio documentary for the BBC World Service, it's called "Leaving the Fold" and it airs today! It explores the stories of three people who have decided to walk away from their faith and the difficulties they faced in doing so.
You can stream it and download it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046hfzb
What does it take for someone to turn their back on their religious upbringing? What effect does that decision ultimately have on them and those around them? We explore the personal journeys of three people who walked away from their faiths and redefined their morality in a world without God.
An ex-Muslim, ex-Hindu, and an ex-born-again-Christian, each recount what their lives were like growing up in devout religious families and what spurred them on to renounce their faith. The programme traces the moments that defined their journeys.
What did removing the hijab in public for the first time represent for the ex-Muslim? How did a religiously motivated bomb attack in India affect the ex-Hindu’s understanding of his faith? How did the ex-born-again-Christian learn to live in a world without morals and rules defined by God?
A sonic impression of a panic attack
Read More
Let your imagination loose on an in-the-dark journey with the work of theatre maker Jan van den Berg, lighting designer; Jennifer Tipton, physicist; John Pendry, sound poet; Jaap Blonk; and many more.
Read More
New research freezes the rapid movement of electrons
Read More
Back in June I worked on 'The Listening Post' - an ambitious sound installation, co-commissioned by LIFT and 14-18 NOW that formed part of the 'After a War' exhibition at the Battersea Arts Centre.
Writers James Wilkes and Tom Chivers led the project researching the history and lives of Battersea residents during the First World War. Their research into local archives and town records unearthed a wealth of material to work with, featuring stories from conscientious objectors, the struggles of munitionettes and the local paranoia surrounding activities of German bakers (below).
https://soundcloud.com/eprosser/rumours-the-listening-post
The pieces were produced and presented across more than 14 speakers spread throughout the installation, supported by work from graphic designer Lina Hakim and installation designer Gary Campbell.
Each section of the installation evoked a different feeling and theme, ranging from orchid growing to leisure activities (roller skating and hot air ballooning) before moving onto the darker tones of wartime industry and tribunals for conscientious objectors.
You can listen to James below as he gives a guided overview of the installation:
https://soundcloud.com/liftfestival/lift2014-after-a-war-a-tour-of-the-listening-post-with-james-wilkes
You can read a review of the event here.
Last year, as part of an AHRC funded project, I was commissioned to make a short experimental audio documentary on the subject of silence. I was given freedom as to how I explored this subject and so I set out to capture the thoughts of those who worked with sound and in silent spaces.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/146717849" params="color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]
The result, unsurprisingly, was that silence meant lots of different things to different people and so thematically it was very noisy! This relationship between noise and silence was one I was keen to explore through the production and so the piece is filled with hiss, distortion and feedback in an attempt to echo the noisy subject matter. This was explored further through the use of interviews but also with extracts of the poem 'Describing Silence' which are intercut throughout. This piece written by James Wilkes was a response to his time spent in total silence and explores some of the self generated noise born out of silence.
Audio piece: A week of dreams detailed through a list of incoherent imagery, places and situations.
Read More
Back over the summer I recorded an interview with Dr Viviane Quirke of Oxford Brookes University about the history and development of cancer chemotherapy drugs. The piece was recorded for the Chemical Heritage Foundation's brilliant and award winning podcast 'Distillations' - which has sadly now come to an end.
The piece was edited by Mia Lobel and can be listened here:
http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/media/distillations/181-chemotherapy.aspx
The episode also features a very personal story by producer Christine Laskowski who looks at her father's cancer treatment with a drug called Cisplatin - a drug that was developed in the 1970s and despite very nasty side-effects - is still used to treat cancer today.
If you don't already listen to the podcast, it's well worth checking out the Distillations back catalogue - with close to 200 episodes - there's some great stuff there waiting to be listened to: http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/media/distillations/index.aspx
Creating a sense of place through sound - a collection of audio shorts for the D&AD Inspired by Audio website.
Read More
In a week’s time In The Dark will be hosting a special listening event at the Wellcome Collection, as part of the larger Voice event. We will be curating an evening of listening that taps into our complex relationship with the voice, featuring a rich chorus of vocalisations, speech and other oral oddities.
Read More
It's halloween, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to post some audio shorts and transitions produced for the In The Dark 'Beyond The Grave' event, held back in July. The event took place in the derelict chapel in the grounds of Abney cemetery, Stoke Newington. We ran two sessions with the later taking place in almost complete darkness. Audience members were locked inside the Chapel for their own safety! These shorts acted as transitions between the main pieces featured at the event.
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/sets/beyond-the-grave
Not quite a bonus or a trip to hell, but anyway here's an extra recording of a Ghost Train taken whilst on a trip to Brighton back in May. Walking along the pier we came across the 'Horror Hotel' and couldn't resist paying for a ride inside. Screams generously provided by my girlfriend.
[audio https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Fright%20Night/Ghost%20Train.mp3]
I was recently made aware of the online platform Thinglink.com - which essentially allows you to 'tag' an image and embed media from around the web - such as from YouTube and Soundcloud. Anyway this really got me thinking about some of the potential that such a platform offers - images provide a really powerful and direct way of communicating something (an image is worth a thousand words, bla bla) - and being able to combine an image with additional multimedia or information can offer a much richer experience to the audience.
For example, you could use an image as a backdrop for presenting other media (such as related video and audio), or you could expand upon an image, by tagging key areas and providing additional context with video, audio, text and other images.
I thought a lot about how this could be used in terms of story telling and perhaps even communicating science, particularly by augmenting image diagrams. There's loads of cool interactive / animated diagrams and educational apps already out there, that essentially bring textbooks into the digital sphere, but they take a lot of 'know-how' and time to develop. Thinglink offers a quick and accessible route for users to create their own interactive diagrams and multimedia packages, through which to share a rich wealth of information and also tell stories through non-linear pathways.
So I took my recent audio documentary on the vOICe technology (you can listen to it here) and I cut out sections that matched up with a diagram I found in a New Scientist article on the same subject (you can read it here).
Diagram below:
I then uploaded my clips to Soundcloud here:
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/sets/the-voice-thinglink-samples/
and used Thinglink to embed the short sound files into the New Scientist diagram image - to produce an interactive diagram of sorts. The audio accompaniments augment the visual impact of the New Scientist diagram with some added 'context' from my documentary. Users can explore the subject at their own pace and explore the clips in any order they choose. Click here to see it all together.
This was just a really quick proof of concept mock up, using existing work - but I'm really keen to start using this platform as a way of quickly creating rich multimedia packages, which combine images, video and audio to communicate stories, ideas and information in a non-linear fashion.
An audio feature I produced over the summer for Pod Academy, exploring the development of the vOICe technology and it's impact on blind users. The vOICe is a computer program developed by dutch engineer Dr Peter Meijer which essentially converts images into sound. Through training and experience blind users can learn to interpret these sounds as a sort of 'synthetic vision'. The piece explores the technology from the perspective of blind user Pat Fletcher, and uncovers some of the science and technology behind its use with it's creator Dr Peter Meijer and cognitive psychologist Dr Michael Proulx (University of Bath).
It was my thought that technology and the computer would be my way out of blindness.
-Pat Fletcher, vOICe user
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/oh-i-see
Download it HERE
Essentially, the software takes spatial information captured by a camera and converts this into a coded soundscape. Users can then learn how to decode this auditory signal into a visual one thanks to a process known as 'sensory substitution', where information from one sense is fed to the brain via another. Fundamentally what the vOICe is doing is re-routing information usually obtained by the eyes and delivering it through another sense organ, the ears.
Although the neuroscience and psychology behind the technology is still largely unknown, it is thought that the visual cortex is eventually recruited to process the incoming auditory information and through experience, is able to decode it as spatial / visual information. There's a great article over at New Scientist that goes into greater depth about the neuroscience behind it - including a useful diagram depicting how the technology works.
The software is currently freely available and can be used with virtually any imaging device, from webcams to camera-mounted glasses – there’s even an android version available for mobile devices! With the increasing prevalence of mobile computing, the vOICe technology is liberating users from their blindness, allowing them to step outside and experience the world through a completely new visual perspective.
For more information visit: http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ where you can experiment with the vOICe for youself and learn more about how it works. I've also prepared a page with a collection of images as heard through the vOICe software, including some featured within the piece above.
Music
Freesound Credits (freesoundarchive.com)
A few weeks ago, as part of a filming trip with work I went to Bitton Railway Station just outside of Bristol. Whilst there I thought it would be a good opportunity to throw my audio recorders about and hopefully capture some nice recordings of steam engines. It would also give me a nice opportunity to make comparisons between my Zoom H4n and Sony PCM-10 recorders - not only on sound quality* but on ease of use.
We were filming there as part of an Ri Channel filming project involving engineers (find out more here), we were interested in using old steam engines at Bitton to illustrate the problem of dynamic loading in material fatigue. A common problem with old steam engines is that they imposed an uneven / cyclic loading pattern, which was bad news for old railway bridges - often leading to their collapse and horrendous train accidents (see Dee bridge disaster).
I absolutely love the complex sounds of machinery and especially the rare sound of an old steam engine - so whilst in between hoping around madly with cameras, changing lenses or getting lost in clouds of steam I placed my recorders mostly at random and very much hoped for the best. I'll go through the results below:
*A caveat - the recorders weren't placed in identical locations and the recordings aren't all made simultaneously - so the comparisons are in no way definitive.
I was really pleased by the quality of these recordings - theres a lot of detail in them and I found that this recorder relative to the Zoom H4n was much easier to manage, in terms of setting it down somewhere and getting it into record quickly. Due to its generous battery life and size I could very easily leave it powered on and bung it in my trouser pocket - this allowed me to get it out very quickly and stick it on record at a moments notice - something that wasn't as easy to do with the Zoom.
Another, very simple note - in this instance I much preferred the Sony's analog gain dial, which is a physical wheel (rather than the Zoom's buttons) - it's not only easier to make minute adjustments but also easier to set without necessarily having to monitor the output (for example just by looking or feeling for the position of the dial)- the Zoom has a digital interface, with values from 1-100, although it's more precise, it's a little more fiddly to make quick adjustments and is at a greater risk of creating handling noise if adjusting during a recording.
Recordings are in stereo using the inbuilt mics, light eq added in post, removing some low end and a subtle limiter placed on it.
Train Departs Station 1 (01:31)
Recorded at the end of the station platform, with the train about a meter or so away. You can hear a few voices in the background and the controllers whistle just before it departs - I especially love the sound of the train whistle from a distance with its light reverb, it has a very haunting quality to it. The train was probably a couple of meters from the recorder.
[audio "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Bitton%20Railway/Sony/Train%20Departs_1%20%28Sony%20PCM10%29.mp3"]
Train Departs Station 2 (02:40)
This was both the best and the worst recording of the day, recorded from 'the other side of the tracks' - in other words from the ground across from the station with the train a couple of meters away, departing from center to left of the recorder. There's some nice detail in this as the train moves into the distance, particularly its whistle and the rattly carriages, but the beginning is pretty useless as it peaks and distorts!
[audio "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Bitton%20Railway/Sony/Train%20Departs_2_Clipped%20%28Sony%20PCM10%29.mp3"]
Setting the levels was total guess work as I had to just leave the recorder running whilst we filmed - so in this case I wasn't so lucky! Bugger.
Here's the same thing happening, but from the camera input (Panasonic AF101) via a Rode NTG2 shotgun mic (mono):
[audio "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Bitton%20Railway/Rode/Train%20Departs%20Station%20Rhode%20NTG2.mp3"]
I've always loved my Zoom, but I must admit on this occasion it was a lot more hassle to manage. It's a lot bulkier, meaning it's a bit of a faff to carry around and keep about your person, especially when you've got a lot of other gear. It also seemed to take a lot longer to power and set up (esp having to put the wind shield on each time) - the Sony seemed to manage fairly well without a windshield (but there wasn't much wind). However the recordings were pretty nice - sometimes they sounded a bit 'muddier' than the Sony but this could be due to the recorders physical placement, it was often a bit further away from the action than the Sony.
Note - these recordings (I think) were taken at different times to the Sony recordings. Recordings in stereo with built in mics - light eq added in post to reduce low-end and a subtle limiter.
Train Departs Station 1 (01:22)
Recorded from the station platform, a little further back than the Sony - train moves across to the right, I particularly like the sound of the carriages as they move across the center and again the train's whistle in the distance is lovely.
[audio "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Bitton%20Railway/Zoom/Train%20Departs%20Station%20%28Zoom%20H4n%29.mp3"]
Train Enters Station (00:50)
A lot noiser this one - this captures the train entering the station from the other end, passing from left to right - the recorder was pretty low on the station floor and a couple of meters from the platform edge, it picks up a lot of voices and excited children!
[audio "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Bitton%20Railway/Zoom/Train%20enters%20station%20%28Zoom%20H4n%29.mp3"]
Train Departs Station 2 (01:10)
Still at the other end of the platform, this time the train departs moving from right to left - you can clearly hear the controllers whistle before the train departs and voices from people standing about the platform. Again the recorder was a couple of meters from the platform edge.
[audio "https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Bitton%20Railway/Zoom/Train%20departs%20from%20station%202%20%28Zoom%20H4n%29.mp3"]
--
Okay so this isn't a definitive comparison review, but personally I found the Sony PCM-10 to be the more useful recorder in this circumstance. It's far more portable - I tend to keep the Sony on me all of the time now and only bring the Zoom when I know I'm going to be recording something. If I was concentrating specifically on capturing audio, then the situation might well be different, but in this instance, when I wanted to quickly make decent recordings without much thought, the Sony was ideal. Monitoring audio without headphones was also a lot clearer with the Sony as it has little green and red (for when audio peaks) indicator lights mounted above the screen below the mics - this is great for quickly knowing when your record levels are set too high - even from a distance I could see this.
I think the pre-amps in the Sony are also much quieter than the Zoom's which often leads to recordings with much less noise and hiss. This is especially useful when capturing the more subtle, quieter details of a soundscape.
Ultimately the portability and battery life of the Sony means that I can just leave it powered on and bung it in a bag or pocket and because of this it's the recorder I tend to reach for more often.
If you have any thoughts, questions or experience with these recorders I would be interested to hear about them in the comments below. Additionally all these recordings are available under a Creative Commons licence - attribution, non-commercial, share-alike and I'd be happy to send them to anyone who wants them. Hopefully I'll get round to adding them to the Freesound Archive.
I've recently started producing podcasts for a new non-profit organisation called Pod Academy - they release weekly podcasts on academia and research, covering everything from the arts and culture to science and the environment. There's a really nice range of subjects covered by the podcasts and their library is growing on a weekly basis. You can browse what they have to offer here.
My latest offering takes a trip around the morgue of the Sunderland Royal Infirmary, with pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton as a guide. The piece provides a glimpse into mortuary life, from working with the dead on a daily basis, to dealing with cross dressing 'auto-erotic asphyxiation' fatalities.
You can listen to the piece over at the Pod Academy website here. Or download it here. The piece takes material recorded for my larger documentary piece 'The D-Word'.
If you want to stay up to date with the podcasts you can subscribe to their podcast feed via iTunes.
A couple of weeks ago I took part in the ‘On Location: Writers, Sounds and Places’ event at the British Library, which was organised in collaboration with The Guardian and In The Dark.
The event explored British landscapes, both urban and rural, through a collection of sounds, words and film and included a panel discussion chaired by the Guardian’s Madeline Bunting. On the panel were writer Rachel Lichtenstein, T.S. Eliot prizewinning poet Alice Oswald and Professor of Literature at the University of Essex, Marina Warner. The event set out to explore how writers, filmmakers and artists explore and capture the essence of British landscapes within their work – and the different approaches they take to achieve their art. You can read a lovely write up of the event by Cherly Tipp here.
To begin the event, I composed several sound pieces, which were to accompany and compliment live readings from both Alice Oswald and Rachel Lichtenstein. These pieces were designed to augment the imagery evoked within the readings and provide a powerful listening experience through the combination of spoken word and abstract sound. The pieces were mixed live under the readings, which brought an element of performance to the soundwork - something which I'd not really explored before in the context of listening events. This also introduced some lovely moments of serendipity, as abstract sounds from the compositions aligned themselves with the words of the readers.
In darkness, Alice opened the event with a powerful reading of her piece 'Sea Poem', which was followed by a piece composed from an old recording of Ted Hughes, reading his piece 'Wild Rock' (listen below):
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/wild-rock/s-cyRyg
After this came ‘A Whitechapel Walk’ from Rachel Lichtenstein, which introduced the sounds of moden Whitechapel into the auditorium. This was then followed by the second and final reading by Alice, who finished off with a her piece 'Epileptic' a piece which brought with it the sounds of night, fluttering wings and the distant tide.
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/epileptic
You can hear the live recording from the event here: [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/54471239" params="auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=7e5f57" width="100%" height="18" iframe="false" /]
The tracklist is as follows:
To close the event I'd composed a final soundscape which blended elements of both the rural and urban landscape, moving from the noise of the country into that of the city. With this piece I wanted to demonstrate noise as a feature of both the rural and urban soundscapes and so pulled out elements of both. This piece features a modified version of a previous work, 'The Dustbin Man Cometh' - which was produced for an In The Dark listening event back in March.
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/from-dartmoor-to-dustbin
In addition to the event are a series of podcasts over at the Guardian which continue the themes of landscape literature, dedicating an episode each to the works of Alice and Rachel. You can also view the short film 'Notes on Orford Ness' which was screened at the event here, an aurally rich portrait of this unusual location, featuring extracts from writer Robert Macfarlane's newly commissioned work, Untrue Island.
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/porn-whales
The idea for this piece fell out of a session playing around with audio samples taken from various pornography films, in a bid to produce something for an In the Dark listening event. After a while of manipulating and stretching out these smutty samples I was struck by how much the moans and groans came to resemble the calls of whales.
After a bit of whale sound research I worked to manipulate these sounds until they modelled the range of sounds associated with whales. From the high-pitched clicks, squeaks and squeals to the lower frequency rumbles. The sounds become slightly more unsettling when processed in this way (although out of context they didn't originally sound that nice to begin with), removing the visual element with which these sounds were originally presented with, definitely made them more sinister. The high-pitched screams are particularly unsettling on their own, baring very little resemblance to the original sample.
However for the event this piece was to be presented at we were keen to finish with something fairly light hearted and I thought it would be much more fun to experiment and explore the concept of 'porn whales' than turn this into something dark and foreboding - there was plenty of that featured at the event anyway.
The sounds of the sea were added to provide a little context (recorded in Brighton on a zoom H4n) and the gentle, soothing music came from Kevin Macleod.
The piece was featured and played as part of the In the Dark 'One Night Stand' listening event at the Clachan Pub, London 14/05/12.
An added bonus - I thought I'd also share with you one of Isabella Rosseliini's great Green Porno films - 'Whale Sex' :
http://youtu.be/A-zJ1hGm-F8
The latest In The Dark listening event: 'One Night Stand' took an unusual step into the murky world of erotica, featuring pieces exploring sex across the animal kingdom; from humans, to snails, to fish and finally to whales. The night proved to be so popular that we had to put on a second sitting, suggesting that sex really does sell, even when it comes to curated listening events.
Sofia Saldanha and I mixed and compiled the audio for the night, including the production of new material to interweave and transition between pieces. Audio featured included a beautiful and emotionally charged interview from the Dialogue Project, a rather unsettling but humorous piece from Canadian radio show Audio Smut (about masterbating in public places) and and a personal favourite from Danish producer Pejk Malinovski whose piece made reference to the artist Matisse by exploring the reproductive behaviours of snails (can be heard here).
We were really keen to move past a linear playlist which simply presented the pieces rigidly, separated by silence. Instead we experimented in blending all the pieces together into a seamless mix. In many cases we produced short interludes and transitions to help take the listener smoothly from one piece to the next and to keep them immersed within the general narrative of the night.
Finishing off the event was 'Porn Whales' - an audio short I'd produced, manipulating the sounds of pornography to resemble the calls of whales (below).
Porn Whales
http://soundcloud.com/eprosser/porn-whales
After a bit of whale sound research I worked to manipulate these sounds until they modelled the range of sounds associated with whales. From the high-pitched clicks, squeaks and squeals to the lower frequency rumbles. The sounds of the sea were added to provide a little context (recorded in Brighton on a zoom H4n) and the gentle, soothing music came from Kevin Macleod.
Following the recent In The Dark: Cityscapes event I was interviewed for the Monocle 24 radio show 'The Urbanist' - we talked about some of the pieces played, discuss the power of audio and explore the nature of urban soundscapes. You can have a listen below, although I admit, I much prefer being on the other side of the microphone.
Listen here: [audio http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13042873/Urbanist%20ITD%20interview.mp3]
The Dustbin Man Cometh was also featured featured on NTS radio by Graham Dunning on his show 'Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone' - the show's a nice listen for anyone interested in avant garde audio, featuring a jagged mix of experimental music, sound art and sonic experimentation. There's a blog associated with the show here and you can catch the show every second Friday between 8-10am on NTS Radio. Recommended listening.
You can listen to the show below:
http://soundcloud.com/n_u_t_s/fractal-meat-on-a-spongy-6