More “opportunities to broadcast” in action! The new episode of my “Gene Pool” Podcast is online now. Episode#20 is based on the Atari Punk Console workshop weekend, led by stellar circuit-bender, Stu “ASMO” Smith, back in November.
I grabbed a quick interview with a caffeine-depleted Asmo and some of the participants on the second day to get an outline of the project, which saw 14 people building ASMO’s modification of this popular circuit. The project built on the existing design by adding a 5 step sequencer, fuzz circuit and pre-amp to the standard design.
The culmination of the 2 days was a final APC jam session with the new instruments that had been created over the weekend, and a large chunk of this sonic freak-out is presented in the podcast.
The podcast is best consumed as a subscription in iTunes (here), so you can get hold of all of other episodes of cool stuff that we broadcast. If you want a quick no-strings-attached fix, there’ll be a link to the show on the sidebar here.
I’ve recently been seeing more of what I do as a way of developing content for future transmission. In the way that, if you’re promoting a commercial art event, the number of people who hear and see it via online documentation should be seen as equally important as the people who participate in it at the time. Only, within the industry, they’re not.
This is my current theme with the Arts Industry in which I work: in a world which has an increasing number of channels for transmitting information, what is becoming increasingly important is the quality of your content. And, if it can muster it’s addled mind from ages of “bums on seats” thinking, the Arts Industry – which produces quality content just by it’s very nature, is ideally placed to contribute in this way. Why not then, see ourselves as media content producers, as well as promoters of live events?
Anyway, let me get to the real point. My “Found Sound Stories” sonic arts development event, led by artist, Janek Schaefer earlier this month was a huge success, due to a combination of the considerable skill and charm of Mr. Schaefer, the immense marketing effort of myself and my intern and the positive spirit of the participants. I made a 55 minute programme for radio from audio material generated over the weekend event and a few recorded interviews with those involved. The excellent Patrick McGinley , who produces the “Framework” show for visionary London radio station, Resonance FM (and others) will be broadcasting my programme as part of his season at 10pm on 20th December 2009. This will be followed by a podcast archive and then an alternative edit appearing on my own “Gene Pool” Podcast later in December. The dozen or so people involved in the live event will thus be joined by a global audience of several thousand.
I’ve made a short preview video edit from the weekend, which is available via YouTube
I’ve been sorting out some boxes in the back of my studio recently in preparation for moving house, and came across some copies of a couple of cassettes that I produced sometime in the mid/late-eighties for my cassette label, SoundImage.
Like many aspiring creative-types of my generation, I benefited from the Tory government’s scheme to manipulate the unemployment figures with the “Enterprise Allowance” scheme. Cynicism aside, this was a hugely successful attempt to nurture entrepreneurial culture in the UK, by validating the ambitions of young people aspiring to something other than the grey 9-5 of 1980’s UK.
With £1000 and a business plan, you could qualify for £40 a week with no hassle – a good deal compared to signing on the dole and making out that you really would be satisfied with a dead-end office job.
I recorded a new episode of the Gene Pool Podcast on Sunday, now available online. The podcast followed an excellent weekend exploring use of the Arduino micro-controller and performance software, Isadora, which was part of the season of creative technology weekends I programmed, called ”Digital Developments“.
Guests for this episode were Nikki Pugh from Birmingham hacker space, FizzPOP and Julie Hoyle from Ochre Print Studio, Guildford. Both of my guests were artists who have become involved in developing creative workspaces for group use, without direct funding support. We talk about the details of their various projects and how they promote and manage them.
The podcast is available now on iTunes or via the link in the sidebar on the right.
I’m getting near to completing a new circuit bent instrument that I’ve been working on, following a design from ASMO which converts a vTech Tiny Touch phone into an amazing noise-maker. Sound samples coming soon, once I’ve cased it up.
The “Digital Developments” (PDF) season that I’ve organised at South Hill Park Arts Centre starts this weekend with a “Found Sound” workshop led by Janek Schaefer and finishes at the end of November with a weekend led by Asmo to build his modified Atari Punk Console design.
I’ll be documenting all of the “Digital Developments” projects, including making a feature on the “Found Sound” weekend for broadcast as part of the “Framework” show on Resonance FM and future episodes of my own Gene Pool Podcast (iTunes link).
More progress on the drone recordings that I’ve been working on. This time building from a dense filtered bass drone supplied by Andrey. I was reminded of an odd “close” feeling of the area around the “Boar’s Hole” in Oxfordshire, which I found myself in while working on the “MY…World” project last year.
I dug through my archive and found the sounds I recorded of inside the brick tunnel and the underground stream which runs beside it. The stream has been diverted through it’s own brick channel, emerging in a area of overgrown bushes either side of the railway embankment.
Although it seems to provide a central frame of reference for me, the sample I’ve edited out here jumps into the track at a later point with some fragments of trombone recording that I tweaked into the mix using my favourite audio shuffling software.
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I’ve been working more on some of the electronic drones that Andrey Sadovnikov of Faria Recs sent through a while back. It’s developing into an interesting process of periodically working on these sounds and then finally being able to recognise what is actually there, as opposed what I think I’d like to be there. Anyway, the resulting pieces are coming out quite heavy and, somehow desolate to my ears.
On this latest piece, I’ve used some sections of the electricity pylon recordings that I made over the Winter, combined with use of sharp edits, kind of sonic depth of field changes.
After a couple of recent conversations and references to binaural beats (as distinct from binaural audio, of course) and their potential influence on ones mental state, I’m researching more into this phenomenon for future audio work. Back in the 90’s, TUU were pretty heavy meditators, so much of our output of that time was pretty suffused with Theta brainwaves, but the intrigue of binaural beats is more connected with their use as triggers for out of body experiences. This might be a good time to break out my old mono-synths from their place in the dark corners of my studio, but I’ve also come across a dedicated piece of binaural software, called Gnaural which looks like it might be good for some tuning experiments.
Anyway, here’s an extract of the latest drone-work.
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Martin Franklin is a digital artist & musician, curator, online broadcaster and founder of the Sound:Space sound art symposium.
His current work combines sound with other media in the digital domain, often resulting in spatial installation pieces.
As solo artist and former leader of Ambient trio, TUU, his many recorded works have been released around the Globe. Performances and exhibitions have included Inpact Festival, Estonia, Pixelpops, WOMAD, Cybersonica, ICA London and Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast.
More “opportunities to broadcast” in action! The new episode of my “Gene Pool” Podcast is online now. Episode#20 is based on the Atari Punk Console workshop weekend, led by stellar circuit-bender, Stu “ASMO” Smith, back in November.
