Skip to content
August 24, 2019

“Rorschach Audio” on BBC Radio 4, again!

The “Ghosts in the Machine” documentary, presented by Laurie Taylor, will be broadcast again on Radio 4, this coming Wednesday – 28 Aug 2019 – 9pm

Click to listen now – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xy9

Leave a Comment
August 21, 2019

Michael Green, 1926 to 2019, R.I.P.

Michael Green, star exhibitor in “The Rumble” exhibition (see “Author Info”) at the Royal Society of British Sculptors, now known as the Royal Society of Sculptors, passed away last Monday, 12 August 2019, aged 93.

Michael’s classic paper is “Convenient Asymmetric Unit for Construction of Multi-Subunit Models”, published in Nature, vol. 219 (1968); and his (extraordinary) exhibits in “The Rumble” included “Icosahedral Shell from 20 Subunits with 3-Fold Cyclic Symmetry” (1975), “Icosahedral Shell from 20 Subunits with 3-Fold Dihedral Symmetry” (1972), “Monkeys Ape Molecules” (2001) and “Double Helix” (1968).

https://www.nature.com/articles/219413a0

With sincere condolences, and much love to Michael’s family.

Leave a Comment
April 22, 2019

International Lawns + Disinformation + the Rural College of Art

International Lawns + Disinformation + the Rural College of Art

Friday 5 July to Sun 28 July 2019
11am to 6pm Fridays to Sundays
Closed Mondays to Thursdays

White Box Gallery
5 Hare & Billet Road
Blackheath
London SE3 0RB

Opening reception Friday 5 July 6pm to 8pm

In his essay “Meanings of Landscape” (“Places of the Mind”, RKP 1949) the critic and curator Geoffrey Grigson described how “some people have ignored the personal factor” in writing on landscape art, and have attempted “to deduce from landscape rules of its own aesthetic”, describing the influence on art (and on art writing) of “a romantic pastime of English travellers in the eighteenth century” who sought to postulate “a kind of psychology divorced from the individual soul”. Particularly in response to the work of the painter John Constable, “Places of the Mind” proposed the alternate hypotheses that “landscape is you and me”, discussing how “we project ourselves” into an actual or painted landscape, “which then reflects our own being back to our eyes”.

https://www.domobaal.com/artists/international-lawns-bio.html
https://www.domobaal.com/artists/david-gates-bio.html

Exhibition Guide – https://tinyurl.com/y4f3z3xe

https://www.instagram.com/internationallawns/
https://www.instagram.com/xxruralxx/

Leave a Comment
January 1, 2019

Semiotics Joke! ****

Happy New Year Folks!

Leave a Comment
November 12, 2018

“Language [as] Meta-Technology” ****

Exhibition dates, Weds 21 Nov to Sun 2 Dec 2018
Fri to Sun 12 to 5pm (or by appointment)
Launch event, Sat 24 Nov, 6pm to 9pm
Closing event, Sun 2 Dec, 3pm to 5pm

Sluice HQ (formerly Vision Signs)
171 Morning Lane
Hackney Central
London E9 6JY

The philosopher C.W. Morris defined semiotics as “the science of signs”, the writer Umberto Eco stated that “semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie”, and the telecommunications theorist Colin Cherry stated that “information can be received only where there is doubt”. For the first instalment of the Passen-gers project off-site series, electronic music and installation art project Disinformation visits the Sluice HQ exhibition space – the former workshop of Vision Signs, a former commercial sign-maker in Hackney, East London – to present a series of audio-visual exhibits, archival presentations and installation artworks. The book “Rorschach Audio – Art & Illusion for Sound” states that “the earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language”, and the “Language as Meta-Technology” installation uses a variety of speech recording, speech synthesis, psychoacoustics research and speech coding technologies to articulate (among other propositions) the hypothesis that “language is the technology that contains all others”.

Best Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/p/BqvC4DllqL2/

Passen-gers Offsite – http://www.passen-gers.co.uk

Exhibition Guide – https://tinyurl.com/y7bv6ayp

1 Comment
October 31, 2018

“Rorschach Audio” on BBC Radio 4

Click to listen – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xy9

Also (apparently) excerpted on Radio 4 “Pick of the Week”

Leave a Comment
October 29, 2018

“National Grid” – live at Fort Process 2018

Disinformation + Voces Castrum – live in the tunnels under Newhaven Fort

Deep bass audio – headphones essential ****

Leave a Comment
September 20, 2018

Disinformation – live at Fort Process 2018

Fort Process is an extraordinary one day sonic arts and music festival that utilises the unique resonant spaces of Newhaven Fort. This third edition of Fort Process, curated by Lost Property, features performances, installations, talks, workshops and live art, from a massive line-up of contributors, including Adam Basanta, AJA, Alice Eldridge + Chris Kiefer, Ana Gutieszca, Automatic Writing Circle, Bartosz Dylewski, Bell Lungs, Blanc Sceol, Bunty, Cécile Chevalier + Chris Kiefer, Copper Sounds, Dan Powell, Daniel W J Mackenzie, David Thomas Broughton, Dirk Campbell, Disinformation, Fay Burnett, Fiery Biscuits String Section, Frances Young, Grischa Lichtenberger, Guoda Dirzyte, Isn’tses, Jack Lister, Jamie Ward, Jason Hotchkiss, Jeph Vanger, Jez Riley French + Pheobe Riley Law, Jez Stevens, Jobina Tinnemans, Joe Banks, Jordan Edge, Joshua Legallienne, Julian Weaver, Kathy Hinde + Matthew Olden, Katie McCallum + Karl M.V. Waugh, KiRa + Accord, Kyoka, Louise Mackenzie, Map 71, Maria Marzaioli, Mark Anderson, Marlo Eggplant, Más Hangok, Max Eastley, Mike Blow, Mysterious Monopole, Ned Rush, New Interpretations Orchestra, Nicholas Ritson, Niko Karlsson, ORE, Pickett Improv, Redhookgrainterminal, Rhombos, Rhys Chatham, Rie Nakajima, Ritual Extra, Sam Hewitt, Semiconductor, Shatner’s Bassoon, Silence Blossoms, Slow Listener, Stephan Barrett + Adam Kinsey, Tap/Sew, Tasos Stamou, Tetsuya Umeda, The Larsens, UKAEA, Ursula Damm, Voces Castrum and Well Hung Game. “Rorschach Audio” lecture demonstration at 2:30pm [sharp] + “National Grid” sound installation running through the day, including live collaboration with Renaissance polyphony ensemble Voces Castrum, in the deep tunnels at 5:00pm.

22 Sept 2018 – 12 midday to 11pm

Fort Process 2018
Newhaven Fort
Fort Road
Newhaven
East Sussex BN9 9DS

Programme download – https://tinyurl.com/ycr26buj

https://fortprocess.co.uk/

Leave a Comment
August 14, 2018

“Babakiueria” and the Politics of Listening

Disinformation’s chums in Melbourne – the excellent Liquid Architecture – who hosted the Rorschach Audio events at the Monash University Museum of Art and Gertrude Contemporary in 2015, have since organised several more events themed around mishearing… most recently a presentation by Jennifer Stoever on “Soni­fy­ing Race, Surveilling Space: the Sonic Color Line and the Lis­ten­ing Ear” (coming up August 25, see link). According to the mail-out, “Soni­fy­ing Race” focusses on experiences from the United States. In terms of Australian experience, similar themes were sent-up in the spoof documentary “Babakiueria”, by Don Featherstone, starring Bob Maza (President of the Aborigines Advancement League) back in 1986. Enjoy!

FYI the joke may have been inspired by the (since de-bunked) myth about this author’s namesake Sir Joseph Banks (no relation) and the word “kanguru”.

Thanks to Pete Reeves (from the University of Sydney) for the heads-up (see you next year mate)

https://eavesdropping.exposed/

Leave a Comment
June 20, 2018

Marshall McLuhan – “Advertising is the folk art of the 20th century”

Marshall McLuhan’s axiom that [5:27 into the video] “advertising is the folk art of the 20th century” (which, in fact, is a quotation that he responds to rather than directly articulates in this interview) is prescient enough, though in some ways his preceding statement, about the nature of reading, is even more interesting. Marshall McLuhan asserts that “the word to read means to guess…” and that “reading is actually an activity of rapid guessing” [4:33].

Etymologically speaking McLuhan is spot-on – the word “read” does (as he says) derive from the Old English rǣdan (from the Dutch raden, and the German raten) meaning to “advise” or “guess”; so the history of language corroborates the idea that our minds deploy “perceptual hypotheses” or intelligent guesswork to decode streams of text and speech (see the “Rorschach Audio” book pages 43, 46 and 167 etc).

Given what the “Rorschach Audio” book says about how “the earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language” (page 96), it’s no surprise that the neural strategies employed in “reading” both speech and text are so closely related. From a public-understanding-of-science point-of-view however, the most striking feature of this interview is that when Marshall McLuhan puts forward this idea, it’s received as so improbable and outlandish that some members of the audience actually laugh [4:50].

https://tinyurl.com/ydd62qlm + https://tinyurl.com/yca4z9ff

Joe Banks, 20 June 2018

Leave a Comment
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
%d bloggers like this: