I'm an award-winning composer, engineer and historian of technology. I present talks, make radio shows and perform live with Spacedog - my band of humans, theremins and uncanny robots.
As I untangle the cable salad, I’m remembering a few highlights from my long weekend of gigs:
I was lucky enough to perform on theremin in front of the Babbage Difference Engine No 2 (in the Science Museum) and to share the bill with Professor Elemental and a gingerbread man (at the Absinthe Ball), an electronic pig (at Interesting 11) and Randoph Matthews and Byron Johnson (at Cabaret Futura -- Randolph has an extraordinarily beautiful voice).
Interesting 11 was a day of geeky pursuits in the Conway Hall, London, that well and truly lived up to its name. The day was put together by Russell Davies and it was in the morning’s Hack Circus, curated by the marvellous Leila Johnston, where I did some theremin wrangling. Accompanied by my robotic vent doll Hugo, I talked a little about my approach to live performance with automata and spoke one-to-one with assorted interesting folk who wanted to try the theremin for themselves.
The Circus included a fine song about 16k computers from MJ Hibbett which brought back fond memories of my first computer, a 16k ZX Spectrum which my dad won at a carpet trade show. Other highlights included a tomato caviar workshop; a beautiful drawing machine from Sandy Noble, based on a pen plotter; an encounter with the Domesday Project, something I hadn’t seen since the early 1990s; and a giant modular synth built by David Cranmer.
The Domesday Project
This was a compendium of words and images about life in Britain, stored on laser disk and largely collected by school children. Run by the BBC, the project was completed in 1986. This Domesday Reloaded site tells you a little more about the project but it doesn’t show many of the photographs themselves. The amateur photographers went around their shops and homes, snapping their living rooms, coats and scarves hanging in the hall, the loo brush and bleach behind the cystern -- all the trappings of everyday life. The result is extraordinary: an archive of images, depicting Britain in the 1980s, as it would look if something had spirited all the people away. The photos have a wonderful, eerie Cold War charm about them. I would love to work with Domesday Reloaded on a live performance to accompany some projections from the disks.
Nine Owls in a Baguette
David Cranmer is the maker behind Nine Owls in a Baguette. Our paths have crossed before -- we both played at the Steampunk evening 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, for White Mischief a few months ago. David brought along his famous pig and a huge, old-school modular synth that he’d built from scratch. This made sounds so fruity, it took your breath away. The synth can be controlled using CV (control voltage), a system that was used to make synths communicate with each before the advent of midi.
As a theremin player, I find CV is much more satisfying than midi as it offers a continuous signal, rather than one that works in midi-like steps. I can use it to play slides and fine tremelo effects. My Etherwave Pro synth also has CV out so we were able to link the two up and use my theremin to control the sounds of David’s synth. The right hand controlled pitch and the left hand controlled filtering. It’s a shame we didn’t get a recording -- it was a wonderful effect. I hope David and I can link up our machines again for a live performance somewhere. I’ll bring the capes and dry ice.
Oh -- and I also had time to visit the Fryer’s Delight, one of London’s finest cafés. Although the street has been annexed by identikit global coffee companies, this family company is still going strong on the Theobald’s Road. Fishcake and chips in the Fryer’s Delight made Interesting 11 a perfect day.
Tomorrow morning I’m performing at Interesting – an event curated by Russell Davies where I’m not sure what’s going to happen but I hear the name is on the tin.
I’ll be part of Leila Johnston‘s Hack Circus – an hour of music, robots, performance and geeky participation.I’m travelling light, just with my theremin and my old pal Hugo, the robotic vent doll. I’m looking forward to the adventure and can’t wait to see who else is on the bill – I’m also very happy to be meeting some of my former Twitter pals in the flesh (still pals – but I no longer Twitter).
Leila (aka Final Bullet) is a writer, podcaster and all round good egg, into geek culture, games, comedy, space travel and more. One of the team who made the brilliant Shift Run Stop, she’s also the founder of the Hackers! newspaper and shares my admiration for crows. There’s a great interview with Leila here on the Made By Many website.
Mosying around Russell’s website, I spotted his very helpful pages on where to buy egg, bacon, chips and beans and good places to have a cup of tea and a think. In Brighton, I’d recommend The Bubble Kitchen – or on a sunny day, The Madiera Cafe on the beach. In London, I still mourn the passing of The Saddler’s Grill, at Angel, and The Modern Tearoom at the top of Drury Lane.
Russell’s talk at Next 11 also caught my eye – it’s about putting computing power into real-world objects and the culture of hacking everyday things. I’m always reppropriating and wiring up handbags, toys and other old tat (or if you’re buying: ‘Found Objects’) so I loved this talk. This exuberant, free and easy open attitude to hacking is something Russell’s colleague Andy Huntingdon called ‘the Geocities of things’:
It’s a busy weekend as Spacedog are performing in Lewes at the Absinthe Ball tonight (Friday 17 June) – we’re playing our uptempo party set – the one with extra cheese. It’ll be a hoot – Professor Elemental and The Las Vegas Mermaids are also on the bill. We’re back to our usual dark and spooky fare, as seen and heard in Televisor, at Cabaret Futura, Kensal Rise, on Monday night. Oh and if you’re in the Science Museum on Sunday afternoon, you might spot me demonstrating the theremin to families – do say hello!
Eerie musicians Spacedog summon the spirit of John Logie Baird as they perform with flickering projections, created live on their working reconstruction of Baird’s original 1920s televisor.
There will be a crackle of static as Fringe regulars the Angliss sisters evoke the earliest days of television in their new evening of deliciously unsettling music. Televisor is the latest retro-futuristic treat from their band Spacedog, mixing theremin, saw, vocals, waterphone and live action from the group’s famous, uncanny musical robots. And this year, their music is given an extra kick from tip-top percussionist Stephen Hiscock (Ensemble Bash).
Technically cranky, faltering, and even a little dangerous, Baird’s televisor was a world away from the bland plasma screens we see today; a perfect match, in fact, for Spacedog’s trademark, homespun electronica, haunted by an analogue past.
Steampunk favourite, gentleman wordsmith Professor Elemental, will be guesting – he’ll perform a brand new number with Spacedog as well as a couple of his classics. Other highlights include a new torch song for variety star Tommy Cooper and a high-energy anthem to the awe-inspiring Soviet Ekranoplan (aka The Caspian Sea Monster).
“A word of mouth wonder”, the Londonist.
“Like a classic surrealist object from a dream”, FAD magazine
“Spacedog…generate the kind of gore-free spinechilling terror that mainstream cinema seems to have forgotten”, the Londonist.
Spacedog will be reprising some of the Televisor set as we squeeze our theremin and musical robots into Bom-Bane’s, Brighton’s most beautiful and diminutive music venue. Limited space – booking advisable!
For Laika (a song from Spacedog featuring theremin and robotic bells)
Extra event!
Spirit Broadcasts and Ghost Trains
Ocean Rooms, Brighton 11 May
Ticket details tbc Two talks for a special Fringe edition of Catalyst Club, hosted by Playgroup and Dr David Bramwell
In the early 20th century, radio and gramophones seemed so remarkable, some tried to use these inventions to explain the spirit world and telepathy. Engineer and theremin player Sarah Angliss reminds us of a strange time when a handful of leading physicists flirted freely with the paranormal. Sarah’s talk includes live aether music mixed with genuine voices from beyond the grave – recordings of soldiers who were lost on the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars.
Starting with the ghost train on the Palace Pier, Colin Uttley examines how the 18th-century phantasmagoria became this classic fairground ‘dark ride’. He also examines a Victorian railway disaster, deep in a tunnel just outside Brighton, which inspired Charles Dickens to write his haunting tale The Signalman. Includes classic ghost train special effects – hold onto your seats!
Radio listening in the former USSR, c1954. Photo: Sergei Polishchuk.
Hats off to TEDx Brighton team who recorded all the talks and published them on the TEDx Brighton site. I’ve put a copy of my own talk below, so you can view it alongside these background notes.
Thanks to everyone who came along to TEDx Brighton, January 2011. I had a great time -- never knew I could hear so many new ideas in one day.
I was very nervous about my own talk -- it’s the first time I’ve put this material together to make one argument -- so it was really encouraging to hear so many positive comments. Taking a tip from Antony Mayfield’s inspiring talk on social networks, I’d like to share these links with you all.
These are some of the resources I’ve been using while I’ve been investigating the curious relationship between Lancashire clog dance, Kraftwerk and early Detroit techno. I hope you find ‘em interesting:
Repeat repeat (Angliss and Radcliffe)
Cotton mills and clog dancing
Dr Caroline Radcliffe: Performer, musician and lecturer in theatre -- Caroline is the dancer in the video who introduced me to The Machinery and its origins. Caroline has researched the history of clog dancing in its many forms in the UK and is a skilled Lancashire clog dancer. She’s also an expert on the life and work of Dan Leno.
Spinning the Web: A great resource on the history of the Lancashire cotton industry.
Sounds of Quarry Bank mill. This is the sound collage Caroline and I put together, using my layered field recordings of cotton mill machines in Quarry Bank mill. Of course, you’re only hearing half the performance here as this is missing the sound of Caroline’s live clog steps.
NB The stereo panning on this file is a little odd as it was prepared for a particular performance space.
Quarry Bank -- this living history museum is packed with working cotton mill machinery from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Early drum machines
The Wurlitzer Sideman in Popular Mechanics Magazine, November 1960
Arguably, the Wurlitzer Sideman was first synthetic drum machine to go on sale. Earlier automatic drummers, such as the Rhythmicon (1931), from Henry Cowell and Léon Theremin, and Raymond Scott’s Circle Machine (1959), were one-off experimental units. The Chamberlin Rhythmate had been on sale since 1948 but only a dozen or so were sold. Using drum sounds pre-recorded on tape loops, rather than electronically synthesised beats, the Rhythmate was a precursor of the Mellotron.
Photos of the inside of a Wurlitzer Sideman on Deviant Synth.
The Musicians’ Union and the talkies
“It remains to be seen whether, when the novelty wears off, patrons of cinemas will be satisfied with this dehumanized form of entertainment.”
Musicians Union, c1930
Cartoon in Musicians' Union Monthly Report, March 1930 (Source: Musicians' Union Archive, University of Stirling)
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
Archives of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, pioneers of time and motion study. Here’s one of their studies from the early 1900s. The worker has flashing lights strapped to her wrists so her movements can be tracked in this long-exposure photograph. The Gilbreths were looking for signs of ‘wasted motion’. They wanted to streamline manual tasks to reduce fatigue, increasing efficiency and give workers more ‘happiness minutes’.
Source: National Museum of American History
Excerpt from the film ‘The One Best Way’ (from emmaroses)
Taylorism
The archive of Frederick Winslow Taylor, pioneer of the ‘scientific management’ of work. At the end of the nineteenth century, Taylor pioneered the application of engineering principles to the management of people and labour. Taylor’s views influenced the development of the assembly line.
Job Matching for Women (1930). Source: US Dept of Labor.
Charlie Chaplin in the factory scene from Modern Times (1936).
Detroit: motor city
An interesting video on the development of the car assembly line (source unknown).
We Are The Robots (1977). Complete with a Gilbrethesque timer. Not an inch of wasted motion in this video.
Call Centres and ‘dark satanic mills’?
Here’s an article in Management Issues, January 2004, reporting on the HSE comment likening the worst call centres to ‘dark satanic mills’.
Here’s the HSE report in question, in which monotony and lack of autonomy are shown to be causes of stress. Interestingly, I don’t see the term ‘dark satanic mill’ here so there may be some discrepancy between the formal report and the words used in press releases and interviews with the author. I am now digging around my old hard disks to see if I can find the source of the original quote. At the moment, the best I have is a comment reported on a BBC website. Of course, the source may have been updated since 2004, as I remember this comparison caused quite a stir.
Here’s a BBC News report from the time, in which Christine Sprigg, author of the HSE report, is reported to use the term ‘dark satanic mills’. Here, you can also see comments from people who were working in UK call centres at the time.
Update 10 March 2011: Dr Christine Sprigg emailed me after the talk and told me some more about provenance of the ‘dark satanic mills’ statement. As far as she knows, it first appeared in this press release, from the British Psychological Society, early in 2004. Although it’s titled ‘Call centres are “not satanic mills”‘, the press release goes on to say:
Ms Sprigg said: “Not all call centres are ‘satanic mills’. Some do merit that description, but the best do not. The task facing organisations that use call centres is to match their aspirations for high service for their customers with high quality of working for their staff.”
…the inference is that some call centres deserve this epithet. And this was seized on by unions and journalists around the UK as it fitted prevailing concerns about these new work places. In a recent email exchange, Dr Sprigg recalled ‘personally I can’t remember even saying that! The Call Centre Association (CCA) got a bit upset at the time. It…snowballed massively.’
Just to add to the confusion, here’s a Channel 4 news page, dated 2002 but updated in 2005 that also makes the reference.
Dr Sprigg also pointed out this paper: ‘An Assembly Line in the Head‘ (Taylor and Bain, 1999) which talks about Taylorism in the call centre. The ‘assembly line’ in question is the stack of calls awaiting the call centre operator, no matter how swifty he or she can deal with their current caller. Here, the authors also refer to the stress of ‘emotional labour’ -- the need to keep check of your own emotions in the call centre, ‘smile down the phone’ and keep within certain boundaries of acceptable conduct and language. They explain how call centre technology cuts out manual tasks, such as dialling numbers, that slow work down (see my notes on ‘wasted motion’ above). As one manager pointed out:
Dialling manually you can make only 30 calls and speak to 10 people. The power dialler will get 80 phone calls and you speak to everyone one of them in a four-hour shift. 10 to 80.
Automation like this boosts productivity but demands employees to keep pace with the relentless call centre machine. And the call centre technology can measure the pace of work of every employee, throughout the day.
Crucially, Taylor and Bain point out that call centre employees do sometimes resist this work structure -- either individually, for instance by finding ways to manipulate management to get better shifts, or collectively, via unions. In the UK, unions have negotiated everything from more teabreaks to better maternity leave for its (majority) female employees. Of course, this paper was written in 1999, before the era of ‘outsourcing’, when faster data networks have enabled companies to site their call centres around the world, cherry picking countries according to their wage costs, labour laws and so on. It would be fascinating to know how closely this represents life in the call centre today, in Europe, India and beyond.
Update Feburary 2011: Hats off to TEDx Brighton team who recorded all the talks and published them on the TEDx Brighton site. You can see my talk here, along with some background notes and links to further reading.
TED is a notforprofit organisation which presents ‘ideas worth spreading’ in free talks and podcasts around the world. TEDx events are created in the spirit of TED – but they’re curated and delivered by local communities. I’m very excited to be appearing in Brighton’s first TEDx event, put together by Tom Bailey.
Here are a few details of my talk:
Loving the Machine
In this optimistic view of mechanisation, I’ll reveal some surprising connections between two types of dance music which flourished a century apart. Both were created by people were working to the relentless beat of factory machines. I’ll also give a sneak preview of my latest artwork – a simple machine which keeps perfect time with your heartbeat.
This talk uses some of my original research for the Science Museum, London, as well as the results of a collaborative project with performer and historian Caroline Radcliffe.
In December 1877, a journalist writing in Scientific American noted there was a now ‘a startling possibility of recording voices of the dead’. He had just witnessed Edison recording sound on his new invention: the phonograph.
In this live demonstration, I’ll explore some of the stranger obsessions of the early adopters of audio recording, as I immortalise a voice from the audience by recording it on wax, using an original Edison Standard Phonograph.
Delving into the archives, I’ll also examine a little-known curiosity from the eighteenth century, one which may have been used to record short segments of sound 150 years before the phonograph.
This event will include some short, musical interludes incorporating a few of my own inventions. As I use the theremin to conjure up ‘music from the aether’, I’ll reveal how the first ‘electric servants’ were also seen as tools for paranormal investigation.
A musician and inventor, Sarah Angliss (Spacedog) is known for her dreamlike performances, incorporating vintage technology, curious stories from the history of science and her own musical machines. She is particularly known for her skills on the theremin and musical saw and the robots which she makes to accompany her on stage.
Sarah takes a keen interest in the history of sound and music and her work has explored musicians’ attitudes to the first music samplers (for the Science Museum, London), Lancashire clog dancing as proto-techno music (with Caroline Radcliffe) and the reputed psychological effects of infrasound (with National Physical Laboratory, Richard Wiseman, Ciaran O’Keefe et al).
Record your voice on wax in this drop-in event. Find me in the Dr Who Exhibition, all evening, at the Centre for Life, Newcastle.
In December 1877, a journalist writing in Scientific American noted there was a now ‘a startling possibility of recording voices of the dead’. He had just witnessed Edison recording sound on his new invention: the phonograph.
In this live demonstration, I’ll explore some of the stranger obsessions of the early adopters of audio recording, as I immortalise a voice from the audience by recording it on wax, using an original Edison Standard Phonograph.
Fear and Loathing in Newcastle
Centre for Life
7-10pm
22 October 2010 Tickets £1
Presenters:
Sarah Angliss
John Hartland-Smith
You can see an extended version of this show at the Last Tuesday Society, London, 20 December.
A photo from the event which was staged at night in the Dr Who exhibition:
I'm performing live at the Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield, QEDCon, Manchester, and the Catalyst Club, Brighton, and composing music for CE3K-inspired Electronic Encounters and some other forthcoming collaborations (stay tuned for news). I'm also hard at work, re-engineering some Spacedog robots, and selecting films for Rocket Lolly, Spacedog's two-hander with Project Moonbase at the Edinburgh Science Festival in April.
News: January 2012
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, is here! I'm ducking out of the Kinetica Art Faire this year but am huddled indoors, writing, sleuthing (investigating a recording in the archives) and devising a new biologically-inspired musical instrument - all will be revealed soon.
News: December 2011
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, launches in mid-December. Join us for the launch gigs at the Marlborough, Brighton, on 9 December and the Horse Hospital, London, on 14 December.
News: November 2011
A busy month writing and editing the forthcoming Spacedog album - stay tuned for news.
News: October 2011
I'm focusing on my writing this month (so am quite the hermit) but I'm squeezing in the occasional live performance here and there.
I'm looking forward to working with Helen Keen in her Spacetacular on 20th. I'm writing a code-based work for the new label Chordpunch and some owlish music for that fine wordsmith Professor Elemental.
Spacedog are booked into the studio at the end of the month to complete work on our album.
News: September 2011
A busy month writing, preparing a get-together of maker musicians for the Brighton Maker Faire After-show party. I've also been electrifying a teapot for the Chi-Tek - an exhibition by MzTek of female tech artists at the V&A. And with my fellow Spacedog Stephen Hisock, I made an appearance on the 10th Anniversary edition of BBC Click.
News: August 2011
The Spacedog song For Laika is now available on iTunes (and the album is on its way). Meanwhile, we've been busy preparing our set for Green Man, including the first outing of our torch song for Tommy Cooper.
I'm procrastinating over a teapot which I'm going to electrify for a MzTek event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September.
I took a short trip to a very rainy Edinburgh Fringe where I played at an event for Edinburgh Skeptics in the Royal Observatory and made some plans for a Spacedog show next summer.
Apart from that, I've been busy writing. More news on that shortly, I hope...
News: July 2011
I'm interviewed by Leila Johnston in this month's Wired UK magazine and will be appearing with my fellow Spacedogs at a Wired: The Future of Music on 20 July.
I've rounded up a bumper crop of links and soundclips for my BBC Radio 4 doc The Bird Fancyer's Delight, which is broadcast on 5 and 9 July and is also available on Listen Again. Thanks for all your cheery emails about the doc, to ProjectMoonbase for mentioning it in their podcast PMB038 and for the many national papers who gave the documentary such lovely reviews - I'm glad people enjoyed it! On Sunday 10 July, the doc was featured on Graham Seed's Pick of the Week (Radio 4). A good week!
My latest collaboration with Richard Wiseman is a free and fun magic trick for your iPhone. It's called Paranormality and it's been put together for the launch of his book by the same name in the US. Thanks to Phillis on Derrren Brown's blog for giving the app a mention - thousands of people have now downloaded it and are busy bamboozling their friends.
News: June 2011
Playing theremin for Louise Colborne's homage to Loie Fuller (pioneering cybernetic dancer c1900) and composing sounds for Sonus, an homage to the analogue age with Spacedog, ArtHertz, Rushes Soho Shorts Festival and Ridley Scott Associates. Discovering how easy (or difficult) it is to publicise events in 2011 without Twitter - will report back!
Getting ready for BEAM - a brand new festival of electronics and music at Brunel University (24-26 June). I'll be speaking, running a workshop on optical flow and performing live with my fellow Spacedogs. I'll also be playing a short theremin set at the Speaky Spokey, a new arts salon in Brighton (Wed 22 June).
Putting the finishing touches to a sonic-themed BBC Radio 4 documentary, with producer Neil McCarthy, due for transmission on 5 July 2011.
Presenting a workshop for Hack Circus at Interesting, in the Conway Hall, London, 18 June, and performing theremin at a family day at the Science Museum, 19 June.
As I untangle the cable salad, I’m remembering a few highlights from my long weekend of gigs:
