A podcast drawing on the botanical writing of Hildegard von Bingen, twelfth-century Christian mystic, exploring affinities with her time as we live through the Covid pandemic. Created for Camden Art Centre’s exhibition ‘The Botanical Mind’, with producer Alannah Chance.
A short biography of composer Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop and inventor of the Oramics ‘drawn sound’ system. For a reprint of her treatise on sound, electronics and metaphysics: An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics.
Through music, poetry, archive and the sound engineer’s toolbox, I explore our enduring and sometimes deathly fascination with the echo. A Radio 4 documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews and Farshoreline.
A tourable, large-scale video triptych of The Machinery, created by Sarah Angliss, Caroline Radcliffe and video artist John Harrison in 2018. This project was supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Some reflections on noise and 1920s modernity, as expressed in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The Hairy Ape’. This includes some archival discoveries about early performances. These notes were made after I’d composed a score for a new production of the play and contributed to the Science Museum research forum ‘Noise, Music and Silence’.
Combining the robotic carillon with a machine learning algorithm from Dan Stowell to hear automatic transcriptions of the dawn chorus played by polyphonic bells. For International Dawn Chorus Day 2016.
A chapter on musicians’ attitudes towards the first drum machines and samplers, in this book published by the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press (2013).
Sharing thoughts on the Leslie speaker in this show about Doppler, presented by conductor Charles Hazlewood and produced by Sara Jane Hall, BBC Radio 4 August 2017.
Published online by Wire Magazine (June 2014), Unheimlich Manoeuvres is a short essay on ventriloquism and the uncanny. It’s illustrated with videos of many fine ventriloquists including Ray Alan, Arthur Worsley and the great Terri Rogers.
A short statement on my work with algorithms and robotics, for The Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music. Edited by Roger T Dean and Alex McLean, Oxford University Press 2013.
A video of a performance of The Machinery at AlgoMech 2016, Sheffield, with performer and historian Caroline Radcliffe. The video by Jon Harrison was exhibited at Compton Verney, 2018.
Researching and creating a generative 50-channel soundscape to reanimate the submarine HMS Alliance. Informed by detailed research with veteran submariners.
Writing on The Bird Fancyer’s Delight for Blokflutist Magazine, The Netherlands, Spring 2013. This was the subject of an archival research project and a subsequent BBC Radio 4 documentary.
Thoughts on the design of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and its minimalist Doomsday Clock which coldly measured the fluctuating risks to humanity during The Cold War and beyond. A short piece for The Wire Magazine, August 2019.
In this optimistic view of mechanisation for TEDx Brighton (2011), I reveal some surprising connections between two types of dance music, inspired by the relentless beat of the factory machine, which flourished two centuries apart. The earliest was devised by women working in Lancashire cotton mills.
Background notes from my TEDx talk Loving the Machine. We can’t say with certainty that industrial music was born in Detroit or post-war Germany. It’s undoubtedly had many beginnings – and one of those was in the cottton mills of Lancashire, in the early nineteenth century, when women clog dancers mimicked the sounds and actions of the factory machines.
Centuries before the advent of the phonograph, captured songbirds were trained to sing fashionable melodies in the home. In this documentary for BBC Radio 4, I explore the surprising history of teaching songbirds to sing. Produced by Neil McCarthy.
Background notes on the Bird Fancyer’s Delight, including a list of music in the show, example tunes for birds and transcripts from treatise on teaching your birds to sing.
A controlled psychological experiment, in the form of two back-to-back concerts. These concerts were highly unusual because some of the music was laced with infrasound (extreme bass sound, below 20Hz in frequency). It took place in the Purcell Room, London, in 2003.
A description of the pure-tone infrasound generator, specially designed for our experiments by the UK National Physical Laboratory. This page includes a critique of the resultant method of creating infrasonic notes for experiments.