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.
The Pod Delusion is a fine, weekly podcast about science, skepticism and other interesting things. And this week, I’ve contributed a short piece on the phonograph – a taster of my talk at the Fortean Times Unconvention. You can hear it on the Pod Delusion site from Friday morning (11 November 2011).
The 7 minute piece starts with some curious words used by Florence Nightingale as she laid down her voice on a wax cylinder for the first time in 1890.
On 12 November, I’m delighted to be joining experts on the sasquatch, hermeticism and Gef the Talking Mongoose at the The Fortean Times Unconvention. Jon Ronson will be talking about The Psychopath Test, Jan Bondeson will be discussing some canine intellectuals and Gail-Nina Anderson will be presenting her popular history of the Egyptian mummy.
I’ll explore some of the stranger obsessions of the early adopters of sound recording as I immortalise a voice from the audience by recording it on wax, using an original Edison Standard Phonograph. I’ll also discuss a little-known sound recording method, one which was used to bring popular music into the home, 150 years before the phonograph. And I’ll reveal some outlandish experiments with radio, from the early 1920s, as I play some live aether music on the theremin, accompanied by fellow Spacedog Stephen Hiscock and Hugo, my ventriloquial sidekick.
I’m taking my theremin, phonograph and robot pal Hugo to Manchester in March for QED, a two day festival of skepticism and popular science. There are some fine speakers on the bill, Maryam Namazie, Steve Jones, Ophelia Benson, David Aaronovitch and Robin Ince among them.
I’ll be exploring some of the stranger obsessions of early adopters of sound recording as I immortalise a voice on wax, using an original Edison phonograph. And I’ll be delving into the archives to reveal a bizarre, long-forgotten recording method that was used to bring music into the home 150 years before the phonograph.
This Radio 4 documentary aired at 1:30pm on 5 July 2011. It’s repeated at 3:30pm on Saturday 9 July.
Now available on the BBC iPlayer.
For those of you who would like to know more about The Bird Fancyer’s Delight, here’s a bumper crop of references I’ve found over the last few months, including transcripts from the British Library, music excerpts, photographs of a serinette and details of contributors to the show. I hope you find them interesting.
Talking Canaries and Voices of the Dead
In December 1877, a journalist writing in Scientific American noted there was a now ‘a startling possibility of recording voices of the dead’. He’d just witnessed Edison recording sound on his new invention: the phonograph. And in 1922, a New York radio station switched on the microphones, exited the studio and broadcast nothing but dead air. To mediums and suggestible listeners tuning in, the crackling radio static was alive with voices from the other side.
Radio and gramophones are transmitters of disembodied voices, a feat that seemed so remarkable to the first users, it inspired some curious claims about the paranormal and unlikely alliances between scientists and diviners of the spirit world. In this talk and live demonstration, I’ll explore some of the stranger obsessions of the early adopters of these sound machines, as I immortalise a voice from the audience by recording it on wax, using an original Edison Standard Phonograph.
This event includes tales of ventriloquism, trained budgies, fake psychics, dead air and 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. I’ll perform some live ‘aether music’ and play genuine voices from the grave: ’message records’ posted by soldiers who were lost in battle in the Second World War.
This weekend, Spacedog are playing at BEAM -- Brunel University’s festival of electronic and analogue music. I’ll be performing with my fellow Spacedogs, participating in a pecha kucha session and running a drop-in workshop on optical flow. Very briefly, optical flow is a trick we can borrow from nature to detect moving objects in a scene, with relatively little computing power. It’s how bees and some other insects navigate their world. I’ll be using some free software libraries to play with optical flow, using a musician’s movements to control music live.
I’ll be writing more about optical flow in a day or so. In the meantime, here’s a fascinating video piece from Minoru Fujimoto which uses optical flow algorithms to track a dancer (video from drpopeyee):
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.
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.
