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Magz Hall: Skyport

Dr Magz Hall, Senior Lecturer in Radio, has been working on an installation, “Skyport”, for the exhibition Air Matters: Learning from Heathrow at Watermans Arts Centre, Brentford, 8th October–31st Dec 2019. The exhibition and surrounding events will explore the politics of air at London Heathrow. For some, the air at Heathrow is a space of networks and travel. For others, it is what they must breathe. The conflation of diverse requirements within one locale presents a significant societal challenge that has implications for sustainable development, well-being, and dignity. Air Matters responds to these challenges, bringing together newly-commissioned artworks, workshops and a symposium.

The exhibition will comprise of six commissioned works by Kate Carr, Nick Ferguson, Matthew Flintham, Magz Hall, Hermione Spriggs & Laura Cooper, and Louise K Wilson. Through investigations into sound and geography we will consider how the air shapes what can be felt and performed. Through study of birds and other airborne life, we will identify competing users of the air. Through mapping patterns of movement, we will make visible aerial architectures. We will ask what art can teach us about the air

Magz’s own contribution “Skyport”. named after the Heathrow based 70’s pirate station, will take the form of a radio inspired sound installation that exploring Heathrow, airspace across radio frequencies. She has been looking into the history of radio scanning and the area’s ongoing pirate radio legacy, which is proving to be very fascinating, indeed and she will share more about the project at her project blog. This project is very timely, given the recent invasion and disruption of the airspace at Gatwick and Heathrow airports.

Magz Hall Shortlisted for 2016 British Composer Awards

Senior Lecturer Dr Magz Hall has been shortlisted for a 2016 British Composer Award.

The shortlist of the British Composer Awards spans thirty-three works across eleven categories and thirty-four composers have been shortlisted. The 2016 shortlist highlights how much the UK composing scene engages with science and technology. Magz’s work, Tree Radio at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, is short listed under the Sonic Art category. The other nominees are Hanna Tuulikki’s SING SIGN: a close duet and Claudia Molitor’s Sonorama.

Tree Radio enables a tree to create a micro FM station powered by solar energy, broadcasting an acoustic translation of its reactions to the environment and its own biological processes.

A sound and radio artist and senior lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, Magz’s audio work has been exhibited at the British Museum, Tate Britain, the Sainsbury Centre, Whitechapel Gallery, V and A, MACBA Barcelona, Denmark, Italy, Germany, Norway, Morocco, Canada and the USA and broadcast internationally. Magz Hall’s blog is here.

The British Composer Awards are given by BASCA, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, an independent professional association representing music writers in all genres, along with the Gold Badge Awards and The Ivors. BASCA campaigns in the UK, Europe and throughout the world in order to protect the professional interests of its members.

The winners in each category will be announced at the British Film Institute (BFI) on Tuesday 6 December 2016.

BBC Radio 3 will broadcast exclusive coverage of the Awards on Hear and Now on Saturday 10 December.

Salute to Vinyl

Dr Andy Birtwistle has launched the Start Here audio cassette label to bring listeners the finest in magnetic tape-based media archaeological art.

The cassettes released on the Start Here label attempt to work with the form and materiality of the cassette tape as a medium, foregrounding and celebrating its unique qualities. Start Here is all about clearing away, stripping back and emptying out, so that these qualities can be perceived and appreciated more clearly.

cover only

The label’s first release is Salute to Vinyl, which features the surface noise recorded from both sides of a blank long-playing vinyl disc. This sound is generated by physical contact between the turntable stylus and the moving surface of a vinyl record. The continuous sound that results from the friction between these two surfaces is interspersed with intermittent sounds produced when the stylus encounters the damaged wall of a recording groove or particles of dirt. This is the sound of vinyl, brought to you through the medium of magnetic tape.

Copies of Salute to Vinyl are available from Chimpsonic and will make ideal summer listening on your Walkman.

Andy is Reader in Film and Sound in the School of Media, Art and Design at Canterbury Christ Church University and is the author of Cinesonica: Sounding Film and Video (Manchester University Press, 2010).