Fallender Ton Für 207 Lautsprecher Boxen (Falling Tone for 207 Loudspeakers) and 230 Unwanted Speakers.

“Falling Tone for Loudspeakers” is a gallery-based installation work that deploys a number of discarded (but working) hi-fi speakers. The original version was created in 2005 as part of a two-month residency in Berlin. The initial collection of speakers was supplemented by other donated by Braal, an electronics recycling company. The 207 speakers used in the Berlin installation were brought back to the UK and a new site-specific version of the work commissioned by Hull Art Lab in 2006. By the time of the Hull work, the number of speakers involved in the installation had expanded to 230.

The Berlin installation involved 7 channels of audio distributed in moving patterns through the mass of speakers with an 8th channel emerging from the huge speaker embedded in the wall. The Hull installation used 17 channels of audio and, like the Berlin piece, made use of the aural equivalent of an optical illusion. This time instead of a constantly falling tone, an apparently endlessly rising set of tones was used. The sounds circulating around the outer speakers were synthesised in situ in response to the ambient sounds of this former potato warehouse and were designed to blur the boundaries between the real and the synthetic. The sounds used on the central speakers were 'pure' sine tones edited and arranged for 8 channel diffusion.

The size of the installations required significant funding support from Deptford X, the Arts Council of England, the British Council, Museum of Installation, Kunstfabrik and Creative Lewisham Agency amongst others. The installations were the focus of a paper written by the researcher for Soundscape, the international journal of acoustic ecology, which featured documentation of the work on its cover.

The researcher has been commissioned to develop the work for a solo show at London’s Beaconsfield Gallery in 2008.

John Wynne has a PhD in Sound Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He was artist-in-residence, along with photographer Tim Wainwright, for one year at the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, one of the world's leading centres for heart and lung transplants. He recorded patients, the devices attached to or implanted in them, and the hospital environment itself, and the project will culminate with a gallery installation in London in 2008. Other outcomes include a radio piece entitled Someone else has died for CBC Radio Canada and ITU, a video piece with surround sound which premiered at Tate Britain.

John is also currently engaged in a project co-funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project which involves working with members of the indigenous Gitxsan community in northern British Columbia, whose language is threatened with extinction. The resulting installation will show at the 'Ksan gallery in Gitxsan territory as well as at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver.

His work with endangered click-languages in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana resulted in an award-winning composed documentary for BBC Radio 3 as well as a photographic sound installation which showed at the Botswana National Museum, the National Art Gallery of Namibia and the Brunei Gallery in London: "Impressive sound sculpture," according to the Wire magazine. Works based on his recordings from Kenya have been heard in concert halls and on the radio worldwide.

John has created large-scale multi-speaker installations in public squares in Copenhagen and Toronto: one was banned by the City Council of Copenhagen for allegedly "frightening and confusing the public" and the other was described in MusicWorks magazine as "an ambient, ghost-like presence". He has also created large-scale installations using discarded but working hi-fi speakers in Berlin (Fallender ton für 207 lautsprecher boxen) and Hull (230 Unwanted Speakers): according to one writer, the Berlin piece "sounded like Heaven .and Hell."

He has created soundtracks for films selected for the London Film Festival, the BBC Short Film Festival, the Whitechapel Open, the European Media Art Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival and is a member of the Steering Committee for ResonanceFM in London.

• http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/17492.htm
• http://www.sonus.ca/curators/norman/wynn...