Performance Lecture

Performance lecture with David Toop and Daniela Cascella at Off the Page, the UK’s first ever literary festival devoted to music criticism.

This weekend-long event featured a host of internationally-renowned critics, authors, musicians and artists discussing the current state of underground and experimental music in a programme of talks, presentations, panel discussions and workshops.

Salome Voegelin

Research Fields

Sound Art
Philosophy and Aesthetics of Sound
Listening
Sonic Memory
Ethics
Audio-Visual Relationship
Digital
Current Research

Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer who is concerned with the practice and philosophy of sound. Her work has been shown in the UK and Mainland Europe. Most recently her voice work 'Barry Echo' has been included in 'Playing with Words, the Spoken Word in Artistic Practice', Cathy Lane ed., UK, CRiSAP and RGAP, Cornerhouse Publication, 2008. In 2007 she was commissioned to produce a site-specific sound piece for RADAR in Loughborough, UK, and produced a collaborative sound work for the Bregenz Kunstverein, Magazin 4, Austria. She is the curator of Clickanywhere, an online sound exhibition featuring sound work that focuses on the voice.
Salomé is regularly invited to speak at conferences and most recently presented Digital Listening some ideas on digital knowledge and sound at an ARLIS workshop on born-digital archives at UCL in London. She also chaired an international workshop on 'Audio Art on the Radio' at The Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland, in November 2009. In July 2008 she gave a talk on Noise at Architectones in Besançon, France and was involved in NOW II a research project into durational work on the radio staged by the University of the Arts Zürich which culminated in a publication entitled Nachtschichten, edition Fink 2008, for which she wrote a chapter.
Voegelin took part in a panel discussion on States of Flux, chaired by Cecilia Wee at Tate Modern. Her published writing includes 'Sonic Memory Material as "Pathetic Trigger"' in 'Organised Sound international peer-reviewed journal, Cambridge University Press April 2006, 'the Anxiety of the Lonely Listener' in '/Seconds', an international peer reviewed on-line journal, issue 05: March 2007, available at 'A Speech for Noise' in 'Earshot' 5, 2007, and most recently 'Völlig Losgelöst', a chapter in 'Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment', Angus Carlyle ed., published by Double Entendre in 2007. Her book 'Listening to Noise and Silence: towards a Philosophy of Sound Art' was published by Continuum Press in May 2010.

David Toop

Research Interests

Sonic arts
Sound
Silence
Improvisation
Digital music
Environmental recording
Memory and perception
Digital technology and its intersections with sound performance
Current Research

Current research includes work towards the completion of a Jerwood/Aldeburgh Music commission to develop an opera. For the opera, entitled 'Star-Shaped Biscuit', David Toop has written the libretto, composed a digital soundpiece and directed improvisation workshops with five musicians and three singers.

David's book, 'Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener', was published by Continuum Books. This further investigates aspects of sound and the uncanny, explored through the act of listening, sound and absence, and the representation of auditory phenomena in literature, myth and the visual arts.

He is also currently researching the history, theory and practice of musical improvisation, particularly the school of free improvisation that emerged in the mid-1960s. In March 2009, he curated an exhibition for CRISAP in the LCC Research Gallery, using personal archive materials and the CRISAP holdings of London Musicians Collective archives and will now take this research further with face-to-face interviews of leading improvisers, working towards the writing of a book on improvisation.

He is investigating further the relationships of sound, listening, space, memory and oral history. Outputs of this research in 2009 included 'Peep Show', a sound work inspired by Samuel Van Hoogstraten's 'A Peepshow with Views of the Interior of a Dutch House' (1655-60), exhibited in the National Gallery's ongoing audio guide exhibition 'Sounds of the Gallery' and 'The Body Event: David Toop from John Latham', a sound piece derived from conversations with John Latham, exhibited at Flat Time House, London.

David is also investigating the materiality of sound. In 2009 he began a collaboration with photographer and filmmaker Barry Lewis, through which flow phenomena in nature are studied using close-up high definition digital video and microaudial sound. He is continuing work with 'Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra', the improvising ensemble largely comprised of LCC students and graduates.

• http://www.salomevoegelin.net
• http://www.soundwords.tumblr.com