Swiss Interlude

In about 18 hours’ time I shall be shaking the asbestos dust out of my clothes, putting the Shunt Vault firmly behind me and heading for the clean air of Switzerland to deliver a programme of lectures and readings.

The events are as follows:

Monday, 24.11, 17.00-18.30, Lucerne, University of Applied Sciences and Art, Institute of Design – ‘Welcome to the Labyrinth’ an informal talk on exploring the digital regime, ‘assemblage critique’ and the concept of design as thought.

Tuesday, 25.11, 10.30-12.00, Bern University of the Arts – ‘Information as Art Form’ a lecture on the role of research and interdisciplinary practice in the development of my work as a writer. This will include a screening of ‘SpaceBaby’, plus a presentation of ‘Welcome to Mars’ and a reading from the book.

Wednesday, 26.11, 16.15-17.45, Lucerne, University of Applied Sciences and Art, Institute of Design – ‘Images of Ecstasy in Print Media’ a joint lecture with Dr Axel Vogelsang.

The poster reproduced above has been designed by students at Bern University of the Arts, to whom I offer my deepest thanks and appreciation. It feels as if I know you already.

Mondo Mancunia – Site Report Number Four

You say: ‘I keep waking up in this building.’

A broken iron bed frame on a bare concrete floor
This is where you break up.

Look at it: you can’t look through it.
It calls you
It sends you away
It obscures the facts
It no longer serves

There’s dust on your clothes

- The Dragman

Biting Tongues take to the main stage for the second and final time. A little of what follows is conveyed in the pictures reproduced above. With thanks and much respect to Graham Massey, Colin Seddon, Eddie Sherwood and Howard Walmsley: see you all in Paris next February.

Mondo Mancunia: Site Report Number Three

In a warehouse late at night
Someone’s lying on a bed sleeping
A white cloth covering his face

In a warehouse late at night
Flies circle in the light around the bed
Fires burn down the streets outside

In a warehouse late at night
Words are in production

In a warehouse late at night
You ask: ‘who is speaking?’

- The Dragman

Biting Tongues caught in action on the main stage, after midnight. Colin Seddon and Eddie Sherwood, Howard Walmsley, Graham Massey.

Mondo Mancunia: Site Report Number Two

Day Two, and we are now becoming well acquainted with the clammy splendours of the Shunt Vault’s chambers. It has precisely the kind of dust that always shows up on your clothing, no matter whether you’re in dark colours or light. ‘Don’t touch the walls,’ Curtis, Simon James’s twin brother advised, holding up a damp set of fingers. Well, certainly not with all these tables of radiophonic gear and endless electrical cables snaking around the stage area, anyway.

The best part of setting up for today’s show was watching newcomer’s reactions to this labyrinthine cavernous space. Bruce and Kit Woolley disappeared after the sound check to watch a play being performed in another part of the complex, while Simon and Curtis were off playing pinball and taking photographs.

It’s such a pleasure to work with these people. To help me perform an expanded version of the ‘Welcome to Mars’ show first presented at San Francisco’s Other Cinema in September of this year, I was joined onstage by Bruce Woolley, taking a break from helping Grace Jones promote her new ‘Hurricane’ album, on Theremin and Moog; Simon James, who’s been recording extensively with DJ Format recently, on tape loops and table-top electronics; and Mark Pilkington, freshly returned from a Flying Saucer convention in Las Vegas, on gnostic sound circuitry. Their work together was as intensive and as sensitive as you would expect from such different but complementary backgrounds. Curtis James will be posting some pictures online soon. In the meantime, the top image in this post is of Simon James recalibrating his solenoids during the sound check: look out for further postings on his blog.

The other images were taken from the stage during the performance of ‘Dr X: A Version of Events’ that was scheduled for later in the evening. They show a view of my lectern taken during a musical interlude, featuring a page from the heavily marked-up text for this piece, plus some intimate views of Howard Walmsley and Graham Massey in action plus a selection of Massey’s research instruments brought over from Dr X’s underground lair in Manhattan for the occasion.

‘Oh for crying out loud,’ a newsman mutters sourly from outside the sealed iron doors of the Molecular Distortion laboratory. ‘How can such a simple investigative procedure go so completely wrong?’

Mondo Mancunia: Site Report Number One

The first night of Mondo Mancunia, a four-day festival of music from Manchester’s music underground, opened at Shunt Vault with a live performance of ‘Ego In Exotica Sum’ a memorial piece first presented in 2005 to commemorate the life and work of musician and arranger Martin Denny. This particular performance was dedicated to the memory of singer Yma Sumac, who was taken away from us recently. Amidst the crumbling brickwork, industrial joists and leaking pipes of Shunt Vault, we recreated a brief moment of Hawaiian paradise as we recalled the great days of Don the Beachcomber ’s Dagger Bar in Honolulu, where Martin Denny first developed his sound back in 1954, and the old Shell Bar in the Hawaiian Village Hotel complex in Waikiki.

One day it will be necessary for us to write a social history of special effects – a detailed account of all those things we have persuaded ourselves that we can see and hear and how we accomplished it – like seeing the ocean floor spread across the back wall of a cocktail bar, or holding a shell up to our ears and listening to the murmuring of waves breaking on a distant shore.

A studio recording of the oration from 'Ego In Exotica Sum' can be found at the Soundmuseum fm.

Pictures and commentary on events at Mondo Mancunia will be posted as and when they occur. Above: KH reads the funeral oration while members of Tool shed, sporting leis and fake Polynesian poly-blends, recreate the authentic Martin Denny sound, and the Easy Listening Gods show their pleasure.

Welcome to Mars, Welcome to the Future

My sincerest, deepest thanks to everyone – too many to be mentioned here by name – who helped make the ‘Welcome to Mars’ launch at the Horse Hospital such a tremendous success last night.

I always thought that there should be more to blogging than pictures of other people’s parties. So here they are.

Towards A Social History of Machines

Lecture Three, ‘Towards A Social History of Machines’, will now be taking place on the afternoon of Wednesday November 19, between 2.00 and 3.30pm, in the usual place. For more information on this talk, including suggested reading and viewing, please go to the Topics column on the right, click on Lectures and then check the entry for November 10.

To get a fresh perspective on the relationship between human and machine movement, you might also care to look at the last two minutes of ‘Butterflies’ (‘Farfale’) a charming 1907 hand-tinted film, which you can access by clicking here.

The still featured above should be enough inducement to view this extraordinary ‘serpentine dance’, inspired by the very modern Loie Fuller. Be humble in its presence.