Celestial Navigation

Francis Barker & Son / Herbert Edward Purey-Cust - 'Celestial Navigation Glove' (c.1895)

Astronomical details on the sphere show stars represented by dots of various sizes and marked by their Bayer notation. A magnitude table is lacking. The constellations are represented by contour areas and some of the stars are connected by lines. A total of 19 stars and one star group are named. There are areas with names of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations and two non-Ptolemaic constellations. Nine of the southern constellations of Plancius are represented, as are two of Hevelius and three of Lacaille. The inventor of this celestial globe, Herbert Edward Purey-Cust (1857-1938) was a Royal Naval officer who was Hydrographer of the Navy from 1909 until 1914, when he retired. He became a Rear-Admiral in 1910 and an Admiral on the retired list in 1919. The instrument was used in conjunction with a star chart he published in 1897. For full details about the cartography and construction of this globe please refer to the related publication.

From the Royal Maritime Collection website here - http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/19736.html#RbT4VErPqjUKA2pV.99

Joseph Cornell - 'Celestial Navigation' (c.1958)

The box retains the typology used in 1936, with a cork ball rolling along the upper part and little cups containing glass marbles, in allusion to the planets and the invisible forces and energies holding them. The objects are in front of two manipulated sky maps; cartography that Cornell has used to construct a poetic background connected to the idea of childhood games and experimentation, in order to build upon the Surrealist proposals and explore connections between the world of science, and the world of the spirit.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio

From the Reina Sofia website here

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Robert Rauschenberg - 'Scanning' (1963)

1. Robert Rauschenberg, Scanning, 1963; oil and silkscreen ink on canvas, 55 3/4 x 73 in. (141.61 x 185.42 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Fractional and promised gift of Helen and Charles Schwab; © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY; photo: Ben Blackwell

Scanning (1963) belongs to the extended series of silkscreen paintings (numbering about eighty in all) that Robert Rauschenberg executed between fall 1962 and late spring 1964. This series is devoted almost exclusively to photographic images, representing a departure from the artist’s immediately preceding Combines (1953–64), which incorporate all manner of found objects and materials—taxidermy animals, articles of clothing, automobile tires, working clocks and electric fans—along with photographs and images derived from mass-media sources. In the silkscreen paintings, commercially produced screens were used to transfer to canvas images derived from contemporary periodicals, such as LIFE and Newsweek, as well as Rauschenberg’s own photographs. On canvas, these images were joined with other silkscreened images and hand-painted marks. Like photographic negatives, each image could be reproduced multiple times. Andy Warhol (1928–1987) also used silkscreening around this time, creating repetitive, grid-like compositions that were often impersonal and designed to be executed by others.1 Rauschenberg, however, made the mechanical process malleable and highly variable, leaving it open to improvisation and the touch of his hand (via the squeegee used to spread ink through the screens).

All of the above information is from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art website, with the quotation from an extended July 2013 essay by Roni Feinstein. For the full essay, see here.

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Holy Mountain Studio

I've been recording in Holy Mountain studios in Hackney recently, and been pretty blown away by the results. Misha Hering, who runs it, has an unbelievable and unique array of equipment, and a great sounding live room (as well as being a wonderful human being) - check it out here, it's a pretty incredible place. Here's a photo from a recent session – pictured are the Prophet T8, Moog Modular and Moog Voyager.

'Still Point' article in FACT

Still Point at St. John's Smith Square, June 2016. Photograph: Alice the Camera

"The success of the performance at St John’s Smith Square is palpable, and Feshareki and Bulley’s achievement is huge, but whether ‘Still Point’ becomes canonical is anyone’s guess. The material is certainly there – the duo have been meticulous in their documentation, collating notation, Oram’s and Davies’ writing and orchestral instruction onto a single score – but it remains singular, without clear successors. The muffled, hypnagogic records of Indignant Senility or The Caretaker might be the closest in actual sound, but certainly not in spirit. Both have incorporated repurposed and anaesthetised classical passages in their music – Wagner for the former, myriad Romantic piano pieces for the latter – but these are used for textural and nostalgic effect. Oram’s score, on the other hand, was entirely original, and her specific manipulations tied into a loftier artistic ethos.

But the mere recognition of the piece feels just as crucial. Oram must have felt intense frustration in 1949, knowing that she had produced a radical work. It predated both the concrète proto-sampling of Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (of whom Oram was vaguely aware at the time) and the purer electronics of Stockhausen and the Cologne School (of whom she was not) in its use of sampling, recording and electronic manipulation. In Britain, where Benjamin Britten and Vaughan Williams represented the apex of experimentation, Oram’s leaps of ambition were especially unprecedented."

The full article can be read here

In

Safe Mode #1

An excerpt from a recording session I did recently for Sam Rivere's Safe Mode features here on a poetry mixtape curated by Harry Burke. It will also be played as part of an exhibition at Salts, Basel in Switzerland.

Tom Richards' Mini-Oramics on BBC World at One

Tom Richards' Mini-Oramics project was featured on BBC Radio 4's World at One yesterday, with Jo Thomas and I discussing our experiences of composing with it.

You can hear the piece in full here

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'The Original Turntablist' - Daphne Oram by Shiva Feshareki

Daphne Oram, courtesy of Oram Trust and Fred Wood

"I then noticed a small, hand written piece of paper written by Oram which stated “Still Point: For Double Orchestra, Microphones and Three pre-recorded 78 RPM discs (1949)” and I was stunned to realise this piece was for turntables and orchestra! It is likely that had it been performed in 1949, it would have transformed the development of electroacoustic music as we know it today.

At the moment, it is a stand-alone piece, that doesn’t fit into any known medium of the time. For me, it was particularly stunning, as my compositional practice is centred around concert music for turntables and orchestra, and I have always seen the turntable as a classical instrument. All of a sudden, the way I had developed my turntabling practice for the past decade, made sense to me. It all felt very surreal and destined."

Read the full article here

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Ted Kotcheff – 'The Human Voice' (1966)

TED KOTCHEFF
THE HUMAN VOICE, 1966
VIDEO, 90 MIN
Based on Jean Cocteau’s one-character play and starring Ingrid
Bergman, this film presents a woman pleading with her ex-lover
over the phone in a conversation constantly interrupted by a bad
connection. The voice on the other end of the line, however, remains
inaudible throughout, leaving the woman to appear as if she is
conversing with herself.
Archbuild/Associated Rediffusion

From here

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