This sequence features brief extracts from "Blackout (The Antiphony Video Supplement)" by Disinformation - Barry Hale's highly influential (and frequently copied) film of concrete parabolic air-defence Sound Mirrors, built at various sites on the UK coast before WW2. "Blackout" was conceived as supplementary to Sound Mirror images by photographer Julian Hills (taken in January 1996) which appear on the sleeve of the Disinformation "Antiphony" double remix CD, published by the record company Ash International in 1997 [1] [2].
Barry Hale's Sound Mirror video has been shown at NTT ICC (Tokyo), The Royal College of Art (London), Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst (Leipzig), The Art House (London), Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt), The Dom (Moscow), and exhibited at The ICA (London), CCCB (Barcelona), The Mac (Birmingham), Now 1999 (Nottingham), Waygood Gallery (Newcastle), Quay Arts (Isle of Wight), Wrexham Arts Centre, South Hill Park (Bracknell), Saltburn Artists Projects, Q Gallery (Derby), Study Gallery of Modern Art (Poole), Event Gallery (London), Ginza Art Lab (Tokyo) and The Latvian National Museum of Art.
Documentation of the Disinformation project appears in The Wire magazine in 1997; in "100% Pylon" by Angus Carlyle, pp. 68-83, "Themepark" 2, 2000; in The Hayward Gallery "Sonic Boom" catalogue, pp. 26-29, 2000; the "Sound Art - Sound as Media" catalogue, pp. 70-73, NTT ICC Tokyo 2000; "The Analysis of Beauty" catalogue 2003; the "Waves" catalogue, pp. 48-49, Latvian National Museum of Art 2006, etc. The "Antiphony Architectural Supplement" appears in Sound Projector 6, pp. 57-64, 1999 - http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/002/003/articles/jbanks2/index.php
The long version of this film runs just short of 20 minutes, and (even in 2008) remains one of the most comprehensive visual surveys of these extraordinary structures ever conducted. One element notable by its absence from this edit is the long (and beautiful) abstract sequence which Barry created for the full version of this film.
This video is virtually identical to later films by Tacita Dean and Lise Autogena, etc [3], and if there is any confusion about the similarity between the original Sound Mirrors film and Tacita Dean's (much later) film "Sound Mirrors", readers should refer to art historian and curator Anda Rottenberg's letter to Art Monthly [4] about the similarity between artist Katarzyna Kozyra's film "Bath House" - of people chatting in a bath house in Budapest, and Tacita Dean's (much later) film "Gellert" - also of people chatting in a bath house in Budapest! What's most surprising is the fact that Tacita Dean's "Sound Mirrors" was commissioned (by The Public Art Development Trust) AFTER these "methods" had been exposed in the art press.
In a virtuoso display of institutional gullibility, a plan by artist Lise Autogena to build 2 new communicating sound mirrors received funding from The Royal Society of Arts "Art for Architecture" scheme, The Arts Council England, Creative Partnerships, Shepway District Council and South East Arts, and support from Arts Catalyst, Demos, Fondation de France, and £70,000 from The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, despite Autogena freely admitting that (in her own words) she knows "absolutely nothing" [5] about acoustics! Anyone with any knowledge of meteorological or acoustic science would know that any proposal to use parabolic reflectors to transmit human speech across the English channel always was inherently technically unsound. However, when in trouble, reach for the "community", so this expenditure has not only been rationalised as a product of "idealism", but also justified on grounds that it provided opportunities to host workshops teaching schoolkids about (no kidding) "science".
Despite the precedents, Autogena's website declares her ideas to be "groundbreaking" and "innovative" (!) and (equally predictably) contains passages that are almost verbatim quotes from earlier "Antiphony" texts. Writing in The Guardian, Tom Dyckhoff reported Autogena's promise to deliver the finished project "in 2002"... six years later, you'd have thought the penny might have dropped, but resources are still being diverted away from viable projects to try and keep this one afloat. The greater tragedy is that in response to increased public interest, a deep trench has been cut in front of the main Sound Mirror site, which can only be crossed over a metal swing-bridge, which is normally locked shut - in other words the great and the good have responded to public enthusiasm for the Sound Mirrors, by spending public money on restricting public access to the Sound Mirrors.
[1] http://www.discogs.com/release/117617
[2] http://rixc.lv/waves/en/txt08.html
[3] The chronology of these projects is documented in "Listening for the Enemy" by Brian Dillon "Cabinet" 12, pp. 68-71, New York 2003
[4] Art Monthly, Oct 1998, page 14
[5] "I'm on the Beach" The Guardian, 13 June 2001
Views :
17396
Rating :
4.15
Keywords, Tags :
Sound Mirrors Disinformation Coldcut Turin Brakes Coast David Dimbleby Lise Autogena Arts Catalyst NESTA Joshua Portway
Video Length :
3 : 59
Comments :
This would have been a better site for Pink Floyd instead of Pompeii.
Funny you should mention that - check out the article in "Sound Projector" magazine (issue 10 page 138) about the influence artist Gustav Metzger's work had on the imagery of Pink Floyd's "The Wall"
So these mirrors make this sound? If so thats awesome!
No mate they pick up sound :)
Yeah, so like they pickup THAT sound?? Of is just for visual stuff.. Must be the second :P
The were designed to pick up the sound of attacking Zeppelins etc
So in this instance, where is the source of this sound. Understand that the sound is being bounced off of the bowls, but what is actually producing the sound? A taped source? Some kind of sound generator?
The source of the sound were the engines of enemy aircraft, Zeppelins and even ships attacking the UK coast
Also Teeside + North Yorkshire :)
there's some serious bass in here, try headphones :)
3 : 59 
This would have been a better site for Pink Floyd instead of Pompeii. 
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