Vicki Bennett explores the processes of making audiovisual content, working with archives and found footage. Using collage as a compositional tool opens up endless opportunities to create and experience results that are more than the sum of their parts, opening doors (and windows) to let light in and move beyond limited and repetitive ways of creative thinking. In this Somerset House Studios podcast, we revisit Vicki Bennett’s talk as part of The Wire magazine’s Music By Any Means series, which ...
Dec 09, 2021•35 min
Studios resident Joe Namy presents sound work Sound Clash from the Eighth Automobile LDN as part of Somerset House Studios' new Gallery 31 exhibition Temporary Compositions , available to listen to online for the duration of the show . Comprising of audio documentation from Namy’s ongoing performance piece Automobile (2012-2021) for cars with souped up sound systems - so far performed over eight iterations in Beirut (2012 and 2013), Mannheim (2014), Gwangju (2016), Montreal (2016), Toronto (2017...
Oct 27, 2021•22 min
As part of Ilona Sagar's Soft Addictions works for Gallery 31's third season Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise , visitors are encouraged to listen to Sagar's looped sound work within the gallery space as an accompaniment to her print and text pieces. Soft Addictions is a generative series of works that analyze the interface between people and computers and the science of responsive design through sound, digital imagery, performance and text. Using gesture and inference the work abstracts the ...
Jun 28, 2021•29 min
Shenece Oretha takes an experimental approach to the podcast format for Somerset House Studios’ Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy series. The multidisciplinary artist choreographs a DJ lecture mix that explores the theme of the body, using sonic forms that range from instruments and speech, to musicians, conductors, and listeners. Oretha journeys through improvisational musical practices, audience culture, Black literature and emotional responses, layering music, speech and sound. Listen as Oretha...
Feb 11, 2021•34 min•Season 12Ep. 8
A new artist-led podcast from Timur Si-Qin exploring how our health is intimately tied to the health of the natural world, as part of Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy. Drawing from religious history, contrasting western and Indigenous cultural relationships with nature, and the desired shift towards a spirituality of symbiosis, artist Timur Si-Qin unpacks the ideas at the centre of his upcoming essay Heaven Is Sick as well as New Peace - Si-Qin’s artwork, brand and ‘protocol’ developed in the wak...
Feb 04, 2021•26 min•Season 12Ep. 7
Defrag was a series of talks curated by Jake Charles Rees for Somerset House Studios between 2017-2019, exploring how technology is changing the world we live in, including the way we produce and consume art and culture. This podcast revisits the live recordings in the form of an audio montage, meshing together a range of fragmented thoughts from guest speakers. It delves into the practices of the people using and critiquing some of the latest technologies and how these shape and augment our rea...
Jan 28, 2021•47 min•Season 12Ep. 6
An hour long segment of reflections and music from Beatrice Dillon alongside the artists she invited to contribute to AGM – DeForrest Brown, Jr., Rian Treanor and Sarra Wild. Somerset House Studios celebrated four years of its dynamic resident artist community with the first online edition of its annual building takeover series AGM . Featuring performances broadcast live from Somerset House, as well as from across the UK and beyond, AGM 2020 premiered five new commissions from a specially curate...
Dec 17, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 12Ep. 5
Part of Mutant Promise's online series for progressive music-making, including introduction courses to coding and sound software, digital field recording, interior soundscape composition, and remote hardware workshops for DIY synth building at home. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Jessica Ekomane is a French-born and Berlin-based electronic musician and sound artist. Her practice unfolds around live performances and installations. Her quadraphonic performances, characterized by their physical affect, seek a c...
Jul 05, 2020•39 min
Revisit Open Your Palm, Feel The Dust Settling There, an audio work by artist and Savage Messiah author Laura Grace Ford , generated by psychogeographic walks – drifts – through the Latimer Road, Hammersmith and White City areas of West London. Originally comprised of three parts, the work is now available as a feature length podcast. Comprised of a conflation of spoken text and sound collage, Open Your Palm is an audio work responding to the psychic and emotional contours of the city, Made from...
May 20, 2020•44 min•Season 12Ep. 4
The word ‘climatotherapy’ refers to a type of physical and mental treatment which utilizes the influence of climate on the human body, exemplified by treatments in the Dead Sea or at hot springs. Climatotherapy was an installation presented by Nozomu Matsumoto & Nile Koetting at ASSEMBLY in 2018, comprised of sound, light, smell, ikebana and virtual assistant Alexa is a key component, repurposed to generate live and enunciate various suggestions and tips throughout, what we should do, how we...
May 07, 2020•16 min•Season 12Ep. 3
The first in our new Pause series, THE UN-NOW NOW is a new commission by Studios artist Vivienne Griffin . Our programme I Should Be Doing Something Else Right Now takes its title from another of Vivienne’s works. This sound work is the culmination of a group workshop hosted by the artist in January, exploring dissonance, vocal fry, polyphonic harmonies, speaking in tongues and drone. Working with The Seer on vocals, accordion and electronic noise, Anya Palamartschuk , vocals and cornet and Josh...
Apr 22, 2020•13 min•Season 12Ep. 2
A performance by Jacob Samuel and Samir Kennedy featuring a collage of interviews with Beatrice Dillon, Coby Sey, Ines Camara, Scott Pattinson, Tadej Vindis and Vanessa Omoregie (Camgirls Project) . The piece looks into the existence of infinity in the present moment, the relationship of tech and the image of the body, the future of prophecies between them. Originally performed live for RADIO ASSEMBLY, part of ASSEMBLY in 2018, five days of sound and performance at Somerset House Studios. - Deep...
Apr 20, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 12Ep. 1
Are you feeling Hyper Functional? Vivienne Griffin, Florence Peake, Rowdy SS & Rebecca Bellantoni respond to the idea of wellness, described as the optimization of mental and physical wellbeing. Time and again we find we cannot measure up to impossible demands, frustrating ourselves. Those who do not or cannot conform to wellness culture risk the contempt of those on its tyrannical treadmill. Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy took place during January and February 2020 at Somerset House Studio...
Mar 09, 2020•22 min•Season 11Ep. 1
For ASSEMBLY, Karen Gwyer approached the street noises as drums. Building over the course of the performance, Karen will use and process the ambient sounds to create a multilayer, polyrhythmic piece created from the more punchy and identifiable sounds as well as distorting the general hum. The mood and intensity will shift as the performance progresses. On top of the rhythmic street sounds, layers of synths will build to create a moving yet sobering composition that draws on Karen’s own emotions...
Jan 30, 2020•27 min•Season 10Ep. 3
Pedestrians, traffic, roadworks, protest; the corner of Somerset House where Waterloo Bridge meets Embankment is a hive of often unpredictable activity and noise. Acknowledging and working with this to define a compositional framework, Marclay invited a series of guests to collaborate in bringing the outdoors inside for an evolving series of electro-acoustic performances. Studios resident Lawrence Lek is an artist, filmmaker and musician whose virtual worlds and animated films create alternate v...
Jan 30, 2020•26 min•Season 10Ep. 2
Artist and producer Beatrice Dillon ’s new piece for ASSEMBLY , infraordinary , combines installation and performance, in which specially composed sounds are triggered using the system’s Kinect camera, alongside a live controlled sound mix of the street. Inspired by writer Georges Perec’s concept of the ‘infra-ordinary’ - taking account of the micro events of the everyday - the performance attempts to examine and reframe the rhythmic patterns of the street outside. Pedestrians, traffic, roadwork...
Jan 30, 2020•31 min•Season 10Ep. 1
Developed in residence at Somerset House Studios, visual artist Sam Williams and musician Roly Porter present Salvage Rhythms , a collaboration resulting in a performance and film drawing on systems of archaeology, mycelial networks, composting and non-human relationships to explore different possibilities of survival and connection. Sam and Roly will present a newly commissioned film Salvage Rhythms at Somerset House Studios in 2020, which collages together sound and movement from their perform...
Dec 18, 2019•18 min•Season 9Ep. 2
With contributions from Annie Goh and Natalie Hyacinth ( Sonic Cyberfeminisms ), Emma Smith , Ziúr , Roy Claire Potter and NSDOS , we hear the artists discuss explore the idea of silence and how this can be disrupted, interjected or accepted in progressive ways, using an excerpt of Audre Lorde’s seminal text Your Silence Will Not Protect You as a jumping off point for artistic discussion. Somerset House Studios were invited to guest curate the 2019 edition of Wysing Polyphonic. Considering the l...
Oct 31, 2019•22 min•Season 9Ep. 1
Conversations about language. Artist Nick Ryan presents an ontological adventure into voice recognition, language, semiotics, sensory experience, immersive sound and imagination. In this bumper final episode of the series, Nick Ryan continues his search into the meaning of language with Anthropologist Dr Jerome Lewis, asking why and where language began. A Reader in Social Anthropology at University College London, Jerome has 25 years of research experience working with The Bayaka hunter-gathere...
Oct 25, 2019•55 min•Season 8Ep. 5
Conversations about language. Artist Nick Ryan presents an ontological adventure into voice recognition, language, semiotics, sensory experience, immersive sound and imagination. The series documents and delves into the research being undertaken by Nick Ryan and his collaborators for RE:COGNITION , an interdisciplinary project exploring the connection between the sound of spoken language) and meanings manifest in the physical world as sound or concepts otherwise capable of being represented soni...
Oct 09, 2019•36 min•Season 8Ep. 4
Conversations about language. Artist Nick Ryan presents an ontological adventure into voice recognition, language, semiotics, sensory experience, immersive sound and imagination. The series documents and delves into the research being undertaken by Nick Ryan and his collaborators for RE:COGNITION , an interdisciplinary project exploring the connection between the sound of spoken language) and meanings manifest in the physical world as sound or concepts otherwise capable of being represented soni...
Sep 24, 2019•32 min•Season 8Ep. 3
Conversations about language. Artist Nick Ryan presents an ontological adventure into voice recognition, language, semiotics, sensory experience, immersive sound and imagination. The series documents and delves into the research being undertaken by Nick Ryan and his collaborators for RE:COGNITION , an interdisciplinary project exploring the connection between the sound of spoken language) and meanings manifest in the physical world as sound or concepts otherwise capable of being represented soni...
Sep 17, 2019•30 min•Season 8Ep. 2
Artist Nick Ryan presents an ontological adventure into voice recognition, language, semiotics, sensory experience, immersive sound and imagination. RE:COGNITION is an interdisciplinary project exploring the connection between the sound of spoken language) and meanings manifest in the physical world as sound or concepts otherwise capable of being represented sonically: an ontological adventure into voice recognition, language, semiotics, sensory experience, immersive sound and imagination. The s...
Sep 05, 2019•4 min•Season 8Ep. 1
#5 Apparatus: Equipment, methods, original recordings since used in tracks. Ceremony at temple starting, Ubud; machine? - unknown; instrument recording in Rotterdam; playing the organ; yangqin recording; unknown machine, Arctic; Unknown; Unknown; playing the piano, London; Greek wedding, Thessaloniki; crickets at night, Canada; running water, unknown; organ; fire safety training; unknown; kemence recording; vocal recording - unknown; exhibition; violin sampling; radio set in a gallery; gallery, ...
Sep 05, 2019•8 min•Season 7Ep. 5
#4 Orison: Efficacy of Prayer and Pilgrimage. Kecak performance, Indonesia; instrument recordings; gamelan from a banjar in the street, Bali; monks in Cantonese, Po Lin monastery; Chinese temple, unknown; Unknown - Tokyo; chants, Sha Tin; prayer, unknown; yangqin recordings; gong recording, Tirta Empul water temple ceremony; unknown; Bali airport; train journey - unknown; monk on car radio, Martyrria, Crete; gong recordings. Drawing inspiration from a story during a journey to the abandoned Arct...
Sep 05, 2019•6 min•Season 7Ep. 4
#3 Argot: Language, the way mankind communicates through voice and mainstream culture. Early south-east Asian music; kecak performance at sunset, Uluwatu, Indonesia; record played in Hong Kong; car radio, UK; man in the street with a boombox, London; Mark Leckey interview; extreme spin class, London; Harrods video; wedding; club, unknown; family in Hong Kong; TV channel, hotel in New York; Unknown; Gig, unknown; car radio, Mariah Carey; gym class; bar, Mayfair; HXE in club; something outside the...
Sep 05, 2019•6 min•Season 7Ep. 3
#2 Remains: Fragments of memories, friends, voices. Unknown - Berlin?; Unknown; Car radio - South London; club, Hong Kong; club, Greece; car radio, UK; Paris, France; car factory, Belgium; gallery, Paris, Sai Wan, Hong Kong; store, Seoul, South Korea; car journey, Hong Kong; London; Chicago; Tokyo supermarket, Japan; taxi, Hong Kong; traffic, Bali; Billie Piper, Unknown; escalators district, Hong Kong; tunnel, London; Camden gig; gallery, Paris; Soundcheck - unknown; Turkish wedding, London. Dra...
Sep 05, 2019•5 min•Season 7Ep. 2
#1 Terrene , 'of, or like earth', focuses on the physicality of land and air. Dungeness, UK: wind, gravel, Hokkaido, Japan: crows in the mountain, snow, Polyrrhenia ruins, Crete: aquaduct at night, Ubud, Bali: running stream, insects in rice paddy fields, Budapest, Hungary: tunnel, Chicago: subway, Unknown, Hong Kong: construction in distance, Belgium: car warehouse, Unknown: thunderstorm, snow. Drawing inspiration from a story during a journey to the abandoned Arctic settlement of Pyramiden, Ub...
Sep 05, 2019•5 min•Season 7Ep. 1
How do we surf and ride the wave of existence? Breaking down the work of Maurice White, Marvin Gaye, Buju Banton, Tupac Shakur, and Matana Roberts, Somerset House Studios resident Nadeem Din-Gabisi explores the artists that have inspired him artistically, serving as influence to his new multi-media project, POOL. POOL examines the mental health issues of many young Black men, born in inner and outer London. Touching on personal moments of trauma and happiness, POOL seeks to find peace within the...
Aug 01, 2019•30 min•Season 6Ep. 3
How can we use technology to nurture a more inclusive culture in digital art, electronic music, and beyond? In June 2019, Somerset House Studios partnered with Mutek and the British Council to host the Amplify Residency, bringing togethe r eleven female and non-binary digital artists and electronic musicians from across world for a week of talks, presentations and performances. Artists in residence rkss, Ale Hop, Sabrina Ratte and Milena Pafundi reflect upon (Inter-) , a 2-day programme of insta...
Jul 16, 2019•22 min•Season 6Ep. 2
