meagre resource productions
Live performance version of Sounds Of The Modern Hospital, Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, 26th February, 2014.
Launch event for the LP ‘Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 1: Sounds Of The Modern Hospital’.
Full video – live at Soundtiago Festival, Santiago, Chile, 2018.
24th – 26th February, 2023, Bern, Switzerland.
Tickets available here.
“The SONOHR Festival is a three-day celebration of creative documentary and fictional audio stories that are rich in sound, and an event which also allows for an active exchange between authors and the audience. We offer the unique experience of enjoying thrilling radio dramas, intriguing documentaries, experimental sound art or interactive audiowalks together with friends and like-minded people in high-quality sound and in the comfortable setting of a cinema.
Our selection includes a national competition as well as outstanding and innovative audio creations from around the world. The side program offers opportunities to various forms of listening and discusses new developments in the field.”
CALL BACK CAROUSEL
Friday, 24th February, 21.30, Kino Rex, Bern.
Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slide-show of the mind’s eye – projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listeners’ mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism.
For SONOHR Mark Vernon presents three episodes of Call Back Carousel – each episode is based on a different found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the 60s and 70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from Mark Vernon’s own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that he has been collecting over the past twenty years.
And on the Sunday I will be doing a presentation on my work relating to audio archaeology and found sounds:
EAR LESSON 5: AUDIO ARCHAEOLOGY
Sunday, 26th February, 11.45am, Lichtspiel, Bern.
In his presentation Mark Vernon explores the world of audio archaeology, magnetic memory, lost voices and found sounds through the lens of his practice as a sound artist. At the core of his practice lies a fascination with the intimacy of the radio voice, environmental sound, obsolete media and the reappropriation of found recordings. A rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, answer-phone messages and other lost voices often find their way into his unorthodox soundworlds and these diverse elements are distilled into radiophonic compositions.
The digital compilation album Navel Gazing III was released last month. It gathers together contributions from a number of artists interviewed by Andrew Ciccone for his Navel Gazers blog (including myself).
The compilation features loads of great artists including Graham Lambkin and Reynols amongst many others. All proceeds go to the Mind charity for mental health so you’d also be supporting a good cause.
Buy your copy here.
A live radio work created for Radio Revolten. Recorded at the Radio Revolten Club on Tuesday, 25th October 2016.
‘Dead Air Spaces’ is a new radio work that explores one of the most basic but vital of our bodily functions – breathing. It includes interviews with diving instructors, a singer, an organist and a yoga teacher and recordings of breathing exercises, snoring, pneumatic tube systems, purring cats, suction units and scuba-divers along with mechanical processes analogous to the human respiratory system such as church organs, bellows and hospital ventilators. The piece also incorporates the use of bi-nasal microphones, a balloon repurposed as an artificial lung and variety of pipes, tubes, whistles and other apparatus played live.
A ‘dead air space’ in diving terminology, refers to a pocket of air that doesn’t play a part in the gas exchange with the lungs; air left over in the snorkel, regulator or even the throat containing greater levels of carbon dioxide.
Laura Phillips & Mark Vernon duo – live at the Bristol Exchange 29th September, 2021.
Performance to plug the launch of the ‘Sonograph Sound Effects Series Vol.2: Public & Domestic Plumbing & Sanitation’ LP on Calling Cards Publishing.
Laura Phillips: Live 16mm and video projections, hacked and amplified projector and waterphone.
Mark Vernon: Field recordings, pipes, tubes, drips, hydrophone, aquarium water pump, soap suds, popping candy and live processing.
Solo live set – Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 31st March, 2017.
Appearing on the same bill as Helm.
Solo live set – Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 4th May, 2017
Live version of the album “Lend an Ear, Leave a Word” with Chilean label mates Glorias Navales.
Solo live set – The Rum Shack, Glasgow, 7th November 2016.
Appearing on the bill with Jason Lescalleet.
Solo Set – The Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 15th May 2018.
Appearing on the same bill with Miki Yui.