The Voice Creates Universes : Sam Enthoven & Laura Sampson [PAST]

Live Performances :

1 July 2022 Friday 7-8pm

2 July Saturday 4-5pm

2 July Saturday 6-7pm

£5 per ticket. There are 10 places for each of the above sessions. Please email divfuse@gmail.com for ticketing and bank transfer details.

IN THE BE-GIN-NING WAS THE WORD howled the machine.

‘This is a lie,’ said the man.

In Marcel Schwob’s 1892 short story The Talking Machine a man trades his voice for the power to shape reality. In their new performance piece, made especially for Project DIVFUSE, storyteller Laura Sampson and sound artist Sam Enthoven will use Schwob’s classic weird tale as a starting point from which to explore the implications of creation stories from around the world. Reality is a consensus. That consensus can be manipulated with narrative – histories, justifications, conspiracy theories and ‘culture wars’. Stories have power. Perhaps the idea that words and voices can create reality is not so far-fetched after all?

Llantysilio : Brian Baker & Bruce Bennett [PAST]

Sound Exhibition:

18 & 19 June 2022 Saturday & Sunday 2:30 – 6:30pm

Running Time : 8 minutes 20 seconds. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

‘Llantysilio’ explores the soundscape around the small church at Llantysilio, a community near Llangollen in North Wales. The church stands by a weir where water from the River Dee is diverted into the Llangollen Canal, which passes through the town towards the Pontcysyllte Aquaduct, a World Heritage site built by Thomas Telford from local iron. This part of north-east Wales, close to the English border, is a confluence of historical forces and natural features. The Dee, the canal, Telford’s Holyhead Road, the railway to the coast (torn up under Beeching), pass in close proximity to each other. The church at Llantysilio stands at the headwaters of this historical logistical network, but the church and its yard are quiet places of contemplation. This composition, based on field recordings at the site, uses percussive plucking of an acoustic guitar within the church and ambient sound from the churchyard to evoke the echoes of industrial history that reverberate within the Dee valley.

Descriptive Realities : Seo Hye Lee [PAST]

Sound Exhibition:

10 June 2022 Friday 5-8pm [Opening hours updated]

11 & 12 June Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

Running time : 18 minutes 32 seconds. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

Descriptive Realities (2017) was made in collaboration with Call and Response Gallery and the deaf blind charity Sense. This sound work is inspired by the everyday sounds of domesticity and uses audio description to shed light on our diverse listening experience. Drawing on her own perception of sound, the piece plays with the mysterious, evocative and sometimes confusing world produced by our eyes and ears. Audio Describer Louise Fryer has created the description of sound based on what she hears and without being given prior context, creating another layer of narrative alongside the audio work. The listener can enjoy multiple layers of narrative by exploring the description of sound, while creating their own audio journey using imagination and listening.

From One to Another : Johanna Nulty [PAST]

Sound Exhibition:

27 May 2022 Friday 4-7pm

28 & 29 May Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

Running Time : 30 minutes. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

The main components of my practice are sculpture, sound, video and installation. In my work I’m interested in exploring the possibilities of the subconscious movement of everyday material and often results in an amalgamation of audio videos and sound pieces.  

I am particularly interested in these sounds because they are evocative and when heard in a different space it can take on an uncanny quality.  

I transform the everyday objects and materials that’s presented around me in aesthetic environment, defining the space, sound and experience. While editing I refined the original version into something that is undefinable. Thinking about texture and warmth from the sound and material. The found objects and materials don’t reveal their source and so then are not literal or illustrative of the source or action.  

I created From One to Another (2021) during the second lockdown. I became more engaged with my surroundings again. Exploring found objects and domestic materials that lived alongside me over the years. Observing and interacting with each object, I built new relationships and created new audio piece.  

-Johanna Nulty

Clay Cameras : Keith de Mendonca [PAST]

Sound Exhibition:

20 May 2022 Friday 4-7pm

21 & 22 May Saturday & Sunday 2:30pm-6:30pm

Running Time: 9 minutes. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

Clay Cameras was created from audio recordings made on a single day in 2005 – sounds from assorted items I found in my apartment, or on the nearby Thames foreshore. A low tide trip to the riverbed resulted in a hoard of tobacco clay pipe stems that had been discarded in the river centuries earlier. The slender tubes make a beautiful tinkling sound when struck or rubbed together. I also recorded and processed sounds from a clockwork cine film camera, some gurgling noises from the back of my fridge and a long since forgotten item as it swung to-and-fro on a door handle.

I had been making sonic contributions every month to Tetsuo Kogawa’s “Radio Kinesonus” project in Tokyo since 2003 (over the telephone!); Jacques Foschia was a Kinesonus co-contributor, and it was he who invited me to provide a ‘pastille’ to the “SilenceRadio” online audio project in 2005. “Clay Cameras” was my gift to him. I made a second composition called “TKU London” from other recordings from that same day;  I played “TKU London” to Kogawa-san’s students at Tokyo Keizai University in an early internet audio streaming event during the same year.

– Keith de Mendonca

ghosts, machines etc… : felix taylor [PAST]

Sound Exhibition:

13 May 2022 Friday 4-7pm

14 & 15 May Saturday & Sunday 2:30pm-6:30pm

Running Time : 16 minutes. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings

‘ghosts, machines etc…’ is a short suite and visual score for field recordings, reverb and distortion. The piece is based around three field recording prompts outlined in the score:

1. a low hum

2. a conversation

3. irregular, uneven rhythms

The player(s) interpret these prompts, make field recordings and play the piece, performing with the effects; reverb and distortion, in accordance to the score.

The piece encourages player(s) to reclaim public and institutional spaces by sitting still, observing and recording. It looks to field recording as an act of resilience and the performance as meditations on the players’ experience recording. It’s an invitation to loiter, hang about and be curious in public space.

The score itself is based around an adaptation of standard western musical notation. It uses a simple key to create instructions that add texture, colour and rhythm to the field recordings.