Voices and books: a new history of reading - a public lecture by Jennifer Richards

Voices and books: a new history of reading

Jennifer Richards, Joseph Cowen Professor of English Literature at Newcastle University delivered last night's public lecture, exploring the importance of the physical voice – breath and tone – to reading.

She explained how the recovery of the lost reading voices of the past, as well as the art of listening, can help us to re-imagine the books of the future.

It is not uncommon to regard reading as a silent action, and although it is often represented as being so, silent reading is a relatively recent practice. There is a history of books being heard as well as seen. Jenny Richards began her lecture by exploring how the printing process contributed to the rise of silent reading.

"Writing moves words to a world of visual space"

Print organises information e.g. contents, chapters, index to make information easier to access.

The format of the book, and indeed the format of a text, shapes the way that it is read.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy, Marshall McLuchan states 'the reading of print puts the reader in the role of movie projector'.

But Richard argues that the physical voice adds meaning to text, and brings the words off the page. She concluded the lecture with a brief introduction to the work she is doing with Professor Michael Rossington (English Literature), Professor Magnus Williamson (Music), and Professor Paul Watson of the Digital Institute at Newcastle University.

"This project is titled Animating Texts at Newcastle University (AtNU). Over three years we will be exploring how the digital can complement rather than replace the print edition, exploring different ways of understanding, explaining, and experiencing text as mobile, variable, adaptable, performable, while also helping us to re-imagine the reading experience."

In terms of my own work, it emphasised the importance of choosing a style and a means of visually presenting my text in a fashion that will guide the reader in how to read it.

I couldn't help but think of the work of Samuel Beckett, particularly the text 'Not I' which i find nearly impenetrable when presented visually, but, when performed, is one of the most powerful pieces of monologue that I have experienced.

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/staff/profile/jenniferrichards.html#research

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/events/public-lectures/

Some thoughts on drawing from Antony Gormley

To mark the opening of Antony Gormley's Space Stations exhibition at The Hatton Gallery, Antony Gormley gave a wonderful talk about drawing. His unscripted rambling about drawing was eloquent and thoughtful, and made for an insightful introduction to the exhibition.

"Space Stations is an exhibition of works on paper by Antony Gormley in which the artist seeks to reconcile the body with its habitat and architecture with anatomy, making drawings wherein the body is treated as a space within space."


Here are a few statements, questions and thoughts raised in the lecture

Drawing is the way we inhabit an imagined world

There is no hiding in drawing

Drawing is tuning in 

Drawing doesn't have to be about appearance

To draw up a plan...

To draw from...

Drawing is reflective

Drawing is a circuit

What is a drawing of? A thing? A place?

A trajectory of thoughts

A diagram of a state of mind

Reversing substance and appearance

Reversing space and body

Allowing the behaviour of materials

The surface of a piece of paper can become a landscape

Describing energy

Stop drawing when it gets too comfortable or too knowing

Drawing is a place of freedom

Drawing is a celebration of what is possible

Drawing enables an empathetic exchange with a viewer in a generous manner

"Gormley's Space Stations exhibition runs in parallel with Speculations: making thinking drawing, an exhibition in celebration of drawing. Speculations: making thinking drawing brings together archival material with the work of contemporary artists in order to explore the ingenious and imaginative ways in which ideas, materials, space and structure can be evoked and investigated on the flat plane of the paper’s surface. 

Speculations: making thinking drawing forms part of the inaugural exhibitions of ‘drawing?’ - a series of exhibitions, discussions, publications, lectures and events based around the theme of drawing, which will take place in various museums and galleries in the North East over the forthcoming year."

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/hatton-gallery/whats-on/exhibitions

Generous Interfaces for Cultural Collections - Mitchell Whitelaw

This lunchtime I went to a lecture by Mitchell Whitelaw in which he talked about Generous Interfaces for Cultural Collections.

"After a decade or more of digitisation, the collections of galleries, archives, libraries and museums are increasingly available in digital form. But I argue that our interfaces have not kept up; the standard search-and-list approach demands a query, shows too little, and discourages exploration. In this talk I will introduce and demonstrate what I call “generous interfaces”: rich, explorable, browsable representations of cultural collections."


The first part of the lecture focused on how digital archives can be organised to enable people to engage with a collection and explore it without having a specific area of research or academic background.





Techniques such as grouping associated material and providing images have been used to prompt people to discover different aspects of a collection that they would not have otherwise have looked at.





Australian Prints and Printmaking have an original way of showing their collection, grouped by decades and in the various types of printmaking e.g. intaglio, relief


http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/explore/decade-summary/






Whitelaw questioned whether we can reintroduce serendipity into digitally, and used serendip o magic as an example








http://serendipomatic.org



The second part of the lecture was about generative interfaces i.e. interfaces that make stuff





I understand this to be DOING something with the information, not purely presenting it, and therefore I see Whitelaw's role as an artist.






http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com





He has used software to follow rules to create an endless collection of images that he hopes will lead people to see the material in different ways and will make meaning.


The software chooses 5 images, applies different effects to them (there is a choice of 3 effects that can be used), and then blends these images together to form a new image. This new image can be sourced back to its original components, and therefore if someone sees the image and goes on to investigate it further, it can lead them to a new area of investigation that they wouldn't have otherwise visited.


Mitchell Whitelaw is an academic, writer and practitioner with interests in new media art and culture, especially generative systems and data-aesthetics. His work has appeared in journals including Leonardo, Digital Creativity, Fibreculture, and Senses and Society. In 2004 his work on a-life art was published in the book Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life (MIT Press, 2004). His current work spans generative art and design, digital materiality, and data visualisation.

http://mtchl.net

Anne-Marie Watson

This afternoon I had the pleasure of introducing Anne-Marie Watson to the First year Painting and Printmaking students at Glasgow School of Art. She delivered an excellent lecture about 'Drawing', referencing a wide range of historical and contemporary artists and covering drawing in it's many forms.

Anne-Marie Watson is an independent Curator, Writer and Artist. Like me, she went to Leeds College of Art and Design to do an Art Foundation course, before moving to Glasgow to study Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art.  

After graduating Watson co-ran an organisation in Glasgow called SEAM (2003 - 2005) where they organised a programme of exhibitions with young Glasgow-based artists including Camilla Low, Charlie Hammond, Nick Evans and Lynn Hynd. 

She then became Assistant Curator (2004 - 2006) at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, followed by Curator (2006 - 2007), working with artists including Johanna Billing, David Shrigley, Ahlam Shibli, Christopher Orr, Ilana Halperin, Bridget Smith and Jordan Baseman.

In 2007 she relocated to London where she was Exhibitions Programmer at Camden Arts Centre, London until April 2013. In this role, Watson worked closely with a number of artists on solo exhibitions including Claire Barclay, Allen Ruppersberg, Chantal Akerman, Anya Gallaccio, Christine Borland, Mathilde Rosier and Haroon Mirza. In 2009 she worked with Paulina Olowska on her selected group exhibition Head-Wig. 

Now working as an independent Curator, Writer and Artist, Watson has been busy with a project called HOUSE.

 

HOUSE is a series of collaborations between artists, dwellers, curators and writers taking place in domestic settings across London. Through public facing interventions into these private, lived spaces, HOUSE thinks through the relationships between people, spaces they inhabit, art and process.

HOUSE developed after an invitation from a friend to use their home for an exhibition. In response, co-curators Alex McDonald and Anne-Marie Watson were interested in instigating an on-going, open ended creative process involving artists and others in discussions around the spaces and places of their life and work. Over plates of food, on studio visits and in coffee shops around the city, conversations have taken place where diverse subjects have been tossed around from Inuit throat singing to rats living under the floor-boards.

Three houses were selected for the project in three diverse areas of the city; Clapton, Forest Gate and Notting Hill and six artists were chosen to take part. Through these relationships with different places, spaces and people a narrative begins to emerge which draws individuals’ stories of living in London into a shared public experience.

The six artists, through their work, are interested in space in different ways; environmental, the space of the body, intimacy, non-space, undefined spaces, exotic, hidden spaces, memory, affect and psychological effect of spaces on people.

HOUSE, in opening up these intimate places for living and working, creates imaginative spaces of vulnerability, risk and the unknown for dwellers, artists and audiences.

HOUSE 1: Anne Hardy & Stephen Setford
Preview Sat 14 Sept 6 – 8pm / Sat 14 & Sun 15 Sept 2013, 11am-6pm
19 Kinnoul Mansions, Rowhill Rd. Hackney. E5 8EB

Hallway – Anne Hardy, Soundtrack (Fieldwork), a work in progress (2013)
Living room – Stephen Setford, Torrent (2013)

Clapton (Mat Jenner) is in the midst of the regeneration of Hackney. This is a shared house, occupied by different people, differing in life-style and age.

HOUSE 2: Angus Mill & Jo Addison
Preview Fri 4 Oct 6 – 8pm / Sat 5 & Sun 6 Oct 2013, 11am-6pm
62 Cranmer Rd. Forest Gate. E7 0JL

Forest Gate (Anne-Marie Watson) is on the edge of Epping Forest in the outer borough of Newham. This house is a typical terrace occupied by four people who are connected via threads of friendship and art.

HOUSE 3: Rachael Champion & Renee Vaughan Sutherland
Closing Sun 20 Oct 4 – 6pm / Sat 19 & Sun 20 Oct 2013, 11am-6pm
2 Londsdale Rd. Nottinghill. W11 2DE

Notting Hill (Daniel Fitzpatrick) is in West London. This house, traditionally built for railway workers and their families has subsequently been owned and occupied by a variety of people who have changed along with the transforming area.

For more information please visit 

housemcdonaldwatson.wordpress.com

Will Self Friday Event

Today I was lucky enough to attend the first Friday Event of the 2012-2013 academic session. The speaker was Will Self who introduced and read from his new publication "Umbrella", which is on the shortlist for the Man Booker prize.

Cinema 1 at The Gft, Glasgow had a full audience, which the speaker likened to a "field of mushrooms".

Self did not disappoint, his talk was informative, intelligent and entertaining.

Quote of the day courtesy of Will Self
"semi colons are the coalition of punctuation"

Gi Primer - Richard Wright

Gi Primer
Richard Wright
Wednesday 22nd February 2012
Wolfson Medical Building, Glasgow University

“the world is already a painting or sculpture” Richard Wright

When the work is out of the way, the action of reaching the work becomes important and this journey is part of the work

The temporary nature of Wright’s work heightens their existence

“The performative aspect of the work is not the making of the work, it is the moment of the work” Richard Wright