Mark Vernon Deep Sleep Trawler
Dreamscapes and other (un)conscious explorations curated by Elena Biserna
Selection focuses on dreams and the slippages between conscious and unconscious states, coming and going from wakefulness to abandon, laying on the liminal zones of consciousness or interrogating cognitive processes – from dreams’ narratives to the unheard sounds of sleeping bodies, from streams of consciousness to explorations of listening as a psychoanalytical tool.
James Webb Autohagiography
Magz Hall Dream Vessels
Francois Tariq Sardi Les Chroniques Insomniaques
Delia Derbyshire Dreams
Richard Crow (with the phantasmic voice of Anna Teresa Scheer) Pollutions (Sonnenstein), from Radio Schreber, Soliloquies for Schziophonic Voices
Mikel R. Nieto 233 Hours of Listening (Or when I’m Sleeping, I’m still Listening)
Mark Vernon/Ian Middleton The Tonic Garden: A Sonic Survey of Soothing Sounds
Mario Gauthier Passages…
Reveil Soundcamp
works
Mark Vernon, Deep Sleep Trawler, 30.00
Composed during a residency at the NHS Forth Valley’s hospital, this piece is based on interview recordings of recollected dreams by patients and staff, gathered with the intention of creating a database or ‘dream bank’ to provide sleep deprived hospital patients with the opportunity of sharing someone else’s dreams. In the end this collection of dreams was plundered to create a series of composed radio dreamscapes connecting the various themes identified within the interview material. Combined with atmospheric soundbeds created from processed electronic sounds and field recordings, the effect is a sort of non-narrative radio play where dream logic rules. The piece is, in part, an homage to Barry Bermange and Delia Derbyshire’s 1964 radio work, Inventions for Radio: Dreams.
James Webb, Autohagiography, 2007, 34:11
Over the course of 2 years (2005-2007), the artist visited a series of hypnotists and hypo-therapists and, after setting up microphones in the practice rooms, had himself recorded under hypnosis. This artwork consists of a montage of voice recordings of the artist’s voice and some of the sounds present in the room and the outside environment picked up by the microphone. In the original installation, these recordings are broadcast from speakers sewn into the headrest of a black, leather chaise longue. http://theotherjameswebb.tumblr.com/
Magz Hall, Dream Vessels, 2016, 7:14
A dramatic radiophonic dream, originally part of the installation Dream Vessels. This installation, composed of different ceramic pots transformed in transmitting devices, is inspired by Robert Desnos’s early surrealist radio programme La Clef des Songes (The Key of Dreams), that invited listeners to submit their dreams for interpretation and dramatisation, and by a book about a talking pot by Tibor Fisher, The Collector Collector. https://magzhall.wordpress.com/
Francois Tariq Sardi, Les Chroniques Insomniaques, 2013, 12:07
The first episode of a serie produced for Duuuu radio, delivered by the artist at every insomniac night. francoistariqsardi.tumblr.com/
Delia Derbyshire, The Dreams, 1964, 42:00
Made in collaboration with Barry Bermange, Dreams is a collection of spliced/reassembled interviews with people describing their dreams arranged in a setting of pure electronic sounds. The program of sounds and voices attempts to represent, in five movements, some sensations of dreaming: running away, falling, landscape, underwater, and colour.
Richard Crow, Pollutions (Sonnenstein), from Radio Schreber, Soliloquies for Schziophonic voices, 2015, 26:42
Radio Schreber, Soliloquies for Schziophonic voices investigates the recurring theme of “hearing voices” in sonic and literary works by paying homage to Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Written in 1903, the Memoirs detail an alternate delusional world famously analysed by Freud in his Psycho-analytic Notes on An Autobiographical account of a case of paranoia. This work gives voice to Schreber’s visionary writings, and explores a sonic tableau of the spectral and disembodied voices embedded in the text, as well as the physical and imaginary locations inhabited by the writer. The piece is also a meditation on the inner or psychological voice as both a sound object and a psychoanalytical subject. In Pollutions (Sonnenstein), we enter into aural contact with Schreber’s imagined body (and mind) and travel with him on a journey through a schizophonic soundscape of text as a haunting sequence of fragments, auditory hallucinations, dissolving and re-forming, eroding and decomposing, as we listen. https://soundcloud.com/richard-crow
Mikel R. Nieto, 233 hours of listening (Or when I’m sleeping, I’m still listening), 2015, 2:33:00
233 hours of listening is a sound piece made with recordings of the same spot. During a one-month reading residence at The Landscape Observatory in Olot (Spain), the artist rented a room and recorded the sound of his sleeping time each night: the sounds of his (ethereal) listening. These sounds were later used to make this piece with ultra-altered recordings. http://mikelrnieto.net/
Mark Vernon/Ian Middleton, The Tonic Garden: A Sonic Survey of Soothing Sounds, 2.30.00
The Tonic Garden was the first programme in the Bedside Radio series produced for Forth Valley Royal’s hospital radio station, Radio Royal. It was designed as an ambient radio piece with patients suffering from insomnia or tinnitus in mind. The voice interviews were initially intended just as research in this survey of soothing sounds but the descriptions and reasoning behind the choices ended up becoming an intrinsic part of the work itself. Field recordings and bespoke music are combined with voices to create a kind of aural survey polling the sounds that were found to be the most relaxing. The Tonic Garden reflects the range of sounds suggested by staff at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Radio Royal volunteers, the FDAMH media group and the public at large.
Mario Gauthier, Passages, from Transparences, 2009, 4:00:00
Transparences is a series of long-form pieces for overnight broadcast, originally curated by Emmanuel Madan for the radio series Simulcast 2.0 in 2009. Passages is inspired by a single idea: that despite appearances and regardless of context, nothing is ever completely immobile. Even though the piece is derived from a single sound, that sound is itself not neutral. It is always accompanied, augmented, or contaminated: a ray of night, an accidental incursion, the listening environment, the effect on the listener, etc. Paul Valéry writes that “While there is conscious variation of thought, no variation of reality,” [Notebook 1, p. 256] but the opposite is also true.
