Audio Arts was a British sound magazine published on audio cassettes, documenting contemporary artistic activity via artist or curator interviews, sound performances or sound art by artists.
Audio Arts was a British sound magazine published on audio cassettes, documenting contemporary artistic activity via artist or curator interviews, sound performances or sound art by artists.
The project was launched in 1973 by Barry Barker and British sculptor William Furlong, born 1944 in Woking, Great Britain. From 1973 to 2006, Audio Arts published 25 volumes of 4 issues of the Audio Arts Cassettes (later releasing LPs and CDs as well). Furlong conducted all interviews until 1996, when Jean Wainwright took the baton as interviewer. Each interview starts with I am here with..., stating artist's name and recording location. Interviewees include: Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert & George, Yoko Ono, R. Buckminster Fuller, Hermann Nitsch, Mario Merz, Gerhard Richter, Nam June Paik, as well as an interview with W. B. Yeats' daughter and readings by Yeats himself (in Vol.1 Issue #4, 1974).
William Furlong was part of a generation of British artists of the 1960s-70s including Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, Bruce McLean or Paul Richards (whose Nice Style performance group was the first pose band) who were consciously moving from traditional art forms to conceptual art, performance, new media, cheap materials, in a dematerialized and process-oriented ethos. [1] Furlong is now a sound artist with sound installations exhibited in Lisbon (Walls of Sound, 1998), Bexhill on Sea, Sussex (Anthem, 2009), Genillard Gallery, London (Possibility & Impossibility of Fixing Meaning, 2009).
With the acquisition of the Audio Arts archive by Tate in 2004 (itself a long-time subscriber to Audio Arts cassettes releases), over 200 boxes of master tapes used to edit the magazine are now secured for future researchers. A selection was exhibited at Tate Britain March–August 2007. The archive is now catalogued, digitized [2] and preserved there. [3]
In October–December 2006, a retrospective exhibition curated by Lucia Farinati took place at Rome’s Sound Art Museum showing a selection of Audio Arts releases and adding a new sound art by Furlong: Conversation Pieces, a reworking/remixing of preview Furlong interviews, making famous interviewees respond to each other by the magic of cut-up. See SlashSeconds.org.
William Furlong's Audio Arts project was featured in the See This Sound (Promises in Sound and Vision) exhibition, curated by Cosima Rainer, August 28, 2009 to January 10, 2010, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, Austria. [4]
The cassette culture refers to the practices associated with amateur production and distribution of music and sound art on compact cassette that emerged in the mid-1970s. The cassette was used by fine artists and poets for the independent distribution of new work. This article focuses on the independent music scene associated with the cassette that burgeoned internationally in the second half of the 1970s.
Vorticism was a London-based modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist manifesto in Blast magazine. Familiar forms of representational art were rejected in favour of a geometric style that tended towards a hard-edged abstraction. Lewis proved unable to harness the talents of his disparate group of avant-garde artists; however, for a brief period Vorticism proved to be an exciting intervention and an artistic riposte to Marinetti's Futurism and the post-impressionism of Roger Fry's Omega Workshops.
Bill Brandt was a British photographer and photojournalist. Born in Germany, Brandt moved to England, where he became known for his images of British society for such magazines as Lilliput and Picture Post; later he made distorted nudes, portraits of famous artists and landscapes. He is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century.
David Hall was an English artist, whose pioneering work contributed much to establishing video as an art form.
People Like Us is the stage name of London DJ multimedia artist Vicki Bennett. She has released a number of albums featuring collages of music and sound since 1992. In recent years, she has performed at a number of modern art galleries, festivals and universities.
Chicks on Speed is a feminist music and fine art ensemble, formed in Munich in 1997, after members Australian Alex Murray-Leslie and American Melissa Logan met at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
Martyn Ware is an English musician, composer, arranger, record producer, and music programmer. As a founding member of both the Human League and Heaven 17, Ware co-wrote hit songs such as "Being Boiled" and "Temptation".
Sir Alan Bowness CBE was a British art historian, art critic, and museum director. He was the director of the Tate Gallery between 1980 and 1988.
Rod Summers, born in Dorset, England, is a sound, visual, conceptual artist, performance poet, dramatist, mail artist and book artist, publisher, archivist, and lecturer on intermedia. He is based in Maastricht, Netherlands.
Launched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine utilized the audio cassette medium to distribute no wave downtown music and audio art and was in activity for the ten years of 1983–1993.
'The Masterwork' Award Winning Fish-Knife is a 1979 performance sculpture by Paul Richards and Bruce McLean with music by Michael Nyman. The companion album is the second release by Michael Nyman and the first release including the Michael Nyman Band. It was released by Audio Arts magazine only on audiocassette, initially in a limited edition of 300 copies, although many more were produced which have the number boxes blank.
Gregor Muir is Director of Collection, International Art, at Tate, having previously been the Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2011 until 2016. He was the director of Hauser & Wirth, London, at 196a Piccadilly, from 2004 - 2011. He is also the author of a 2009 memoir in which he recounts his direct experience of the YBA art scene in 1990s London.
viral symphOny is a collaborative electronic noise music symphony created by the postconceptual artist Joseph Nechvatal. It was created between the years 2006 and 2008 using custom artificial life C++ software based on the viral phenomenon model. It is 1 hour and 40 minutes in length. The first movement of viral symphOny - and raw viral field material - was released in 2006 as a CD by The Institute for Electronic Arts in Alfred, New York. A low resolution extract from the pOstmOrtem section of viral symphOny was published in NME magazine.
Timothy Hyman is a British figurative painter, art writer and curator. He has published monographs on both Sienese Painting and on Pierre Bonnard, as well as most recently The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century. He has written extensively on art and film, has been a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) and has curated exhibitions at the Tate, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Hayward galleries. Hyman is a portraitist, but is best known for his narrative renditions of London. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Max Beckmann and Bonnard, as well as Lorenzetti and Brueghel, he explores his personal relationship, both real and mythological, with the city where he lives and works. He employs vivid colours, shifting scale and perspectives, to create visionary works. He was elected an RA in 2011.
National Life Stories (NLS) is an independent charitable trust and limited company based within the British Library Oral History section, whose key focus and expertise is oral history fieldwork. Since 1987 National Life Stories (NLS) has initiated a series of innovative interviewing projects funded almost entirely from sponsorship, charitable and individual donations.
Generator Sound Art was an experimental arts and culture organization based in New York City, co-owned by the sound artists Gen Ken Montgomery and Scott Konzelmann. It focused upon the work of dedicated Sound Artists, and was an umbrella organization that facilitated the activities of the Generator Gallery / exhibition space, the Generations Unlimited audio recording label, and a second, eponymous audio recording label. Generator as a physical gallery / exhibition space existed in the East Village and then in Chelsea from 1989 to 1992.
Harvestworks is a not-for-profit arts organization located in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by artists supporting the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new technologies. The Harvestworks TEAM Lab supports the creation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies.
Mark Peter Andrew Rohtmaa-Jackson is an American British curator based in the East of Iceland. In 2023 he was appointed the Director of LungA School, an independent artist-led art school in Seyðisfjörður.
Helen Louise Thorington was an American radio artist, composer, performer, net artist and writer. She was also the founder of New Radio and Performing Arts (1981), a nonprofit organization based in New York City; the founder and executive producer of New American Radio (1987–1998); and the founder and co-director of Turbulence.org (1996–2016).
Reagan Speaks For Himself is an audio artwork created by Douglas Kahn. First composed in 1980 using a razor blade and reel-to-reel tape recorder, the work is a satirical cut-up reworking of a 1979 interview between Former Governor of California Ronald Reagan and the American journalist Bill Moyers. Regular airplay on college and independent radio stations during the period saw the piece gain popularity and enduring influence, marking what the artist Jon Leidecker has labelled as "many people's first exposure to culture jamming."
