Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless, or stupid. You still haven’t looked at anything, you’ve merely picked out what you’ve long ago picked out.
(Georges Perec; Species of Spaces; 1974)
On a rainy day in Oxford more than ten years ago Felicity Ford and Paul Whitty set up a project with the aim of recording everyday life in sound – to resist the overwhelming tide of visual images of the everyday and to meet it with the abundant soundings of vending machines, luggage carousels, toasters, escalators, boilers, garden sheds, wheeled luggage. We followed the writer Georges Perec’s instruction to exhaust the subject, not to be satisfied with a cursory glance, not to be satisfied to have identified what we already knew – what we had already heard – but to look again or in our case to listen, to keep listening, to listen long after it would probably have been more sensible to stop. That project was Sound Diaries.
This project celebrates ten years of Sound Diaries with contributions from twelve artists who responded to our open call;
We are interested in everyday sounds and sounding contexts from cutlery drawers to bus stops to self- service checkouts. Projects can take many forms but should focus on documentary recording of everyday sound.
Sound Diaries expands awareness of the roles of sound and listening in daily life. The project explores the cultural and communal significance of sounds and forms a research base for projects executed both locally and Internationally, in Beijing, Brussels, Tallinn, Cumbria and rural Oxfordshire.
We have invited twelve artists to create new projects and you can hear the artists present their work on July 13th 2019 at The Jam Factory in Oxford. Admission is free and all are welcome.
Here’s the programme:
11:00 – 11:20 Richard Bentley Sweep
11.25 – 11.45 Hannah Dargavel-Leafe Conduit
11.50 – 12:10 Kathryn Tovey Walking with another
12.45- 13.05 Aisling Davis Uisce
13.10 -13.30 Jacek Smolicki Inaudible Cities
14:10 – 14:30 Atilio Doreste Muffled Sounds
14.35 – 14.55 Beth Shearsby
15.00 -15.20 Lucía Hinojosa Forgetting 1993
15.45- 16.05 Fi.Ona SoundStamps
16.10 – 16.30 James Green Sounding 24h
16.35 – 16.55 Marlo De Lara aural investigation of everyday britain