Neolithic Cannibals workshop 3

Workshop 3 was held at Brighton Museum and offered a unique journey into deep history. Exploring the Archaeology Gallery with Jon Sygrave from Archaeology South East, the young artists were transported to the Neolithic era, learning about the remains of Whitehawk Camp while surrounded by mysterious artifacts. With skilled flint knapper Grant Williams the artists experienced the intense sonic impacts and intricate crunchy  processes involved in crafting tools from aged stone. It turns out that listening to the materials is of great importance when knapping. Observing the timbral and pitch changes as flint was worked, participants discovered a wide range of sounds within the ancient rock.

Film by Curtis James

Using chalk gathered from Whitehawk Hill, artists translated Whitehawk Neolithic Camp’s patterns and shapes into graphic scores, for future explorations with electronic synthesizers. 

The workshop culminated in an improvised performance, where the artists gathered around a mock campfire, exploring the sonic potential of flints and recording their experiments with a surround microphone, capturing every gritty, resonant detail.

Neolithic Cannibals is a socially engaged sound art project and exhibition from the young people of Whitehawk and East Brighton, artist Simon James, who was born and raised in Whitehawk, and Class Divide.

More info here

Neolithic Cannibals Workshop 2

In workshop 2, the young artists expanded their listening to the outdoors, exploring the sonic environment around The Crew Club. They used portable audio recorders to gather sounds, and percussion beaters were used for improvisation with materials and found objects.

Film by Curtis James

An unexpected highlight was an impromptu group performance playing the railing that surrounds a forlorn and empty playground. Where lack of funds have seen the playpark derelict, the young sound artists found their own way to play, circling the railing and dragging their beaters and brushes over the tines of the railing as they ran around and around. A surround microphone captured the swirling, spinning metallic resonances as they reverberated around the nearby valley walls.

Neolithic Cannibals is a socially engaged sound art project and exhibition from the young people of Whitehawk and East Brighton, artist Simon James, who was born and raised in Whitehawk, and Class Divide.

More info here

Neolithic Cannibals - Workshop 1 journal and video clip

The first Neolithic Cannibals workshop took place this week. We enjoyed some simple field recording, exploring the corridor outside our workshop space. I guided the group in listening to and recording the resonances and timbre of various objects and materials such as a hollow plastic bin (which they dropped the microphone in to and then hit with percussion beaters), coathangers sliding and scratching on a metal rail, radiators clanging, squeaky tables and discovering that every door has its own unique sound signature if you listen closely. They mixed these everyday, found sounds with electronics, improvising their first soundscape, each artist engaging with the inquisitive, playful nature that lies at the heart of this project.  

Young sound artists take part in listening exercises and experiment with synthesizers and found sounds. Film by Curtis James

A vibrational movement - through the hill to the city. Vibrating the earth and chalk that sit as a symbolic barrier.

Often these tools - microphones, synthesisers and effects are more powerful in the hands of young people, with no preconceptions of what they should do with them or what they should sound like. That’s really exciting. 

I’m listening back to their work now and there are some lovely moments. After just one session I’ve no doubt we will fill the gallery space with wonderfully imaginative sounds. 

Fog

At Shoreham Port on the South Coast of England, a harbour arm sits shrouded in mist. A 500hz tone sounds at 2 minute intervals as an alert to those at sea.

In the years I’ve been recording at Shoreham Port I’ve not managed to record the fog horn. Yesterday I was in the right place at the right time and enjoyed listening to the tones from many different perspectives, two of which I’ve shared here.

Sound captions - The Architect Has Left the Building

The main focus of the RIBA exhibition with Jim Stephenson and Sofia Smith was the film, but something that excited me as much as producing my first multi speaker gallery mix was writing the captions for the catalogue. Emily Macaulay, who took care of all the visual branding for the project, suggested we might include some words to accompany the images that make up the bulk of the catalogue. It coincided with a period where I’m actively trying to improve my writing and ways of communicating the listening that I partake in on a daily basis.

Book designed by Emily Macaulay - Photos by Curtis James

I’ve spoken before about my background and lack of education and thus the lack of confidence that historically may have made me feel like I couldn’t do something like this, so I’m really proud to be included in the catalogue.

I’ve kept a listening journal since September 2023 and continue to engage with it daily. The connection and deep noticing this practice promotes has been my favorite discovery for a long time and in fact has seen me do less recording.

Neolithic Cannibals

Deep Listening to the Unheard

A socially engaged sound art project and exhibition at Brighton Festival 2024 from the young people of Whitehawk and East Brighton, and artist Simon James, who was born and raised in Whitehawk and education campaign group Class Divide.

Explored through the deep time history of the Neolithic in East Brighton and the contemporary soundscape of Whitehawk, the Neolithic Cannibals exhibition mixes archaeology, psycho-geography, sound art, and activism to transport audiences to a place where imaginative and fantastical sounds will invite deep listening to an area that can often be considered hidden and unheard.

Through a series of workshops the young people of Whitehawk will listen to and sound the contemporary environment of East Brighton using the Whitehawk Hill Neolithic Camp, discovered in 1929 through a geophysical listening technique known as Bosing,  as a symbolic focal point and inspiration for their sonic explorations. 

The Neolithic Cannibals exhibition at Lighthouse will recreate the Neolithic Camp - a place of communion, celebration and ritual, as a compassionate listening space inviting audiences to discover Whitehawk's richness, joy, playfulness and hope, empowering local voices through rarely explored sonic expressions. Audiences will leave with a deeper appreciation for empathetic listening, and consider the power of collective effort and the part we all play in addressing complex and current social issues.

She Had Kept all Her Illusions

I’m doing some early research on a series of short personal radio features and one of them is about a painting that I’d locked away in my loft. I enjoyed reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and soaking up the atmosphere and exploration of duality and paintings as mirrors.

As a person from a working class background it has taken me a long time to find the confidence to consider telling stories with my own voice, using my own words, accepting my own self percieved lack of vocabulary and inteligence. But I’m excited about the stories I can tell and the creative ways I can shape them, welcoming space and placing deep listening at the center.

I owe a lot to my twin brother leading the way with his podcast series about education inequality which also features some of our childhood experiences. Listen here.

There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.
— Oscar Wilde

Sheytan

Sound design and music for Mia Khalifa and Sara Burn’s new jewellery brand Sheytan. A really fun project to work on mixing field recordings and intricate sounds of jewellery and body movements. Direction (from Dom Goodman at Tin Drum, one of my oldest friends from ‘90s streetwear shop The One40Five Store) fitted really nicely with where my head is at right now around subtle, half heard shifts to reality, magical breath, smoke air. The key though was getting the foley sounds of the jewellery and body movements, general atmos and then working out where to shift that scenery.

PHOTOGRAPHER
@Fabienmontique

MOVMENT DIRECTOR
@Harpersletters

ART DIRECTOR
@rupertsmythstudio

CREATIVE DIRECTORS
@saraburnstudio @miakhalifa

PHOTO ASSIST + DOP VIDEO
@skoczkowski

BTS PHOTOGRAPHY
@coralilliana

MODEL
@Aissa.seck

CAMERA ASSISTANT
@thomdfr

PHOTO LIGHT ASSISTANT
@prod109film
@edward_wendt

MAKEUP
@aurelia.liansberg

HAIR
@jacobkajruphair

STYLING ASSISTANT
@cocoblossomdawson

PRODUCER
@montiqueandco
@Jonas_prod

ASSIST PROD
@It_sangie

MUSIC SUPERVISION
@Dominic.goodman for @tindrummusicuk

SOUND DESIGN
@thesimonsound

LOCATION
@Studio.labriquerouge

Scent Clouds

I headed down to Shoreham Port this morning to do some listening. I took microphones but I had no real intention of recording. As I passed the Lagoon to the East and turned the corner on Basin Road, the familiar overpowering odour of fish from the fishing boats and dock hit my nose. I’m not a fan of fish, my memory of living in a council flat and the communal areas stale with the stench of a neighbour’s fishy dinners putting me off for life. Usually I hold my nose and walk briskly past, but today it struck me that this space is full of smells and how I’ve never fully turned my attention to them. 

As I pass the fishing docks I picked up a smell from the building on my left, large air vents blowing out warm musty air that smells of bland dust. I walk on and sniff bouncy, rubbery clouds floating from the bicycle workshop.

Loud trucks pass me, exhausts spewing diesel fumes. In contrast, distant but growing is my favourite smell of timber shipped from Europe for local building work. It is an evocative smell and reminds me of walking in woods and forests. It mixes with the fresh air blown off the sea.

It’s quiet down here today but I pass a few people and pick up the scents of their soaps and deodorants. Clean, sweet fragrances that cut through the industrial haze. Next a hot, burnt scent - toxic. I think it is the fumes from the old gas works. Oil seeped in to the ground gets churned up by rough seas. On the road the sea scent is faint. I have to draw in deeply to pick it up.

Sound from a machine on the docks bounces off the sea wall throwing it’s location and confusing me. Smells do the same. Some are just out of reach. I can’t quite take enough in to establish what they are. They sit on the periphery of knowing.

A single cormorant sits on the cold pipe warning light. 

My nose is already preparing for the water treatment plant, and it hits me before I’ve even crossed the road. I’ve described this stench as a mix of shit and washing detergent. A trace of perfume from a passing walker cuts through the stink for a moment. It is a welcome relief but I let them go by as I don’t want their scent trail to cloud the natural and unnatural smells here.

The whiff of freshly caught fish from a family set up with tents and multiple fishing rods. Two young men stand on a wooden groyne and leap in to the sea. I can smell sun tan lotion and more human odours as I approach Carrats Cafe. Fruity shower gels and clean deodorants. Hot oil, fried foods and coffee. 

Smells are similar to sounds in that they are carried in the air, sometimes fleeting, difficult to place; sometimes loud and obnoxious, sometimes actually noxious. As I turned my attention to smelling I realised how easily confused I became and wondered sometimes if I was imagining smells - scent memories triggered by certain conditions. 

Flux and Phantoms

Sheltered by a concrete harbour arm and a shingle and steel embankment built on sunken ships, Shoreham Port houses a sewage treatment works, a power station, a rock processing plant, a steel factory, wharves, lorry parks and burger vans: a backdrop for swimmers, nudists, cyclists, surfers, fishers and summer picnickers.

More from my collaboration with Angus Carlyle at Shoreham Port. Flux and Phantoms is a multi dimensional broadcast experiment for Radiophrenia, a temporary art radio station broadcasting from the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. Field recordings gathered from Shoreham Port will be broadcast at 4PM on Saturday the 26th of August, and listeners are invited to use another device to simultaneously mix in “phantom frequencies” and recreate a phenomena encountered at the site: the appearance of enigmatic drones and tones at the edges of the acoustic atmosphere. These ‘phantom sounds’ can be streamed from Soundcloud via a link below.

The hope is that listeners will experiment by playing this second layer synchronised with the broadcast, using a mobile phone or a computer - possibly a bluetooth speaker - and engaging with the spatial nature of these recordings. We’ve been testing it out and it is a lot of fun to move the second sound source - the phantom sounds - around the listening space, with the potential to collaborate with friends and use more than one  playback device.

Photo by Curtis James

To listen to the ghost frequencies which add an extra dimension to the "Flux and Phantoms" broadcast please tune into Soundcloud with another device and mix the two streams in your own space.

Sharing sounds from South of Shoreham Port.

Last week Angus Carlyle and I spent the evening with a small group at Blast Theory’s ‘Pot Luck’ sharing our experiences and sounds from around Shoreham Port.

Blast Theory are an artists group specialising in interactive art and their studio overlooks the docks, warehouses and industrial machinery of Shoreham Port. There we shared the background to our project, a selection of recordings and journal entries, facilitated some Deep Listening exercises and an experimental spatial work, ‘Phantom Sounds’.

Thanks to everyone that came along and Blast Theory for inviting us.

We continue to develop this project, considering how we share it publicly and how we work with the community. The ideas and thoughts around all of this shift and change more than the intertidal zone shaped by the sea!

The evening included a group performance of Pauline Oliveros’ ‘Rock Piece’ using pebbles from the beach

Stone Table overlooking Shoreham Port

Sounding the Shadows at RIBA Lates photos

Structural resonances and architectural fantasies at the RIBA Gallery in Portland Place, London. Using Buchla Electric Music Box, Wingie resonator and contact mics and a transducer to interact with airborne sound and structural borne sound from the gallery itself. A custom control surface for spatial movement on the 7.1 speaker system was designed using Touch OSC.

Photo by Jim Stephenson

Photo by Jim Stephenson

Custom control interface for spatial control of electronic sources, field recordings and feedback

The Architect has Left the Building review in Apollo Magazine

This building-as-camera projection is amplified by the sounds layered over the footage: vibrations to the fabric of the building in the form of footsteps, bangs and knocks, rain and wind, captured by sound artist Simon James using contact mics, like sound through a stethoscope.

A lovely review of The Architect has Left the Building film/exhibition with Jim Stephenson and Sofia Smith at RIBA. Read it here.

The exhibition runs until August 12th. Find out more here.

The buildings start to seem alive, just on a life cycle far slower than that of the people that crawl in and around them. Like the mountains that folklore claims to be sleeping giants, the buildings patiently await the transfiguration that comes with time.

Sounding the Shadows at RIBA

Space as a continuation of certain, wonderous, eerie expectations: we don’t know what it is about. This roar, the slight light and movement.

Keiko Prince on sound artist Maryanne Amacher.

I’ll be channelling that energy at a RIBA Lates performance on the 22nd of June.

Sounding the Shadows, by musician and sound artist Simon James, is an exploration of structural resonances and architectural fantasies; a multi speaker 'sound environment' created for and performed live in RIBA's Portland Place Gallery, mixing Buchla Electronic Synthesizer with field recordings of buildings and spaces from Simon’s archive.

The Architect has Left the Building

I’m really excited to announce this collaboration with Jim Stephenson and Sofia Smith who I’ve worked with on a number of films (see here and here for just two examples). The joy of working with people who appreciate the power of sound in all its subtleties is immense and this commission has seen us work together on our most ambitious project yet. The Architect has Left the Building is a multi screen, multi speaker film commissioned by RIBA and is being shown at their Portland Place gallery from the 3rd of June to the 12th of August.

Weaving together moments of architectural joy and intimacy drawn from the professional archives of renowned photographer and filmmaker Jim Stephenson

More details here. I’ll write more about this when I can form more than basic sentences, but I’m so pleased with how this has come together, and really proud to have mixed my first multi speaker work for this RIBA commission and delivered sound captions for the beautiful book designed by Emily Macaulay who has also created all of the exhibition branding and signage. A dream team to work with. Ok now I’m going to play the new Zelda game with my son…….

Dead Shot

Out today on Sky Cinema. Creatively rewarding collaboration with composer Max de Warderner. Highlight was ditching the expensive Buchla synthesizer and turning to kitchen utensils instead.

Whitehawk Dawn Chorus recording.

I got up very early a few weeks ago to record this. Find it on Bandcamp pay what you can afford, all proceeds to Class Divide education.

And please check out the Class Divide podcast series, now in to its 5th episode, deep explorations of education inequality.

Logo design by Stanley James Press

Whitehawk is classed as one of the UK's most deprived communities, but alongside the negative data, inherent stigma, and the tarmac and terraced houses, there are many hidden treasures.

One of those treasures is Whitehawk Hill Nature Reserve, beneath which lie the remains of one of the UK's most important archaeological sites. It is also one of Britain's rarest natural habitats.

Let the sounds of an awakening community and the nature that surrounds it transport you into a realm where time transcends and perceptions are shattered. As the symphony of Whitehawk Hill unfolds, you will discover a community that defies expectations and challenges preconceived notions.

All proceeds from the sale of this soundscape will go to Whitehawk campaign group Class Divide.

Class Divide is a politically independent grassroots campaign fighting to draw attention to the deeply injust educational attainment gap for young people from the communities of Whitehawk, Manor Farm and Bristol Estate in Brighton and Hove.

The campaign is made up of parents, residents, experts and supporters who have experienced these problems or have expertise in education.