A-baa is a straightforward transfer of noise from one space to another via the internet. It is a live audio transmission of a sheep grazing a field in Devon to a gallery in London for the listener to ruminate over.

place: Camerawork, 121 Roman Road, London E2.

date/time: 18 November 1995, 12.00-17.00 hours.

It operates simultaneously across a range of spaces; from the space of production, the field, to the space of consumption, the gallery, through the medium of exchange and the space of the internet. It is a continuous sound, "live" and unrecorded with no edit.

These unfinished working notes are available for grazing by the reader, forming a further spatial relation between the head and screen of the computer.


on spaces & sound

map:

  • green field a space of production.
  • white gallery a space of consumption.
  • internet medium of exchange, various spaces; with one chief spatial relation, the head and the screen.

sound/noise

the shifting codification of noises/sounds:

  • the forms/categories of noise and sound.
  • the social-spatial context of hearing.
  • the economic context of hearing.
  • hearing and listening are not naturalised activities; incidental and purchased hearing.

sound as image.

sound/noise is metaphoric, and intangible:

  • it stands for an elsewhere, a "culture", a place, a source.
  • its production is unique and transitory.
  • its reproduction as music is intensely capitalised, and channelled through institutions.
  • sound is rarely understood as a medium of knowledge.

reproduction

the ideological effort of the "pure":

  • as the mimetic reproduction of things.
  • as interference-free communication and exchange.
  • as authentic reproduction; the means of production and conventions of reception.

the technological invention (reproduction) of things:

  • bio-technological and A-Life [the ear].
  • recording and the preservation of the moment; technologies of re-play and repetition.

reproduction as cultural sclerosis/invention:

  • what and/or whom is reproduced by this or that particular act?
  • what is sustained by this reproduction?
mediation

as that which comes between:

  • the action of recording, transmitting replaying a sound source.
  • the various agencies (organisations) of this action.
  • the technological link; from field to internet to gallery.

as that which brings to audibility/visibility:

  • the range of computer software and increasing functions of this technology; what can and is to be encoded.
  • the production of the 'virtual' and its representative effects.

as the context of reception and readings:

  • listening and reading in different places.
  • the pursuit of the authentic.
  • the investment (in technology, in technical skill).
dislocation/alienation

the dislocation of sound source and its replay:

  • the incongruity of object, sheep, and space of replay, exhibition space.
  • the strange reverse turn of gallery-field; the plan/pen.
  • the disjunction of the space of seeing as space of listening.
  • the re-presentation of the object via technology of listening; of reading off the terminal.
an alienation:
  • the economy of agriculture; economy of cultural production.
  • technology of control (breeding, health)
  • technologies of representation and consumption.
  • the problem of identifying the object producing the sound.

sources

comments cam@camwork.demon.co.uk