Mercy and Liverpool Biennial 2012
present
Talks by David Tompkins and Joe Banks
with Q+A
5-7pm at Camp and Furnace Blade Factory
Saturday 6th October
Continuing Mercy's investigation of Liverpool Biennial's theme of 'hospitality', these two vibrant, unforgettable 'performance lectures' look at the electronic noise as the host of para-psychological and hallucinatory message, and the vocoder as home to complex interactions between war, science, pop culture, and ghost story.
David Tompkins
HOW TO WRECK A NICE BEACH
Based on the strange science of voice
synthesis, How To Wreck A Nice Beach, traces the history of
the vocoder from Churchill's bunker to Stalin's gulags, from
"Autobahn" to Auto-Tune, from T-Mobile to T-Pain (the
book's title comes from a mishearing of the vocodered phrase, 'How to
recognize speech'). Along with the growing acclaim for his book on
this subject, David is renowned world-wide for the generous and
performative nature of his talks.
"Unquestionably
brilliant, not only one of the best music books of the year, but also
one of the best music books ever written." - Los Angeles
Times
"A hallucinatory stew of Rimbaud, Tom Wolfe,
Lester Bangs and Bootsy Collins." - New York Magazine
Joe Banks
RORSCACH AUDIO
In this talk on 'creative listening', human perception and hallucination, Joe delivers a series of interactive examples, along with highly entertaining digressions linking Raymond Rousell, Da Vinci and wartime military intellegence. Part detective story, part artistic and cultural critique, Rorschach Audio lifts the lid on an array of fascinating and under-examined perceptual and political phenomena.
"Anyone who ever listened to The Police singing "So Lonely" and thought it was about BBC broadcaster Sue Lawley... has already struck off down a path towards creative expression, and in the warp and weft of these diverse and captivating threads, Banks attempts to find the locus for all manner of perceptual and psychological phenomena. " - Freq
"a wonderfully argued, eccentric and impassioned interrogation of aural perception... incorporating an intimidating range of wonderfully niche anecdotes, experiments and eccentricities. From the wordplay of proto-surrealist author Raymond Roussel, to spectral technologies by American 'inventor' George Meek... Banks ... animates questions surrounding the interrelationship of sound, technology, perception and belief." - The Quietus