HEARING THE IMPOSSIBLE

Collected sound works curated by Matthew Herbert that are to be imagined rather than heard. 10 creators were commissioned to produce works which exist in those rarely charted realms - the impossible. The booklet includes an account of ‘An Experiment in Recording Sounds from the Past’ a precursor to The “Strange Lecture of Professor Pepper.

Developed at workshops at campfr.com, these “compositions” have antecedents in Dadaism, Surrealism, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. This, however, is a form of conceptual art in which there are no tangible outcomes, except in the ear-magination. These are dreamworks, boldly spanning billions of years, all things in their entirety, the embedded sounds in our environment which there are no known means of retrieving, only wishing that it might be so. These might take in the untold history of labour, or the everyday accumulation of micro-digitalia and algorithms in our surveillance society.

Forward by David Stubbs, Design by Rob Blake, Executive Producer Matthew Herbert

Last few copies available here Accidental Editions
210 x 148mm
2021

Realised in blocks of text at right angles, or in shimmering waves, or overlaid on white and grey to encourage active engagement rather than passivity on the reader’s part, these works, for works they are, blur traditional distinctions between subject and audience, creator, listener. To read these pieces is to be a participant in the creative process. When all is impossible, everything is possible.