Dr Murkes Gesammeltes Schweigen (by Heinrich Böll) is a satire based in a broadcasting house in the 1950’s where Murke, a radio engineer, lifts above the tedium by collecting snippets of silent audiotape. This distillation was originally conceived as a tape installation (2005), where the silence cuts from the radio play of the same book, were extracted and spliced together into one tape loop, played between several open reel tape players.
For signal I re-edited the loop, refering to the original silence cuts that were predetermined by the radio script, highlighting the lineage of events between the words of a fictious silence collector.
improvisation for unknown forces is in response to ‘Three Receivers’ by Douglas Kahn.
Recorded 12, 13, 14th April 2007, Islington Mill, Salford between the hours of 00.00-01.00.
Commissioned for Signal
Ben Gwilliam is an artist whose work spans sound, film, installation & performance. His work explores how the mechanics of sound medias’ reflect the ways in which we listen to and look upon the world around us. His fascination with making sound drives a curiosity that forms as durational performances and Installations, film & video works and writing.
His music and performances work has seen him collaborate with Artists such as Claus van Bebber, Helmut Lemke, Lee Patterson, Rhodri Davies, Hainer Woermann, Chris Heenan, Michael Vorfeld, and Sascha Demand, Jason Zeh, Stephen Cornford, Matt Wand and others.