Do(n't)

Sound and concept by John Wynne

All three pieces in this series were selected by the art curators of the Humber Mouth Literary Festival as a somewhat subversive intervention for the BBC’s controversial ‘Big Screen’ in Victoria Square, Hull, which normally pumps out BBC TV broadcasts all day long.  The BBC flatly refused to allow one of the pieces, Orange Alert, to be screened on grounds of political sensitivity and public safety.  I deliberately added a 30-second silence with a blank white screen to the end of another piece, Auditory Warnings, specifically for this site in order to introduce some sense of respite from the audiovisual bombardment, but the BBC insisted on editing this out and returning directly to regularly scheduled broadcasting:  they said that people would think the screen was malfunctioning.  Confidential Report was allowed without edits and, along with Auditory Warnings, was played at regular intervals for two weeks. 

Text programming by Tony Langford

Auditory Warnings
This piece will be featured in the ALARM issue of Static, the online journal of the London Consortium, due to launch December 11, 2007.
Text by John Wynne [Cry-wolf effect quote from 'Human factors review of nuclear power plant control room design', Electric Power Research Institute Report NP-309 (1977) Seminara, Gonzalez and Parsons quoted by Bliss in 'Investigations of Alarm Mistrust under Conditions of Varying Alarm and Ongoing Task Criticality' in Human Factors in Auditory Warnings, Stanton and Edworthy, ed, Ashgate, 1999, p179].

Confidential incident report by an airline pilot
Text quoted by Patterson, RD, in 'Auditory warning sounds in the work environment' quoted by Stanton and Edworthy in 'Auditory Warnings and Displays: An Overview' in Human Factors in Auditory Warnings, Stanton and Edworthy, ed, Ashgate 1999, p5.

Orange Alert
Text from The Onion online journal read by Dr Miguel Orgel.