John_Wynne

John Wynne has a PhD in Sound Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work, which is often research-based, is made for museums, galleries and public spaces, as well as for radio. Click for News on recent and upcoming projects including the new installation for 300 speakers, player piano and vacuum cleaner and the group show Sound Proof 2.

U N W A N T E D . . S P E A K E R S

John's untitled installation for 300 speakers, player piano and vacuum cleaner developed during a residency at Beaconsfield Gallery in London in 2009: it has become the first piece of sound art in the Saatchi collection and will be included in a show called Newspeak at the new Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea in June 2010. Click for the project Research Log. Previous installations for discarded but working hi-fi speakers include 230 Unwanted Speakers (Walnut Grained Vinyl Veneered Particleboard Construction) which was commissioned by Hull Art Lab in the UK. His first work for recycled speakers was Fallender ton für 207 lautsprecher boxen at Kunstfabrik, Berlin, which according to one writer "sounded like heaven ... and hell".

T R A N S P L A N T

John was artist-in-residence for one year at Harefield Hospital, one of the world's leading facilities for heart and lung transplantation, where he worked closely with photographer Tim Wainwright. The Transplant project has numerous outcomes including Transplant, a large-scale 24-channel photographic sound installation: "Both dignified and brutal, Transplant evokes the melancholy and trauma that underpin this uncanny transaction" (The Guardian). ITU, a surround-sound video, has shown at TATE Britain; Flow was a site-specific installation in Europe's oldest surviving operating theatre. Hearts, Lungs and Minds, a half-hour piece commissioned by BBC Radio 3, won the Bronze award at the 2008 Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago. Transplant is also a superbly designed book which includes a DVD by Wainwright and Wynne and features responses to the project by David Toop, Charles Darwent (The Independent), Marcia Farquhar and others.

E N D A N G E R E D . . L A N G U A G E S

John is currently engaged in his second project with endangered languages. He worked with linguist Tyler Peterson and visual artist Denise Hawrysio to record speakers of Gitxsanimaax, an indigenous language in northern British Columbia, Canada. The fieldwork, funded by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, provided materials for an installation which will show at 'Ksan Gallery in Gitxsan territory and at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in 2010. This work is the subject of an article in a new book, Playing With Words: The spoken word in artistic practice.

A research and recording trip to the Kalahari Desert provided materials for Hearing Voices, a body of work based on highly endangered 'click languages' spoken by the indigenous Khoi and San inhabitants of the region. Hearing Voices is an award-winning half-hour composed documentary commissioned by BBC Radio 3, “a capricious sound world where aural objects shift and surprise” (Resonance Magazine). An 8-channel photographic sound installation, also entitled Hearing Voices, has shown in Botswana, Namibia and London. The catalogue for this exhibition is an interactive CD-ROM with a Foreword by David Toop and featuring John's field recordings made with linguist Dr Andy Chebanne. The disc is used by the Working Group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa to assist in the struggle for rights and recognition of their languages and cultures. An article about John's work with his recordings from Africa was published in the book Sonic Geography Imagined and Remembered and his conference presentation for Fieldworks: Dialogues between art and anthropology can be viewed at the Tate Modern website. His article When is a Click not a Glitch? was commissioned for Sound Art, and Language Ecology and Photographic Sound in the McWorld was published in the journal Organised Sound.

S O N I C . . P O R T R A I T S

John has also created 'sonic portraits': the first of these was James Kamotho Kimani, which was selected by the International Society for Contemporary Music in Copenhagen, released on CD by Unknown Public and broadcast in Berlin, London, Toronto and San Francisco. The second piece, Upcountry, premiered in the Purcell Room in London and at the AGON Festival in Milan and has been widely broadcast, including on Radiotopia Kunstradio as part of Ars Electronica in Vienna.

A U D I T O R Y . . W A R N I N G S

John designs alarm sounds, often for multi-channel installations in public spaces. He recently published an article entitled Auditory Warnings and the Assault on Silence in Issue 6 of the London Consortium's online journal, Static. His first work with electronic alarms and reminders was for the SOUND/Gallery in Copenhagen's Town Hall Square, using 25 speakers hidden under the paving stones: The Sound of Sirens was banned by the city council, which claimed that some members of the public were "frightened and confused". The piece was later released by Underwood Audio, curated in a concert at the Goethe Institute in London and broadcast in London, Berlin and Toronto.

Do(n't) was originally an interactive installation for the European Group for Organisational Studies in Barcelona in 2002 and subsequently became a set of 3 pieces designed for the online journal Ephemera. Two of these pieces played at half-hour intervals on the BBC's Big Screen in Victoria Square in Hull in July 2005, but the BBC refused to allow the screening of the third piece, Orange Alert.

Cry Wolf involved an arrangement of auditory warnings using 25 computer-controlled speakers installed in a vertical grid against the 4-storey central wall of Kiasma, Helsinki's Museum of Contemporary Art. John designed small interactive audio devices for the gallery installation Grasping and Clinging in collaboration with visual artist Denise Hawrysio in Bangkok, Thailand. Response Time, a large-scale, site-specific octaphonic installation in the urban park at Toronto's Metro Hall was described in one review as "an ambient, ghost-like presence".

J o h n ... W y n n e .....[sound artist] John Wynne [sound artist]