“Decoys” is a two track vinyl album that began as a collaboration with Mark Peter Wright. Having spent time researching different foley techniques used in the history of film sound, we adapted a repertoire of our own, shifting from the usual kind of pastoral / wilderness scene where foley is recruited to add punctual detail and acoustic atmosphere to conceive a wastescape instead. As we were recording and then as we were arranging the recorded material, we constructed an oblique score, which was then interpreted by musicians Claudia Molitor, Tullis Rennie and Alison Blunt. At that point they had not heard our version, nor did they know our toxic ecology thematic. Their response to the score forms the second part of the album.

The album will be released - with the score - on Multimodal in the Autumn, the first release from this new label.

Japanese broadcaster NHK World screened an English-language version of their earlier Japanese-langauge documentary about Rupert Cox's and my collaborative film, "Zawawa." Quite a few excerpts of sound and image from our film were shown alongside some interviews with Rupert and some shots of Okinawans watching the film on its première tour around island community centres. The image below shows our collaborator Professor Kozo Hiramatsu interviewing audiences for their responses to the film.

The 6th edition of the Helicotrema Festival was held in November Venice. CRiSAP were asked to curate a playlist, to which I contributed a text piece that was originally exhibited as part of Daniela Cascella's "Sound Writing 2."

I was also invited to sumbit an additional work for the Festival, having my work played back in dedicated listening sessions alongside some incredible artists.

Two readings from A Downland Index, one at the literary cabaret Speaky Spokey in Brighton and one at the Photographers' Gallery in London, there to support the launch of Justin Hopper's book The Old Weird Albion.

The HPNoSS (Hospital Project on Noise, Sound and Sleep) is collaborative project that aims to provide a holistic understanding of sound in the hospital environment and the intimate relationship of noise to sleep, rest, treatment and recovery. The project ran from April to September 2017 and more details are avaiable here; a short video was produced to encapsulate some of our work, including a workshop designed to test a number of noise reduction strategies in a simulated hospital environment.

"Radio Not" is a short (1000 words) text that functions as the introduction to Alana Pagnutti's Reception: The Radio-Works of Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage.
The introduction takes a broad account of the kinds of practices John Cage adopted in his engagements with radio (whether as medium, as device or as critical problematic to be approached in the same way a Palaeolithic person might depict a mammoth on a cave wall to ward off its evil). Cage's more conventional radio works are related to the programmes he produced for a local station as a teenager; several works by and on Cage are addressed as are Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard (rarely referenced with respect to Cage).
The introduction deploys a number of textual strategies to govern its production. These strategies are not revealed to the reader. Some relate to 'constraints' on writing that Cage himself used - such as mesostics - others function differently, controlling, for example, the number of words in a paragraph, the number of letters in each word in a paragraph, the sequence of words of different lengths.
In her endorsement of the book, the executive director of the John Cage Trust (and editor of "Selected Letters of John Cage") described my text as "a gift" and, elsewhere, the John Cage trust called the text "beautiful".
The book was launched at London's Cafe Oto on July 10th, 2017, where alongside the UK premiere of John Cage's "Water Walk" (1959), I gave a talk.

"In Bocca Al Lupo", is another perspective on my project "In The Shadow of the Silent Mountain:" a new text from a trip to the summit of Monte Cervialto in 2016, writing from the album booklet describing a journey to the peak of Monte Polveracchio in 2014, and a rendition of a 2013 account of a wintery walk on Monte Accelica. This rendition 'musicalises' the rivers, snow and wolf prints by turning an audio recording into a score and the text into a lyric."In Bocca Al Lupo" was published by The Learned Pig as part of their Wolf Crossing editorial season.

Mark Peter Wright and I contributed to this event at the Wellcome Trust that was curated by poet, film programmer and geographer Amy Cutler. The event was part of a weekend at the museum devoted to "Remaking Nature". Our performed lecture navigated the themes of Foley, decoys, agency, non-human rights and camouflage, deploying sound, spoken word and costume. As the names on the poster above promise there were some excellent contributions across the long afternoon.

A chapter written by myself and Rupert Cox has been published in the Modern Conflict and the Senses volume edited by Nicholas J. Saunders and Paul Cornish. There are some very interesting looking articles in the rest of the book. Our text is about our research work in Okinawa that is being conducted under the rubric of "Zawawa" (a local onomatopoeic word that describes the sound of sugar can leaves rustling in the wind, a word with strong associations of the war that frequently appears in popular song). In particular we are focusing on our film "The Cave Mouth and The Giant Voice."

"Into The Outside", the film made by myself and Chiara Caterina has had two more screenings, both times as contributions to two new group shows. It was shown as part of "Connecting Columns," an exhibition curated by Cathy Lane and Lisa Hall at the Srishti Outpost at Mill Hall, a Collateral Venue at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale from March 1st to March 10th, 2017.

It was also shown in the exhibition "Ego et Eco: Individualismo e Coscienza Ecologica" at Palazzo Delle Arti Napoli from 22nd of April til 29th of April, 2017. This time, the film was projected at epic scale in a darkened room in the gallery. The opening of this exhibition was scheduled to coincide with Earth Day and with the launch of Simone Ciglia's fascinating book "Il Campo Espanso."