"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."

"Memories of Memories of Memories of Memories" is part of the title of a chapter that has just been published in Bernd Herzogenrath's edited volume "Sonic Thinking: A Media Philosophical Approach". The chapter is another meditation on the field work and studio work for my Silent Mountain project - and how field and studio is a polarisation that needs to be rethought. You can read more about the book here.

I have three sentences cited in this amazing new book on contemporary Portuguese photography edited by Delfim Sardo Photography: A User's Manual. The extract of my writing comes from a longer piece originally written about Carlos Lobo.

"A Crossing Bell" was reworked for the "What Has To Be Done" group show at the Today Art Museum, Beijing. Rather than the Essex vernacular architecture-inspired original at the Estuary Festival, for the Today Art Museum in 2017, the work takes on another local meaning, this time using a temple bell sourced in Beijing with red painted wood and columns and cross-bars I remember from when I once visited the Lama / Yonge Temple. 

“Ancient Chinese acoustics long ago recognised that there was sound beyond human hearing. Touching bells when sound had disappeared still yielded tactile perception of vibrations,” Don Ihde Listening And Voice.
 
 “[T]he emotional power of the tocsin in such circumstances transcended that of any other source of information,” Alain Corbin Village Bells.

“Into The Outside”, a film collaboration between myself and Chiara Caterina, made in Southern Italy as part of the Liminaria Residency programme, has been short-listed for the Swedenborg Film Festival prize. The title of the film echoes a quotation from Georges Bataille - "Here darkness is not the absence of light (of sound) but absorption into the outside” - and announces its exploration of the nocturnal that is also evoked in a blog post I wrote while on the residency: "Night insects draw to my headtorch and to Guiliano’s LED light. Bubbles, scrapes and chinks for my hydrophone trawl; a crab clicks over a flat rock. Water creatures in the depths under the bridge – Raffeale captures their energies in a way I could not. Birdsong strange in the moon’s soft grey; Chiara submerges one camera and aims another to the far shore. Franco talks of the purposes of night. Five foxes on the way home; at the farm, one screams for 10 minutes then – my recorder now on – nientefor the half an hour til I fall asleep standing up”.
The festival is on 26th of November, 2016. 
​http://www.swedenborg.org.uk/events/swedenborg_film_festival

Rupert Cox and my film "Cave Mouth and the Giant Voice" was shown at the film club Inter at Stereo Cafe Bar, Glasgow. Inter bills itself as "INTER- is a new event series presenting experimental sound work for loudspeakers.

“between” “among” “in the midst of” “mutually” “reciprocally” “together” “during”

These nights are about creating a focused, public listening context for deep experiments in / with sound. We aim to support work and practices which might not fit easily into other performance contexts. We hope these events can help to draw together practices across electroacoustic composition, studio production and field-recording (amongst others) and be part of the exchange between sound and music methods taking place across Glasgow, and much further afield…"

A Crossing Bell was an installation for the Estuary Festival 2016 Points of Departure exhibition. Originally commissioned as a response to the Gravesend-Tilbury foot ferry, the work was eventually located at the point where passengers are about to join the boat or have just arrived from it, the bell hanging in a structure designed to echo elements of Essex coastal architecture and constructed from planks that once were part of Southend Pier.

Photos: Benedict Johnson benedictjohnson.com

From the exhibition interpretation text: "Installed near the Tilbury ferry within a custom-built wooden shelter that offers views over the wide river, the engraved bell is there to be rung by passengers and festival-goers as they offer their prayers for a crossing (their own or someone else’s, a friend’s or a stranger’s, a crossing here at the Thames or one that lies further afield). The aspiration is that the bell transform the short journey on the openness of the swift-flowing river and suggest other crossings, other times and other places; its un-amplified peals finding their place amongst engine noise, the cries of white feathered gulls, voices and the soundings of the Thames itself".