As part of the January 2009 celebrations for the London Sinfonietta moving headquarters to
Kings Place (also now home to The Guardian newspaper), 'The Art of News' project was created.
Composers, singers and poets were brought together to create new material inspired by the
daily news, resulting in performances, cabaret and readings over several days and evenings.
Patrick Furness and I were asked to create an installation that would deliver music to people in
the cafe area of the Kings Place atrium. We responded by creating 100 audio 'newspapers', each
containing super-thin cutting edge circuitry that could play back 20 seconds of audio when a
certain area of the paper was pressed.
The music included in the newspapers was created by sound artist Duncan Chapman, who
worked with members of the London Sinfonietta and the Copenhagen Youth Project, along with
poet Kenny Baraka.
Visitors were met by a collection of newspapers from around the world spread along walls of the
main entrance, which led to the audio newspapers distributed around the coffee tables and sofas.
The circuitry arrives from Hong Kong. Only 1.5mm thick, including battery
Each newspaper was made of three carefully aligned layers
Lots of trimming and sticking, as well as recording different sound files into 100 chips
Lots of late nights and over 900 pieces of double sided tape...
The sounds were recorded into the chips using a purpose built probe
Patrick and I created the front page with a bit of a Dadaist theme,
and included a crossword and surreal weather map on the back
One of Alexa Reid's amazing concept sketches for the hallway scenography
The freshly wallpapered hallway, and the listening post where
you could hear the full versions of Duncan's compositions
A completed NewSound paper waits for an unsuspecting victim
The printing was kindly done using the facilities of Apex Architecture,
and the last few leftover pages were recycled as muffin cases.
