Poem for Delia (2008) - Tim Dickinson

A tribute to the pioneering works of sonic artist Delia Derbyshire, once a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Delia Derbyshires favourite sound source was a Coolicon Utility Lighting Shade, British Patent No 419602, Registered Design No 777912.
Recordings were made of a metallic lampshade being struck in variety of different positions and with differing intensity.
These original recordings have been subsequently manipulated and effected, until the sound loses its original, identifiable nature. This allows exploration into how the sound of that lampshade, or rather its characteristics relate to our cognitive understanding of that sound and its shape.
What Pierre Schaeffer refers to a precondition, a deliberate placing-in-condition of the subject. (Schaeffer, P. 1966)
The concealment of the causes does not result from a technical imperfection, nor is it an occasional process of variation: it becomes a precondition, a deliberate placing-in-condition of the subject. It is toward it, then, that the question turns around: What am I hearing? What exactly are you hearing in the sense that one asks the subject to describe not the external references of the sound it perceives but the perception itself.
Schaeffer, Pierre, Trait des objets musicaux (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966.)

Category:

Film & Animation

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• Derbyshire
• BBC
• Radiophonic
• workshop
• Cafe
• Concrete
• Plymouth
• Tim
• Dickinson
• College
• of
• Art