8.30 am. Following my Saturday morning special — scrambled eggs — I was back on the job: pointing the stone work of my conspectus while laying the foundations of a postgraduate research training workshop on:

This may turn out to be my in-road towards a practice-based module for the School of Art. Having conceived the graphic design of the title page and slides, I knew where I was, what I must do, and how it should be done. The image dictated the attitude. 11.20 pm. A final shave and polish of the conspectus. 12.00 pm. I continued with my draft concepts for the workshop:

What might be called ‘audiography’ (the use of a sound recording device as though it were a camera) is nothing like as prevalent as video or still photography. Even though smartphones, iPads, and cameras commonly have the capacity to capture sound at the press of a button, few people use them to this end. I understand some of the reasons for this. For example, unlike still-photographs, sound recordings can’t be reviewed quickly. They have to made and played in time. Moreover, it’s not yet possible to embed a sound file in a webpage, blog, or social media site other than as a hyperlink to a file that is stored on a deposit account elsewhere.

In 1985, I began keeping an occasional aural diary. This was, in part, motivated by the development of the Sony Walkman cassette-corder, which was an eminently portable and often exquisitely designed piece of analogue technology. The Sony Walkman Professional WM D6C (1984-2002) — a portmanteau of a device — was the finest cassette-tape recorder ever made. I carried it with me like a camera, everywhere I went:

I felt like John Constable stepping out with his own mobile technology — the tube of oil paint. Invented in 1841, it permitted him and, later, the Impressionists to paint plein air. This small, discrete, and eminently mobile type of sound recorder gave anyone with the money the opportunity to become an amateur field recorder in any environment. I captured sound events experienced on holidays and research trips, in the domestic context, and around my town and place of work:

The Aural Diary was maintained from 1985 to 1988, 2002 to 2006, and 2013 to 2015. Subsequently, a number of these recordings provided the source material for my sound art and art-music compositions. During the periods when the recordings were made, I listened to the world far more attentively. The recordings are vividly ‘visual’. In contrast to a photographic print (analogue or otherwise), the sonic ‘picture’ isn’t flat; sound expresses a breadth and depth of field far more profoundly. The recordings were the closest that I’ve ever got to achieving my ideal of creating an invisible image. The following is an announcement made at the Amtrak Station, Philadelphia at 9.55 am on Tuesday, November 22, 2005. Fortuitously, the last words uttered are those of the train number, ’56’, which is also length of the recording in seconds.

3.10 pm. The conspectus was ready for delivery to the publisher. I carried on making notes for my sound workshop until the close of the afternoon. 5.15 pm. Unplugged! 6.30 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. An evening with my wife.