9.30 am. Farmers’ Marketeering. Election campaigners were out in numbers; I was out for a tray of eggs:

10.30 am. On with my own campaign of shameless self promotion, unsupportable claims, and empty promises. Mission: to promote the R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A CD and get it reviewed. Strategy: develop a list of significant agencies, including BBC radio and experimental music/sound art radio stations and magazines who might play and/or review the work; set up dedicated publicity websites (the album already has two content-orientated sites); and write a covering description.

2.00 pm. The product’s Facebook presence is prepared:

I’ve inadvertently locked myself out of my Studium website. What was the email that I’d used? A problem for another day, perhaps. 5.15 pm. Enough! 6.20 pm. Practise session 1.

7.30 pm. We attended a performance of early sacred music by the AMA Vocal Trio at Holy Trinity Church, Aberystwyth:

When you hear a cross section of works from the same (admittedly broad) period of music, commonalities — such as structural motifs, melodic progressions, and harmonic patterns — become apparent. These elements make up, in part, the style or convention in which the composers worked, and to which the best of them (such as William Byrd (d. 1623)) contributed uniquely. Invention and innovation are the more impressive when achieved within the constraints of a very strict discipline.

8.00 am. I engaged email ping-pong to try and establish who is the current administrator of the School’s Facebook account in order to distribute ownership among some of the staff. Mediated access simply doesn’t work. Staff need the capacity to be able to post material for themselves and immediately. The site is relaunched:

10.00 am. I return to the book proposal with some degree of clarity. In the intervening days since I last considered the project, its concept has expanded to embrace the more generalised sphere of sound and spirit (as opposed to religion only). In this respect, the book will represent a sonic parallel to my Photography and Spirit publication:

2.00 pm. I continued in the same vein after lunch. I’ve returned to the tape recordings made by the late Maurice Grosse (a paranormal investigator for the Society of Psychical Research) capturing the supposed voice of a deceased elderly man that emanated from an 11-year old girl. The context was his investigation of the so-called Enfield poltergeist in 1977. (The year that I first went to art school.) I’d heard Grosse play his original cassette tapes of the interrogation of the spirit (one Bill Wilkins) at a conference of the SPR:

MG: I want you to tell me what do you remember — what happened to you when you died? Just before you died, and just after you died.

B: Days before I died, I’d — I went blind. Then I had a haemorrhage, and I fell asleep. And then I died in a chair in the corner downstairs.

MG: Do you have any friends there with you?

B: Yes. . . . 69 dogs.

MG: And what do you got 69 dogs for?

B: Now then they can protect me from you killing me. . .

MG: How can we kill you, Bill?

B: You . . .

MG: And how do we — how do we kill you, if we can’t see you, Bill?

B: By praying to God.

It sent a chill down my spine. Wilkins had lived and died in the council house then presently occupied by the girl and her family. I enjoyed several spine-tingling breakfast conversations with Maurice at the SPR conferences. He talked about levitating wardrobes, apparitions, loud noises emanating from inside solid walls, and violent assaults from spirits as a more or less accepted feature of his everyday life.

7.20 pm. I continued a review of Scole Experiment material, which I’d begun in the late afternoon. This is familiar territory, but the claims represents the apogee (thus far) of so-called physical mediumship, and one which as always challenged my mind to think clearly, openly, and critically about things touched, seen, and heard, that are inexplicable in terms of conventional science. On returning to a subject, one has to spend time adjusting to its peculiar atmosphere again. And this one is most peculiar.

8.45 pm. An elevating light. The walk to the Old College:

9.30 am. I’m teaching the third-year paintings, who are on the final lap of their module. All, to a woman, appear to be on target. We’ve now the luxury of discussing the finer points of exhibition selection and presentation.

Like something chard by fire:

Some principles and observations:

• For the exhibition: Don’t choose the best works. Instead, choose those that work together the best. (These may also be the best works.)
• As they say: talent, alone, won’t get you anywhere. But you won’t get anywhere without it.
• If I had to choose between teaching a student who, one the one hand, possessed an enormous artistic ability but a poor work ethic and one who, on the other, had only a modicum of artistic ability but a considerable capacity for hard work … I’d always prefer the latter.
• There’s a great deal of difference between being simple and being simplistic. The former is a gift; the latter, a pejorative.
• Ideally, a title should be artwork’s textual analogue. For example, if the artwork is metaphorical and allusive in nature, then so should the appellation be.
• Every artwork contains the seed of its own resolution. Solutions that lie outside it are always borrowed.

The Unitarian chapel, Aberystwyth:

Georgia’s palette:

12.45 pm. A visit to Mr Turner, the engraver, to book an appointment to record the sound of a text being inscribed on Monday. 1.10 pm. Lunch in the Quad over emails and assessment timetables.

2.00 pm. Back into the ring to complete the roster of today’s tutorials. 3.10 pm. Back to basecamp at the School to clear admin and await the start of Frances Woodley’s (PhD Fine Art) curatorial talk on the current Still Life: Ambiguous Practices exhibition:

The lecture was followed by an opening of the exhibition at 6.00 pm. After a late dinner, I returned to the homebase desk to revamp the School’s Twitter account:

Art is more than life.

8.00 am. The final field trip to St Fagan’s and the city chapels, Cardiff. A Lewis’s coach was, as ever, our horse and carriage. We were driven through an overcast, chill, landscape, and pockets of fog, which began to burn away only as we left Port Talbot. I miss the site/sight of industry; I miss South Wales. With some direction from Bob, the driver pulled into the bus park at St Fagan’s around 10.30 am. Much has changed in the intervening two years. The entrance to the museum is being demolished, and new transplants of buildings, planned. My group took the track up to Capel Penrhiw (converted c.1707) — which changes not:

From there, via the row of miner’s cottages (time travel by terrace), we walked to Llandeilo Church, the 13th-century Norman church:

It’s an  impressive reconstruction, but one that never fully persuades me. Thereafter, I cut the students lose, so that they could do the more important work of discovering things for themselves.

12.45 pm. Lunch on a bench. The sun shines; the day is therapeutic. 1.30 pm. Onto the bus and on to Cardiff city centre. The group and I walked to the Hayes to see the resplendent Tabernacle chapel (enlarged 1840):

Then, we turned on our heels and headed for the extraordinary Bethany: a chapel within a department store:

I’ve seen its façade many times before, but it never fails to surprise and satisfy. One space seeps into another as each building incorporates the other. In some respects it’s a more rewarding experience than Llandeilo Church. 2.45 pm. Again, I cut lose the students to shop and return to the National Museum Cardiff, where we alighted. For my part, I gravitated towards the Central Market. In my student days at Newport, I’d make a trip here just to east the faggots and peas. The shop is till there at the rear of the gallery. But now it serves biryani and chicken curry instead. In most other respects, the place hasn’t changed:

4.15 pm. I took refuge from the sun beside the circle of standing stones at Cathay’s Park (which I recall drawing in the early 1980s while waiting for something or someone. (That, I don’t recall.)):

The remainder of the afternoon was spent in the museum’s galleries. I’d forgotten just how good the modern and contemporary collections are. We left Cardiff at 5.00 pm, arriving home around 7.40 pm.

8.30 am. At the School, I prepared the lecture theatre for Stephen Hughes’s final presentation to the Chapels in Wales module. Then, off to town to run errands in preparation for tomorrow’s field trip to Cardiff for this module. 10.00 am. The first MA Fine Art tutorial of the morning, followed by another an hour later. The focus of the discussions is, inevitably, the coming exhibition (which will take place around mid-May). It’s immensely satisfying to see students reaping the reward of their struggles, finding answers (which are always provisional) and a sense of direction, and engaging a dimension of their personhood that might not otherwise be accessible other than through creative endeavour.

2.00 pm. The inert, grey skies and Novembery chill has lifted. A late-spring is in the air. But the blossoms have still not yet bloomed:

2.00 pm. MA Fine Art student no. 3, today. We paint more than we know. So often, in terms of our awareness of the significance of what we do, we are playing catch up with the artwork. A thorough understanding of such is beyond any one of us. Which is why we need the critical commentary of others. The Natalie v Painting stand-off:

3.00 pm. MA Fine Art, no. 4. Carly sees blind; shades of Franz Kline:

3.45 pm. Field trip admin — the making of a register — followed by sound uploads, register updates, and email admin related to today’s activities. The tail of one’s duties is so much longer than the body.

6.20 pm. Practise session 1. 7.20 pm. Four volumes of the Scourby Bible vinyl recordings have arrived from the USA. Soon ‘The Talking Bible’ [working title] project can commence:

On with MA Vocational Practice administration in preparation for the assessment related to this module.

8.15 am. Pruned my inbox before setting up for a 9.15 am class:

This was on ‘Socialmedia & ProfessionalPromotion’ for the BA Creative Arts students. Only two takers. I was informed that attendance has been an ‘issue’ on this course. It finished earlier than anticipated (one can grill two students for only so long), so I’d time to interview a BA applicant who’d just arrived from Essex.

11.15 pm. Back at homebase, I concluded a little admin before returning to the sound studio to complete the process of creating initial mixdown masters of The Aural Bible II tracks:

To be really good at doing something, you need patience, persistence, and endurance, and only a modicum of talent. Having listened to Friday’s masters, I decided to do them all again; not because they were lacking, but because a second attempt might elicit an improvement. This proved to be the case.

2.00 pm. The process of amelioration often goes hand in hand with the principles of simplification and doing less; that is to say, not interfering with the work without call or perceivable effect … learning to have a lighter touch. I was taught fine art in this manner. My lecturers prescribed a course of action only reluctantly, and only when I’d come to the end of my own resources. And even then, they edged me in the direction of possibilities rather than presented readymade solutions. Moreover, I was taught only when I needed to be taught (and this was something that I, principally, was expected to discern), rather than on the basis of a regular tutorial regime. In those days, art education was constrained by neither a timetable (except for the few art history lectures and seminars we were expected to attend) nor a curriculum. Such liberality would not be tolerated today. I learned to be resourceful and to look to myself. The best teaching, in my opinion, develops the art student’s capacity for autodidacticism.  Without it, they’ll not continue to learn when outside an educational institution. All other pedagogical ‘aims and outcomes’ are very secondary.

3.50 pm. Mixdown masters are complete. On to a student reference before updating my task list and re-engaging with the book project plans. I’m learning, again, to write in notebooks with a pencil (as opposed to directly onto a computer). The two Creative writing students I taught this morning composed their own work similarly. (Surely, this was a sign.) I bought a small box of these orangey cardboard file folders from a retail stationers on City Road, Cardiff when I first lived in that city back in 1981-2. They reminded me of the exercise books that I’d used in primary school. (There must be some elements of continuity throughout one’s life.) I’ve used them, on occasion, ever since:

6.15 pm. Practise session 1: guitar direct to amp.  7.20 pm. Bookish thoughts, again. How does a new book emerge, for me? Usually on the back of ideas that have been either turning over in my head for several years or, also, cautiously aired in conference papers. Such is the case on this occasion. Thereafter, it emerges sentence by sentence. One only has to begin writing (lots and for a long time) and … bingo! Nothing to it.

8.30 am. For the first time in the week, I’ve caught up on my emails. Our home internet access is slow. It’s a problem with our line, we’re told. An investigation is underway over the next few days. Slow upload and down load speeds have, periodically, dogged our system for a year or more. BT’s ability to effectively solve the problem leaves much to be desired. At the moment, calling data down from the web is like trying to strain blancmange through a sieve. I need to adjust my plans and work on non-internet dependent tasks. I managed to lever a number of module-related emails over the side of my outbox, before returning to the post-production process:

9.30 am. I begin each session with a full review of what has been accomplished thus far. By reminding myself the whole album’s character, I’m better able to comprehend the needs and identities of its parts, as they develop. One cannot hear all the problems at once. Flaws and inconsistencies — to which I was oblivious earlier — become painfully apparent (or whatever the aural equivalent) on successive auditions. Listening attunes the ears. But repeated reviews engender familiarity also. The sound works becomes progressively stale. In visual art, one often inverts the work — by either turning it upside down or viewing it in a mirror — in order to see it afresh. There is no parallel strategy for sound composition and recording production. Inverting the composition (that is to say, playing it in reverse) creates an entirely different sound — another work altogether. The best I can do is to change or vary the context of listening: playing the sound over the domestic Hi-Fi, the desktop computer speakers in my study, and different qualities of headphone. (In principle, one can do the same with visual art: look at the work outside of the studio, at home, in a gallery, or in the open air.) By lunchtime, I’d auditioned all but one of the already composed pieces.

2.00 pm. On with the final piece. That done, I go through them all again, starting at the beginning. Phase by phase, the same decision making process, problem diagnosis, and application of solutions is applied evenly throughout the body of works. Continuity and consistency are, thereby, ensured. 2.45 pm. A final mixdown of master tracks. Not all will remain the masters; in due course, better versions may be produced. But, for the time being, they mark my best efforts at completion. 5.15 pm. I have sensations of nausea, a headache, and a developing cough. I’ll take to the couch this evening.

8.30 am. A day for launches. Next week, first and second year students will be advised on their module choices for the next academic session. Therefore, it seemed opportune to publicise the new art history module on Abstraction:

9.30 am. I caught up with yesterday’s emails (and their implications — short and long), and then settled to design a logo for a new symposium series that I’m organising with my colleague Dr Roberts.  NOISE PROJECTion represents an extension to ‘The Noises of Art’ conference, which The Courtauld Institute and I convened in 2013. I’d been considering a second conference on art and sound, but couldn’t arrive at a thematic underpinning. However, as I’ve discovered, it wasn’t the content that was frustrating my resolve but, rather, the container. So, instead of launching into another grand extravaganza of art/sound scholarship and practice, I’m attempting to construct several smaller, shorter, and more focussed project-based events. Three-day conferences are good for defining breadth of subject, but one-day symposia are better for developing depth:

2.30 pm. Back to the sound studio and further post-production on The Aural Bible II: The Bible in Translation CD:

Sound production depends, in part, on a spatial awareness of the stereo field (left, centre, right) and the depth of field (foreground, middle ground, and background). (It’s not possible to establish vertical locations (up, centre, down) within a two-speaker stereo field. Although, high and low pitched sounds can sometimes ‘appear’ to be situated above and below the top and bottom, respectively, of the speakers.) Sound composition is, in this sense, very much like pictorial composition within a traditional Renaissance box-format. Like visually represented objects, recorded sonic objects can be given precise topographical locations within this network of coordinates. And the sound space is no less illusory than its visual parallel. What would a modernist audio space sound like? No depth of field, whatsoever.

6.20 pm. Practise session 1: the introduction of my new Nano Big Muff Pi fuzz effector to Pedalboard I. It’s a relatively inexpensive pedal as pedals go, but the fuzz has a fizz that sounds like Cadmium Yellow (Pale) mixed with sherbet (as Kandinsky might have described it).

7.30 pm. More post-production tweaking: piece by piece, track by track, second by second. I’m endeavouring to remove a microphonic feedback squeal (delineated in blue on the frequency graph) from one piece that, because the sample sound is looped, periodically despoils the whole:

Perhaps this is one for studio experts with specialised software for squatting flies like this. 9.40 pm. Practise session 2: caressing the strings, easing the note through a gentle curve, raising its pitch by a whole note, releasing the pressure, and then letting it return to rest.

10.30 pm. ‘The night watch’. Some ideas require quiet, darkness, and seclusion to come forth.

9.00 am. I attended to emails before returning to a new workshop on social media for professional practitioners, which I’d begun two nights ago. The provision is for both the new BA Creative Arts degree and he School’s own Professional Practice module:

I’m sure the students know more about this aspect of cultural communication than do I. In between developing slides (which I find is the best way of developing the narrative), emails were attended to and articles on a particular odyssey that some Christians have made from one theological position to another, read. I should really sit down and examine my own evolution/revolution over the past decade. There have been many broken ties, shifts in emphasis and paradigm, wholesale abandonments, enriching surprises, liberations, fearful insights, doubts confirmed, prejudices jettisoned, and horizons broadened.

5.15 pm. PowerPoint and handout complete. 6.30 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. There was a need to turn over a few stones of theological controversy.

9.30 pm. After a well-deserved lie in, I got back to my desk, the inevitable putting away of bits and pieces the journey, email responses, computer glitches, and desk-clearing in readiness for the bank holiday. My order of cables arrived:

Now I can proceed to finalise the ‘Image & Inscription’ equipment set-up. But, first, a radical spring clean on my studio and studio desktop areas. Always disable keyboard before cleaning it. One can inadvertently press a complex combination of keys that puts the computer into eternal hibernation:

Curious prismatic magnifications caused by droplets of glass cleaner on a computer monitor. Joan Miro would have loved this:

The new cables are attached to the new DJ mixer. All I need now is to record the process of engraving, which I’ll do after the Easter weekend:

6.20 pm Practise session 1. 7.50 pm. Off to the Arts Centre to see an (or is it ‘a’) NT Live performance of Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge:

An exceptional performance in which acting, stage design, and sound design were co-equals and worked together to form a greater whole.