Selected by Meriel Herbert
The Listening Room, 2003
Sound and context have become increasingly important in the work of emerging artist Neil Webb. Often pieces evolve through a process of recording sounds from a buildings ignored systems, these are then edited and mixed into multi-channel tracks, which are then played back into the same building. His two most recent audio installations were in response to the now defunct Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield. Invisible Resonance was designed as a complete antithesis to the pop music environment. Using noises from the surface vibrations of the building -such as the air conditioning- mixed with sounds from a computer-generated grand piano, he created a complex final audio soundscape.
The listener could hear this through specially designed glass exciters attached to the walls of a glass room overlooking the city. This technology allowed the walls of the room to vibrate and act as speakers. The audience were invited to sit in the space, relax and contemplate the scene outside. My Personal Pop Museum was made for the upstairs bar in the Centre and references the artists own memories of, and tastes in, pop music. As visitors order a round of drinks at the bar, they hear small sequences of music and voice-overs from Neils Radio show floating above their heads.
Neil is engaged in an ongoing project titled Bocman, consisting of audio events and the release of soundtracks, his CD Somewhere Nowhere has just been released on the independent label Audiolaceration. The artist is also a founder member of the group HOST, which in addition to producing group exhibitions of the artists individual works, invites fellow artists to make new works on specific themes for alternative spaces. Host4: Cinema is the latest of these projects, where thirty-six artists made pieces for the Side Cinema in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Neil has just completed his M.A. in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University and has been selected for a residency in Tuttlingen, Germany, from July to September 2005.
(Meriel Herbert, 2005)
The article was originally commissioned for the Axis Web site.
www.axisweb.org/grCVFU.aspx?SELECTIONID=15351