Lights Out on August 4th

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, August 1914

National Library of Wales Cymru 1914 archive

Everyone in the UK is invited to take part in LIGHTS OUT by turning off their lights from 10pm to 11pm on 4 August, leaving on a single light or candle to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War .

Millions of people are expected to participate and hundreds of local authorities, iconic buildings, national organisations including the BBC and the Royal British Legion, parish councils and places of worship have already pledged their support. Iconic landmarks such Blackpool Illuminations, the Houses of Parliament, Eden Project, Imperial War Museums and Tower Bridge will turn off their lights; the Royal British Legion has launched a campaign for at least one million candles to be lit across the UK and theatre productions including those of the National Theatre’s War Horse, both nationally and internationally, will invite their audiences to take part in LIGHTS OUT after their curtain calls.

 Leading international artists have been commissioned by 14-18 NOW to create special public artworks, for one night only in the form of a light source.

Bedwyr Williams’ work Traw will be a large-scale video and sound installation  at the site of the North Wales Memorial Arch, Bangor. The memorial takes centre stage in front of images projected onto the enormous facing wall of Bangor University’s new Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre.

Taking photographs found in the Cymru 1914 archive, Williams has created a sequence of images of local soldiers and civilians   affected by WW1. Excluding all uniform and references to rank, the close up faces reveal something of the individual’s personality and personal sacrifice in a war where death was measured in millions.

Bedwyr Williams is one of Wales’ leading visual artists. In 2013 he represented Wales at the Venice Biennale.

Commenting on the project Bedwyr Williams said: “As a young art student I walked past the memorial arch in Bangor many times and I have to admit that I never gave it a huge amount of thought. Working on this project I’ll never be able to walk past this place again without thinking of the lives lost fighting in the First World War.”

Audio Arts sound art magazine, aural archive of artists’ voices and sound art

Audio Arts: Volume 5 No 3 & 4 audio cassette Live to Air comprises a compilation of artists' soundworks, includes contributions from: Bruce McLean, Harvey Mangolds

As I tidy and throw away redundant materials from the Slide Library here at Cardiff Metropolitan University prior to a move to another campus it really helps when I know that what is going into the bin is not therefore lost to history. the old audio arts cassette has been binned but every volume from that magazine of sounds and sound art is available still! On the Tate website here.
Explore and listen to this innovative audio cassette-magazine featuring exclusive contributions from more than 900 individual artists including Joseph Beuys, Ian Breakwell, Tracey Emin and Andy Warhol. Audio Arts was  established by Bill Furlong in 1972 and includes soundworks, interviews and  coverage of exhibitions. You will find all 24 volumes from Audio Arts published between 1973 and 2006
including  the Audio Arts supplements which focus on particular themes and individuals, from the state of British art in the late 1970s to a feature on Damien Hirst in 2003.
Read more here

CC Search (Copyright free images)

from CC Search 

keyword =business meeting

I am often asked to recommend a website to go to for Copyright free images. The Electronic Library at Cardiff Met offers many links to image databases  that we recommend, some (marked with a black or a green copyright symbol)  like Bridgeman Education and Visual Arts Data Service offer copyright free images for educational use.

 I can also recommend a single page to which you can navigate on the internet which will allow you to search a whole selection of different image databases ...not just images of art and design... made available under a  Creative Commons licence.

Creative Common licences all offer, as minimum, permission to copy so long as the image is marked clearly with details of who first created it (attribution). To learn more about Creative Commons licences (which are voluntarily  applied by creators to their works and can apply to text, images , music and all copyrighted materials) you should go here.
To search for all those Creative Commons licensed images  go here. Enter a keyword and select a source to search from the range offered ( various interesting websites ) results will bring back Creative Commons licenced images, moving images and sound.

Pathe News on Youtube

Pathe News Inc.

In 1895 Charles Pathé began his quest to document the historical events of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. By 1914, Pathé produced the first weekly newsreel.
British Pathé, the U.K. newsreel archive company, has uploaded its entire 100-year collection of 85,000 historic films in high resolution to YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe

The collection, which spans 1896 to 1976, comprises some 3,500 hours of historical footage of major events, notable figures, fashion, travel, sports and culture. It includes extensive film from both World War I and World War II.
The Home page displays a choice of popular uploads, days that shook the world, disasters, inventions, animals, daredevils, celebrities and  compilations.  'Weirdest newsreels' includes a newsreel about a progressive school , a tall man marrying a short lady and  an obese three year old . In contrast you can also find footage from the Battle of the Somme , the SAS storming the Iranian Embassy in London and a documentary on the assassination of the American President John F Kennedy claiming the CIA killed him.

Reel to Real

'Reel to Real' is a sound curating project, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, designed to catalogue, digitise and  make available online, in gallery spaces and beyond, the Pitt Rivers Museum's unique archival field recordings. The content of the recordings ranges from spirits singing in the rainforests of the Central African Republic to children's songs and games in playgrounds throughout Europe.

The project website includes information about and playlists from all of the Museum's original ethnographic recordings, video and interview resources, ethnomusicology seminars, their SoundCloud account and much more. 

Reel to Real Project Website here.

Visualiser combining Bayaka sound waves and images

The related  SoundCloud account can be found here, and customised playlists and sets can be found here.

London Sound Survey-Sounds of London

http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/projects/12_tones_intro/

There are over 1,000 recordings of London life on the London Sound Survey website, plus sound maps, historical references to past London sounds, and some original 1930s and 1940s radio broadcasts. 

All the recordings (which are safely stored in the sound cloud )are Creative Commons-licensed which makes them available for NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY. All you have to do under the terms of the license is include an acknowledgement and a link to the London Sound Survey website at www.soundsurvey.org.uk.

Elements from the  London Sound Survey also feature  on These Are The Good Times LP published on the Vittelli label  and on  issue 6 of An Antidote To Indifference.

Ian Rawes who compiled the The London Sound Survey works at the British Library sound archive and this collection of sounds  is the result of his explorations of the world of Field recordings and acoustic ecologists . His own recordings employ a variety of professional, home made, and adapted devices .

Other websites featuring different ways of perceiving 'the city'
 urban75, Classic Cafes, Derelict London, Subterranea Britannica and Spitalfields Life



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learn how to search the internet for legal Audio, Video and Image resources of quality

Learn how to use the Internet to find copyright cleared images for your work, Jisc who champion the use of digital technologies in UK education and research have created a free online tutorial covering al you need to know to become an expert image searcher.

Use this free, interactive tutorial to improve your image searching skills.

Two other tutorials cover audio and moving image resources, find them in The Virtual training Suite

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