The trailer for Channel 4’s ‘Born Risky: Grayson Perry’, a four-part short-form series with artist Grayson Perry discussing gender expression and gender identity.
The Soundtracker Gordon Hempton – From the Generation Anthropocene Podcast

Sound recordist Gordon Hempton uses a meter to check the sound level in Olympic National Park. Photo by Seattle Times photographer Ken Lambert, in June, 2005. Hempton wants to declare one square inch of the Hoh valley a sanctuary of natural quiet as a way to defend the “soundscape” of Olympic National Park.
From the Podcast Generation Anthropocene, from the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Science
Gordon Hempton is an “acoustic ecologist” and field recording artist who seeks out the places on Earth that are free of noise pollution. The episode features Hempton’s story and some of his favorite recordings of the natural environment. You can listen to a field recording from Hempton’s “One Square Inch of Silence” and for more of his work check out his book “One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet.”
A Beginner’s Guide to Field Recording
In Peter Szendy’s provocative book Listening, he presents two related questions: “Can one make a listening listened to? Can I transmit my listening, unique as it is?”
It’s these questions that have occupied my thinking a great deal over the past few years. This preoccupation has resonated through much of my work, specifically though my practice of field recording. More importantly, it has provided me with the opportunity to think critically about what it is that makes field recordings affecting, meaningful and ultimately creative. Why, for example, is it some these types of recordings move us, and others simply don’t?
It’s not that long ago when recordists and researchers working with sound thought of it as a mechanism through which objectivity could be transmitted. One needs to listen no further than early ethnomusicology and mid-century wildlife recording for examples of this attitude. The pretence to being objective brought with it an inferred negation of agency, that somehow the recordist was simply capturing moments of the real when they started the tape rolling. The idea of objective recording in the field, thankfully now problematised and rejected, still lingers though like a spectre haunting the ways many listeners consider recordings. It is as if, somehow, because of where they are recorded they are true. The issue for anyone who undertakes field recording as part of their practice is to recognise that agency and ultimately a kind of creative subjective listening is vital if the work is to transmit, as Szendy puts it, the listener’s listening.
But what is field recording? And moreover why has it become a substantial presence in the contemporary sound ecologies? Merely two decades ago it was a somewhat uncharted realm lacking vigorous and pluralistic investigations. It’s these questions and a few more I am seeking to consider here. I should at this point say that what follows is by no means an exhaustive survey of field recording artistry or a bible of practices. It is perhaps more a sketch or mud map from which you can cut your own pathway into the field should that appeal.
Lawrence English
When Forgery Isn’t A Crime
For nearly 30 years, art forger Mark Landis duped dozens of museums into accepting fakes into their collections. His stunts made headlines around the world. But Mark Landis never asked for money so he never went to jail. Now his paintings and drawings are in a touring exhibition called Intent to Deceive, and he’s the subject of a new documentary called Art & Craft.
Landis is a paradox. He’s a shut-in who craves interaction. His house in Laurel, Miss., is extremely cluttered, but his scams are well-organized. In Art & Craft, we also learn that Landis is a huge fan of old movies and TV shows.
Landis works on a “Picasso” at his home. His materials — including magic markers and frames from Wal-Mart — are not those of a “proper” forger, says filmmaker Sam Cull
Listen to Kurt’s full conversation with Mark Landis and Sam Cullman:
Obsolete Skin
Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.
Nam June Paik
Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings
By Kristine Stiles, Peter Howard Selz
MIT Media Lab – Knotty Objects: STEAK
This video is one of a series of videos in collaboration between m ss ng p eces and MIT Media Lab for the Knotty Objects Summit, the first MIT Media Lab Summit devoted to design.
Curated by artist and designer Daisy Ginsberg and artist-philosopher Koert van Mensvoort. The steak is a vivid reminder that all manufactured consumables have consequential origins, whether those origins are living, breathing animals, or cells in vitro.
Director: Jordan Fish
Executive Producer and Founder: Ari Kuschnir
Executive Producers and Partners : Kate Oppenheim and Brian Latt
Head of Production: Dave Saltzman
Producer: Jonathan Figueroa
Director of Photography: Sam Kuhn
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