You Can't Hear the Sounds You Make

'...so I decided to stay in Cambridge overnight'

For several years I have earned an honest crust selling 'the arts' to the unsuspecting public. A night at the theatre, a dance and a giggle, an afternoon with a face painter and juggler; you thought it was just you and the artist? Oh no. I was there as your mediator. Only yesterday someone asked me what I did for a living and I said 'arts marketing'. 'What's that?' 'Well, it's when you persuade people to take part in arts activity ...'

One of the areas which I have not enjoyed marketing is a whole new 'artform' which used to be called 'new media' before morphing into 'digital arts' and then becoming what is now apparently called 'new technology arts'. It sort of took up from where performance or live art left off. That is to say, you could be guaranteed about 5 people in an audience and mostly made up of the artist's friends and family (actually I don't want to knock friends and family as a marketing device, they're an extremely useful audience segment: easy to contact, will attend anything, loyal and easily pleased).

In May 2007, Everyday Eavesdropper was working on the 'Enter' Festival in Cambridge which brought together the great and the good of the techno art world. Thankfully, EE wasn't there for his marketing abilities but because the Director is a friend and she persuaded EE into some free volunteer help. These are the domes on Parker's Piece where most of it happened.


Let's cut straight to the chase. Despite fears to the contrary, the art wasn't at all bad. EE didn't see it all and as always, later on you get to hear about the most amazing event of the festival that you missed. However, it is EE's opinion that events fell into five categories:

• Atrocious pretension
• Great ideas poor technological delivery
• Clever technology looking for an idea
• Hmmm, yes that's quite interesting, makes you think doesn't it?
• Mind-warping

Some of the ones that worked for EE made interesting use of GPS (the system that locates you in time and space that you have in most mobile phones and car mapping systems that tell you where to go). 'Active Ingredient' (see their blog here) had a game called 'Ere Be Dragons' which used a heart monitor and gps to ... [sorry I've cut out the paragraph here where I try and explain this - you'll just have to check their website!].

The best one of all came right at the end of the weekend and fitted into the category of 'Mind Warping'. If you ever get a chance to try out Sounds from above the ground by Duncan Speakman do take it up. He uses technology to transform what is a simple but clever idea. In this case, EE joined a group to walk round Cambridge city centre with the artist a few metres ahead with a sensitive microphone and the audience following a few metres behind with headphones on, listening both to the artist's commentary on what he sees and feels and to all the noises which are being picked up. The sounds and speech are electronically filtered and changed (slightly) and the overall effect is completely mesmerising and very moving.

You can get a glimpse of what it is like and what people think, on Duncan Speakman's website here. Of course, it is personal and as we know, EE likes listening to the patchwork of everyday sounds and conversations anyway; but hearing a miniature snippet of two young people in conversation: "... so I decided to stay in Cambridge overnight" was even more fascinating than normal. To some extent this broke the Datada rules in that they didn't know they were being listened to - EE was 30-40 metres away - but it was so beautiful to enter into and out of someone else's life so rapidly.

There was more too it than this though; something about re-discovering what you thought you already knew. Like Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation', a 1974 film starring Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who's perspective on the people he is surveying gradually changes through repeated listening to the tape. Even better (and now EE looks certain to get pretentious) in the poetry of TS Eliot (Four Quartets):

"Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage."

'Sudden in a shaft of sunlight' beautifully encapsulates those minutes in Cambridge on a Sunday afternoon in May, 2007.

The Presence of Strangers

'I don't think my boyfriend would be too pleased'

I'm reminded of that Monty Python sketch of the business man in a bowler hat on his way home from work. All around him there are fights and robberies and explosions and people with no clothes on (or something like that). When he gets in, his wife is having an affair and all the time he seems completely oblivious to the excitement all around. Finally, he settles down and daringly puts the television on for some entertainment.

There's something about it that rings true. After one of the less interesting evenings of televisualar entertainment I've seen recently it occurs to me that we have become blind to the drama around us in favour of a tv version - wooo the Everyday Eavesdropper gets serious. Actually, it's a philosophy often been put forward about film. The 'Pervert's Guide to Cinema' which has been doing the rounds of arts cinemas argues that what film does is give us the experience of danger, fear, desire etc without us having to become involved. There is just the right amount of distance.

Back in October 2006 EE was in Norwich, a city of 150,000 inhabitants in the East of England. Arriving early for a training afternoon on the secrets of European funding in the arts he found himself in a coffee shop just inside the city centre. It must have been designed for people drinking on their own because around the edge is a high ledge and stools to go with it, so that people are looking outwards. If we were by the seaside, we could be looking out to sea at ships on the horizon, but we're not.

There are three tables within the coffee shop as well, for people who want to stare inwards or at the staff. At one of these was our romantic hero. Although EE is of course listening out for snippets of information all the time he wasn't actually tuned in to this conversation between our romantic hero and the waitress until our hero said '.. you know I've been coming in here for some time .. and it's not just for the coffee.'

EE, still facing away from the action, had no choice but to listen.

'Well, it's because I'm a secret admirer of yours and I was wondering if you would like to go out with me?'

Wahay - a public declaration of love in a coffee shop in Norwich.

The waitress, obviously taken aback: 'oh .. no .. I'm sorry .. I already have a boyfriend.'

Romantic Hero: 'oh .. well .. if you don't ask you don't get' in an embarassed sing-songy tone.

Waitress, recovering her composure: 'well, I'm very flattered of course .. but I don't think my boyfriend would be too pleased.'

The romantic hero must have been choosing his moment for weeks, perhaps months. I wonder if he was ever to return.

Afterwards, EE enjoyed hearing the story being retold for the benefit of her waiting colleagues. She made a really interesting point as they all picked it over, saying that if it had been the other way round - if she had been a customer asking a waiter - she wouldn't have chosen a time when he was working in his formal professional serving role to ask him this question. The customer/server relationship is very particular (and implies a power relationship I think is what she was saying). Of course, that may be why he had been attracted to her in the first place.

The 21st Century is When Everything Changes

'It's John Barrowman'

2006 was the year when everything changed. Rather like 'The Doctor', EE travelled the globe helping people, bringing happiness and meeting the occasional monster.

The Millennium Centre is an arts centre and should not to be confused with The Millennium Stadium which is a sports stadium. Both are in Cardiff in Wales (UK) and both were completed shortly after the start of the millennium (hence the titles). The Millennium Centre bucked the trend of recent arts capital projects in the UK in that it was completed on budget, on time and hasn't closed within a year of opening.

It's a wonderful building - at least to look at from the outside. The brief to the architects was apparently that it should be “unmistakably Welsh and internationally outstanding” and it is impressive isn't it? There's a prize for anyone who can tell me what the words say on the front.

Late on a Thursday afternoon in July 2006, EE was completing a hard day's work on a conference taking place at the centre and an evening's conference socialising beckoned. First though, EE and companions had to negotiate a film set which had appeared outside the front door of the centre.

A crowd had gathered to watch four fancily dressed indviduals walk from the water statue outside the centre with a variety of support actors ('extras') pretending to be passers-by. The real passers-by gathered in a little ring around the action. As EE stopped to watch this fascinating scene someone was heard to murmur: 'It's John Barrowman'. Although, at the time, EE was not entirely sure who John Barrowman was, he was informed that this was the filming of a new series called 'Torchwood'. Torchwood is a a spin-off series from the UK TV Series - Dr Who (and in fact 'Torchwood' is an anagram of 'Doctor Who').

Torchwood is brilliant and has been a huge hit in the UK; gaining the highest ever number of viewers for a show on a non-sport digital channel. Two and a half million people tuned in to the first episode (mainly to find out if the rumours were true that there really was something decent to watch on BBC Three).

It has become part of the tv boom which has hit Cardiff; now the biggest tv, film and new media production centre outside London in the UK (according to the press release) and who would have thought that could happen twenty years ago?

When it returns in the autumn of 2007, Torchwood is moving to BBC2 for its first showings. No doubt the higher status of the programme will mean the actors have stand-ins walking to and fro the water statue instead of the likes of John Barrowman and Eve Myles and passers-by won't get the chance to gawp!

The cast of Torchwood seen here modelling the latest Debenhams range.

... oh yes, I'm sure you're desperate to know which bit EE saw. So, after intense study of the matter it would appear that the sequence appeared right at the beginning of episode 4. Look out for EE in the background!