In depth: about the project
The Goodwin Sands Radiogram is named after a sandbank in the English Channel off the south east coast of Kent. It is a podcast series of feature documentaries which is imagined to be broadcast from a wrecked ship on the Sands in the style of old 1950s BBC or Pathe newsreel type programmes. It is written, edited and produced by Ben Horner.
The show takes three or four residents of the south east area (conceptually within 'broadcast range' of the ship) and weaves their stories together using sound design devised from radiophonic hisses, crackles and static. To aid and bind the artistic concept the Announcer appears a handful of times throughout the programme to offer themed insights into (but rarely addresses directly) the interviewees' stories. His part is played by actor Peter Kelly.
The themes of the programmes are surreptitiously named after appropriate pop music, and there are Easter Eggs hidden throughout for the enthusiast to decipher should they wish. This idea is largely Mark Gatiss' fault from when I heard him interviewed on Utter Shambles.
Each episode takes around 40 hours to research, record, edit and create the music and sound design. Interviewees are found through personal contacts, local newspaper archives, local online contact groups and by word of mouth and the sound design is captured and manipulated through extensive listening to, recording and editing shortwave and digital radio static. These recordings are then composed together with the interviews with neither taking preferential place over the other - this is where musical skill enables an end result different from the now-typical two-people-around-the-kitchen-table type of podcasts. Some episodes feature sound design which deliberately obstructs the interview material for creative expression purposes, for example.
The musical interludes are made in collaboration with other artists for this series. Typically a musician from the south east (to keep with the theme of the programme) with work with Ben either from scratch or with existing material to compose some pieces which accent or illustrate the narrative and emotion of the programme.
The artistic impetus behind the programme is twofold: To explore the creative capabilities of the form (referencing old radio sounds but employing a contemporary medium), and to survey the ethnography of the south east. For the latter, what began as a limitation of funding and time to travel became a celebration of the hidden lives and creativity of an area prejudicially typified by its bland retirement-home reputation and xenophobic politics. There are good people in the south east of Kent.
The series was recorded on an old Zoom H2 recorder which creaks and complains every time it is touched or the wind blows too hard.
The show takes three or four residents of the south east area (conceptually within 'broadcast range' of the ship) and weaves their stories together using sound design devised from radiophonic hisses, crackles and static. To aid and bind the artistic concept the Announcer appears a handful of times throughout the programme to offer themed insights into (but rarely addresses directly) the interviewees' stories. His part is played by actor Peter Kelly.
The themes of the programmes are surreptitiously named after appropriate pop music, and there are Easter Eggs hidden throughout for the enthusiast to decipher should they wish. This idea is largely Mark Gatiss' fault from when I heard him interviewed on Utter Shambles.
Each episode takes around 40 hours to research, record, edit and create the music and sound design. Interviewees are found through personal contacts, local newspaper archives, local online contact groups and by word of mouth and the sound design is captured and manipulated through extensive listening to, recording and editing shortwave and digital radio static. These recordings are then composed together with the interviews with neither taking preferential place over the other - this is where musical skill enables an end result different from the now-typical two-people-around-the-kitchen-table type of podcasts. Some episodes feature sound design which deliberately obstructs the interview material for creative expression purposes, for example.
The musical interludes are made in collaboration with other artists for this series. Typically a musician from the south east (to keep with the theme of the programme) with work with Ben either from scratch or with existing material to compose some pieces which accent or illustrate the narrative and emotion of the programme.
The artistic impetus behind the programme is twofold: To explore the creative capabilities of the form (referencing old radio sounds but employing a contemporary medium), and to survey the ethnography of the south east. For the latter, what began as a limitation of funding and time to travel became a celebration of the hidden lives and creativity of an area prejudicially typified by its bland retirement-home reputation and xenophobic politics. There are good people in the south east of Kent.
The series was recorded on an old Zoom H2 recorder which creaks and complains every time it is touched or the wind blows too hard.
About the artist
My name is Ben Horner and I am a very-near graduate of a PhD course of study at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent. My PhD looks at the way sound and speech is used in podcast documentary practice and theorises that all sound can be considered music as it carries semiotic information and emotion just as music does. This is along the lines of R. Murray Schafer's soundscape philosophy, Michel Chion's film work, and Pierre Schaeffer's radio art experimentation.
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I am an award-winning musician and sound artist who began exhibiting publicly in 2011 and have received multiple international commissions as well as having been invited to speak at a range of international music and radio conferences. Early music and soundwork was influenced by my pop and rock background (something akin to Mogwai's postrock brand perhaps) but has always included some element of spoken word material. Developing focus on the speech component took its first full form in 2014's Piano in the Woods documentary about a musical performance piece around a degrading piano left outside for a whole year. This developed into the closer merging of speech and sound in the Goodwin Sands Radiogram, the project which inspired my PhD research.
I am now looking to make a step-change to bring music and sound even closer together in a multi-layered and fully immersive way. I'm not absolutely sure how this will result but what I do know is that it will be counter to, and hopefully lead the way in, the new medium of podcasting which is slowly coagulating into something really predictable, tedious and beholden to neoliberal commercialism. This must be countenanced before the medium is crystallised. I have a new series planned which merges sound and music more closely than ever before, with a fourth-wall breaking, unpredictable and risky investigation into British culture's relationship to the arts. All I need is the funding to make it.
It is theorised that feature documentaries occupy a space between literature and cinema. When reading, images are conjured by the reader and, like cinema, time-based compositional editing, sound and music are employed to create atmosphere and immersion. Through the conception of feature documentary as a musical practice so many doors are opened to make listening, empathy and humanity so much more accessible, something which I feel is vital in these difficult political times in Europe and around the world.
For other works please see http://theaudiosphere.com
I am now looking to make a step-change to bring music and sound even closer together in a multi-layered and fully immersive way. I'm not absolutely sure how this will result but what I do know is that it will be counter to, and hopefully lead the way in, the new medium of podcasting which is slowly coagulating into something really predictable, tedious and beholden to neoliberal commercialism. This must be countenanced before the medium is crystallised. I have a new series planned which merges sound and music more closely than ever before, with a fourth-wall breaking, unpredictable and risky investigation into British culture's relationship to the arts. All I need is the funding to make it.
It is theorised that feature documentaries occupy a space between literature and cinema. When reading, images are conjured by the reader and, like cinema, time-based compositional editing, sound and music are employed to create atmosphere and immersion. Through the conception of feature documentary as a musical practice so many doors are opened to make listening, empathy and humanity so much more accessible, something which I feel is vital in these difficult political times in Europe and around the world.
For other works please see http://theaudiosphere.com
