#universal ear

A Flea Orchestra In Your Ear is currently available to view in full as part of Moving Image Artists’ ongoing MIA Screens showcase. Project director Graeme Cole has provided a new written introduction, zeroing in on the 10 year anniversary of the film’s production.

--> https://movingimageartists.co.uk/2020/04/24/mia-screens-graeme-cole/

The latest (p)reconstructed UNIVERSAL EAR episode has been chosen to play at the freezer-section-fresh Kinoskop Festival of Analogue Experimental Film in Belgrade, Serbia, this weekend.

Check out their Facebook Page for the festival trailer, which reveals the festival to be probably the “most interesting” and also “delightful” festival to emerge in quite some time.

EVENT: UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum at Kinoskop 1st International Festival of Analogue Experimental Cinema and Audio-visual Performance

PROGRAM: Selection IV : Film Deconstruction

WHERE: Kvaka 22, Ruzveltova 39, Belgrade, Serbia

WHEN: Saturday 30th November, 2019, 20.00

COST: FREE

UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum by Harley Byrne

229pp, paperback, 12/11-02/12/2018

Reconstructed by Graeme Cole (text) and Aleksandra Niemczyk (illustrations) from the unfound memoirs of Harley Byrne.

Available to buy in a temporally-limited edition during Rencontres Bandits-Mages 2018, 12th November-2nd December.

BUY NOW £8 +£5 postage and packaging (UK & international) or in person at Bandits-Mages.

Harley Byrne’s ongoing mission is to capture and make available for download “all the world’s music, ever.” This novella-length extract from his memoirs tells the full story of Byrne’s adventures in Bourges, France, 2187AD.

While working on his escape from slavery in the reverb mines of 32nd-century Detroit, Byrne is tipped off to the existence of a form of ‘rogue sim electroacoustic pop’ created by a pair of sentient statues in 22nd-century Bourges.

But when he arrives in the historical city, he discovers it to be an ontologically dubious virtual heritage site, overrun with corrupt holograms, cyborg saints, and the occasional native telling fisherman’s tales from deep VR.

What’s more, one of the musicians is missing: the lab-cultured, organic statue of Saint Ursinus, recreated from ancient DNA but barely more than an adolescent.

In order to track him down, Byrne must navigate the ever re-loading maze of the city, outwit the crazed busts of Bourges’ most celebrated sons and daughters, and keep hold of his senses under the effects of the curse of the phantom tympanum.

Available for 21 days only, the first UNIVERSAL EAR book was created as part of an EMAP/EMARE artist residency at Bandits-Mages, Bourges, further supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The book also contains a photographic project - A New Ontology of Hallucination - and Mr Cole’s studio log from the residency. A film adaptation of the adventure will loop as part of a Curse of the Phantom Tympanum exhibition at Le Haïdouc – Antre Peaux in Bourges from 16th November-2nd December 2018.

The UNIVERSAL EAR studio is back in Bourges and preparing for our biggest exhibition yet (and shooting Aleksandra Niemczyk's new movie)!

The exhibition takes place from November 16th-December 2nd and will include the unveiling of the newest, biggest, most foolhardy episode to date: THE CURSE OF THE PHANTOM TYMPANUM. It is part of Rencontres Bandits-Mages 2018 - *Mending the Fabric of the World: Unstable Reality and Shifting Knowledges*, which promises to be a fabulous event.

The first UNIVERSAL EAR book will also be available in a TEMPORALLY LIMITED EDITION, for 21 days only!

We'll keep you involved here, but you can also follow and respond on our other platforms:

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/universalear/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/UNIVERSAL_EAR

ALL NEW Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alltheworldsmusicever/

Or drop by to our studio & eventual exhibition space at Le Haïdouc to say Bonjour.

The first (p)reconstructed episode of UNIVERSAL EAR is finally online. Enjoy. Or tolerate, at least. Share it with your friends and with your enemies.

More info on this episode.

The music industry is in a pretty healthy state in 2017 if organisations can afford to (allegedly) invent/commission ‘fake’ artists confident in the knowledge that they will turn a profit, right?

Given that these are generic ambient works presumably listened to mostly for sleeping/otherwise not really listening (a conclusion drawn because they are merely generic, not ‘merely’ ambient - of course serious ambient music is always listened to properly) might it not be more diplomatic to suggest that the fake artists are being listened to by fake (or at least dummy) listeners, so the crimes cancel each other out?

And more pertinently to the UNIVERSAL EAR theme, is the music that fake artists create ‘fake music’ - or is it real? If it isn’t music, what is it?

And as a side-note, why do all the phoney authors sound like Palmbomen tracks?