pervasive media studio

Geiger-Müller Sound System

Geiger-Müller Sound System is a collaboration between MrUnderwood and Timothy X Atack. For the last few years MrUnderwood has been exploring a process called Sonic Graffiti, installing homemade sound modules into the built environment. These units can either create and play back recordings, re-route existing ambient sound, or emit their own self-generated noise, and are operated by anyone who chances upon them. Their use is rarely monitored, and the modules are often victims of their environment; stolen, eroded or otherwise lost.

For this residency MrUnderwood and Tim will be investigating how fiction, narrative and storytelling might augment the experiences demonstrated by Sonic Graffiti, and are currently focussing on strategies and aesthetics suggested by ‘sounds of warning’ – alarms, alerts, announcements, themes of danger and decay.

Both artists share an interest in ambient sound, and the use of sound design to transpose or enhance a sense of location. Both also share a passion for the playing of instruments and the accessibility of such to the widest possible variety of participants. Tim’s narrative focus is strongly influenced by the emotive properties of specific technologies (especially the anachronistic analogue kind) and Sam has a practical love of bending analogue devices to transcend or pervert their original purpose.

By the end of their residency they hope, at the very least, to have the beginnings of an exciting new instrument to play, with some unlikely and intriguing stories attached to its operation.