APG - David Toop – FLAT TIME/sounding

Thursday 13 December 2012, 7pm A composition by David Toop based on John Latham's idea of Flat Time, performed by John Butcher, Aleks Kolkowski, Elaine Mitchener and David Toop. First performed in 2010 at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of a commission to create the soundtrack for the online John Latham Archive, FLAT TIME/sounding is a score of texts and visual elements composed for improvising musicians. The score ­– which also functions as an opening, a catalyst, or the conditional framework for an eventstructural audio sculpture – draws on John Latham’s Time-Base Theory and Time-Base Rollers. It further draws on David Toop’s 1976 APG placement at the London Zoo, where he focussed on acoustic ecology – or bioacoustics – in human/animal communication. A score for improvisation, FLAT TIME/sounding marks the challenge of attempting to script the eventfulness that characterises animal ‘speech’ and time-based cosmology. In the context of the exhibition at Raven Row, it proposes new ways of interpreting the archival ‘scores’ generated by APG’s past and present. This event was part of the exhibition The Individual and the Organisation: Artist Placement Group 1966-79 27 September to 16 December 2012 For more about the exhibition go to http://www.ravenrow.org/exhibition/artist_placement_group/