[spectre] Threshold artspace: Perth: UK: Tonne: Sound Toys: March 06

[Iliyana Nedkova]

Scottish premiere
Sound Toys 2002-5
Tonne aka Paul Farrington
part of Players - Horsecross' exclusive year round celebration of 
artists’ games and toys

1 - 31 March 2006
Threshold artspace
Open daily up to 14 hours a day
Admission FREE

Threshold artspace Perth Concert Hall Horsecross Mill Street Perth PH1 
5HZ UK
  0044 (0) 845 612 6320  info at horsecross.co.uk    www.horsecross.co.uk


‘One of Perth Concert Hall’s biggest attractions is Threshold artspace –
the innovative exhibition [space for digital public art …] which sits 
in the glass-fronted foyer of the hall’
Auditoria



 From Wednesday 1 March, Horsecross is delighted to welcome artist Paul 
Farrington under the guise Tonne to the Threshold artspace at Perth 
Concert Hall for the Scottish premiere of Sound Toys 2002-5 which will 
be showing throughout March as part of the Players exhibition.

This is the first time Tonne’s innovative audio-visual work has been 
seen in a public gallery as a mini-retrospective exhibition. Whether 
you are a budding or accomplished musician you will be able to play 
with Tonne’s sound toys. Generate your own electronic music using the 
gamepad while sitting in the sumptuous orange-peel chair and listening 
to your compositions streaming from the under-floor speakers.

Sound Toys is the latest addition to Players – Horsecross' exclusive 
exhibition of 12 artworks running throughout 2006. As part of Players, 
the Threshold Stage has been transformed into a digital playground for 
young and old to engage with some of the best computer games and sound 
toys around.

The exhibition launched in November 05 with the Scottish premiere of 
four interactive titles initially commissioned by BBC Big Screen by a 
trio of British and Belgian artists. The four games, one of which was 
the massive hit Football 2005, provided fun and competitive times over 
the festive season in the foyer of the concert hall.

  “Tonne’s sound toys are part of a new art trend called ‘dynamic data 
visualization’, says Iliyana Nedkova, Horsecross Creative Director of 
New Media. “This trend has been acclaimed by critics as one of the 
genuinely new cultural forms enabled by computing. It means that 
artists can change sounds, numbers, and many other non visual stimuli 
into a visual form. The iTunes visualizers at www.apple.com/itunes are 
probably the most popular example.”

After graduating from London’s Royal College of Art, Tonne’s artistic 
practice has focused on the fusion of the sonic and the visual. His 
first solo album SoundToy also featured in Players and probes the 
possibilities of screen-based custom-built software.

“I invited the experimental musicians Scanner and Hakan Lidbo to use 
the SoundToy software and record the results,” says Paul. “The original 
software was developed as research work at the Royal College of Art and 
coming from a background in design, I wanted to make my own software. 
With SoundToy, you can create your own mix by accessing the original 
sounds that were used by the musicians featured on this album.”

For Tonne’s Scottish premiere at the Threshold Stage, Iliyana Nedkova 
has selected another three recent projects which includes Depeche Mode, 
NoiseToy and Circle Sound.

Depeche Mode is a sound toy designed as part of a secret website which 
was made available to people who bought the box-set release of Depeche 
Mode remixes. To play this toy you simply click a coloured icon and 
apply it to the main sequencer and press play, you’ll then hear your 
very own produced sound.

The idea for the Noisetoy came from the record label’s name Mute who 
originally commissioned Paul “I played around with turning sounds on as 
opposed to turning sounds off,” says Paul. “I also selected samples 
from a diverse range of releases on the label.”

CircleSound formed part of Simon Fisher Turner’s latest album Lana Lara 
Lata and allows the listener to manipulate musical extracts from the 
album. To play this toy, you need to choose a colour block from the 
middle wheel. Each colour holds a different sound. Then place the sound 
in any of the empty cells on the other wheels and play around with the 
speed, direction and volume and save controls.


More about Tonne’s Sound Toys

•	“A sound toy makes electronic music for people who can’t be bothered 
to do it. [Tonne’s Sound Toys] programme lets you generate appealingly 
blippy music on your MAC or PC by setting repetitive patterns of 
samples in motion. …Some would hardly call it music, but it is 
unequivocally contemporary, as easy to operate as a pinball machine, or 
a Newton's cradle,”  The Guardian
•	“… one of the finest audio-games currently on the web. The game is 
deceptively elegant,” Disquiet, USA 
•	NoiseToy can also be played online at 
www.mute.com/distract/noisetoy/index.html
•	CircleToy can also be accessed online at www.simonfisherturner.com
•	Tonne lives and works in Brighton, UK. For more information on 
Tonne's artistic practice click onto: www.studiotonne.com

More about Players

•	Players is an exclusive Horsecross exhibition curated by Iliyana 
Nedkova. The exhibition runs throughout 2006 and admission is free.
•	Players is showing as a large scale wall projection with various 
degrees of interactivity at the Threshold Stage, one of the locations 
within the Threshold artspace.
•	There are 12 works featured in Players and titles change every month.
•	All the works selected or commissioned as part of Players do not 
resemble the big budget commercial games of the entertainment industry. 
Instead they raise questions about the culture and future of gaming. 
They also use interactivity and even surveillance for fun and 
civilisation critique.
•	Players launched in November 05 with the Scottish premiere of four 
interactive titles initially commissioned by BBC Big Screen by Peter 
Appleton, Onno Baudouin and Simon Robertshaw. Trigger Happy 1998 by Jon 
Thomson and Alison Craighead featured throughout February courtesy of 
the Arts Council Collection -.the largest loan collection of modern and 
contemporary British art in the world. Trigger Happy is a clever and 
engaging take on popular game Space Invaders, ‘An ungodly alliance of 
arcade game firepower and literary theory’ J.J.King
•	Showing next as part of Players are all world or Scottish premieres 
including First Person by Beverley Hood (throughout April) ; 
spring_alpha: audiography  by Simon Yuill (May); Do You Know Your 
Europe?  by Mare Tralla (July); reproduced by Sam Hill (August); 
September 12 by Gonzalo Frasca (September);  Influx by Joanna Kane 
(October)
•	Horsecross has worked in partnership with Gillies home furnishings 
who provided the Danish designer Stokke’s Orange Peel chair, which is 
central to the Players experience.

More about Threshold artspace

•	 ‘One of Perth Concert Hall’s biggest attractions is Threshold 
artspace – the innovative exhibition [space …] which sits in the 
glass-fronted foyer of the hall’ Auditoria October 2005
•	Threshold  artspace is Scotland’s first and only dedicated exhibition 
space for digital public art which launched in September along with the 
opening of Scotland’s new concert hall.
•	The half a million pounds project makes Perth Concert Hall a centre 
of excellence for digital arts, on a par with only a few other venues 
in Europe. Threshold gives an entirely new meaning to concert, theatre, 
cinema and art-gallery-going, as well as to your dining experience.
•	Over 20 new Horsecross commissions by artists from 11 different 
countries have been premiered at Threshold artspace since September 
2005. New shows are continuously produced and exhibited as part of the 
evolving Threshold collection of artists’ films, video, digital 
photography, visual poetry, interactive titles, sound toys, Internet 
art and computer games.
•	The Threshold artspace features 9 locations available for artists’ 
interventions including an interactive entrance box; a ‘canvas’ of 22 
screens dominating the foyer; a playground with flexible screens and 
interactivity; a trail of sound boxes embedded in the floor; a surprise 
audiovisual treat tucked away in the public toilets; copper-clad roof 
of the concert hall for an added visual delight.
•	All Threshold artspace locations are linked together by an 
‘intelligent’ control system and open source software which allows 
artworks to be displayed and experienced up to 14 hours a day 
throughout the year.
•	Threshold artspace received £250,000 in initial funding from the 
Scottish Arts Council through a National Lottery Capital Funding Grant 
and additional funding from Scottish Enterprise Tayside, Perth and 
Kinross Council, Perth and Kinross Leisure and Gannochy Trust.
•	Support towards the Horsecross commissions has been provided by a 
range of partners and funders.

More about Horsecross

•	Horsecross has evolved out of Perth Theatre as the new agency 
delivering cultural activities in Perth Concert Hall, Perth Theatre and 
to all communities across the Perth & Kinross area.  Horsecross aims to 
put this part of Scotland firmly on the cultural map both nationally 
and internationally.
•	Horsecross is led by Chief Executive Jane Spiers who has a team of 
five Creative Directors – Graham McLaren (Theatre), Ian Grieve 
(Theatre), Iliyana Nedkova (New Media), Svend Brown (Classical Music) 
and Andy Shearer (Rock & Pop).
•	The development of the £19.5m Perth Concert Hall was a Millennium 
project and is part of the area's economic development strategy to 
position Perth as one of Europe's most vibrant small cities by 2010.
•	The project was funded by Perth and Kinross Council, Perth and 
Kinross Leisure, The Gannochy Trust, Scottish Enterprise Tayside, 
Norwich Union and the Scottish Arts Council Arts Lottery.
•	Horsecross supporters are Perth & Kinross Council, Perth & Kinross 
Leisure, The Gannochy Trust, Norwich Union Insurance, Scottish Arts 
Council, Arts & Business, EventScotland, Scottish & Southern, The Cross 
Trust and BAA Scotland.
•	The Horsecross name comes from the local area.  Perth Concert Hall 
sits on the site of the original Horsecross – Perth’s 17th century 
horse market.  The name is synonymous with bustling activity in the 
heart of the city.