[spectre] New podcast: Jennifer Lucy Allan talks about foghorns

[Radio Web MACBA]

*New podcast: **Jennifer Lucy Allan
<https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/jennifer-lucy-allan/capsula> *talks about
foghorns, 'a sound that’s lost and not lost at the same time', and how
foggy it gets when you are digging up sensory records in archives and oral
memory.

Link: https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/jennifer-lucy-allan/capsula

*Sound production commissioned to Tiago Pina. Produced by Matias Rossi.*

The foghorn is a sonic marker used in conditions of low visibility to alert
vessels of hidden navigational hazards. Part of the coastal landscape since
its invention in the nineteenth century, foghorns became obsolete with the
rise of automatic alert systems or simpler devices such as compressed air
horns.

In 2013, the British writer and research Jennifer Lucy Allan, co-director
of the record label Arc Light Editions, covered a performance of the
'Foghorn Requiem', a composition that marks the passing of the foghorn from
the British coastal landscape. In her review she wrote: 'The foghorn
symbolises the sound of industry, the hollering of an age of engines,
machines and power, and also a sound that is intensely nostalgic. It
suggests loneliness and isolation, but is simultaneously a wordless
reassurance to those out at sea that there’s a human presence nearby.' The
experience made such a strong impression on her that she ended up
dedicating her doctoral thesis to researching the social and cultural
history of foghorns, 'a sound that’s lost and not lost at the same time.'

In this podcast we talk to Jennifer Lucy Allan about metereology and
aurality, about volumes, distance and communities, about sounds
disconnected from their function, holes in YouTube and holes in official
archives, and amateur archivists. And about the making of sensory records
before the end of the twentieth century and how this archival memory can be
interpreted.

*This podcast is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative
Europe programme of the European Union*.

*Timeline*
*02:35* A 100-120 decibel steam powered horn on a coastline: how did that
happen?
*05:02* “Foghorn Requiem”, a starting point
*08:45* A massive sound
*13:32* Holes in official archives
*21:01* Archivists: the invisible heroes
*23:10* How it got foggy: the fallibility of archives, memory and sound
*26:40* An individual character for every foghorn
*28:28* Types of foghorns
*30:26* A sound disconnected from its function
*34:17* A sound that is lost and not lost at the same time
*37:22* Meteorology and aurality
*39:23* Music and foghorns: Ingram Marshall’s 'Fog Tropes'
*40:39* Music and foghorns: Alvin Curran’s 'Maritime

*E/N/J/O/Y*


*E/N/J/O/Y*


*E/N/J/O/Y*
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