Presented by GLOSS; curated by Dominic Paterson
GLOSS, 5 Florence Street, Glasgow
Preview, Thursday 4 June, 6-8pm
12-5pm daily, 5-18 June (22-24 June by appointment)

A Sensation Never Yet Known is a new film work by Luke Fowler exploring the ongoing history of electronic music in Scotland. Fowler’s film combines footage of recent workshops led by Glasgow Library of Synthesised Sound (GLOSS) with explorations of the practice of UK composer Janet Beat, an electronic and electro-acoustic music pioneer.

In material sourced from an interview with Fowler, Janet vividly recalls her earliest memories of sound and her experiences of being doubly marginalised as a woman musician in a then-male-dominated field and a composer of electronic music at a time when it was viewed with suspicion by the musical establishment, including the Musicians’ Union.

The project is informed by Fowler’s collaboration with GLOSS and with University of Glasgow musician-researchers Louise Harris and Kevin Leomo. Drawing on their respective practices, Fowler traces aesthetic and historical resonances between music made today and Janet’s use of electronic instruments and experimentation with techniques such as visual scores. Extending Fowler’s long-standing interest in how cultural and political figures of the 1960s and 1970s are remembered, A Sensation Never Yet Known also reflects his own practice as a musician and an artist-filmmaker.

A Sensation Never Yet Known: Symposium
5.30-8pm, Weds 17^th June, Hunterian Art Gallery Lecture Theatre
Book your place here.

Join Thinking Culture for this special event exploring Luke Fowler’s film portrait of Janet Beat. With contributions from:

– Prof Louise Harris (University of Glasgow)
– Dr Claire M. Holdsworth (University of Glasgow)
– Dr Frances Morgan (University of Huddersfield)

Through presentations, screenings and discussion, this event will consider the complex histories at stake in A Sensation Never Yet Known, including the role of women musicians in electronic music. Three of Luke Fowler’s previous films engaging with music and musicians will be shown, bringing composers such as Brunhild Meyer Ferrari and Christian Wolff, as well as fellow artist Sue Tompkins, into view, and connecting Beat’s work to resonant histories of practice:

– N’importe Quoi (for Brunhild), 2023. 9 minutes
– Country Grammar (with Sue Tompkins), 2017. 18 minutes
– For Christian, 2016. 6 minutes

Louise Harris is an electronic and audiovisual composer, and Professor of Audiovisual Composition at The University of Glasgow. She specialises in the creation and exploration of audiovisual relationships utilising electronic music, recorded sound and computer-generated visual environments.  Louise’s work encompasses fixed media, live performance and large-scale installation pieces, with a recent research strand specifically addressing Expanded Audiovisual Formats (EAF). Her work has been performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent commissions from Cryptic and The Lighthouse, Sanctuary and the Plenty? Festival. Harris’s book Composing Audiovisually, a monograph on audiovisual composition, was published by Routledge in July 2021.

Claire M. Holdsworth is a writer, archivist and audio-maker. Specialising in sound theory, artists’ moving image (1960s to late 1980s), and technology-based art, her research considers the voice, investigating narration, historiography, archives, and social collectives, with a focus on feminist and queer subjects. Claire was an Early Career Research Fellow at Kingston School of Art (Kingston University London) and prior to that completed an AHRC-funded PhD at Central Saint Martins (UAL) based in the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection in the CSM Museum.

A Sensation Never Yet Known: Workshops
6-8pm, Weds 24^th June, Weds 1^st July, Tues 7^th July, GLOSS / University of Glasgow.
Book your place here.

1. Listening – in nature, in/to self. 6-8pm, Weds 24^th June, Weds 1^st July
2. Making – scoring/notating/drawing/sketching/writing/memorising – in work, practice, flow. 6-8pm, Weds 1^st July
3. Sounding – in community. 6-8pm, Tues 7^th July

Led by Dr Kevin Leomo, this workshop series engages with experimental musical practices, taking the work of Janet Beat as a starting point. Through exploring practices including Deep Listening, acoustic ecology, and Fluxus, we’ll consider how we can acknowledge the artistic traditions we draw from and honour the legacies of those who came before. We’ll think about the barriers faced by the artists who influenced us, and what barriers we face today as contemporary artists and as people. We’ll consider the material conditions in which we live and make work, while also collectively discussing the future of artistic practice, both individual and collective.

Open to all (no experience required), but particularly useful for those with an artistic and/or experimental practice.

Kevin Leomo is a Scottish-Filipino sound artist, researcher, curator, and community organiser. His creative practice spans text-based scores, non-standard notation, improvisation, field recording, critical listening practices, performance, and installation. Kevin has performed at AMPLIFI, Events Research Programme, Afro-Scottish Poetry, Glasgow Experimental Music Series, and Glasgow Mela. Kevin Co-Directs the Creatives of Colour Festival, is one half of Project Somnolence with Maria Sledmere, and leads the sound artist collective Sound Thought. He sits on the Scottish Trade Union Congress Black Workers’ Committee and the Musicians’ Union Regional Committee for Scotland & Northern Ireland. Kevin is a board member for the Scottish Music Centre and the Strategic Advisory Board for the Anti-Racism Observatory for Scotland.