Play-It-Again-Use-It-Together

Posted on: 16 August 2018 in Posts

Eileen Simpson and Ben White’s project takes as its starting point the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Popular Music (IPM) archive of over 80,000 records, an exceptional and rich research resource gifted over a number of years by collectors and enthusiasts.

With a particular focus on copyright-expired hit records from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s, the artists will temporarily re-house the IPM archive in one of the galleries at the Victoria Gallery & Museum for the duration of the exhibition, making it fully accessible and public for the first time.

Alongside this uncovering of the archive, at the centre of the exhibition is a newly commissioned and bespoke booth created for archive digitisation, broadcast and remix performance, designed with 51 Architecture, the award winning architecture practice led by Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas. Animated by University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University students and graduates, the exhibition space will be turned into a production site through which the shellac and vinyl records will be digitised and made available online (www.playitagainuseittogether.com). To further explore the usefulness of the public domain digital samples created during the digitisation process, the artists invite a number of collaborators to live produce new music sampling from the evolving public resource.

Play it Again! Use it Together contributes to Open Music Archive, Eileen Simpson and Ben White’s ongoing work to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright archive material and to spark collaborative activity.  Here, using the unique resource of the IMP’s archive, the artists strip away proprietary elements to explore ownership, investigating what is owned and how it is owned. The project promotes expanded usership of the archive through replay, live events, digitisation and distribution – seeking to explore different relations between artists, institutions and their publics.

About New Perspectives #NewPerspectives

Play it Again! Use it Togetheris the third of a series of three artists commissions through 2018 collectively titled New Perspectives and curated by Rose Lejeune. It was preceded by Model for a Common Room by ceramicist Phoebe Cummings, and the installation and performance project The Part Versus the Whole by artist Ben Judd.

Performances:

Friday 14th September, 7.00pm: Elsa Hewitt

Join us for the opening event with award-winning musician and electronic music producer Elsa Hewitt, who the artists have invited to create a new live set, assembled from sounds digitised from the 78rpm records in the IPM archive. Free, booking required.

Saturday 27th October, 3pm: Oli Carman

Oli Carman is a composer based in the North West, specialising in electro-acoustic music. The artists have invited him to create a new live composition, assembled from sounds digitised from the 78rpm records in the IPM archive. Free, no booking required.

Saturday 10th Nov, 3pm: Archive Hack Day

Coders, electronic musicians and producers are invited to come along and make beats from the public domain samples in the archive using the open source code developed for Play it Again! Use it Together and the public domain sounds digitized from the 78 rpm records. Event with Queen Mary University of London. Free, no booking required.