Confidential Incident Report

John Wynne

Origin: Static Issue 06
Content: Text/Movie

Video: Confidential Incident Report (Flash)

The text of Confidential Incident Report is taken from a pilot’s account of an in-flight incident and is part of a set of text/sound pieces called Do(n’t) (www.sensitivebrigade.com, text programming by Tony Langford). All three pieces in this series were selected by the art curators of the Humber Mouth Literary Festival as a somewhat subversive intervention for the B.B.C.’s controversial ‘Big Screen’ in Victoria Square, Hull. The B.B.C. flatly refused to allow one of the pieces, Orange Alert, to be screened, on grounds of political sensitivity and public safety. A 30-second silence with a blank white screen was added to the end of Auditory Warnings to introduce some respite from the audiovisual bombardment – but the B.BC. insisted on editing this out and returning directly to regularly scheduled broadcasting, saying people would think the screen was malfunctioning. Confidential Report was allowed without edits and, along with Auditory Warnings, was played at regular intervals for two weeks.

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Contributor:

John Wynne has a Ph.D. in sound art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Arts, London and member of CRISAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice). He was artist-in-residence for one year at Harefield Hospital, one of the world’s leading centres for heart- and lung-transplants, producing radio pieces for the B.B.C. and for the C.B.C. and, with photographer Tim Wainwright, a surround-sound video shown at TATE Britain, an installation for the Old Operating Theatre Museum, and a 24-channel photographic sound installation (2008). His work with endangered click-languages resulted in an award-winning ‘composed documentary’ for B.B.C. Radio 3 and an installation shown in Botswana, Namibia, and London. He has created large-scale sound installations in public squares using alarm sounds of his own design: one was banned by the City of Copenhagen for allegedly ‘frightening and confusing the public’ and another in Toronto described as ‘an ambient, ghost-like presence’. He has created installations using hundreds of discarded but working hi-fi speakers: Fallender ton für 207 lautsprecher boxen in Berlin sounded ‘like Heaven… and Hell’.

Associated Links:
www.sensitivebrigade.com