R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A : The Aural Bible I
- Submitting institution
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Aberystwyth University / Prifysgol Aberystwyth
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 10164653
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- March
- Year
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This multi-output practice-based research project engages with a unique wax-cylinder recording of Evan Roberts, figurehead of the 1904-5 Welsh Revival. The centrepiece of the project is a sound-art composition that reconfigures the original recording to expound aspects of the religio-social context that gave rise to it, as well as fleshing out the character of the preacher and the revival.
Two years prior to the centenary of the Revival, the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales received a phonographic wax cylinder that held the sole extant sound capture of the movement – a key cultural and religious event in the history of Wales. However, the cylinder was severely damaged and rendered unplayable. After a painstaking repair, a digital transfer of the recording was prepared by a sound studio in Los Angeles and the British Library, London. This version formed the basis of Harvey’s suite of sound works.
While both musicians and sound artists have based compositions on spoken sermons, there is no evidence of any prior engagement with a wax-cylinder recording of this genre. In basing the conceptual underpinning of the suite of compositions on the fractured and reassembled character of the cylinder, the project proffers a pioneering and reasoned approach to analogue-digital collaging and reorganisation.
The suite also manifested the cylinder’s vestigial afterlife and showed how sound-art practice can be a medium and process of intrusion, interpretation, and an instrument of art historical investigation. This aspect of the practice-as-research project was explored in the book chapter “The Retrieval of Revival,” which examined the cylinder in the contexts of early sound-recording processes, technology and modernity, metaphors of ruin, Roberts’ preaching, and the promotion of the religious idealism.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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