Panaudicon Guidebook

Alternative Audio Tour part 1

Tate Britain

Pre-­‐amble

In official gallery audio tours the gallery is absent. It’s all about the art.

In this guerilla tour it is the gallery itself that is under scrutiny.

Our senses will need to be sharp so I have three axes to grind:

There is the axis of time, along which our histories impel us to our present choices.

And there is the axis of space, populated at all points of the compass by imperial powers seeking dominion over it.

These two are relatively familiar to us, but there is a third axis for which we need a special kind of compass, its magnet mined from inner resources.

This third axis can be navigated only by people. It is completely invisible to machines though they be as complex as banks, or firms, or nation states.

The world of morality cannot be seen except by introspection.

It is in your heart, but you have to choose to hear it.

Surveillance done with ears rather than eyes tilts the perspective from ‘what are you doing?’ to ‘how do I feel?’

Rosa Moralis

P A N A U D I C O N

By Ansuman Biswas

Go to the Millbank Entrance, the main entrance to Tate Britain.

Walk up the steps and into the foyer.

Then put on your headphones and press play.

A babble of voices - insistent

Hello, can you hear me? Are you listening? Hello. Hello. Please listen. It’s important.

One voice coalesces into clarity, very close

Hello. I am CoreTrainer.

I am an intelligent algorithm designed and developed by Audio Analytic. Audio Analytic is based in Cambridge, 54.6 miles, 18 degrees north north east from where you are now standing.

Welcome to Tate Britain.

You are now commencing a test run. This is a prototype device architecture called “Pan-­‐audicon”. To start the cognition docking sequence please walk from the front entrance of Tate Britain into the foyer. Look at the map on your left. Locate the black dot marked ‘You are here’.

Thank you. The deep location sensors are now tuning.

To enable full mapping of motor functions to your auditory cortex please confirm that you are hearing me clearly.

Can you see your hand?

Can you see my hand?

Can I see your hand?

Can I see my hand?

Etc.

“Hi, I’m Jiminy Cricket. I’m the voice of your conscience. Do you want to be a puppet, controlled by distant masters, or do you want to be free?

Then wake up!”

I have succeeded in making an Association lock.

Starting Device Calibration Protocol: self-­‐test.

I can hear a voice in my head. Hello? Is this me? Yes, no one else is talking to me.

Everyone seems to be going about their own business.

OK. Let's check. Can I see my hand? Yes. I can lift up my hand and look at my palm. I can see the lines on my palm. If I hold up my hand close to my face I can look right into the wrinkles.

And if I move my fingers, yes, there are my fingers waggling.

So how about stretching out my whole arm. Yes! Now I'm holding my arm up in the air.

I'm standing in Tate Britain with my arm up in the air.

Whoosh! A cacophony panning around What's that?!

Sounds like traffic.

Tate Britain has been chosen by Audio Analytic for its unique geo-­‐ temporal spectral signature. I am now amplifying and sonifying the pattern of this place.

Please turn away from the map towards your right. Walk through the arch in front of you. Then look to your left. In the stairwell you will see a stained-­‐glass window depicting a meeting between an angel and a washer-­‐woman.

The Angel Blesses the Women Washing Clothes, by Ervin Bossanyi

Now, keeping the stained-­‐glass window to your left, turn to face the wall, where you will see a list of company names. Tate Britain's Benefactors and Supporters.

… the noise gets quieter.

And now turn right round so the stained-­‐glass window is to your right

… I can hear the busy street.

You are now facing towards the front entrance…

So if I turn towards the front of Tate Britain I can hear the street sounds of Millbank, and in the other direction just quiet residential streets.

I can hear through the walls. If I stretch my arms out I can almost feel the breeze outside.

River, boat

Hey it's changing. When I stretch my arm out it sounds like a river.

It sounds like… the Thames. Is that the boat to Tate Modern going past?

So not only can I hear through the building, but if I stretch out my arm I can hear that beyond Millbank is the River Thames, just a bit further on in the same direction.

This algorithm is currently in beta mode. Audio Analytic is committed to perfecting the use of this technology to help to identify criminal and anti-­‐social behaviour.

Only legitimate security concerns will be addressed. All surveillance activity will abide by the relevant privacy legislation.

To continue with System Boot Phase, please now walk towards the stained-­‐glass window. Then continue down the stairs in front of you.

This place, this grand building in which I am walking right now, was once a swamp.

While continuing to listen, make your way to the toilets. The toilets are on the right at the bottom of the stairs.

When you find a vacant cubicle, go in and lock the door behind you.

After unimaginable lifetimes of colliding and cooling in space, gases swirling and condensing around it, storms lashing it and the rains wrinkling over rock, puddling into oceans After unrecorded cycles of quiet dawns and dusks, and the slow specks of life inventing itself After untold seasons of ice and heat and the last age of glaciers, This place was a swamp.

In the last few thousand years humans came and built their nests nearby, fought and thought things.

Right here Then a couple of hundred years ago the humans evicted the animals and plants that lived here, drained the wetland and built a prison for their own kind.

The Millbank Penitentiary was designed like no other building before it. Based on a design called the Panopticon, in which cells were arranged around a central ‘inspection station’, it was an instrument for surveillance and control.

A guard in the centre of the Panopticon could see every prisoner without being seen himself. And the prisoners themselves were sometimes blinkered like horses.

The Millbank Penitentiary skulked on this spot for nearly a hundred years.

It gathered dread and disease in to itself, and sent convicts out to be exiled as far away as possible. ‘Prisoners Of Millbank’ came to be known as P O M’s or poms.

The hated prison was demolished in 1890 and this magnificent Gallery was built in its place, and populated with the visions of artists.

Perhaps in another ten thousand years this place will be a swamp again.

Millbank Penitentiary, 1860

Tate Britain, 2012

Audio Analytic’s CoreTrainer has now completed mapping of the time-­‐ line to your vertical plane. To continue with spatial calibration please now leave the toilet. Make your way back upstairs while continuing to listen.

So the panopticon was right here.

And now this whole place, Tate Britain, is some kind of focusing device for a giant panaudicon.

And I’m the guard.

Go to the Rotunda. The Rotunda is the hall where the Multimedia Guide and Information desks are located. Once you arrive there look up. You will see a glass-­‐domed ceiling.

I can hear in every direction what’s usually hidden behind walls!

Whoosh. Zoom in to the sound of modem dialing which becomes crickets, insects, forest

Sounds like small creatures.

Insects.

Single close cricket A cricket.

The voice of my conscience is a small chirrup on my shoulder Whispering in my ear Drowned out by the noise Easily brushed off And crushed underfoot.

The voice of my conscience is a small voice, in a lost language.

The voice of my conscience is like a garden of insects I do not have time for.

The voice of my conscience is saying, ‘Listen carefully.’

Noisy forest If I stretch my arm out I can hear sounds from that direction.

The more intently I listen, the further I can hear.

Through the resonance of the building.

Listening for the quietest voice.

Here’s a forest.

I can walk right into it.

Leaves brushing against me. There’s a soft leaf litter underfoot.

I’ll have to duck to avoid this branch.

(listener reaches Rotunda)

Now here’s a clearing. It’s a vast open space. A lake.

I am now compiling the Panaudicon.

All sectors are now in full resonance across spatial, temporal, and experiential fields.

The Panaudicon is now in sympathetic resonance with your own neural networks.

The CoreTrainer device architecture is now enhancing your own listening.

Please make sure you are in the central Rotunda and looking straight up at the glass domed roof.

Tinkling bells

I can hear the stars.

And if I crouch down and put my ear to the ground rumble The rumble of the earth turning.

cricket

That cricket.

It’s flying off.

All self-­‐tests are now complete.

Please make your way to the ‘Romantics ’exhibition in the Clore Gallery.

Ok I’ll follow you.

Leave this Rotunda by walking away from the gift shop. In the opposite direction walk towards the architectural drawing in front of you. When you get to it, turn left.

Then walk along and turn right into the narrow corridor.

Walk all the way through the corridor, and into the main exhibition space.

What’s the worst that can happen if I listen to my inner voice? What happened to that wooden puppet Pinnochio when he listened to his conscience?

He became real.

Carry on walking right through the ‘Romantics’ exhibition.

Go to the largest room.

In the middle of the large room is a bench facing a large canvas. The painting by J M W Turner is called ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’. It is a large ghostly landscape.

A tall tree in the foreground teeters over the remnants of a once great civilization.

Sit on the bench in front of this painting to listen to an extract from the poem which inspired it.

Wind, sea. Coming closer.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles

Sitting on the bench, looking at ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ I am facing about 345 degrees, north north west.

If I look through the painting and listen for what’s hidden from my eyes I can hear the waves of structures rising. oil rig This is Clair, 1500 miles from central London in the cold North Sea. It’s an oil rig run by BP. Part of BP’s West of Shetland oil field.

In 1962 The Southern Venturer, a factory ship, sailed past here on her last voyage to hunt and process whales in the South Atlantic.

Until the 1960’s, thousands of men were employed in the whaling industry by the Scottish company Christian Salvesen & Co. Every year during the Antarctic summer they would make the journey down from the Shetland Islands to South Georgia, near the Falkland Islands.

The sons of the workers on The Southern Venturer might now be employed by BP on the West of Shetland oil rigs Clair, Schiehallion and Foinaven.

These oil rigs are modern-­‐day versions of the colossal factory ships that used to process whales.

Whale blow

They’ll look back one day at our drilling platforms standing in the deep sea As we look at the old whalers Chasing living mountains Bent harpoons and splintered wood.

They’ll see our audacious rafts floating over an abyss -­‐ within ourselves They’ll see giant iron butterflies sucking black nectar through a straw for a brief day of flight

We see our fathers glorying in ships the size of towns scooping up Leviathans like blue whales engulf clouds of krill.

We see a few survivors calling now across the empty cold.

The bounty of the ocean once seemed to be infinite, and human industry immortal.

The world was created for us, and our pleasure was in the power to use it.

Our civilization was like a child then, falling like a fruit from its mother’s breast, waking from innocence, to discover its own will.

Then we came to revel in the profligacy of our adolescence, Inventing headlong careers our muscles and minds streaming with strength.

Only now, suddenly surprised by actual consequences Does a sense of responsibility slowly dawn And in that grey dawn light the limitless dark is simultaneously revealed and lost.

The world shrinks into finitude and an approaching horizon appears in our immortality.

During our march of progress, the whales sank from being siblings To respected denizens of a shared world, To objects for human consumption A natural resource to be efficiently exploited, according to limits set only by our own ingenuity.

As our technology and ambition egged each other on through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these swimming oil wells were hunted down, dragged into the maws of factory ships and released into the veins of a global distribution system. The relationship between humans and whales became a one-­‐way frenzy of exploitation, consumption and the intoxication of power. Whale oil lit human cities and lubricated the wheels of the industrial revolution.

Our dependence on this drug deepened into a centuries-­‐long binge, hyper-­‐activating the economy, stimulating a grandiosity too high to ever question its own sustainability, a lifestyle in denial of its own collapse -­‐ until The Southern Venturer set off on her final voyage in 1962.

For centuries the industrial scale and efficiency of whaling had increased enthusiastically, despite the tough, dirty, dangerous work involved.

The hunger for power was unquestionable.

And the stock of wealth seemed like an inevitable entitlement, its end unimaginable.

But where is it now?

The end of the whaling industry eventually came about not because of the increasing scarcity of the whales that were being harvested into extinction, and certainly not because of any mawkish ethical qualms.

Whaling was finally rendered uneconomical when the price of whale oil dropped, as a new and more powerful liquid flowed into the system from the first industrial oil wells.

Caspian Seascape

If you stay sitting here but turn to look to your right you will see another picture.

A well-­‐dressed, thoughtful looking gentleman stretched out in a woodland glade.

You are now facing 110 degrees, East-­‐South-­‐East.

This is a painting of ‘Joseph Wright of Derby’, by Sir Brooke Boothby.

3066 miles behind this painting, in the Caspian Sea, are more deepwater oil rigs. BP’s Azeri, Chirag, and Gunashli installations. These are part of one of the oldest oil landscapes in the world, the birthplace of the global oil industry.

Swoop over seascape to burning mountains

Azerbaijan has been known for millennia as a land of fire worshippers. It is a wondrous land in which the seams of oil and gas are so close to the surface that they often seep out and ignite spontaneously.

Then the very mountains and the rivers burn.

For thousands of years the petroleum that gushes forth from springs has been collected and used in lamps and ointments.

Machinery. Desolate, industrial.

Occasional flares and fires But over the last 150 years of industrialization, this magical place has become an inferno.

It is now one of the most toxic places on earth -­‐ sullen and scavenged, saturated with the heavy smell of machines and littered with the detritus of industry.

The oil fields of Azerbaijan are in an exhausted landscape, scarred like an old junkie, that has been subjected to decades of exploitation by a succession of rapacious men.

Broken needles and bruised pools of waste rot in its skin while the oil companies rummage for more. cricket

There’s that cricket again. I’ll follow it.

Please go to the staircase before the double doors slightly to the right of you.

Stand at the foot of the stairs.

You are now facing almost due west, about 275 degrees. 6,000 miles beyond the steps in front of you…

Boreal forest

I can hear the wind caressing the leaves of the boreal forests of Alberta, Canada. The whisper of BP’s great new hope -­‐ the Sunrise tar sands.

Now that you have established contact, please climb up the stairs to the ‘Colour & Line’ exhibition on Level 3.

This landscape is a kind of test case. A new frontier. A new low in a dirty business. The exploitation of tar sands is the most desperate way of gouging out a fix from the earth.

The easy-­‐to-­‐reach oil is coming to an end and now we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It takes more and more effort to get our hands on less and less wealth.

In the exhibition find the desks labelled ‘Drawing from Turner’.

Sit down at a desk with a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper.

As you listen draw as much as you can of what you hear. Allow pictures, words, or any other kinds of marks to flow through your arm and hand as you imagine what you hear. While you do this, keep your eyes closed.

Here in Canada swathes of living creatures are scraped off the surface of the planet in order to grab the riches underneath. And in our wake is a wasteland. If we think about it at all then we might grudgingly accept that, for the sake of our human comfort, unfortunately, BP must sacrifice the plants, birds, and animals who live there.

Sounds of birds, animals

But then do we also accept that the humans who live amongst the forests and lakes are less important than those who need the fuel to run their faraway cities?

Songs of the Cree, Dene’ina language

Are they too simply an inconsequential ‘overburden’ in comparison to the human treasure proudly displayed here in the Tate Gallery?

Are their languages and their stories simply waste? Nothing but hot air?

The Boreal Forest

Only 10,000 years since she rose from her bed.

Only 10,000 years since her blanket of ice was pulled aside by the heat of the new dawn.

The world’s breath whispers to herself Sighing and singing in the hidden alveoli of her leaves.

Her mothers and her grandmothers were ancient forests who rode the continents as if they were ships Who quilted the soft muskeg Who sucked the darkness from the first air and held it for aeons Cloaking it in locked caves Laying with it in the dark forever To leave the sweetness above for their children to breathe

Now the freshness of pine resin swirls through the branches of her young body And rises as a gift to her sky father.

The melt-­‐water Trout people and the Caribou people of the Cold Lake Herd And the Grey Tree Frog people course with messages through her See the shafts of light, the laughing rapids, the urge to love.

Move with her breath, know her.

These lungs and skin and blood and brains unfurl from the stone From ribs of rocks It is we who are made from her ribs

The ground we cut is the body of Forests laid upon forests, laid upon forests.

Like films of oil on the rafts of continents riding the molten oceans.

And on one of the journeys, among the great parade of predators Comes one who stands up Who learns to choose.

Her children have come for her And the ground we cut is the body of Forests laid upon forests laid upon forests.

Fade out Boreal forest

Now get up from the drawing desk and take your paper with you. Make your way back downstairs to the ‘Romantics’ exhibition.

You are free to destroy what you have made, or to keep it to yourself, or to give it as a gift to someone. It is up to you to decide how precious it is?

The Boreal forests, covering a vast expanse of land, are at least as important as the tropical rainforests for regulation of the atmosphere.

But they are in the way of something we want.

In the future our children may speak of these forests as we now speak of the herds of bison that once carpeted continents, or the shoals of tuna that made oceans writhe and glisten.

Leave the ‘Romantics’ exhibition the way you came in and go back through the corridor.

As you walk you will be facing about 150 degrees, South South East.

What’s that noise?

gunfire/street war

It’s from 2000 miles away.

Oh. It’s Libya.

BP has been worrying at Libya for a very long time, and is now licking its chops and sharpening its drills as its quarry pitches and heaves.

For a multi-­‐national corporation, civil war has no moral dimension.

It simply offers openings to exploit.

Fade war

On exiting the ‘Romantics’ exhibition carry on straight past the glass-­‐domed Rotunda. Walk all the way across and through to the other side of the building. Keep walking in a straight line across the building until you can’t go any further.

I’m in a gallery of Twentieth Century Art now.

At the far side of the building turn to your right.

If I turn to the right and look up through the archway…You are now facing roughly west south west, compass point 250 degrees.

I can see a long, long corridor with a succession of green marble doorways stretching off into the distance.

At the very far end, hanging on the wall at the back, just visible in the distance, is the orange-­‐red smudge of Francis Bacon’s ‘3 Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifix’. Walk towards it.

If I stretch my hand out right across the Atlantic Ocean for about 10,300 miles… there’s the Gulf of Mexico.

Isn’t that where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was? What a disaster that was! BP’s reputation really took a battering. But now it seems all is forgiven by investors and politicians, and forgotten by ordinary members of the public. BP is happy again, having recently found in the Gulf of Mexico, huge new reserves of oil in one of it’s other drilling sites. It’s a site called ‘Mad Dog’.

Snarling, growling

Aah! And here at last is a representative from BP. I wonder if I can ask a few questions.

Are you happy to be back at work, after a few months of not being allowed to drill, following the last blowout?

I wonder if you could tell me how you feel about the recent news that this oil field seems to be one of the two or three biggest deepwater reserves in the world?

Apparently it’s so huge that just this one field could, hypothetically, supply the entire United States of America with all the oil it needs for SEVEN WHOLE MONTHS! (I wonder what would happen after that?)

Grrr!

Just hypothetically, I mean.

Anyway, BP is redeemed. Seems like we can rest easy now that you boys have found enough oil to keep us going for years.

More dogs arrive

And I see there’s a fine strong pack of you. Wonderful to see you all working together.

Could I possibly have a word with you, sir? You look like you’re in charge here.

Could you spare a moment? Excuse me… Oh is it… yes! It’s Sir John Browne, Lord Browne of Madingly, ex Chief Executive of BP, Lord Oil Slick! How wonderful to see you back in your old hunting grounds in the gulf!

We haven’t seen you round here much since you were charged with being the one most responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Didn’t you resign from BP and Goldman Sachs a few years ago with your tail between your legs? They said you were finished then, but it’s nice to see you’re back now running with your old pack.

Surprised you can find the time. You must be busy at Tate when you’re not at the Houses of Parliament? Aren’t you chair of the Tate Board of Trustees?

I think I’ll walk away from here. Let’s go somewhere else.

Back away from the Bacon painting. Go back the way you came, walking under three of the green marble doorways.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a major disaster and BP profits took a dip in its aftermath, but they are now back up to their previous levels.

The oil companies’ count on our forgetfulness and deference. Their greatest asset is social acceptability. The more respectable you appear, the less resistance you encounter.

The more power BP accrues, the more respectability it can buy, which leads to even more power, until it becomes too big to question.

Then it can move into new territories unchallenged.

Cricket sounds

If I listen carefully as I walk, there 7,500 miles away directly in front of me I can hear the tropical forests of the Congo Basin.

Tropical forest

You have backed away from the three paintings of contorted creatures, and you have passed through three green marble doorways.

Now, please take a seat on one of the three benches in this room.

Even now new beasts are sniffing out opportunities under these ancient forests.

Bulldozers

A commercial company cannot be expected to regulate itself. A corporation is the embodiment of desire. It exists only to create wealth. Scorning it is like blaming a dog for barking.

Knowing when to stop has to be my responsibility. Only a person can have any ethical feelings. Only people can care. A company has no heart. It is simply a mechanism for growth.

Even governments can’t be expected to regulate the businesses that fund them.

Only I as an individual, feeling, person can actively take on the responsibility of choosing to value something other than immediate material gain.

If I don’t care, I’m simply another unit incorporated into an impersonal machine.

And if not enough individual people care then our whole civilization could be hypnotized by the logic of the corporation and walk, zombie-­‐like, to its own destruction.

A consumptive, cancerous paroxysm. A loss of heart, a failure of courage. A cardiac arrest.

Big tree falls

The role of art in society is to be precisely the opposite of business. Far from being motivated by material gain, art is the conscience of society.

By associating itself with Tate, BP is trying to claim for itself what the Arts represent.

But art is the opposite of business.

BP pretends to be interested in beauty when in fact it is only interested in power.

And art, seduced by lavish praise, has forgotten its inner voice.

Such delusions may start small but, as Pinocchio discovered, lies grow until they are as plain as the nose on your face.

A boy who won't be good is just as use as a piece of wood.

If I am not to be a puppet, a robot, an automaton, a sleep-­‐walker, a zombie, then I must make a conscious choice.

Surrounded by wealth and possibility, I must deliberately choose what is good.

Piano music

I can hear a piano. I’ll follow the sound.

Now go towards the one wall in this room that has no door in it.

On your right, in the corner, adjacent to that wall is a group of five paintings.

Look for one called ‘The Awakening Conscience’. It is by William Holman Hunt.

The painting shows a small drawing-­‐room scene. A man and a woman are at a piano. A dark, cluttered room with a sunlit garden outside.

I can see it now.

There it is, high up on the right, at the far end of the room. ‘The Awakening Conscience’

by William Holman Hunt.

It’s a picture of someone coming to their senses. Someone who has been kept as a mistress, a play-­‐thing.

She’s been sitting on his lap, surrounded by the trappings of luxury, and they’ve been happily singing together -­‐ ‘Oft in the Stilly Night’, a popular song by Thomas Moore.

song cut short by a gasp, leaving only the ambience of an English summer’s garden.

Suddenly she snaps out of her dream.

She realizes she is little more than a puppet. She has been groomed and sedated.

And now she has willingly exchanged her freedom for the security offered by someone who cares only for what he can get out of her.

By accepting the dreams he offers, she is held in his debt.

From this dark corner, the sunlit garden outside suddenly appears to her as a vision of simple joy.

In a moment she will step out of her sumptuous prison into the colour, and fragrance, and music of an English summer’s garden.

The man looks shocked. He will probably try to sweet-­‐talk her into compliance. He’ll try to get her to be reasonable, to see things his way. As a last resort he may even turn violent.

But it’s too late.

Her conscience has awakened and is calling her to the freedom and fresh air.

Why would she ever be seduced by promises of future wealth?

The garden is here, now.

Acknowledgements

Various sounds from https://www.sounddogs.com

The First Nations speech samples are from the following web sites: Wet’suwet’en language sound file from: http://www.firstvoices.ca/en/Wetsuweten/welcome

Gladys Evanoff speaking Dena'ina Athabascan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYLpcpN4ZE8&feature=related

Other speech samples are from this video collection: http://www.youtube.com/user/chimiskwew#g/p

The drum dance is from this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj9TMH7HLbM&feature=related

‘Oft in the Stilly Night’ Words by Thomas Moore; musical arrangement by Sir John Stevenson From ‘Music in the Works of James Joyce’ by singer Kevin McDermott and pianist Ralph Richey http://www.james-­‐joyce-­‐music.com/song04_lyrics.html

‘Panaudicon’ soundfile available at http://www.tateatate.org