Sapiens

I don't say this often, but... everyone should read this book. Sapiens offers a rare chance to step outside of your life and look at the big picture, while being throughly entertained by some brilliantly clear and compelling writing.

From cave men to artificial intelligence, Harari covers where humans come from, what we've done, why we've done it and what we might do next. It's highly readable, incredibly succinct considering the scope and certainly never dull.

In tracking human progress, from hunter-gatherers 'of no signifiance' to the atomic bomb and the internet, Harai is particularly adept at identifying and exploring the ideas, myths and beliefs that have made it all possible. He explores big concepts with breezy simplicity - gender, money, writing, empire, religion, science and ideology - explaining how they came about and how they have influenced the development of human societies.

This is all illustrated with fascinating detail, zooming into relatable events in order to reflect wider trends. In this way Harari navigates the complexity of human history, while retaining his expansive perspective. He also manages to challenge over-simplified or distorted interpretations of events - albeit with a light touch relative to more academic texts.

While largely balanced, there is a welcome polemic element to his writing too. Harai often returns to man made environmental change and animal welfare in order to raise questions about the impact of mankind beyond the mirrored walls of of human culture. He also identifies a number of traits which appear to have shaped his own worldview. These include the importance of imagination in the organisation of human society, a fascination for our individual capacity to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time, and a longitudinal trend towards an ever closer integration of the world population.

It is the author's ability to frame big questions within the broad sweep of human history in such an accessible and entertaining way that make this book so good. I can honestly say that it has changed my way of thinking.

Spook Country revisted

When it was first published, I found the cover design and title 'Spook Country' a little perplexing. It seemed somehow un-Gibson, like the novel had been packaged as a mass-market spy thriller. I could only hope that this would lead more people to discover the depth of perspective that it offered. Of course, like so much of of Gibson's writing, I don't think I appreciated this depth at the time. It now seems even more prescient.

All the usual Gibson traits are there: near future-technology (this time 'locative' virtual reality - which could now be seen as both fore-runner of augmented reality and the new generation of VR); subcultures (art world, systema, free-running, BASE jumping) habitual drug use (benzos, coffee and broasted potatoes); enthralling story; profound insights and a cast of characters who effortlessly redefine cool.

There's also the sense of zeitgeist. Unlike previous trilogies, which reflect their time through projections of the future, Gibson has very intentionally rooted this series in the culture it was written. The use of present or near future technology in fiction is always going to timestamp your work. Here Gibson is explicit in this use - drawing on wi-fi, iPods, clam phones (soon to be made obselete by the smart phone) and specific brand names. As a result, with the series published between 2003 and 2010, he has documented one of the most rapid and significant decades of change in regard to our relationship with communications technology.

The point about brand names is important, Gibson was keen to stress when speaking in London at the publication of 'Zero History'. This codified language is central to our experience in the world of the early 21st century. Whereas his previous novels painted corporations as machivellian international powers (think 1990s anti-globalisation protests), the relationship here is more complex. It is personified in the charachter of Hubertus Bigend, the London-based Belgian marketing guru behind the mysterious Blue Ant and the one constant in all three books. Often the fixer and the enabler, he guides the achingly cool female lead characters down the rabbit hole of cutting edge cool in search of truth. And yet his motives are never clear. Through an R&D division with bottomless resources, he is ostensibly on the hunt for anything cool that he can co-opt into his marketing business to sell brands. In doing so he co-opts the female leads themselves, challenging them to question how far they want to sign themselves away to this seemingly benign, yet alarmingly omnipient, commercial entity. Sound familiar?

Artist Studios: Keeping Creativity in the Capital

'It's an increasing struggle to maintain a practice that isn't funded in a commercial way' says Emma Hart, an exhibiting artist living in London who has shown at Folkestone Triennial, Whitechapel Gallery, Camden Arts Centre and Matt's Gallery.

Emma is at London Art Fair for the first time - not as an exhibitor but as a panellist. She's here to discuss the role that artists play in the creative reputation of the capital and what can be done to keep them here in the face of rapidly rising rents.

In November, Hart was awarded £50k by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation through its Awards for Artists. If that hadn't happened, she says, "I would have had to consider a move out of London." But she doesn't want to leave. She's a Londonder. Her family live here. As it is she has already just had to move South to Peckham from the East.

Behind the panel is a map showing applications to Whitechapel Gallery's triennial London Open exhibition in 2012. It's a fairly even spread across the boroughs. But when compared with the 2015 map a number of factors become apparent. This by no means a scientific data set, but there is a marked shift in applications from West to East, and from inner to outer. An increased number of applications from outer boroughs may, says curator Daniel F Herrman, be attributed to changes in eligibility, but it's where the dots no longer exist that is a concern. I hadn't expected to see such an effect in so a short space of time.

"We all have anecdotes of artists we know who have left for other cities" says Ben Luke, the Evening Standard's Art Critic, including other European capitals such as Berlin. Recent statistics compiled by artist's newsletter (a-n) have shown that artists in the UK earn an average of just £10k a year. "That's just £3 an hour" says Luke, "a third of the London Living Wage".

This means that artists are very rarely full time - subsidising their work through a variety of other income streams including teaching. "10 years ago succesful artists were going into studios paid for by themselves." says Hart who also teaches at Central Saint Martins, "Now even Turner prize winners are moving back into supported studios. Many are coming back to teach."

Hart's studio in Peckham is managed by [Space Studios], an organisation that rents out around 500 spaces to artists in the capital. While they own some of their properties outright, those that they lease have seen rent rises of as much as 400% in recent years.

Also on the panel is Fabio Altumura, Gallery and Development Manager for Cubitt, an artist run co-operative based just around the corner in Angel. Cubitt sustains its studios through rent and other initiatives while receiving Arts Council funding for its gallery and education programme. "I keep meeting artists who can't afford to be artists" he laments.

In 2014 the Greater London Authority's Cultural Strategy Unit estimated that as many as 3,500 artists are likely to lose their places of work in the next 5 years - 30% of the 11,000 practicing artists they found currently provided for by 298 separate studio buildings or sites. Only 17% of these spaces are freeholds.

So what can be done to help these spaces which are under so much pressure from a grossly inflated commercial property market?

The panel turns Kirsten Dunne, the senior Cultural Strategy Officer at the GLA who comissioned this research. Can politics play a role? Might there be some provision for studios under affordable housing quotas?

Probably not under curent planning laws, she responds. "Housing is the biggest issue facing Londonders today", she remind us. London needs more homes, but it also needs more infastructure to support it's growing population - schools, hospitals, energy, green spaces. Councils accross London are under a lot of pressure. (In fact if you visit Big Bang Data at Somerset House this month there's a fantastic interactive installation which puts you in the place of decision making around these issues.)

But Dunne and her colleagues at the cultural strategy unit, headed up by Munira Mirza, have been building the case for artists' contribution to the capital, and are talking to London boroughs and developers to keep culture at the heart of the city. "Studios are a really viable model because artists are brilliant at paying" says Dunne, who is now researching alternative forms of funding.

There is a lot of evidence, however, that "artists are the victims of their success", says Luke. They move into new areas, start squatting and make the area popular. "We don't benefit from that value that we create" underlines Hart "I can't afford the rents that I have apparently made bigger."

Altumura recalls an interview with David Byrne in the New York Times. "There's this romantic vision of artist struggling in big metropolis," he says, "It's not romantic, is a struggle. How much cultural capital has been established on artists not being paid? We need to put value on what we are dealing with."

So what happens when artists can't afford to be artists and what does it mean for an area if only a certain economic class of artist can afford to stay?

Living in New York, Altumura witnessed first hand the hollowing out of the city. "New York has lost most of artists to West Coast" he says "and this impacts on the art that is being made."

"If only those with money start taking up art in the first place, that skews everything because there is a lack of diversity." says Hart "We (artists) can't make links into communities if we are always on the move and we can't put down roots ourselves."

"Institutions need artists nearby too" says Herrman on behalf of the Whitechapel Gallery. If artists and cooperative organisations are priced out "then it creates a monoculture of criticality and creativity" he warns "and I think that would make London far less attractive as a place for tourism, for thinking, for living and defiantly as a place for growing. We, as institutions, are keen on diversity."

So what can be done?

All of the panel agree that artists and arts leaders have a role to play in highlighting the problem and advocating for alternatives.

"Artist co-ops such as Cubitt are an extremely beneficial model for other forms of co operative organisation" says Herrman.

"I'm always been amazed by how resourceful artists are and can be" agrees Altumura "as long as they have the basics covered such as affordable living and an affordable studio.We need to enable more artists have their opinions heard and to allow artists to be in a position to do what's best for them."

"I remember an article saying that it's standard procedure to have a business person on the board of arts organisation" posits Dunne "but it's not standard procedure to have an artist on the board of each business organisation. That would certainly be a recognition of value."

"I would like to start hearing arguments which go beyond how much money artists make and how many jobs they create." says Hart "For me that would be a critical space and a more fundamental debate about what art really does and what we need. We need to go beyond talking about art in just financial terms."

"Berlin is not just interesting an interesting place to work because rents are cheap" says Herrman "Rents are controlled. Since the 1988 housing act there is a lack of tenancy protection (in the UK), be it for artists or the general population, which incentives speculation over long-term tenancies. That is not the case in many other countries."

In more immediate terms, a new £20m London Regeneration Fund has just announced by the Mayor's office. It includes provision for artist studios and work space which should at least start "to dent the shortfall" says Dunne. Funding for new creative space includes Cell Studios in Hackney Wick, The Bow Packing Works, two industrial sheds in Enfield and the ground floor car park of a Magistrate’s Court in Richmond.

Dunne also points to a few tentative schemes which tether affordable housing to affordable workspace, such as Hackney Wick Fish Island, and to developers, such as Peabody and Grovesnor, who she says do have an understanding of the long-term benefits of community. She is also keen to highlight best practice in councils such as Waltham Forest, who she says want to embed culture in their communities.

But, as she and Hart both agree, a lot of this relies on a shared understanding of what exactly is "affordable". If you read the property pages of the London Evening Standard, the current definition offered by London developers seems to be £350,000-£400,000+ for a two bedroom flat through a shared ownership scheme. I can't afford that, and I'm not even an artist.

Chris works for London Art Fair and Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists as an Account Director at Four Colman Getty. He convened this panel on behalf of London Art Fair but any views expressed in this article are personal or those of contributors.

The Invention of News

A lot happened in the western world between the 15th and 18th centuries. 'The Invention of News' spans four hundred years that saw the Reformation of the church, the expansion of global trade routes, spawling international conflicts and unprecedented poltical revolutions.

With all this going on, it's unsurprising that a market for information developped within populations that were increasingly literate and interested in current affairs. Yet despite Gutenberg's breakthrough with the moveable type press in 1439, for much of this period the newspaper was not the primary method of delivery. Not 'invented' until around 1600, it was in fact more of a product of these times than their herald.

Petegree's book is an study of the diversity of the information landscape into which newspapers emerged. Not dissimilar, he notes, to the blending of various forms of print, broadcast and digital media over the last 100 years.

Pre-Gutenberg, news would travel through a large illiterate population by word-of-mouth, or through court messangers employed by those few people who could afford them. The personal reputation of trusted sources was key.

The forerunners of printed news were hand-written manuscript services used by Italian merchants in the 16th century to keep abreast of international affairs and changing prices for goods which might affect their business. These Avissi would collate verbal reports and written correspondence from foreign cities in the order that they arrived, citing the date, city of origin, and often the personal source of the news - a practice still common in newswires.

It was this format that the first enterprising newspapers copied from the start of the 17th century. Yet the stream of data would come with no context, explanation or analysis. A literate population who could now afford the luxury of a newspaper might be able access information previously only available to the inner circles of power, but they might not be aware of its significance.

The marshaling of public opinion was a battle fought instead through pamphlets, which enjoyed their first explosion during the wars sparked by the Reformation and reached their frenzied peak during the French Revolution two and a half centuries later. These ephemeral publications could be produced and distributed quickly and cheaply in response to demand for news of major events. Unlike the subscription-based model of newspapers, they had no need to acknowledge their publisher in the interest of repeat business, and so could be far more liberal in their often contentious opinion.

It is no coincidence that such developments went hand in hand with the emergence of Europe from a feudal system into a place of commerce, and an awakening of conciousness which saw people question first the church, then the rights of their rulers and eventually their own role in civil society.

In fact the potential to excite the population was one quickly recognised by civil authorities, who initially imposed strict copy-checking policy on very closely controlled monopolies, as in the Netherlands, or even completely  nationalised the press, as in the case of The Gazette in France. In this climate, when one word wrong could leave to arrest, many printers were initially happy to restrict their content to the coverage of less contentious foreign affairs.

The most notable exception the rule was England where, following the English Civil War and subsequent Glorious Revolution, a unique news ecology developped which saw publications effectively bought as propoganda tools by rival political parties. The French and American revolutions saw later relaxation of domestic news coverage - albeit temporary in the case of the former.

One of the major strengths of Petegree's book is an ability to link the development of news with the emergence of other industries of the time, including financial markets in the 18th century, first evidenced in the Tulip crisis and South Sea Bubble, or the establishment of coffee houses as centres of discussion and debate closely associated with the rise of other forms of journal and periodical.

Besides the printing press, the innovation most central to the establishment of regular news services was the development of a European postal network during the 16th century, to link the major trade centres of Italy and the Netherlands via the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. In an age of instantaneous alert, it is fascinating to consider how the speed of news depended for so long on the speed of horse travel - around 50 miles a day with the fastest couriers - often delayed indefinatley by rough sea crossings and political turmoil. It took until the early 18th century for printed news to establish itself as a regular feature in daily life.

Petegree also examines the role of advertising, in introducing domestic news and affairs into the pages of newspapers through the first personal and business ads.

One of the most charming aspects of the book is its ability to illustrate the times in which it trades, calling on first hand accounts of consumers of news as well as contemporary reportage and insight into the lives of news producers and distributors. The way in which superstitious tales tales of strange occurrences give way to more factual reports is evidence of a mankind's changing awareness of the world at this time. Yet it some news, such as battle reports, gruesome murders, moral tales and societal gossip, remain of timeless interest.

This is a fascinating and illuminating history which explores a momentous period of political and economic development towards the world we live in today through contemporary sources and perceptions. It successfully paints a complex picture of the news ecology, while demonstrating how the interest in, market for and presentation of information developped in tandem with commercial growth, civil engagement and enlightenment thinking. There were a few times when I found myself wondering whether I needed the depth of study provided on certain topics, but these were far between and recompensed by the quality of research and the lucidity of the greater narrative. 

Excellent.

Have you ever seen a smeuse? How would you know?

Print by Stanley Donwood

'We are making do with an impoverished and increasingly homogenized language to describe the landscapes outside of our cities' says Robert Macfarlane, author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places and The Old Ways. He's at the Foyles on Charing Cross Road, talking about his new book Landmarks. To prove his point, he turns to the Junior Oxford English Dictionary which in 2007 removed seemingly essential words such as dandelion, nectar and cauliflower to be replaced with others such as broadband, email and analogue. Should children really learn to spell blackberry with a capital B before they've tasted the fruit?

When he's not lecturing in English at Cambridge, Macfarlane spends a lot of his time walking in and writing about these landscapes, so you might expect him to have developed a richer vocabulary for them. But the point that he's making is relevant to us all. How often have you been for a walk in the countryside and found yourself unable to name the plant, animal or distinct weather that catches your eye? What does the act of naming bring to our experience? What does it matter?

It's about cognition as much as anything, Macfarlane seems to be saying. Once you know the name for something, such as a ‘smeuse’ (Sussex dialect for ‘the hole in the base of a hedgerow made by the repeated passage of a small animal’), you're more likely to be aware of it and actually see one. He gives the example of a period in which he was reading J A Baker's Peregrine, a singular exploration of the Essex landscape in search of these beautiful raptors. Around this time Mcfarlane started seeing these birds in his own area, tuning into their presence with an awareness that he had not previously held. Language and books about nature can, he says, change the way that we see. Macfarlane's own writing, infused with the culture, history and people of the landscapes that he visits, certainly achieves this for me.

He describes a campaign to save the peat moors of Lewis, the North most of the Outer Hebredies. For the company hoping to build Europe's largest wind-farm here, it made sense to describe the place as empty and desolate. To anyone looking at pictures of these open, windswept places, that's how they seem. For locals such as Finlay Macleod, however, it's a landscape steeped in the experience of the crofters who once cut the turf from it's ground. Macleod's lexicon, included in one of nine glossaries in Landmarks, gives us phrases such as the wonderfully precise 'rionnach maoim’ (a Hebridean Gaelic term for ‘the shadows cast by cumulus clouds on moorland on a sunny, windy day’).

As I stood at the train station this morning, and realised that I was suffering 'sun-scald' from the glare of the rails, it dawned on me that it's not just our countryside that requires a richer language. Many of us can't even describe the landscape of our everyday urban environment. The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape is a good start, but perhaps there should be a word the shadow cast by a tree upon a brick wall, for litter trapped against a fence by the wind, or the way that you can look back in time by glancing above the modern shop fronts of a high street. Maybe there already is. I've always been a fan of desire lines (that muddy corner of the grass in a park that everyone cuts to make their journey shorter).

Macfarlane wants to encourage his readers to experiment with their own language, highlighting the fun that Douglas Adams and John Lloyd had re-appropriating English place names in The Meaning of Liff. It's time, he says, to re-wild our language, and there's a page at the back of the book left blank for you to start your own lexicon. My wife and I begin with 'The Best Bits' - a phrase we use to describe those rays of sun that break through the clouds like beams of god (as an Art History graduate I'm sure I used to know the correct word for this phenomenon but it's since been supplanted. Where can I turn for a decent visual dictionary?). In the interest of linguistic diversity, I'm sure we can do better than that.

Activating Memory: Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2014 at Plymouth University

I'm sitting in the office on Wednesday morning watching the BBC News. A section of iron railway at Dawlish is wobbling like an elastic band as waves wash over the crumbled masonry below. This was my route to the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival in Plymouth for the weekend.



After the wettest January on record, the UK is experiencing the worst flooding we've seen in years. The South West has been the worst hit, and now the storms are taking out the coast. My colleagues send me pictures of waves the size of mountains crashing over Sennen cove, waves engulfing churches and pubs. On the TV, another huge blue LOW is spiraling in from the Atlantic in a volley of curvy white arrows. "Should we abandon...?" asks an email from a music critic who I'm due to be travelling with. "The roads are clear from Exeter to Plymouth" Prof Eduardo Miranda from Plymouth University assures me over the phone. I book a hire car and co-ordinate trains with some of artists heading down from London: namely synth-pop legend Martyn Ware of Heaven17 and his assistant engineer Tom Belton.

I join them on the train at Paddington. Martyn's wearing a black and gold patterned shirt and a greyish cardigan. Closer inspection reveals the gold pattern to be Glock 17s. On the seat tray in front of him is a black polystyrene box about the size of a computer keyboard. "You won't believe this," he tells me, pulling out an even smaller creamy grey rectangle, "it looks like a toy doesn't it?" It is, in fact, some kind of new Japanese super-synth-sequencer-tape-loop combo that costs more than most people would spend on a laptop - a far cry from the giant wire-crossed analogue keyboards that Ware started out with. It's also what he'll be playing live in Plymouth later tonight night. "Otherwise it'd just look like I'm doing my emails". He's only had it for three weeks and still doesn't completely understand it, but he seems confident. It starts playing a loop as he tries to put it away. After a few attempts, he works out how to turn it off.

The train sails through the waterlogged paddy fields of Somerset in deceptively bright sunshine. We arrive in Exeter half an hour early and pick the hire car up with no trouble. After negotiating the Bluetooth connection, Martyn treats us to Beyoncé's new album. It’s the only music on his phone that doesn't require access to 4G. The sky in front of us darkens and lets loose in heavy squalls, but the road remains clear. Despite skipping half the tracks ("she could be the new Whitney Houston. She's letting herself get ruined by a man") we arrive in Plymouth before it's over. A five hour journey door-to-door. What travel chaos?

As Martyn and Tom set up for the evening's concert, I head to the Roland Levinsky Building where most of the 9th Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival will take place. Co-directors Simon Ible and Professor Eduardo Miranda declare the festival open over some wine and nibbles and introduce us to Duncan Williams, a young sound engineer in the University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research, looking relaxed in trainers jeans and a black shirt. His composition 'Choncord for Five Elements' has been been chosen as the first performance of the festival.

We file round into the Peninsula Arts gallery to discover the elements. A quintet of giant, five-tonne blocks of swirling Italian marble dominate the room. They've been carved by Devonshire artist Peter Randall-Page, who is exhibiting major new work between the Peninsula Arts gallery and Plymouth Museum over the road. Symmetrical, ball-like forms covered in perfectly polished rounded lumps, they look a bit like scale-up pollen or viruses. Above each one is a speaker. Williams has assigned a voice to each stone and a programme that allows them to interact with each other. The space is awash with sound, I can hear water and wind and what sounds a bit like the crackling of fire, but I struggle to locate what's coming from where until I find a sweet spot at the centre of all five speakers. People are swirling around the stones themselves, most running their hands over and around the bulbous marble forms. It's an extremely tactile environment. The marbling patterns are intensely hypnotic and perfectly teased out by the undulating surfaces of the beautiful shapes.



I'm introduced to the Lithuanian Cultural Attache who is here to see composer Linas Balthas and pianist Lauryna Sableviciute. We walk over to the next venue together, a chapel like building divided into lecture theatres on three floors. We're in the loft space, a high-beamed white vault with theatre-style seating. I spot speakers at the front and back, Martyn Ware's piece 'Recapture' is a 3D sound composition, so we chose a row of seats right in the middle.

Ware strides out onto the stage in a blue suit, and white shirt with polished midnight shoes to match, taking up position at a music stand. Tom follows, sitting side on to us facing a laptop to the right of the stage. A guitar refrain starts looping through the front speakers, followed shortly after by snatches of old lyrics about memory. Other noises start to fade in and out and I become aware that some of them are coming from behind me. There are no real beats, just washes of high end, slurred piano and strings rising up through the mix. "It's easy to remember but so hard to forget" croons a smooth voice from the front. It's not Ware, but it brings my attention back into focus on him. In a Guardian interview before the festival Ware describes how he is ‘fascinated with that meniscus between recognisable and unrecognisable’, like wind in the trees that sounds like a familiar pop song. There's some definite knob twiddling going in. Tom's not moving. The Lithuanian Attache finds this hilarious. I tell her that he's doing his emails. It's like a radio tuning in and out. The only thing I can compare the sonic experience to is Chris Watson's multi-channel live mixes. Two pioneers from Sheffield still pushing the envelope.


Next on stage is Remember a Day by Alexis Kirke, a researcher of both music and computer science at Plymouth Uni. Kirke explained his intention behind the project in a video posted online a few weeks before. It's an illustration his idea that singing might help those with dementia to remember important information. Wearing a grey suit and tie, he sits with a laptop to the left of stage, while a cellist and soprano take their positions. As silence settles, Kirke reaches for his phone, setting off a ringtone melody which is taken up by the cello. The soprano adds words "Ge-t u-p, wa-sh hair, bru-sh teeth..." intoned in slow operatic phrasing. It's a daily routine, punctuated by activities relating to a dog. This last word always sung as a long semitone note: "....brush d-oogg".

Then come numbers, one to nine, up and down in scale, like vocal exercises, before breaking out into recognisable 077.. telephone numbers. From out of these comes a new refrain "*Co-codamol* twice a day, twenty-five one hun-dred". It's the back of a medicine label. The cello throughout is really quite exciting, all sorts of strange rhythms. I'm later told this is a by-product of algorithmic composition, music written by a computer that can only apply a mathematical understanding of melody. In the third movement the mobile phone lets rip. Synthetic chimes ringing through space, cello chopping and slicing and sluicing through and around them. The vocals return and the ringing ends. The daily routine holds us steady. The chimes swing back in. Ringing up and down the scales like church bells. Heralding the joyous occasion of brushing the dog.



On Saturday morning I go to see Alexis talk about A Day To Remember with members of the local Alzheimer’s Society and Singing with Dementia, a local group that promotes the palliative benefits of group singing. They show us a video of one of their workshops. The interviews with husband and wife couples brings a tear to the eye and makes me wonder at the power of music to bring joy to even the most difficult of lives. Nicole Quin, whose Irish mother benefited from the group, tells us how the group activity helps to reduce social isolation, while familiar recordings can form the basis for desert island disc style storytelling.



I have lunch with Tim Grabham who is in Plymouth to film the festival and interview Prof Miranda for a film he's making on the incredible properties of slime mould, a single-celled amoeba-like organism. Apparently there are some exciting musical applications already in the pipeline for the 2015 festival. It sounds fascinating.

That evening Prof Miranda premieres his latest work 'Sounds from the Underground', which sees him duet on piano with Lauryna Sableviciute. The distinction between this and every other piano duet I've seen is that one of the two won't actually touch the piano. Prof Miranda will instead use an array of electromagments installed in an impressive array over the open strings of the grand. They will vibrate the strings according to an computer alogrithm that interweaves with the work of Sableviciute's fingers. The results are strange sonorities, pulses in pizzicato, bowing and percussive in accordance with Miranda's taste for the classical music of his own South American heritage. Another highlight of the evening is Linas Baltas Air, which sees two string orchestras play simultaneous pieces that sound like slithering variations on Air on a G String.



Concert over, Alexis and I hop in his red hatchback to drive down to the Hoe and watch the tail end of the storms that ravaged the coast at Dawlish. Most of the waterfront is cordoned off with hazard tape so we venture to the nearest wall overlooking the Hoe. The dark water of Plymouth Sound crashes into the stone cliff front below throwing up plumes of white spray. Earlier in the week the waves were coming right up over the road. A Chinese restaurant just below us is in tatters, its large windows smashed in by the same sea they were made to view.

We spot figures halfway down the front of the Hoe towards the Barbican, Young lads, an decide to join them, partly out of civic responsibility, but mostly due to our own thirst to get closer to the action. By the time we get there they're right down at the foot of the cliff where waves are crashing over the stone quay. We stop one of the lads from going down the last sea slicked flight of stairs. He's drunk, so I struggle to make out what he's trying to tell me. "it's alright" he shouts "I'm a poet."

A few months earlier Alexis had stood in front of Prince Charles and local dignitaries conducting the wave pool in the University's new Marine Institute. The pool was rigged with sensors and Alexis armed with hacked Kinect controllers that could sense his arm movements and relay them back to the pool controls. He's a poet too.



Biomusic, the 10th Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival, takes place at Plymouth University this weekend, 27 February - 1 March: http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/event.htmhttp://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/event.htm

When algorithms fail

Craig Constantinides of Go2Games

Decisions made by pre-programmed computer algorithms are increasingly affecting our lives, and not always for the better; a point made clear by two events in the last two weeks.

An Amazon glitch between 7 and 8pm last Friday saw hundreds of products automatically plummet to a rock bottom price of 1p, at which point they were quickly snapped up by consumers already whipped into a bargain Christmas gift frenzy by media hype around Black Friday. The culprate in this case was Repricer Express - a software which promises "continuous repricing 24/7" for sellers across multiple online channels. As a seller, this is a way of ensuring that you're offering the most competitive prices for your wares without having to check on the competition yourself. Come Saturday morning, a number of people who had left the algorithms in charge found that huge amounts of stock had been given a way in a freak 1hr flash sale caused by a glitch in the software.

Whilst an algorithm stealing from Amazon will be seen by many as a kind of automated Robin Hood, redistributing riches from the greedy corporation to the poor consumer, it turns out that the online megalith won't be the one that will actually suffer. Craig Constantinides of Go2Games claimed in CityAM that £358,000 of stock had been affected. He issued pleas via Facebook for customers to return, or pay full price, for goods purchased in the giveaway. Which raises the point that although it was the machines wot gave it away, it was consumers that pounced on the bargains, unable to believe their luck. Should it be on their conscience whether they return the goods? It will be unless Repricer Express or Amazon refund all damages.

To be fair to Repricer Express, they have pointed out that there is already an automatic alert built into the software to warn retailers of any dramatic price fluctuation. This suggests that those who came a-cropper were those who chose to turn this function off and trust the machines. On the other hand the hour of the glitch could just have easily affected anyone who was doing something other than constantly check their phones 24/7.

Talking of conscience, the second crime against humanity perpetrated by the algorithms this week was courtesy of taxi app Uber. The company operates an automatic surge pricing which saw fares in the area of Sidney caught up in the hostage siege shoot up to a minimum of $100, as people tried to flee the area. A spokesperson for the company explained that the system was designed to attract more drivers to an area of high demand,  but the company quickly moved to regain their human status by offering free rides to all affected. This goes to show that behind every algorithm lies a human agent with the power to decide how it is programmed and to take responsibility for any resulting failure. The real heartless automaton of the week was the badly programmed disgrace to the Islamic faith responsible for it all, not to mention the idiots posing for selfies at the cordon.

Human agents need be held to account for any machine-made decisions, but we all need to be aware of how much to responsibility we are handing over to the automation in our lives.

Monday 9 February 2015: If you're interested in these ideas, I can thoroughly recommend Nicholas Carr's The Glass Cage, published last month by Bodley Head.