AT MIDNIGHT, the digital signal that has transmitted terrestrial television into Merseyside homes for more than 50 years will be switched off forever.
But those final 24 hours of broadcasting material will not vanish along with it, as they are being transformed into an audio art work that is being premiered at the Bluecoat.
British Composer of the Year, Janek Schaefer, has spent the past few days based in a number of adjoining city centre apartments, where he has recorded the sound emitted by a series of old televisions tuned into BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
He now has just a few days to break the recordings down into short bursts that will be broadcast at random during the installation.
“I’m a deadline driven guy,” says the father-of-two, who claims studying architecture trained him to be able to carry out tasks within a given time limit.
“I make up my own rules, tell a story and stay up all night.
“ I work from 11pm to 4am mostly. That’s when everyone’s not phoning me for interviews or asking me to bring lunch or telling you off because you haven’t done the laundry. The phone’s stopped ringing and the kids are asleep.”
The newly commissioned work, National Portrait, will be exhibited as part of a six-room retrospective spanning his 20 year career.
It will include his widely revered Recorded Delivery piece, which he created in 1995 from a sound activated tape recording of a parcel travelling from a post office to an installation room in Wembley. Visitors will hear scanning, stamping, lifts, vans, radios, singing and the final delivery, with a surprise highlight as they eavesdrop on hot-blooded postmen.
“All my pieces are idea-based, concepts and sounds knitted together,” says Schaefer, who lives in Surrey.
“With National Portrait, Sara (Bluecoat curator Sara Jayne Parsons) asked me to do a show and I knew TV was dying and they were both at about the same time, so I thought ‘that’s going to be perfect’. Once you press record, you are making a portrait of that day.”
To coincide with the exhibition, the Bluecoat’s poet-in-residence, Nathan Jones, will be joining with the Daily Post to create a piece of poetry with readers’ help. Further details to follow shortly.
JANEK SCHAEFER: Sound Art opens at the Bluecoat on Saturday and runs until January 17.
