Eileen Simpson and Ben White (both born 1977) are British artists who frequently collaborate. Together, they are known for their work with copyright issues, audio and experimental film.
Work
Simpson and White were both born in 1977, in Manchester. Simpson has a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London, and an MA in Film and Visual Media from Birkbeck, University of London.
With White, Simpson initiated the Open Music Archive, which is a platform for collecting and digitizing audio recordings which are no longer copyrighted. In 2008, Simpson and White toured the UK to advocate for the establishment of a country-wide "creative commons" for artists' use. They have primarily focused their work on recorded audio and copyright issues, and played small snippets of out of copyright songs from the early 1960s and before, including at their British Art Show 8 exhibition in Leeds.
Struggle in Jerash (2009) is a work of experimental film that uses footage from Struggle in Jerash (1957) along with meta-commentary to create "a social situation, a collective discussion, a participatory event," according to Art Monthly. The film was praised by Discourse for the way that it demonstrates "the dangers of increasingly aggressive copyright legislation." The experimental film uses a copyright-free, digitized version of a VHS copy of the original, along with the commentary of twelve Jordanians watching the film.
Simpson and White's The Brilliant and Dark (2010) explores themes of inter-generational connectedness and is based on the score of an operetta.
Their work Auditory Learning was featured in British Art Show 8. The Auditory Learning EP was released on the occasion of the British Art Show 8 opening in Edinburgh on 12 February 2016. The work was a collaboration between the artists and individuals from a local youth group, using sounds to "trigger archival audio fragments and beats from out-of-copyright vinyl records from 1962."
In 2016, the artists created a soundscape made up of recordings of sounds of audiences of Modern Art Oxford from the last 50 years.
References
- "107 Things To Do in Edinburgh This Week!". Edinburgh Reporter. 13 March 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
- ^ Balsom, Erika (October 2014). "Copyright and the Commons: Eileen Simpson and Ben White's Struggle in Jerash (2009)". Discourse. Archived from the original on 2017-09-01 – via HighBeam Research.
- Wright, Karen (2016-02-14). "British Art Show 8: Computers and cameras dominate and leave painting and sculpture out in the cold". The Independent. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
- Luck, Taylor (2 June 2008). "Artists advocate for establishment of 'creative commons'". Jordan Times. Retrieved 7 July 2017. – via EBSCO (subscription required)
- ^ Balsom, Erika (2017). After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231543125.
- "British Art Show 8, Leeds: "The real austerity here is aesthetic"". Financial Times. 20 October 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
- "Where are the laughs? British Art Show 8 is a super-serious riff on our toxic material world". The Guardian. 7 October 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
- Zoller, Maxa (February 2013). "Experimental Film Round-up". Art Monthly (363): 40. – via EBSCO (subscription required)
- Seddon, Laura (2016). "Intergenerational Relationships: The Case of the Society of Women Musicians". In Haworth, Catherine; Colton, Lisa (eds.). Gender, Age and Musical Creativity. New York: Routledge. pp. 110–111. ISBN 9781317130062.
- "Auditory Learning – K Barley (AKA Bambooman)". SoundCloud. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
- "British Art Show 8". e-flux. 9 October 2016. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
- "Work by Yoko Ono to be displayed at Modern Art Oxford". Bucks Free Press. 15 April 2016. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
External links
- Open Music Archive
- Eileen Simpson and Ben White, Auditory Learning (2015) at BAS8 (video)
- Ben White: Auditory Learning (video)