Video and Web Resources

UBU Web (started by Kenneth Goldsmith in 1996) states on its homepage that it is ‘All avant-garde. All the time’. The site hosts a remarkable archive of sound with links to sound files of work by John Cage, an intonarumori orchestra, Janet Cardiff, Luigi Russolo and very many others.

Part 3 of Julian Rosefeld’s Manifesto (2015) starts with a recitation of Marinetti’s Futurism proclamation (played by Cate Blanchett as a stockbroker, 10’ 25”):

Listen to a recording of a Filippo Tomasso Marinetti sound-poem, ‘Zong Toomb Toomb’, here. 

Watch BBC3 videos of Luigi Russolo’s intonamuri: Part 1 and Part 2. 

‘Bobby Gets Hep’: a comic strip by Frederick S. Clarke (1946), published by the Bell Telephone Company, on party line etiquette.

Watch the trailer for Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine here, production by Toneelgroep Amsterdam and directed by Ivo van Hove.

Watch John Cage describing his visit to the anechoic chamber at Harvard here. 

Visit the website of the John Cage Trust (2016) and 4’ 33” app (with recordings made by users worldwide).

Tate Museum (2011) on Tacita Dean’s film of Merce Cunningham performing ‘Stillness’ to Cage’s ‘4’33”. 

Watch Tacita Dean, artist talk on ‘Stillness’ at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2013) here. 

Watch Damien Hirst’s film of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Breath’ here.

Listen to the BBC 1957 production of All That Fall here.

Vist BBC Sound Effects online for more than 16,000 effects in .wav format, available for personal, educational or research purposes.

Click here to listen to an 1880s recording of Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech, from a wax cylinder held in the Smithsonian’s collection.

Vist Centuries of Sound project here: a year-by-year set of audio mixes in MP3 format, starting with the first years of recorded sound (1859–60). The playlist includes scenes and speeches from plays, lectures, songs, music and everyday soundscapes. A new year is released on the first Monday of each month as a podcast.