Ben Freeth

About

Ben Freeth creates installations, performances, presentations and carries out collaborative artistic research. His creative practice produces multichannel sound works, custom electronics, code, instruments and data driven artworks featuring sonication.

The digital residencies provide an online space for artists to develop works, ideas and practices. Six residencies will take place online between October – January, with each selected artist having one month to complete a proposed project along the theme of: Media Archaeology/ Zombie Media. Media archaeologists have challenged the rejection of history by modern media culture and theory alike by pointing out unnoticed continuities and ruptures.

Whilst in residence, Freeth will create a series of workshops as practice, which investigate the media archaeology of the hydrophone through three incarnations: contemporary sound art / bio-acoustics, WW1 early detection listening networks, and Lucien Blake's speculative but never built hydrophone designs. DIY hydrophones will be built and recordings made near the Farne Isles, South Shetland, and Newcastle, UK. These will be used to generate a set of audio compositions and a third (de)composition made through algorithmic subtraction in the spectral and temporal domains based on material from the earlier pieces. The audio will be presented in a gallery setting and online.

Freeth lives and works in Newcastle, UK. Recent exhibitions include Bio-Vortex,  Piksel 15, Bergen, Norway and Gold Lines Are Mineral Veins, Occasion Festival, Newcastle.