KINDLING #2 : How Buildings Learn - Seth Cooke

12 page printed newspaper (289x380mm) with digital audio.

'Last year, a consultant from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors took stock of my home in Bristol. He told me the survey would be sent as a pdf via email; I asked him for the audio recording of his spoken notes. The visiting field recordist graciously gifted it to me.
Around the same time, we had a security camera fitted. My daughters commented that the audio sounded like “Daddy’s music.” I can now travel anywhere in the world while producing field recordings of my home. ‘How Buildings Learn’ is the third publication in the series ‘Method of Loci’. The first – ‘This Content is Unavailable in Your Country’ – follows trails through Pornhub via videos tagged or titled “Bristol”. The second – ‘⦵ (pour Isidore)’ – transforms Plimsoll Swing Bridge into a tribute to the founder of Lettrism.
The pieces comprising ‘Method of Loci’ are about the transcription of space. Each uses an analytical process to identify a readymade, or a readymade to identify an analytical process. The point defines the perimeter. The perimeter defines the point. Then I argue with myself about how much of the working can be exposed without merely exposing an artwork that doesn’t work.
Field recording is often about access to territory, technique and technology. Change the territory, change the technique, change the technology, and you find yourself transcribing spaces to which you wouldn’t otherwise have access.
Although not in this case. I never left the house.
Seth Cooke, April 2024'