“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a theory of everything?” This sentiment is likely to be expressed by a theoretical physicist, whose area of science has been searching for some sort of ‘Unified Field Theory’ since Albert Einstein coined the term.

The idea is to find some way of joining all the fundamental forces together with the fundamental particles to make a neat and simple formula that somehow explains the universe. ‘Superstring Theory’ has, for many years, been the best candidate for the task, despite its far-flung predictions and apparent un-testability.

This was the subject of the engaging lecture given by Professor Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck as a prelude to Liebeck and pianist Katya Apekisheva’s recital.

Both the lecture and recital were based on Einstein and his connections with music. The link was somewhat tenuous — not much of ‘Superstring Theory’ has anything to do with music, and not much of the recital’s programme had much to do with Einstein — but it was inspiring to hear science joined with music. Einstein was, after all, a great aficionado of classical music and amateur musician himself. He recognised the subtle nature of understanding and the need for approaches other than that of science.

Despite its undeniable success and contribution to the world’s prosperity, most modern science has been based on a strong general principle: to reduce in order to unify. In other words, if we look closely enough at the world around us, then we will see underlying similarities. The discovery that the universe is largely composed of a hundred or so chemical elements is a good example of this. Yet reductionism has its dangers: look at Freud’s destructive attempts to explain human behaviour by means of a few subconscious urges. If we zoom in too closely, we miss the big picture.

Unfortunately, Liebeck and Apekisheva’s playing was infected with some of this harmful reductionism.

Rarely have I heard two such excellent musicians play so well together at the level of single notes, yet so far apart in terms of larger shapes. The shorter phrases were integrated, but in terms of sound, colour and narrative structure, the players were in different worlds.

Equally, when it came to the massively varied styles of the composers programmed — J. S. Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Dvorak and Bloch — it seemed that the performers were trying to play them all in a similar way.

Heterogeneity is to be celebrated; in music this means different techniques and different sound worlds for different composers, especially if the programme stretches across three centuries.

Both performers favoured a somewhat direct approach, avoiding the mystique that makes for the most engaging playing.

This gave the Mozart a certain brutality, but it worked excellently for the Bloch. A composer of Jewish origin, Ernest Bloch often used Jewish motifs in his work, including the three-movement Baal Shem, which Liebeck and Apekisheva played with great energy and conviction.

It was illuminating to hear in Brian Foster’s lecture that the elusive ‘Superstring Theory’ posits explanatory vibrating strings that are actually larger than the current fundamental particles (quarks and the like). In order to understand better, we often need to take a step back.

Jo Shaw

My Name Is Rachel Corrie is one of the  last decade’s most critically acclaimed pieces of political theatre for good reason.

Every sentence, joke and entreaty for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taken directly from the journals, blogs and answer machine messages left behind by Rachel Corrie; an American political activist who was killed in March 2003 by an Israeli tank, aged just 23.

Ros Philips’ production at the Citizens Theatre uses these insightful sources verbatim and the result is both inspiring and affecting. Philips’ production is an honest and faithful portrayal of Rachel’s great ability to convey her deepest feelings and hopes through writing, with touching and self-deprecating wit. Above all, it communicates Rachel’s idealism without ever seeming like a political diatribe or a personal tirade.

Herein lies the momentous appeal and the heartbreaking reality of My Name is Rachel Corrie; it is both a political and a personal tragedy. Rachel’s writing portrays all the horror of violence in a conflict which seems no closer to resolution now than in 2003.

Her detailed account of the suffering of the Palestinian people and their dignity in the face of insurmountable military power ensures that any sense of self-importance is tactfully avoided.

The audience is privy to a barrage of facts and figures about water sources and helicopters, which feels as overwhelming as it must have done for Rachel. Her intimate, day-to-day account of life in a war zone, with its insight into Palestinian domestic life as well as the logistics of peaceful protest, ensures that the audience feels a sense of identification and involvement with Rachel and her cause.

The reality of ongoing conflict becomes inescapable in the tiny stalls studio. Mairi Phillips’ commendable performance allows Rachel’s sense of justice and hope to take centre stage in the personal and reflective set. Changing from a dreamily decorated and brightly coloured bedroom to a make-shift tent effectively communicates the self-awareness of Rachel’s journey.

This unassuming lack of self-righteousness is one of the most charming aspects of Phillips’ performance as Rachel, as it acknowledges her past mistakes as we progress from a re-reading of her diary to the documentation of every moment in Gaza. Phillips’ portrayal of Rachel is so easy to identify with that it is almost unsettling.

Music and costume are utilised well, but never allowed to overshadow Rachel’s words. Phillips never relinquishes the audience’s attention or empathy and her magnetism is a perfect match for Rachel’s soaring and lucid writing. The sense of intimacy that the audience is afforded at the beginning of the production makes the final tragedy seem like a personal loss, as well as a political travesty.

The deeply exuberant and humorous beginning to the production makes only for a more tragic end as we see Rachel’s faith in non-violent action begin to waiver. Ros Philips’ production never feels exploitative and the same can be said for its conclusion. The raw normality of her final email is that of a determination to continue to try and help the Palestinian people and retain optimism in the face of so much suffering, which makes this personal and political tragedy even more harrowing. It is often asked whether the world is forgetting about Palestine. My Name is Rachel Corrie is a resonating and moving production, which can only help draw attention to this conflict and to the life of an incredible young woman.

Tom Bonnick

Martin Crimp’s The City — which was first performed in 2008 but feels older; as if perhaps it could have been written at any point in the last thirty years — is a strange, increasingly alarming play: after initially giving the impression of being a (slightly awkwardly staged) kitchen sink drama of sorts, it rapidly evolves in the latter half into a more surreal, often-disturbing dramatic experience that has something of Pinter or Sarah Kane about it.

It is ostensibly the story of a horrifically unhappily-married couple, Clair (Selina Boyack, pictured) and Chris (Ronnie Simon), who both treat their relationship like a game of chess in which one can only have an advantage by seeing several sentences ahead in a conversation — wedlock as psychological warfare.

Crimp is fascinated with language and meaning, components which form the structural basis for the play. Clair and Chris tell each other anecdotes and relay episodes from their days at work and home (Chris has an unspecified office job and Clair, perhaps in a moment of overly heavy-handed symbolism, is a translator) — and then Crimp distorts his vision of the world by following up these anecdotes with a discomfitting existentialist surrealism.

The effect erodes both the distinction between truth and fiction, and the audience’s certainties, until it is not entirely clear what is really happening and what only belongs in the minds and words of his two lead roles.

Periphery characters are introduced and hover on a threshold between reality and fantasy. A neighbour comes to complain about the noise being made by Chris and Clair’s daughter playing in the garden and her grievances transform into a powerful, rather terrifying monologue discussing an unnamed war taking place somewhere abroad, in which her husband is involved in some capacity and which demands of its participants particularly brutal acts of violence — it is one of the play’s most interesting and shocking scenes. Later, in the final moments, the daughter herself emerges and plays a piano piece from behind a screen at the behest of her parents and Jenny, the neighbour – the women all wear the same pink jeans and appear to be morphing into one another; their identities somehow interchangeable.

The Tron’s Changing House theatre is a fantastic space for this production — dark and slightly claustrophobic — and director Andy Arnold, on typically excellent form, maintains tight formal control over his cast. Boyack and Simon enter the play standing unnaturally far apart; both upright and rigid, and Simon does not let go of a tightly-gripped briefcase for some time: between them they create a vaguely unnerving atmosphere from the very beginning, which is only fully articulated with the introduction of the surrounding cast.

This is a uniformly outstanding version of Crimp’s story, made so by Boyack’s icily brilliant performance and Simon’s pitifully spineless one.

Tom Bonnick

Everything that’s wrong with Stewart Laing’s adaptation and direction of Puccini’s immensely popular 1896 opera La Boheme — performed in Glasgow by the usually superb Scottish Opera — seems to be a consequence of the dramatic modernisation to which it has been subjected. That sounds like there’s a lot that’s bad, which isn’t true, really — one aspect in particular doesn’t work, and its general wrongness permeates the rest of an otherwise fine and sometimes excellent production: the result is a slightly confused and occasionally bittersweet pill.

Laing’s fundamental mistake is in believing that the prevailing cultural atmosphere of nineteenth-century bohemian Paris could be satisfactorily evoked by a more contemporary New York hipster scene. What was already a fairly insubstantial story — redeemed by Puccini’s powerful score — has been rendered almost non-existent by the crippling emotional constraints of modernity, and all of the male leads — supposedly a group of writers, philosophers and artists — are unconvincing as anything other than boorish pseudo-intellectuals whose lives we are given no good reason to invest in.

Chief amongst them is Rodolfo (Avi Klemberg), a writer, who by the end of the first act has fallen in love with upstairs neighbour Mimi (Celine Byrne). The dramatic and romantic pinnacle of Act I should, in an ideal world, be O Soave Fanciulla, a heartfelt, rousing duet in which the couple proclaim their mutual adoration. Byrne, who is outstanding throughout, brings real commitment to the scene, but Klemberg delivers his lines without passion or urgency — a situation not helped by uniformly prosaic and unimaginative supertitles and some shaky acoustics for the first half-hour.

Things pick up in Act II, which has been transported to an über-cool art gallery from its original, somewhat less glamorous setting, with dynamic crowd scenes, improved depth of sound and a quicker pace — and we’re also introduced to Musetta (Nadine Livingston), the former beau of Rodolfo’s friend Marcello, who steals the show with diva-esque antics and fantastic stage presence.

When the inevitable final-act tragedy arrives, it feels grating (however expected): the setting and characters simply aren’t imbued with the pathos or richness of feeling required in order for an audience to care, and when Rodolfo declares to Marcello that he’s scared and thinks Mimi is dying, he may as well be offering his buddy another beer, for all the lack of sentiment.

In the hands of conductor Francesco Corti, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera give a terrific rendition of Puccini’s music, which really leads one to the conclusion that this is a production best enjoyed with eyes firmly closed. As well as a disappointing translation of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s original libretto, staging (Act II excepted) is truly dismal — the large space is made to feel bland and empty.

Byrne’s first-rate performance only throws into sharper relief the deficit in Klemberg’s — although in fairness, this is largely because of how little he is given to work with. Mimi makes ornamental fake flowers and Rodolfo is a poet — it should be the other way around.

Lauren Martin

Set in New York City in a post-9/11 world, three couples are tormented by events that ultimately destroy their relationships.  The stage is simple and claustrophobic, allowing the starkness of these private moments to be laid out bare for the shock and discomfort of the audience. The Furies tells of a gay couple, Jimmy and Barry, struggling to mend their relationship after an argument, but reconciliation is interrupted by the presence of Jimmy’s sister Jamie and the revelation of Barry’s looming death.  Jimmy’s stereotypical gay mannerisms and camp demeanour sit rather uncomfortably against Barry’s more subtle approach to the portrayal of his sexuality, with Jimmy unfortunately reminiscent of Jack from Will & Grace.

However, The Furies is more concerned with communication than sexuality. Jamie is a welcome comic presence, who sits silently sneering at Barry with brilliant contempt for the conversation. As she furiously whispers into Jimmy’s ear throughout the scene, her silent influence makes their reconciliation impossible.

Her final vitriolic outburst is both commanding and amusing, but it feels as if her screams of impending revenge are unnecessary given how well her facial expressions convey her thoughts.

Land of the Dead is a more subtle work, in which a couple retells the day of the woman’s abortion. The couple stand side by side facing the audience, though they feel worlds apart. Their monologues become intercut when retelling the fateful day, and emotions run high as their narratives run closer together and struggle to distinguish themselves, particularly when she retells the physical abortion and he discusses the diner breakfast he ate at the same moment.

The woman, played by Frances Grey, is by far the stand out turn of the triple bill. Her quasi-apologetic manner attempts to stop her emotional damage being laid bare, ironically like a long-suffering mother figure, and in trying to downplay her ordeal she portrays a woman fraying at the edges; grasping at what little composure and peace of mind she has left. Her boyfriend is a typical American alpha male figure who mocks her suffering. His forced New York accent however is horrific, and makes it difficult for any sense of authenticity to come across. When he retrospectively warms to the idea of being a father, it sits coldly against the rest of his monologue, marking him out as a figure of contempt. Although his insensitivity is shocking to the audience, it feels as if his jokes are meant to be thinly veiled coping mechanisms for his willing of the abortion, but the actor’s focus on the alpha male side of the role weighs in too heavily to make this feel plausible.

Helter Skelter is by far the most shocking of the trio. As a typical suburban couple shop for gifts, they hypocritically lament the commercialisation of Christmas and engage in unremarkable domestic dialogue. This is suddenly destroyed by the revelation of the man’s six-year affair with his wife’s sister, with an enormous, genuine gasp of shock from the audience rendering it all the more realistic.

Frances Grey portrays a woman broken by an event outwith her control, but retains a marvellous sense of gallows humour, even sarcastically pointing out her huge pregnant bump to emphasise her husband’s cruelty.

As he attempts to worm his way out of his guilt, her quiet disgust and constant stare cuts through his words wonderfully. In knowing this all occurs in an upmarket restaurant, Helter Skelter plays with the concept of a painful event occurring quietly in a banal, public place. Her final wish to break free, to “create history with a simple gesture”, culminates in her stabbing her swollen stomach. However shocked the audience is by this final gesture, the emphasis on realism in the triple bill is somewhat ruined by it, as the scene could easily have been carried in another, equally fruitful, direction through the dark comedy of her suffering.

Dominic Maxwell-Lewis

A stage version of hugely successful film Backbeat is something that writer and director Iain Softley has said he has wanted to do since he made the film back in 1994. It’s easy to understand why, especially when performed so deftly by such a strong cast as this.

The story is of the love triangle between early fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe, his girlfriend, Astrid Kircherr, and John Lennon during the infancy of The Beatles at the Kaiserkeller club in Hamburg. The relationship between Astrid and Stuart puts strains on both the band and Stuart’s friendship with Lennon as The Beatles go from strength to strength.

What is immediately striking about the play is the technicality of the production. The opening scenes of then art student, Stuart Sutcliffe, miming working on a canvas are displayed with projections of paint splashing moodily against the backdrop of the steel-like wall that serves as a cold ‘grim up North’ industrial landscape for the scenes in Liverpool. With many moving stage parts and visual additions it is immediately a very arresting experience but somehow leaves you feeling that the story would dwindle and suffer without its filmic embellishments. This is not to say that they are there to compensate for any lack of dynamism in the ensemble. Andrew Knott’s portrayal of John Lennon has many elements to it.

The bolshy anti-intellectualism of his public demeanour and the softer, more private side of his character are balanced extremely well and there’s a genuine feeling that a person is onstage rather than just part of a character. This extends to the performance scenes where hugely impressive musical abilities are exhibited by all. These scenes capture the early Beatles at a time when they reputedly had the energy of a punk band.

The development of The Beatles’ now internationally famous songs takes a very amusing, though borderline pastiche, line in incidental scenes of songwriting (most notably Paul McCartney sitting on the side of the stage during one scene struggling with lyrics to Please Tease Me which, with the help of a passing John Lennon, is moulded into Please Please Me). It is in moments such as these when a fearfully doe-eyed approach to the imagining of the story becomes noticeable. This is thankfully saved by a shift of focus in the second half, as Sutcliffe’s health declines and the play changes course. The highly enjoyable first half, with its montage-like speed becomes a more resolute affair in the second. This is helped largely by Alex Robertson’s noble portrayal of Stuart Sutcliffe, whose relationship with John Lennon hits more obstacles. The pairing is truly engaging, with a camaraderie that is unbelievably candid and at times quite moving.

The decision to stage the world premiere at the Citizens speaks volumes for its reputation as a theatre that attracts new and exciting writing. Practically speaking, it has the advantage of distancing the play from the nostalgia that it would attract back in Liverpool. I was glad to see that the production did not descend into a trip down memory lane. The ‘softly softly’ approach at the beginning is admittedly quite disconcerting. It is sophisticated in its storytelling and skillful in its performance. A first class production.

Joshua Ferris’ first novel, 2007’s Then We Came To The End, announced a bold new voice in American fiction — one which lay somewhere between Don Delillo (whose own work of fiction, Americana, gave Then We Came to the End its title) and Jonathan Franzen. In that instance, Ferris’ reach did not quite exceed his grasp, so to speak, but what the novel lacked in structural finesse, it more than made up for with the author’s bold style (it is written in an unusual first person plural and narrated by a sort of collective conscious) and ambitious bravado.

His second book, The Unnamed, speaks of the same disillusionment and urban anxiety as in Then We Came To The End, but it comes with a greater sense of authorial capability and sophistication. Ferris seems to be carrying through to their logical conclusions the moral and philosophical quandaries that he touched upon in his debut work — equal parts of Emersonian counter-culture and quintessentially twenty-first century ennui.

This time, his protagonist has a name, Tim Farnsworth; a man who, upon receiving a non-specific terminal diagnosis, decides to walk out on all the monotonous routines and constituents of a normal life — job, wife, family — literally. That is, he begins going on walks, compulsively; longer and longer walks which are obviously meant to symbolise a gradual estrangement for Tim from life itself.

The conceptual existentialism which this plot device evokes is cleverly established, and Tim’s sense of angst is made nicely believable, but I couldn’t help but miss the ultra-perceptive brand of laconic realism that Ferris had developed in his earlier work, and particularly the short stories he has had published in the New Yorker (in fact, if you only have ten minutes to spare, I would advise that you stop reading this newspaper right now and search for The Dinner Party on Google instead). Call it nostalgia, but I found some of The Unnamed’s most emotionally honest passages to be those which take place in offices, the same environment in which the events of the first novel are located.

Still, there is an awful lot to be impressed by here, and I suppose an author branching out is (usually) to be commended. What the narative loses from Ferris’ abandomnent of realism it more than makes up for with a vitality and poignancy that was, perhaps, missing in his earlier work

More than anything, though, The Unnamed is reassuring — not with regards to its subject — but for the reason that it cements its author’s reputation as one of the most interesting young literary figures currently at work.

The Unnamed is out now in paperback, RRP £12.99

In 2008, Woolworths briefly stocked a range of children’s bedroom furniture with the brand-name Lolita. Initially baffled by the complaints that were made, the company subsequently withdrew the items from sale. It seemed that their marketing department was not only ignorant of the literary connotations of that name, but was also naïve to its sexual connotations in popular culture (Lolita is used to refer to anything from child pornography to sexual fantasy costumes).

The origin of such connections lie in Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial 1953 novel Lolita, in which Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged European academic, becomes obsessed with a twelve-year-old American schoolgirl, Lolita. Written in the first person from Humbert’s perspective, the novel appears to offer excuses for his reprehensible behaviour. Nabokov has often been crudely equated with Humbert, yet I think the book has something far more sophisticated and subtle to offer.

The recent publication of Nabokov’s unfinished novel The Original of Laura has reignited the controversy surrounding Lolita. Sadly, this new novel makes for disappointing reading, as it contains merely a few disconnected scenes and some incomplete notes. Despite its value as an insight into Nabokov’s creative process, its lavish edition (single sided printing on thick paper, with both facsimile and typeset spread out to around two hundred and fifty pages) and retail price of £25 seem something of a money-spinner. Like Lolita, it contains some borderline pornographic scenes of sex between a young girl and a middle aged man. The same theme occurs in others of Nabokov’s novels; Martin Amis described this recurrence as ‘embarrassing’, seemingly implying that Nabokov fantasised about paedophilia, a view which is not entirely uncommon.

Why does this theme feature so strongly in Nabokov’s work? Can it be excused? First of all, it is important to understand Nabokov’s approach to writing. A highly intellectual man, he was interested in riddles, in wordplay and puzzles; his other hobbies were collecting butterflies and composing chess problems. He wilfully courted controversy: “I don’t give a damn for public morals,” he declared in one interview. This is not to say that he had no standards, merely that he was an iconoclast who enjoyed breaking conventions, exposing hypocrisies and provoking pomposity, if only for the sake of it. While certainly not a roman à thèse, Lolita can be read as a satire of contemporary sexual attitudes.

Lolita is sent to a girls’ school which claims to have a modern curriculum, teaching “the four Ds: Dramatics, Dance, Debating and Dating”. As well as taking a swipe at progressive education, this highlights the gender stereotypes foisted upon children. Nabokov draws attention to the way contemporary culture encourages Lolita to behave in ways that are sexually suggestive beyond her years. It is here that we can find hypocrisies which, perhaps, Nabokov sought to attack. Today, also, you don’t have to look far to see the gross contradiction between the taboo of paedophilia (perhaps our greatest taboo) and the sexualisation of children.

Connected to this is the converse issue of the way women are encouraged to present themselves as childlike. The continual pressure exerted on women to appear as young as possible, to dye or remove body hair (arguably for a pre-pubescent look), to conform to the artificial and unblemished appearance of teenage models in adverts or to act in childish, naïve or deferential ways all form part of a society-wide fantasy that barely legal is the ideal. While paedophilia is rightly condemned, much contemporary culture seeks to make it a template for legal sexual relationships. Seeing the grossness of this contradiction can help us understand why Nabokov turned repeatedly to the theme of under-aged sex in his novels: it is a merciless attack on the hypocrisy of social attitudes.

Nabokov also touches on the conceptually complicated issue of the interplay of fantasy, advertising and objectification that occur in the ancient but ever more accessible archetype of pornography. Humbert muses that “what I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another, fanciful Lolita.” Nabokov was fascinated by the way imagination and memory extrapolate from reality into fantasy. Advertising and pornography manifest this, creating distance between the actual world and our ideas of it. Since Nabokov’s time, the issue of pornography has undoubtedly become bigger; advertising has become more invasive; and pressure to conform to sexual stereotypes more pernicious. The result is that his satirical novels are now more significant than ever.

Chopin, Piano Concerto in F minor. Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Joseph Swensen, conductor; Polina Leschenko, piano.

“Chopin was proud, passionate, tormented and very manly.” So Ingrid Bergman tells us in the film Autumn Sonata. Without doubt one of the hardest composers to interpret, the conventional image of Chopin has his music balanced precariously between extremes. Traditionally, the performer is faced with the challenge of playing his music with restraint but not indifference, with nobility but not pomposity, with virtuosity but not showmanship, with delicacy but not fussiness and, most infamously, with sentiment but not sentimentality. Polina Leschenko gave a convincing rendering of his second piano concerto that seemed to undermine some of these conventions.

Perhaps Chopin’s stylistic individuality came partly from his exclusive focus on the piano, for which he wrote almost all his music. His isolated position among composers has led some pianists to avoid him completely. Alfred Brendel was one of them: he described Chopin as too specialised, technically as well as stylistically. Yet Leschenko disagreed, her performance seemed to borrow ideas from a wide range of composers. Most prominent was the robust way in which she attacked the lower register, bringing to mind Beethoven. Yet there were moments of Mozartian clarity, Schumannesque poignancy and even Prokofiev-like vigour. In the third movement, her energetic handling of the folk rhythms brought to mind later Eastern European composers such as Smetana. How refreshing it was to hear a pianist not shy away from the coarse in Chopin.

The one element I felt lacking in her playing was the aristocratic dignity so often associated with Chopin. However, the habit of equating musical style with personality (as in the Bergman quote) is difficult to defend. The cocktail of biographical anecdote, artistic depiction and performance convention that mythologize a composer often narrow our potential for understanding. Leschenko broke through some of these boundaries with her playing and gave a fresh insight into the piece.

Not that she wasn’t limited in some respects. It was easy to feel that her occasionally tempestuous playing was merely a Russian imposition. This may have been partly due to the piano, whose 9ft steely growl is far from the sound of the instruments Chopin himself played. It seemed to take her most of the first movement to settle into the piece, or perhaps for us to settle into her way of playing. In this movement her approach gave a rather fragmented impression, losing out on some of its long phrases and delayed climaxes. By the second movement she found her poise, apparent from her body language as well as the greater colour in her sound.

Interesting to see was the approach Leschenko and Swensen took to the weaknesses of the piece. Written at the age of only 19 and actually Chopin’s first piano concerto, the piece lacks the cohesiveness of some other Romantic concertos and contains moments of frank clumsiness in the orchestral writing. The performers’ response was to leave the problems in full view without trying to cover them up. Chopin’s music has been presented as merely golden too many times already.

Phoebe More Gordon

Through Acousmatic Art, Luke Fowler sets out on an exploration of the relationship between looking and listening, and thus questions the ways in which to develop new and meaningful dialogues between sound and film. Acousmatic sound is sound one hears without seeing an originating cause — an invisible sound source.

In A Grammar for Listening, the audience is presented with moving images that are superposed with sounds; the two are unexpectedly disconnected, lacking any apparent synchronicity. Arranged in three parts, Fowler’s absorbing works are set up in separate, neatly arranged rooms of the idiosyncratic Modern Institute Building on Robertson Street. In each small dark room, the tape of a 16mm projector continuously reels away overhead, while large black speakers on either side of the screen cast a series of uninterrupted sounds. These range from soothing to ominous, the latter effect perhaps triggered especially by the noises’ inexplicable and unidentifiable origins. Part two, made in collaboration with Parisian-based composer Eric La Casa, offers pictures such as the elegant movements of the wind on a rippled lake in beautiful and (presumably) quiet, peaceful landscapes that are starkly contrasted with scenes from warehouses, motorways and busy traffic on city streets. We expect to hear sounds that are in accordance with the pictures that are being shown to us. When we discover this is not the case, we suddenly find ourselves paying attention to different elements in new ways.

Fowler’s exhibition thus also represents deep ties with the use of silence, an important theme for experimental film of the 1960s, which would dismiss sound or musical accompaniment as illustrative or manipulative. In an attempt to both avoid such distraction and encourage reflection upon the complexities between film and sound, Fowler draws important parallels with even earlier crucial and highly influential sonic experiments. Developed in the 1940s by the French composer Pierre Schaeffer, the notion of Musique Concrète — an avant-garde style of music that relies on natural environmental sounds and other non-inherently-musical noises to create music — later lead to many an artwork reflecting on both the production and usage of sound, including for example John Cage’s 1952 composition 4’33, a piece in which the performer(s) remain utterly silent onstage for that amount of time. Placed within such a background of sonic experimentation, A Grammar for Listening indeed follows this practice of removing sound from its context, and Fowler allows us to understand and concentrate solely on the sonic properties of the experience.

Part three of Fowler’s exhibition looks at Field Recording in collaboration with Toshiya Tsunoda, known for his use of environmental sounds as a motif. Field Recording is a means of capturing the audible illustration of an environment that is produced outside of a recording studio; originally a technique used for collecting data in natural and social science studies, its usage has since expanded to that of evocative art in itself. Fowler and Tsunoda’s film captures two figures contemplating a handful of landmarks in London, with the sounds of both the environment around them as well as the vibrations of each person’s temple muscles (recorded using a highly individual method involving a stethoscope with built-in microphones wrapped around the person’s head). This too raises interesting questions about sounds, their sources and the assumptions and expectation bound up in these, but also the nature of contemplating, the choice of a particular focal point within an environment and the artist’s reasons for choosing such a place and the emotional responses involved in such a choice.

An overall intensely thought-provoking and challenging piece of work, that both relates and further stimulates long-standing traditions of visual and audio recordings.