Sound artist John Wynne’s work moves in several directions… He is engaged in an ongoing series of sonic portraits based on recordings made during his travels in Africa. This body of work, which includes Upcountry, an electro-acoustic composition based on Kenyan master musician William Ingosi Mwoshi, has been heard in concert halls and on the radio throughout Europe and North America. Recently, he was commissioned by BBC Radio to create a ‘composed documentary’ using materials recorded in Botswana: this half-hour piece, “a capricious sound world where aural objects shift and surprise” (Resonance Magazine), was broadcast in August of 2004. Hearing Voices, a photographic sound installation based on the speakers of several endangered Khoisan ‘click-languages’ in the Kalahari Desert, was shown at the Botswana National Museum, The National Art Gallery of Namibia and will be at SOAS in London in late summer 2005. Wynne also creates large-scale multi-speaker installations using electronic auditory warning sounds of his own design. His first work with alarm sounds was designed for speakers hidden under the paving stones of Copenhagen’s main square: The Sound of Sirens was banned by the city council for allegedly “frightening and confusing” the public. In subsequent work, he has taken a less aggressive approach: Cry Wolf involved a huge installation of 25 computer-controlled speakers installed in a vertical grid against the 4-storey central wall of Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art. His octaphonic piece for speakers encircling the urban park at Metro Hall Square in Toronto was described by one reviewer as “an ambient, ghost-like presence” (MusicWorks), and this piece was recently re-installed in the rotunda of the Kitchener City Hall in Ontario as part of the Open Ears Festival of Sound and Music. In 2004, his Berlin installation, Fallender ton für 207 loutsprecher boxen, made use of 207 recycled hi-fi speakers and sounded, according to one entry in the gallery visitors’ book, “like Heaven… and Hell.” John has created soundtracks for films selected for the London Film Festival, the BBC Short Film Festival, the Whitechapel Open, the European Media Art Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Sound Arts at the University of the Arts, London and is doing his PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a regular programme called Upcountry on ResonanceFM in London. Accessed 6.11.06 from http://www.soundarts.co.uk/