Acoustic Cameras

Sound annexation project

What is Acoustic Cameras?
The image you see is a real time stream from a live webcam located somewhere on the planet. The sound was specially created for this stream by an artist invited by the Acoustic Cameras collective.

How does it work?
The invited artist chooses a camera among the thousands of live webcams proposed by the Acoustic Cameras collective. He/she composes a music and/or a sound piece for this camera. The AC team aggregates the sound and the camera and puts them online.

The webcams’ flow is intercepted but not modified. The artist is invited to deliver a sound or musical piece related to this flow; this piece acting as a modification of reality. The resulting work thus created is the encounter of a recorded sound piece and the live capture of a fluctuating landscape. Depending on the season, on the weather, on the time of day or night, the camera continuously scans the filmed place (seaside, city or mountain) and writes in real time the film of the artist’s music. The music, the sound design, by monopolizing the filmed landscape, soon takes on a narrative, dramatic dimension, according to the principles of music in cinema. The only difference is that here the film is written simultaneously.

Acoustic Cameras is an artistic project in the form of a website, created on January 1, 2016. To date, more than 100 international artists - composers, poets, sound artists - participate.
Stay tuned ! Acoustic Cameras expands continually, regularly enriched with new works of artists.

Simon Fisher Turner

Ski Resort

Ski station - Severomorsk - Russia

lat.: 69.0688, long.: 33.4162

About the artist

From child actor to teenage pop idol, from self-confessed 'extreme sound freak' to acclaimed solo recording artist, Simon Fisher's career has been nothing if not varied. His early acting credits included film and TV roles from Black Beauty to The Big Sleep (re-made with Robert Mitchum). At the same time he was fronting various '70s pop acts, and at the age of 17 was signed to Jonathan King's UK Records, releasing his first solo album in 1969. After that precocious start, Simon followed an often eccentric, sometimes outlandish musical path. He operated on the fringes of punk; performed briefly with The The; became 'Musician in Residence' at the ICA in 1980; released two albums as one half of a fictional French female duo know as Deux Filles. But through all this Simon was developing a deep and abiding interest in the stuff of sound, accumulating a vast library of collected sounds from daily life. It is this interest which now forms the basis of his improvisatory, eclectic approach to music making, and is manifest on his most recent solo albums on the Mute Label (his discography comprises some 30 solo albums to date). From trite pop to extreme sound-freakery, the mature SFT (as he now styles himself) has arrived at a mesmeric originality. Simon's life as a film composer stems from his association with Derek Jarman in the 1980s and '90s. His scoring credits for Jarman included Caravaggio, The Last of England, The Garden and Edward II. His final film for Jarman was the powerful, poignant Blue, where a soundscape recorded by Simon at Eno's country house, together with Jarman's AIDs-inspired spoken words, stood in for visuals - only a blue screen was projected. The film won a Michael Powell Award. Simon subsequently toured Blue round the world, performing his music at live screenings.

Coming soon!

Simon Fisher Turner

About the artist