Discussing Wendy

29 Jun 2023 7-11pm

Overview

Frances Scott and Chu-Li Shewring will be in conversation with TACO! director Mat Jenner, as part of their new film Wendy (2023), a film fan letter and response to the work of composer, electronic music innovator and polymath, Wendy Carlos.

Wendy is currently showing at TACO! as a film installation at  with 5:1 surround sound. Translated into a series of rehearsals, the film orbits around a duet for four hands on one piano. Together, Frances Scott and Chu-Li Shewring learn to play a transcribed version of Timesteps, an original score composed by Wendy Carlos, first imagined for Anthony Burgess’ book, A Clockwork Orange (1962), and realised for the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation a decade later.

Frances and Chu-Li will be joined by Dave Tompkins, contributor to Incantation, Wendy (2021), who will play records connected to his research around vocal synthesis, the history of the vocoder and its recent complicity with developments in AI. Dave is a writer based in New York and London, currently working on a book about Miami Bass. He recently contributed to Boogie Down Predictions (2022), edited by Roy Christopher, published by Strange Attractor/MIT Press, and his first book How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II to Hip-Hop (2010) was published by StopSmiling / Melville House.

Incantation, Wendy is published by An Endless Supply under their Bobo imprint, and forms part of the research residency and commission with TACO!. The publication is edited by Beth Bramich, and features contributions by Beth Bramich, Valentina Formenti, Stine Hebert, Juliet Jacques, Tom Richards, Chu-Li Shewring and Dave Tompkins, accompanied by hand-drawn music scores, film stills and script notes.

The book is available for a special price of £17 during the Wendy exhibition

 
Wendy was made possible thanks to the funding support of Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust.