Stitch is a not-for-profit organisation set up by a group of young artists, scientists and environmentalists with the aim of raising environmental awareness through art.

They are holding an art auction tonight in the amazing surrounds of the Old Dairy (WC1N), with all proceeds contributing towards environmental causes. I have a framed photograph in the show, Untitled (Isle of Grain).

Untitled (Isle of Grain), C-type 35mm print, 60cm x 42cm, 2011

I have written a short piece of text explaining the background to the image.

The Isle of Grain is a region of marshland in the north of Kent, at the mouthway of the River Thames. In virtue of its astounding biodiversity and variety of habitats, it is classified by ecologists as an "open mosaic" environment, home to a rich tapestry of wildlife. Thirteen of its native species are endangered with extinction, with a further 34 classified as nationally scarce. It is home to Britain's rarest species of native bee.

Its sparse populous, coastal location and proximity to London also make the Isle of Grain a target for industrial development. Formerly home to a BP oil refinery, it is now occupied by the Thamesport container seaport, an oil-burning power station, a Liquefied Natural Gas import facility, and the landing point of the BritNed high-voltage submarine power cable, linking Kent with Maasklakte, Holland. A further gas-fired power station is planned by the National Grid, who own over 700 acres of the surrounding land.

In November 2011, Lord Norman Foster presented a proposal to develop Grain as the radial point of a new high-tech transport system, the "Thames Hub". This would include a four-runway airport with twice the capacity of Heathrow, a Trade Spine to link utility pipes and cables to the north of England, and a high-speed rail station, forecast to become the UK's busiest.

The auction also includes works by the like of Vivienne Westwood, Richard Long, Marc Quinn and Richard Wentworth. The event runs from 6pm.

I'm giving a talk next week as part of the excellent-sounding Hearing Connections, an evening of lectures on sonification and networks. It's part of a series of events at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the 200-year-old establishment that Faraday and Medawar once called home. So, no pressure then.

I'll be discussing the relationships between sound and ecosystems, giving a whistle-stop tour of emergence, nested hierarchies and complexity, via Wolfram and Stockhausen, and hopefully culminating in a demo of some exciting new multi-level simulation work that I've been developing.

Here's the abstract:

What does a concerto have in common with a coral reef? The answer is that both are made up of nested hierarchies, in which an individual on one layer contains a population of the one below. An ecosystem comprises of multiple species, each of which contains multiple communities, made up of multiple individuals -- and an individual is itself an ecosystem of organs, cells and microbes. Likewise, a concerto comprises of movements, which comprise of parts, which comprise of notes and harmonies.

This talk is a brief tour around the relationships between music and ecology, and how their similarity can be used as a fruitful way to illuminate both our scientific and artistic practices.

• Can translating a real ecosystem into sound reveal hidden properties to us?
• Can the dynamics of an ecosystem be thought of as creative, or teach us about creativity?
• Can there be a single set of simple rules that unify all of these levels collectively?

Hearing Connections runs from 7pm on Tuesday 15 November.
More information and tickets on the Royal Institution's website.

Later this month, James Bulley and I will be debuting a new collaborative work at a Barbican Lates event, curated by Off Modern as part of the OMA/Progress exhibition.

Entitled "Maelstrom", it is a multichannel sound installation that uses real-time YouTube uploads as its raw material, using them to resynthesize morphing banks of chord sequences. These are then spun rapidly around the listener by a multichannel system of repurposed speakers, creating a tornado of audio data.

From the press blurb:

Over 48 hours of user-created audio is uploaded to the internet every minute, a figure that is increasing exponentially. Maelstrom is a sound installation that draws on this material in real time, constructing shifting walls of sound from thousands of audio fragments.

By organising these fragments based on their tonal attributes, they collectively form a vast instrument, whose properties are affected by global internet activity. A score composed specifically for this instrument voices an endless series of chord variations, dynamically generated by an array of live processes.

Maelstrom builds a tornado of tonal cluster chords around its spiral speaker system, engulfing the listener in the swirling mass of information that is now an integral part of our day-to-day lives.

Off Modern Late is on Thursday 24th November, in various spaces around the Barbican Centre, from 6.30pm onwards. Entry is free.

More info: The Barbican, Off Modern.

Imperial's Complexity and Networks group are hosting a day-long meeting on music, beauty perception and neuroscience this coming May (Wednesday 19th). With a focus on the neural correlates of creative and aesthetic processes, and the complex dynamics thereof, it's one not to miss for art-and-emergence junkies.

See the attached list of talks (PDF) for more info.

The Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) is a new audiovisual interaction laboratory here at Goldsmiths, University of London. We're celebrating its opening with GDS EXPO 2010, a day of seminars, installations and performances taking place next Wednesday (17 Feb).

As part of the launch, I'll be showing a new AV work in the studio's ambisonic space, hooking into the 3D motion capture and projection system. Above is an advance screen grab; more info, video and code coming soon...

In T-minus one week, it's the second edition of our new monthly night of cosmic sounds at 93 Feat East, Signals From The Cosmos.

This month we have joined forces with London record label Thisisnotanexit (responsible for records from artists such as Hatchback, Detachments, Brain Machine and Spectral Empire) to celebrate their latest release, the new Ultralight EP from soon to be massive Canadian duo Parallels. Unfortunately we can't afford to get Parallels to London to play for us, but we do have TINAE label boss Simon A. Carr performing a rare DJ set. Expect future music of the highest order.

In addition we will be giving away a copy of this awesome record to one lucky winner. Best of all, entry is free.

Featuring:

Simon A. Carr (Thisisnotanexit)
http://www.thisisnotanexit.net

and your regular hosts:

Urlaubshits
http://www.urlaubshits.co.uk

Ad Hoc
http://www.adhoc.fm

Also find us on Facebook or last.fm.

This Thursday at the ICA, I'll be DJing to a night of live drawing by Mimi and Tom, as part the regular Heavy Pencil series. The idea is that I'll be creating live remixes of their own sound work, interspersed with tracks selected by them, for a kind of sensory cross-pollination: drawing in response to music in response to drawing, ad infinitum. It'll be great fun having such a wild and weird sonic (and visual) palette to work from.

Signals From The Cosmos is a new monthly residency at 93 Feet East that I am beginning this week (as Ad Hoc), alongside Scott Urlaubshits. Guests this month are the West End Boys, formerly of La Supercool Discotheque. We'll be playing (and I quote) cosmic disco, mutant house, future acid, radiophonic techno and low slung dubbed out grooves.

We're aesthetically angling it somewhere in the retro-futurist continuum somewhere between 1950s American comics and the cold-war Soviet space race. Here's the first flyer of the series...

If you're socially disposed, send a transmission to our Facebook group or MySpace profile.

I'll also be debuting a series of experimental live video pieces to accompany the night. The first is a live video kaleidoscope, created in a few fun minutes playing with Apple's Quartz Composer.

Not one, but three What They Could Do, They Did-related events this week for your delectation, all with free entry as usual...

The Pictures (Barden's Boudier, Wednesday 18 Feb)
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=26568428070
The latest installment of London's most entrenched underground film club, curated by Garry Sykes. This month featuring "Silver Jew" (exclusive UK screening), live music from Trace Fluids and The Super Shirani Nitemare Band, plus Boring Girls DJs, bingo, free popcorn...

A+B=C
Escape, Herne Hill, Thursday 19 Feb)
http://www.theydid.org.uk/2009/escape/

All bases are manned with our thrilling collaboration with Brighton's Beatabet collective (beatabet.net) for this month's Escape, featuring AK/DK, The Beatabet Band, The Capsized Smiles and so very much more.

"In C"
The Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, Saturday 21 Feb, 3pm
http://www.theydid.org.uk/2009/in-c/

As part of the "24 Fragments" event (thefragmentedorchestra.com), we're performing Terry Riley's classic piece of unpredictable modern minimalism "In C" using a homebrewed ensemble specially trained for the purpose. Also accompanied by a talk by the Stroke Assocation.

So it seems that 2009 has hit the ground running with cultural happenings in S/SE London. The Goldsmiths institution of the Thursday Club, a mostly-weekly showcase for innovative new works, kicks off with two talks on sensory interfaces by Ryan Jordan and Artemis Papageorgiou (today, 15 January, free). This is followed by the first of the monthly Electronic Music Studios concerts (16 January, free), at which I'll be performing with AtomSwarm on their 8-channel diffusion system.

Also related to Goldsmiths, though taking place further north, is a 2-day show of events and performances organised by students from Goldsmiths MFA Curating and Royal College of Art Curating Masters. Contested Ground is at Project Space 176 in Chalk Farm this Saturday/Sunday (16-17 January, free). I'll be heading down with Mike and others for the series of multi platform events on Saturday, followed by the amusingly-nomenclatured "artist disco" in the evening.

Gasworks in Vauxhall, meanwhile, is staging a radiophonic intervention by the Resonance FM Radio Orchestra on Friday (15 January, free) as part of its exhibition of South London artist-inventor Felix Thorn's amazing machines. Also features the long-awaited face off between sound theorist Nicolas Collins and SuperCollider/livecoding veteran Nick Collins, described in a mailout thus:

a live coding vs. live circuit building competition with Nick Collins (Sussex University) versus Nicolas Collins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), vying for the annual award of the "Nic(k) Collins Cup," an exquisite ceramic vessel commissioned from Devon potter Nic Collins (no relation).

Finally, Herne Hill's 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning are hosting two further events as part of their current exhibition People, Signs and Resistance (28 Jan & 11 Feb, free). Next up is an audience with Sam The Wheels, a first-generation Jamaican migrant who arrived in London in the 1950s and has since been capturing video footage of the area which should be essential viewing for those interested in local heritage — through the Brixton Riots to their legacy.