Simon Blackmore, Anthony Hall and Steve Symons are one of six artist groups that have been nominated for the Share Prize 2008. Blackmore, Hall and Symons have proposed an unique installed durational performance in the form of a furniture workshop. Using their unique hand-crafted technological tools, they will make dynamic audio through chopping, sawing and lathing.

The performance starts with the splitting of a log with an axe and then the shaping of the resulting quarters of wood, amplified via contact microphones and processed via custom software, the ripping and rendering noise signifies the start of the raw wood’s journey to a shaped object, ready for the lathe. The Sound Lathe itself sounds more digital. It produces audio data, saw dust, noise and wood chippings. With this human powered machine, turned spindles are shaped into complex sounds such as tones, glitches and beats. Unlike many electronic instruments, the Sound Lathe produces a unique wooden object at the end of each performance. This object serves as a memory of the performance, slightly faulty and incomplete as it represents the conclusion rather than an accurate recording of the process.

Comments about this and other entries from the Share Prize Jury Statement 2008http://blog.wired.com/sterling/: …It has recently been said that “cyberspace is turning itself out,” that “the virtual is becoming the actual.” We think this years’ chosen artists may have proven this thesis. They have created extraordinary works where digital images crawl out of screens and onto human fingers, where digital sound samples leave the computer to become solid chunks of wood carved on industrial lathes. We also have a large, synaesthetic, immersive installation, two multi-user interaction pieces suitable for groups, and one of the scariest and most physically confrontational pieces of electronic art yet created. Digital art is getting heavier, more immediate, embodied and physically realized. Digital technology can manufacture now, and digital culture is changing our world in ways that we can touch, grip and feel.