Alan Lamb is based in Dwellingup in regional Western Australia. Lamb is an artist, biomedical research scientist and General Practitioner and his investigations of The Wires have their foundations in site-specific installation, experimental audio and sound composition. After completing his PhD in Physiology at the University of Edinburgh 1975, Lamb permanently returned to Australia to undertake a Senior Research Fellowship in Neurophysiology at the University of WA. Lamb’s formal investigations of The Wires started in 1976 with his discovery of a 1km stretch of abandoned telephone wires on a farm in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, the 12 telegraph poles and 6 unsheathed wires made a soft “…singing” noise. Lamb called these wires the Faraway Wind Organ, and learnt to record them and later devised compositions with these recordings.    During the 80’s and 90’s Lamb continued his work with The Wires through his own constructions in the WA desert, and collaborations with artists such as Sarah Hopkins, Joan Brassil, Kaffe Matthews, Simone de Haan and Julian Knowles.     In 1997 he was commissioned by the Japanese Government to build a Wind Organ for the opening of the SPring8 Electron Synchrotron in Harima.     In 2004 Wagga Space Program (WSP) commissioned Lamb to build a Wire installation for the unsound04 festival and Mutable Landscapes residency project on a farm on the outskirts of Wagga (NSW).     In 2006 Lamb returned to Wagga for the unsound06 festival and Locomotivus project, which took place on a train as it moved through the landscape. During the festival the 8-carriage train pulled into a silo siding and tuned into a live CB radio transmission of the ‘Pindari’ wires, which were played through a PA system installed on the train.

THE WIRES & ALAN LAMB | A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Lamb’s formal investigations of The Wires started in 1976 with his discovery of a 1km stretch of abandoned telephone wires on a farm in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, the 12 telegraph poles and 6 unsheathed wires made a soft “…singing” noise. Lamb called these wires the Faraway Wind Organ, and learnt to record them and later devised compositions with these recordings. Typically, Lamb would spend days to weeks with the wires, sometimes gathering continuous 24-hour recordings that reflect cyclic changes of environmental factors. These recordings led to the sound designers for the Star Wars (George Lucas) films to approach Lamb about how he used The Wires to create pinging laser beam like noises.

After completing his PhD in Physiology at the University of Edinburgh 1975, Lamb permanently returned to Australia to undertake a Senior Research Fellowship in Neurophysiology at the University of WA. During the 80’s Lamb also released several seminal compositions including Primal Image (Dorobo 1995) and Night Passage (Dorobo 1998), and at many festivals and specially commissioned installations he presented sculptural, improvised sound, dance and video collaborations with artists such as Sarah Hopkins, Beth Shelton and Joan Brassil. In 1985 his recordings were used by Peter Schulthope in the film Burke and Wills, directed by Greame Clifford. More recently Lamb’s wire recordings were used in the Australian Films Wolf Creek (2005) The Boys (1998) and Little Fish (2005).

During the 70’s and 80’s Lamb developed a technique of attaching stereo contact microphones to record and listen to The Wires. When listened to through headphones listeners were exposed to an amplified universe of sound that sonically reflects things we cannot see and human interaction with the wire (such as tapping and singing into the polystyrene sounding boxes). Whilst having traditional sonic qualities such as pitch, timbre, rhythm and key, the sounds produced are best described as a deep space atmosphere with hums and electro-pings, even spiders can be heard as they collide or strut up and down the wire!

In the 90’s Lamb retired from his academic career to move to the regional WA township of Dwellingup and resumed his earlier career as a GP. Throughout this time he continued his work with The Wires through his own constructions in the desert, and collaborations with artists such as Sarah Hopkins, Kaffe Matthews and Julian Knowles. In 1997 he was commissioned by the Japanese Government to build a Wind Organ for the opening of the Spring8 Electron Synchrotron in Harima.

In 2004 Wagga Space Program (WSP) commissioned Lamb to build a Wire installation for the unsound04 festival and Mutable Landscapes residency project at ‘Pindari’, a farm on the outskirts of Wagga (NSW). In 2006 Lamb returned to Wagga for the unsound06 festival and Locomotivus project, which took place on a train as it moved through the landscape. During the festival the 8-carriage train pulled into a silo siding and tuned into a live CB radio transmission of the ‘Pindari’ wires, which were played through a PA system installed on the train. The wires provided a delightfully symbolic gesture of the ability of do-it-yourself technology to traverse space and time, whilst challenging arts conventions of venue, creation and presentation. Lamb cites his collaborations with WSP as influential to reinvigorating his work with The Wires and collaborations with other artists. It is these experiences and the consequent conversations that have formed the creative dialogue and positive working relationship that has compelled Sarah Last and Dr Alan Lamb to establish The WIRED Lab.

A BRIEF STATEMENT FROM ALAN LAMB ON NEUROSCIENCE AND SOUND ART

Neuroscience:  The question is how do cells in the embryo organise into the complex system which becomes the nervous system? I addressed several important and fundamental issues. In particular: How do nascent neurons achieve the task of connecting to their appropriate targets in order to create the functioning whole.

Not all the questions have been answered, even today. There is a problem at the boundary of science and metaphysics which is directly confronted by theoretical embryology. This is why I have turned to the field of sound art.

Sound Art: My parallel career in sound art has lead me to the concept that certain questions about the organization of complex systems such as the embryo cannot be answered by the conventional scientific method. Rather an empirical approach is required which may not be “reducible” in the sense which “hard” science appears to demand.

My thoughts are best summarised in the article “How to make a self-organising musical organism: A study of ontogeny and evolution for the imagination “ published by Ars Electronica 1989 (Kuntsforum No 103, Kuntsradio, Austria 1989). I show how simple “scores” with just a few “directions” can allow, for example, a complexity of people to evolve characteristics of organism such as spatial differentiation and specialisation of structure and function. The paper is couched in the form of playful allegory to make the concepts easy to understand. I believe this allegorical approach, one of the aims of this application, can provide deep insights into the ontogeny of organism.

CURRICULUM VITAE

MB,BS 1968 University of Western Australia

Dip. Obs. RCOG (London) 1972

PhD 1975 Physiology (Developmental Neuroscience), The Changing Patterns of Motor Innervation to the Developing Limb, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

1969-1972 Hospital Appointments

1972     Obstetrics Registrar (Elsie Ingles Maternity Hospital, Edinburgh)

1972-1975 PhD student, Dept Physiology, University of Edinburgh

1976-1990 Developmental Neurobiology Research Fellow Department of Pathology,  UWA

1979-1990 Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow, NH&MRC

1980-1989 Director, Neurobiology Research Laboratory, UWA

1990-2002 Full time General Practitioner

1974-present  Freelance sound artist and composer

2005-present  Director, Dwellingup Arts Lab

ALAN LAMB DISCOGRAPHY

Albums :

Alan Lamb : Original Masters – Night Passage, Dorobo 1998

Alan Lamb : Night Passage & Night Passage Demixed, Dorobo 1998

Alan Lamb : Archival Recordings – Primal Image, Dorobo 1995

Sarah Hopkins and Alan Lamb : Sky Song, Vox Australis 1989

Compilation / Soundtrack / Guest Appearance :

Sarah Last & Douglas Kahn (Eds), Arts of Sound DVD, Beauty and Squeals for Cat, Art Monthly Australia #225, November 2009

Dave Noyze : Automata 49 Cataclyst 2009 (Alan Lamb appears on The Computational Beauty of Nature I and The Computational Beauty of Nature II)

Dave Noyze : Automata 48 Cataclyst 2009 (Alan Lamb appears on Hybrid Rechner II)

Wolf Creek (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Rubber Records 2005 (Wire recordings sourced from “Night Passage“)

Motion – Movement in Australian Sound, Fragment Of The Outback, Preservation 2003

Halana 2, Last Anzac, Halana 1996

Statics, Beauty (Short Version), CCI Recordings 1995

A Storm Of Drones, Primal Image, Asphodel 1995

Dark Eyed and Starry They Were, Primal Image (Edit), Heartland Records 1995

The Year Of Silence, Primal Image (Edit), Dorobo 1995

NMA Tape 9 (Cassette), Excerpt from Night Passage, NMA Publications 1991

Austral Voices, Journeys On The Winds of Time I, New Albion 1990

- The Wires at Pindari broadcast to ‘Locomotivis’ a moving train, unsound06, Wagga Space Program 2006
- Performance at Liquid Architecture, Melbourne 2005
- The Wires at Pindari, unsound04, Wagga Space Program 2004
- Lines in the Sky, Holmes a Court Gallery Perth 2003
- Cambelltown Art Gallery Wind Harp, with Joan Brassil 2001
- Wogarno Wires in collaboration with Kaffe Matthews, Simpson Desert, 1999-present
- Sounding Sphere, Japan 1997
- Baldivis Wire Music Farm 1991-1999
- Journeys on the Winds of Time, Ars Electronica, Austria 1989
- Sky Song tour, with Sarah Hopkins 1985-1988
- Night Passage, Performance at Fremantle Art Gallery 1986 & Pipeline ensemble concerts (with Simone de Haan & Daryl Pratt), Melbourne 1987
- Mirages (with Joan Brassil), Roslyn Oxley Gallery & ABC, Sydney 1986
- The Winds of Heaven (with Sarah Hopkins), Pole Farm Wire Instillation, Darwin Institute of Technology, 1986
- Primal Image, wire recording broadcast on 2MBS FM 1985 & ABC 1986
- Skysong (with Sarah Hopkins) Soundworks Festival, Perth 1985
- Beauty, Soundworks Festival, Perth 1985
- Faraway Wind Organ, Faraway Farm, Fitzgerald National Park, Western Australia, 1976-1984.

WRITTEN PUBLICATIONS

Lamb AH. Metaphysics of wire music. NMA 9,  pp3-30, NMA Publications, Melbourne 1991. -> PDF

Lamb AH. How to make a self organising musical organism: a study of ontogeny and evolution for the imagination. In: Im Netz Der Systeme, Kuntsforum 103, Sept/Oct 1989, Ars Electronica, Kunstradio, Austria. -> PDF

Lamb AH, Ferns MJ, Klose K.Peripheral competition in the control of sensory neuron numbers in Xenopus frogs reared with a single bilaterally innervated hindlimb. Brain Res Dev Brain Res. 1989 Jan 1;45(1):149-53.

Denton CJ, Lamb AH, Wilson P, Mark RF. Innervation pattern of muscles of one-legged Xenopus laevis supplied by motoneurons from both sides of the spinal cord. Brain Res. 1985 Jan;349(1-2):85-94.

Lamb AH. Motoneuron death in the embryo. CRC Crit Rev Clin Neurobiol. 1984;1(2):141-79. Review.

Lamb AH. Target dependency of developing motoneurons in Xenopus laevis. J Comp Neurol. 1981 Dec 1;203(2):157-71.

Lamb AH. Selective bilateral motor innervation in Xenopus tadpoles with one hind limb. J Embryol Exp Morphol. 1981 Oct;65:149-63.

Lamb AH. Motoneurone counts in Xenopus frogs reared with one bilaterally-innervated hindlimb. Nature. 1980 Mar 27;284(5754):347-50.

Lamb AH. Evidence that some developing limb motoneurons die for reasons other than peripheral competition. Dev Biol. 1979 Jul;71(1):8-21.

Lamb AH. The projection patterns of the ventral horn to the hind limb during development. Dev Biol. 1976 Nov;54(1):82-99.

UNPUBLISHED LETTERS

Lamb AH. Outline of method for transposing continuous low frequency waveform (electro-encephalogram, engine vibration, etc) into audible sound for real-time monitoring: a software strategy. Letter to Sarich Technologies, 1989. -> PDF

Alan : “I wanted a software program to transpose low frequency (ie sub-audible) signals into an audible output without losing the information contained within the waveform itself. That is, I did not want a transposition based on registration with an artificial sound source. The idea was to be able to hear the real structure of the wave form. It is in fact a very difficult problem to be solved. I asked Mr Sarich to help me construct a software solution and he passed me on to his manager of engineering Mr Schlunky(?). Schlunky was unable to understand the basic principle I was proposing so the whole project ground to a halt, which is a pity because at that time the monitoring of engine performance for example was pitifully stone age and if it had been understood Sarich Technologies would have made a fortune. My hidden agenda of course was to tune in to the music of the brain.. ho hum.. That never happened. But others have pursued the same idea independently, and today there are many people working on it with varying success. But I don’t think anyone has properly solved the original problem that I put out there. Perhaps it’s still worth a try?”