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Eileen Simpson and Ben White

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Eileen Simpson and Ben White (both born 1977) are British artists who frequently collaborate. Together, they are known for their work with copyright issues, audio and experimental film.

Work

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Simpson and White were both born in 1977, in Manchester.[1] Simpson has a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London, and an MA in Film and Visual Media from Birkbeck, University of London.[citation needed]

With White, Simpson initiated the Open Music Archive, which is a platform for collecting and digitizing audio recordings which are no longer copyrighted.[2][3] In 2008, Simpson and White toured the UK to advocate for the establishment of a country-wide "creative commons" for artists' use.[4] They have primarily focused their work on recorded audio and copyright issues,[5][6] and played small snippets of out of copyright songs from the early 1960s and before, including at their British Art Show 8 exhibition in Leeds.[7]

Struggle in Jerash (2009) is a work of experimental film that uses footage from Struggle in Jerash (1957) along with meta-commentary to create "a social situation, a collective discussion, a participatory event," according to Art Monthly.[8] The film was praised by Discourse for the way that it demonstrates "the dangers of increasingly aggressive copyright legislation."[2] The experimental film uses a copyright-free, digitized version of a VHS copy of the original, along with the commentary of twelve Jordanians watching the film.[5]

Simpson and White's The Brilliant and Dark (2010) explores themes of inter-generational connectedness and is based on the score of an operetta.[9]

Their work Auditory Learning was featured in British Art Show 8. The Auditory Learning EP was released on the occasion of the British Art Show 8 opening in Edinburgh on 12 February 2016.[10] The work was a collaboration between the artists and individuals from a local youth group, using sounds to "trigger archival audio fragments and beats from out-of-copyright vinyl records from 1962."[11]

In 2016, the artists created a soundscape made up of recordings of sounds of audiences of Modern Art Oxford from the last 50 years.[12]

References

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  1. ^ "107 Things To Do in Edinburgh This Week!". Edinburgh Reporter. 13 March 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  2. ^ a b Balsom, Erika (October 2014). "Copyright and the Commons: Eileen Simpson and Ben White's Struggle in Jerash (2009)". Discourse. Archived from the original on 2017-09-01 – via HighBeam Research.
  3. ^ Wright, Karen (2016-02-14). "British Art Show 8: Computers and cameras dominate and leave painting and sculpture out in the cold". The Independent. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
  4. ^ Luck, Taylor (2 June 2008). "Artists advocate for establishment of 'creative commons'". Jordan Times. Retrieved 7 July 2017. – via EBSCO (subscription required)
  5. ^ a b Balsom, Erika (2017). After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231543125.
  6. ^ "British Art Show 8, Leeds: "The real austerity here is aesthetic"". Financial Times. 20 October 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  7. ^ "Where are the laughs? British Art Show 8 is a super-serious riff on our toxic material world". The Guardian. 7 October 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  8. ^ Zoller, Maxa (February 2013). "Experimental Film Round-up". Art Monthly (363): 40. – via EBSCO (subscription required)
  9. ^ Seddon, Laura (2016). "Intergenerational Relationships: The Case of the Society of Women Musicians". In Haworth, Catherine; Colton, Lisa (eds.). Gender, Age and Musical Creativity. New York: Routledge. pp. 110–111. ISBN 9781317130062.
  10. ^ "Auditory Learning – K Barley (AKA Bambooman)". SoundCloud. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  11. ^ "British Art Show 8". e-flux. 9 October 2016. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
  12. ^ "Work by Yoko Ono to be displayed at Modern Art Oxford". Bucks Free Press. 15 April 2016. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
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