Design for music, retail and cultural projects, alongside installation, sound and text-based art.︎︎︎Scroll down for selected work.
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Studio
improvisation
08.08.26 -09.08.26
︎︎︎Sound/Art installation
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︎Client – self-initiated
︎Role – artist
Artists statement –
Title – Studio improvisation 08.08.26 – 09.08.26 – David Barrington 2026
Two circular mirrors, polystyrene beads, blue and red light and a layered electronic drone establish a spatial field between microscopic and cosmic scales. The installation considers the sublime as an effect of unstable scale, positioning the self as relational and permeable.
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Wanting to push my creativity as far as I can, after a series of positive and negative personal challenges this year, I wanted to see if I could improvise a sound and sculpture installation in under four days.
Beneath the offices where I work are a series of audio studios for burgeoning musicians. I have known the studio owner for over twenty years, when he told me they were moving out. I negotiated to use one of the empty spaces over a weekend.
Far from a sterile white cube, each studio has LED lighting around the walls, with hue control. So a very loaded space, but that’s what made it interesting.
So this wasn’t a public exhibition, more an opportunity to see what I could do if pushed, establish my practice and document the evidence for future work.
Very big thank-you to Dominic for so kindly letting me use the space!
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︎︎︎Press play to hear the accompanying audio piece
︎︎︎Installation details
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A selection of
sound pieces.
︎︎︎Audio
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
︎
︎Client – self-initiated
︎Role – artist
A selection of sound pieces.
These early standalone works explore how a technology or process can shape a composition, treating the machine as a collaborator: an other that brings things to a piece I wouldn't find alone. The challenge is to stay emotionally evocative, which for me remains essential to any artwork.
Writing about them since has helped me unpick connections I wasn't aware of when I made them, and place them in a broader theoretical frame.
01
Harmonic drift piece
for Korg Prophecy.
34 minutes 44 seconds.
Improvised in one take on a Korg Prophecy synthesiser. A single key is sellotaped down, leaving both hands free to slowly retune the two oscillators so they drift in and out of phase, while delay and chorus are adjusted in real time.
As they drift, they pass through moments of pure tuning, though built on a single note, the piece never settles, harmonically or emotionally – a metastable state, in Gilbert Simondon's sense, charged with potential it never fully resolves.
02
You’re my thrill for
Yamaha SU10 sampler.
3 minutes 20 seconds.
Made over a few days on a friend's Yamaha SU10, one of Yamaha's first portable, battery-operated samplers. It was extremely limited in memory and sequencing, but bizarrely featured a ribbon controller for changing parameters in real time.
As I learnt its quirks, I set its rawness and glitch against the smoothest of Julie London's easy-listening recording of "You're My Thrill". The glitches come from using the ribbon to move the sample's start and end points; the orchestral parts were smeared further with granular synthesis in software.
Analogous to a car crash seen in slow motion, the track seeks to elongate the drama whilst simultaneously rupturing its chrome surfaces through collapse and digital error, reminiscent of the collisions of sex and death in J.G. Ballard’s Crash.
03
Slowed.
4 minutes 50 seconds.
An exploration of the layering and collaging possibilities of digital audio workstation software, recording onto a Sony MiniDisc and resampling it back into the computer.
MiniDisc was interesting as a format because slowing down a recording made on it exposes aspects of ATRAC compression that were designed specifically to remain hidden at normal playback speed. ATRAC removes information on the assumption that the listener cannot perceive it. Changing the playback speed opens a universe of defects, glitches and tonal colour, so the degradation becomes part of the piece.
04
Eponifir.
2 minutes 42 seconds.
Made over a few days on a friend's Yamaha SU10, one of Yamaha's first portable, battery-operated samplers. It was extremely limited in memory and sequencing, but bizarrely featured a ribbon controller for changing parameters in real time.
As I learnt its quirks, I set its rawness and glitch against the smoothest of Julie London's easy-listening recording of "You're My Thrill". The glitches come from using the ribbon to move the sample's start and end points; the orchestral parts were smeared further with granular synthesis in software.
Analogous to a car crash seen in slow motion, the track seeks to elongate the drama whilst simultaneously rupturing its chrome surfaces through collapse and digital error, reminiscent of the collisions of sex and death in J.G. Ballard’s Crash.