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Open Music Archive initiated by artists Eileen Simpson & Ben White, is a collaborative project to source, digitise, and distribute out of copyright music recordings.

Open Music Archive Projects is a forum for projects using material from the archive. Use this wiki to post feedback, suggestions or project ideas.

1 Screen Tests DVD
2 Dragline: British Art Show Nottingham
3 Dragline @ Swiss Institute NY
4 Open Music Archive presents an Evening of Free Music and Films
5 British Art Show 6, Manchester (28th Jan -2nd April 2006)
6 OMA @ Open Congress, Tate Britain
7 DJ Performance of Screen Tests, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
8 Future Projects

Screen Tests DVD

A project in collaboration with Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska that evolved from British Art Show 6.

The Free DVD was launched at the Anticipating the Past: Artist: Archive: Film conference on the 12th-13th May, at Tate Modern.

The DVD includes three new films - edited from archive film material, with a soundtrack made from out-of-copyright records - along with the original material and source files. The material is released under a Creative Commons license, enabling anyone to use and re-use Screen Tests for future creative exchange.

Screen Tests 1/4 Screen Tests
The film unfolds as a series of Andy Warhol-like screen tests, slowly revealing the location and the occupation of those before the camera - students and models from the Manchester School of Art.

Screen Tests 2/4 Dragline
Dragline stumbles across an autonomous event, and echoing 1970’s structuralist film, returns the default setting of contemporary digital practice - sampling and looping - to its industrial roots.

Screen Tests 3/4 Broadcast Times: The Birth of Westward
As the exhibition train leaves the platform, we are taken on a documentary journey of “a happy hunting ground for tycoons” the birth of commercial television broadcasting.

Screen Tests 4/4
The Northern Region Film and Television Archive, based in Newcastle did not respond to several attempts at contact, eventually we spoke over the telephone and they declined any involvement.

Arts Council England funded the production of this DVD through Grants for the arts.

Dragline: British Art Show Nottingham

Dragline and Screen Tests are showing at Angel Row Gallery as part of British Art Show 6, Nottingham (21st April - 25th June)

Angel Row Gallery
Central Library Building
3 Angel Row
Nottingham
NG1 6HP

Catch a live performance of Screen Tests in Nottingham at 7.30pm on 19th May at Powerhouse, Victoria Studios (part of the Nottingham Trent buildings)

more details

Dragline @ Swiss Institute NY

Preview of our new film Dragline - remixed archive material, with a soundtrack made from out-of-copyright records, produced in collaboration with Chance Projects showing at:

Swiss Institute 495 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10012

Thursday March 23, 7pm

Open Music Archive presents an Evening of Free Music and Films

Thanks to everyone who came down! It was great. Archive playlist and remixes will appear here soon.

Archive playlists, remix samples, and photos

British Art Show 6, Manchester (28th Jan -2nd April 2006)

We were invited by artists Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska to collaborate on Screen Tests for the British Art Show 6 in Manchester. Screen Tests is a film composed entirely of material found and released from the North West Film Archive. The ten minute film is accompanied by a sound track made from out-of-copyright recordings. These source recordings are available in the Open Music Archive to download:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

See Screen Tests at Urbis until 2nd April 2006

On 18th February (6-8pm) at The Whitworth Art Gallery a DJ remix of Screen Tests was performed live by Ben White.

OMA @ Open Congress, Tate Britain

Open Music Archive presented at Open Congress (Tate Britain 7th-8th October 2005)

Open Congress was Inspired by Free Software: software that challenges conventional practices of authorship, ownership and distribution. The innovative congress explored these implications for art, visual culture and cultural production in general.

For Open Congress, Open Music Archive presented a DJ set of music made entirely of samples of out-of-copyright music recordings, mainly sourced from 1920s 78rpm records. An accompanying slideshow uncovered the process of tracking this material.

Open Congress performance images

Tate Online Events Archive (video of the performance)

Listen to an excerpt of the live performance: MP3 (5.3MB) | Ogg Vorbis (3.7MB)