Saturday 28 September 2-7pm

Join us for a special day of presentations and film screenings exploring hidden systems and structures, that launches our autumn artists’ residencies.

2pm Welcome by Gareth Bell-Jones & Lotte Juul Petersen, Wysing curators.

2.10pm Presentation by Dr Torsten Meißner, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge. Taking the example of the Linear B script, Dr Meißner will show how linguistics analyses structures in unknown writing systems and makes sense of ancient scripts.

3.10pm Screening of Beatrice Gibson's Agatha 2012 (14min)*, a psychosexual sci-fi about a planet without speech. Its narrator, ambiguous in gender and function, weaves us slowly through a mental and physical landscape, observing and chronicling a space beyond words. Based on a dream had by the radical British composer Cornelius Cardew.

3.25pm-3.40pm Break with tea and coffee available.

3.40pm Presentation by Michael Potter, Professor of Logic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Prof. Potter will explain why Polish logician Alfred Tarski (1901-1983) searched for a definition of truth and what that definition was. He will also explain Tarski's distinction between object language and meta-language and its importance.

4.40pm Screening of Anna Barham’s Argent Minotaur Slept, 2012 (08.08 min, silent), an animated version of a section of a large volume of text, written from the letters in the phrase 'Return to Leptis Magna', a reference to an ancient archaeological ruin.

4.50pm-5.10pm Break with tea and coffee available.

5.10pm Presentation by Mark Gotham, Director of Music Making, Churchill College. Gotham will talk about Hidden systems: A defence of ‘modern’ music and engage with the kinds of complaints that are commonly leveled against modern, classical music. The talk will be illustrated with many audio examples.

6.10pm Screening of Wojciech Bruszewski’s Matchbox, 1975  (5 mins)*. A loop of film of a hand tapping a matchbox alternates with a shot of a window and sets up a strong visual rhythm. This is offset by a single thumping sound, of the matchbox, that gradually slips out of phase, hitting all the sync points in the film. The work encapsulates in miniature such feelings attributable to film as anticipation, memory, desire, resolution. Guy Sherwin

6.15pm-7pm Roundtable discussion and questions from audience.

7pm Event ends

To see other events taking place as part of Convention T, see here.

This event is free and no booking is required.

*With thanks to LUX, London