With a new imprint, TOUCHFOLIO, Touch introduces a new series of bespoke hardback book and CD publications, produced to the highest specifications and continuing 38 years’ experience of audiovisual publishing.
CODEX2 – THE HEAT EQUATION
Book contents:
69 photos and a portrait of Mika Vainio by Joséphine Michel, and an introductory essay by Jeremy Millar
CD Track listing:
1. Mika Vainio – Live at Contra Pop, Ramsgate 56:38
The Story
The Heat Equation is a 100pp book + CD showcasing a new photographic work by Joséphine Michel alongside a live recording of Mika Vainio’s final performance in the UK, featuring all new material intended for his proposed 2017 solo CD for Touch.
Following their previous collaboration on Halfway to White (Touch # FOLIO 001, 2015), Michel and Vainio had been planning a second production, and in March 2017, Michel visited Vainio in Oslo to show him the first examples of the photographs she had been taking for this purpose. Included in the book, as a postcard insert, is Michel’s tender portrait of Mika Vainio taken at this meeting.
Shortly before Mika’s untimely death in April 2017, the project took an unexpected turn. The recordings for the new album for Touch were nearing completion but his sequencer broke down and the project needed to be restarted. The collaboration turned into a complementary exploration between Michel’s both quasi-scientific and lyrical photographs, a perception of a world on the edge of discovery – whether it be born of physics, medicine or space travel – and the legacy of Vainio’s musical vision, with its vast imaginary of matter, and its tension between heat and icy precision.
The photographs and the music interact through a variety of climates, where the microcosm and the macrocosm, the animate and the inanimate, the telluric and the cosmic coexist – and sometimes fuse.
In August 2016 Vainio performed a blinding set at the Contra Pop festival on Ramsgate beach, which was recorded off the desk, yet the organisers reported that the file was corrupted and the proposed counterpoint to Michel’s work was deemed lost.
Miraculously, 18 months later, Contra Pop discovered a back-up recording. Remastered by Russell Haswell, Mika Vainio’s new music is the equal of anything he released in his lifetime.
Bound in a linen cover with foil blocking, Michel’s photography is expertly printed on 200gsm Arctic Silk. The Heat Equation is released in an edition of 750 copies, accompanied by an introductory text by artist Jeremy Millar, “The Devouring Drop”, art directed by Jon Wozencroft and the latest development in Touch’s new series of ‘ear books’.
TOUCHFOLIO 002 TOUCH MOVEMENTS
EXCLUSIVE NEW WORKS BY:
Mika Vainio
AER
Bethan Kellough
Wire
CM von Hausswolff
Chris Watson
Jana Winderen
Claire M Singer
Hildur Gudnadottir
Philip Jeck
Simon Scott
ELEH
Russell Haswell
Heitor Alvelos
Johann Johannsson
Mark Van Hoen
fennesz remastered
Sohrab
Strafe f.r.
Jim O’Rourke
BJ Nilsen
Peter Rehberg
Oren Ambarchi
in a 24/7 world there is no greater challenge than “to be in command of one’s own time”. Is it true that the ability to download anything, at any moment, constitutes freedom? Has the ‘Value’ of music, art and design been stripped bare? “I Google, therefore I am”…
touchMOVEMENTS has been compiled over the course of 3 years. It is a response to many requests for Touch to publish a fuller account of Jon Wozencroft’s photography for the cover art of the project. The book follows the music, which was compiled step-by- step, like a jigsaw – there was not an “open call” to the artists, rather a sequential development which gives the CD a special narrative quality. And since our lastTouch 30compilation in 2012, the accuracy of the music has grown and rises to the challenge of what sound can do to transform perceptions about the immediate emotion of musical work and its more dif cult, longer term evolution.
Following Touch Folio 001 in 2015, this series is a dedication to nding new ways
of audiovisual publishing, somewhere between the twin peaks of a jewel-cased CD and a lavish box-set. The two elements of sound and the visual work in parallel to create the idea of an “Ear-book”, whose interdependency reveals itself over time, and allows the richest of listening and viewing experiences. The music and the photography is fully annotated, alongside a rarely-seen manifesto by the Surrealist lm-maker Jan Švankmajer which celebrates the spirit of the creative act.
TOUCHFOLIO 001 – HALFWAY TO WHITE
Currently out of stock in Europe
Release and shipping date is May 4th 2015.
Please note: this item is not available to customers outside Europe from Bandcamp. US and RoW customers should please purchase from Forced Exposure – thank you.
60pp hardback book + 60 min CD
Bound in a grey linen cover, printed on heavy hi-white paper
Published on 4 May 2015 in an edition of 500 copies.
This first release, HALFWAY TO WHITE, is a collaboration between singular photographer Joséphine Michel and acclaimed musician and sound artist Mika Vainio. Joséphine Michel’s images reframe our perception of the visual by exploring the notion of ‘sonic photography’, her subjects being exposed according to the resonance of the noise-fields felt at her chosen locations. Michel subtly brings to light the inflections of sound – its tones and pulsations – in a setting that has often been considered one of the most silent visual arts.
This work is mirrored by Mika Vainio’s five original compositions, his recordings poised between an environmental hold and atmosphere, whilst suggesting an extra-sensory world and a dream-state in parallel to the 33 haunting photographs that make up this ensemble.
HALFWAY TO WHITE has been designed by Jon Wozencroft. Further FOLIO publications can be expect- ed throughout 2015-2016, including new work from Chris Watson, the world’s leading sound recordist and sonic painter, and other artists from the Touch stable.
Track listing:
1. Fade from Black
2. Missing a Border
3. Notes on the Exposures
4. Line of a Curve
5. White Out
Here you can read an interview with Joséphine Michel with The Photographers Gallery and an essay in Photomonitor.
A review in Brainwashed (USA) can be read here, and for readers of french, in fisheye