Hairwaves: A Cautionary Tale
Bouffants, buzz cuts, mohawks, and dreadlocks: no matter the style, hair has played an important social and cultural role throughout human history.
2006 / Mark Vernon / Zoe Irvine / Freight / Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, Scotland
Bouffants, buzz cuts, mohawks, and dreadlocks: no matter the style, hair has played an important social and cultural role throughout human history.
In Hairwaves: A Cautionary Tale, sound artists Zoe Irvine and Mark Vernon explore the sounds and stories of the barber shop -- snipping, layering, and mixing field recordings and interviews with beauticians, wig makers, pet groomers, and a psychic hairstylist.
In Voice in the Mirror, a psychic barber encounters ghosts while cutting hair.
To hear more from Hairwaves, check out the Extras section below.
produced by
Mark Vernon is a Glasgow-based sound artist, musician, and radio producer. He was a founding member of Glasgow's pirate art radio collective Radio Tuesday and has produced programs and features for stations including WFMU, Resonance FM, Radio 101, and BBC Radio 4. He performs and records with Barry Burns as Vernon & Burns on Gagarin records and is also a member of the trio Hassle Hound, who have records released on Pickled Egg, Textile, Staubgold, and Twisted Nerve.
Zoe Irvine's background is in visual art, but she began to work with sound in 1994.