Culture Now: Martyn Ware in conversation with Robert Worby

Join Martyn Ware and Robert Worby for a lunchtime talk around sound art and music production.

Martyn Ware is an independent artist and record producer working with sound and electronic arts. He has successfully founded and run several electronic bands and record labels. With The Human League he recorded and produced two albums, with BEF another two and with Heaven 17 nine more. During his 28-years career he sold over 50 million albums. He collaborated with music stars such as Tina Turner, Terence Trent D'Arby, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Marc Almond and Mavis Staples.

Most recently, in 2001, together with Vince Clarke, he set up Illustrious Company devoted to experiments with 3D surround sound. Illustrious Company collaborates with both fine artists and corporate commercial clients around the world. Illustrious Company’s clients include: the British Council, The Science Museum, The Royal Ballet, Amnesty International, the V&A Museum, Mute Records, BBC TV, the Royal Observatory Greenwich, BAFTA, Museum Of London, Tate Britain and many more.

Martyn Ware lectures on creativity, compositional theory and music production at numerous colleges and universities across UK including Royal College of Art, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary College, University of London. He has been recently awarded Honorary Doctorate in Science from University of London.

Ware is a member of BAFTA and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His project, developed with Jeremy Till (Director of Architecture at the University of Sheffield), represented Great Britain at the 10th Venice Architectural Biennale in 2006.

Robert Worby is a composer, sound artist, writer and broadcaster based in London. His work is rooted in a fascination with sound – its characteristics, its textures, shapes and patterns – and the idea that, when sounds are combined, meaning becomes multi-faceted and difficult to pin down.

His musical career began in the late 1970's when Worby played guitar and tapes in a post-punk band called The Distributors. He later received awards from the Arts Council to work as a composer and undertake a number of residencies. Together with colleagues from the BBC and Sonic Arts Network, Robert founded the Cut & Splice Festival of Electronic Music and Sound Art in 2002. He currently presents on BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now whilst continuing to work on his musical compositions.

With thanks to Maryam and Edward Eisler.