The Miller and McAfee Press

The Miller and McAfee Press are presenting two new audio pieces and one collaboration with Dallas Seitz. For their first piece a song was selected by the artists, who cannot read or speak Norwegian, from a book of old Norse folk songs found in a Stavanger charity shop, Their performance of the song begins with one voice that sings with uncertainty and stumbles over notes and pronunciations. As other voices join in and repeat the refrain, mistakes are in some places reinforced, in others ironed out, until a strong and coherent chorus can be heard. The evolution of the song echoes the evolution of a culture, in which deviations become mainstream, or are otherwise suppressed.
In their second piece The Miller and McAfee Press were struck by the Norwegian trait of saying “yes” on the in-breath, and how similar this can sound to the English speaker’s sharp intake of breath to signal alarm. The work is sung on the in-breath, with the singers clearly exhaling between notes.
For the collaboration with Seitz they produced the soundtrack for Sea Monkeys and Mermaids a video work featured in his installation for TW2. The sound was made using a synthesised sample of vinyl record static. The needle moving through the groove of a record, a metaphor for a glacier carving through the landscape. Successive generations of this sample were digitally distorted to produce cracking, grating and grinding that echoes through the space like a slowly shifting ice-sheet.
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Andrew Miller and Duncan McAfee (UK) began working together in 1999. Their practice hasevolved to concentrate on the production of independently published printed matter, audio work and installation. Often made in collaboration with others, projects straddle disciplines and involve individuals and groups from ranging disciplines.

The Miller and McAfee Press approach will mean that work is frequently generated through conversation with chosen collaborators. Subjects for interrogation recur. Cultural agents are examined and reorganised - The Bible, the choir, the archive, the classroom, the pop song, the joke. Old artefacts are remixed and re-released, revealing parts previously concealed.

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