Stereo Pair documents the making of Stereo Pair and was assembled by Phil Coy between 2022 and 2026. By collating and organising research material, which includes working drawings, maquettes, archive images, photographs, film stills and installation shots, the publication operates as a photo-essay and a user-manual, which makes visible the hidden narratives that ran alongside the work’s production between 2019 and 2021. For example, one sequence sees rubble retrieved from the demolition of The Mathematics Building, a location used for the filming of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), being cast into the foundations of Stereo Pair, followed by photographs of HMV record company executives witnessing the exhumation of Nipper the dog, the subject of the nearby record factory’s ubiquitous gramophone logo.
Essays by Jennifer Lucy Allen, Lee Mackinnon and Will Self further explore the rich geographical and cultural context that informed Stereo Pair’s development, including the invention of stereo reproduction made near to its site, alongside the extraordinary history and contemporary resonance of pre-radar technology, sound mirrors and early listening devices.
