Charlotte White is an artist based in Brighton, England, working predominantly with sound.  She is not restricted to one discipline, however, and work has included video animation and photography.  She has had her work performed extensively in both the UK, Europe and across the web.  

Most recently her sound works have been performed as part of Radio Taxi, a weekend of audio broadcasts on both FM radio and the internet, organised by the Taxi Gallery in Cambridge.  Her 60-second video entitled A Bit Weird has been screened as part of the Host4:Cinema project in Sheffield, Falmouth, and Newcastle.  It has also been screened in the Trampoline event organised by Nottingham-based art collective Reaktor.

In 2003, she received a first class honours degree in Fine Art from Sheffield Hallam University.  The same year she exhibited photographic works in various venues in Sheffield.  She also broadcast a 25-minute radio show, featuring two of her works for Resonance FM, a radio station dedicated to sonic art and experimental music.  A five-minute version of a fuller composition was performed in a nightclub, and released on a subsequent cd as part of Host’s Sounds Recorded for an Empty Nightclub project.  This same piece was performed at the Maxis Festival, Sheffield.

In 2002, Charlotte received a millennium award to write a piece of electro-acoustic music called Hampshire Sounds.  She invited local residents to ‘nominate’ sounds within their locality.  She then recorded these sounds and photographed the sound source.  These sounds made up part of the piece of music.  The instrumental (more conventional) music was derived using algorithmic software that converted data values from the images of the sound source into notated music.  The notated music played alongside the recorded sounds to make the whole composition.  This was presented in surround sound, alongside an animated video piece and descriptions of the working process.

Charlotte’s practise follows a philosophy and a work ethic that increasingly embraces chance and randomness, whereby the process of working is one of discovery for the artist.  By using people’s nominations in the Hampshire Sounds composition, for example, Charlotte was relinquishing a degree of ‘control’ typically exerted by artists when they make decisions about their work and how it develops.  The design of the system by which she would work was hers, yet the outcomes from within that system were as unknown to her as to anybody else.

The decisions made by artists when producing a piece of work have become a point of acute consideration for Charlotte.  Her work increasingly explores this notion.   Frustrated by the fixed nature of previous compositions with sound, Charlotte is now exploring ways in which work can be presented in a more organic form, constantly changing and developing, as they do in the real world.  This is exemplified in her current work-in-progress and will be explored as part of the Tower Ateliers residency.

Charlotte is currently developing a multi-channel sound installation, exploring the nature of statistics, using programming software.  This software enables sounds to be triggered in such a way that the piece will never exactly repeat itself.  She is seeking both exhibition spaces and funding for this piece and is currently in communication with the Arts Council, England regarding the project’s funding. 

She is participating in an education project called Sonic Postcards, funded by NESTA.  This involves going into schools to encourage a broader sense of listening.  With the children, sound recordings are made and then edited on the computer using software that is available for free download.  The children use the sounds to make a 2-3 minute composition.  This is their Sonic Postcard, which is then e-mailed as an mp3 file to other schools around the UK that have also taken part in this UK-wide project.

Charlotte White is also a part-time lecturer on the foundation art and design course at the University of Portsmouth.