Who We Are

Jon Wozencroft

Jon started Touch during the last few months of a postgrad course at the London College of Printing. The idea was to extend the scope of a record label by combining music publishing with the level of curation afforded to fine art. On graduation he got a job at the Reader's Digest as an art editor working on special books. He spent a few years working occasionally in the print business whilst dedicating as much time to Touch as possible, producing a series of audiovisual magazines, and getting the chance to collaborate with New Order, Derek Jarman, Tuxedomoon, Joseph Beuys, Cabaret Voltaire amongst others.

In 1983 Wozencroft met Neville Brody and worked with him in various guises on book projects, exhibitions, corporate commissions and especially FUSE, one of the first magazines to critically engage with digital culture. He is the author of The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 1 & 2, published by Thames & Hudson in 1988 and 1994, and the curator of the exhibition of the same name, held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1988 and ultimately at Parco in Tokyo in 1990. In 1994, 1995 and 1998, Wozencroft organised the programme for the 3 FUSE Conferences held thus far in London, Berlin and San Francisco.

Alongside Touch, Wozencroft's photography and design work has appeared in a number of publications, including Fax Art, Sampler, G1, Merz to Émigré and Beyond, and Shapeshifters. He was the publisher of Vagabond (magazine co–edited with Jon Savage, 1992), and the editor/designer of Joy Division's Heart and soul box set in 1997. In 2005–2007 he co–curated the rereleases of Joy Division's back catalogue and participated in Grant Gee's acclaimed documentary film of the band.

A book of his work, Touch & Fuse, was published in 1999 by The University of Porto. He also makes moving image work that has been showcased at the BFI, Sonar, Transmediale, Avanti and numerous other festivals. In 2012, Taschen will publish a full documentation of the FUSE project, From Invention to Antimatter: Twenty years of FUSE.

Touch has since developed into one of the most influential music publishers in the world, working with a small roster of artists who transform the perception of sound and its visualization – Fennesz, Philip Jeck, Chris Watson to name just three. Wozencroft, with his partner Mike Harding, now celebrate 30 years of independent activity with a series of special events and releases - touch33.net

Wozencroft has taught at Central Saint Martin's School of Art and Design, The London College of Printing, and has given lectures at numerous art colleges and universities around the world. He is presently Senior Tutor in sound and moving image in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art.


Paul Devereux

Overview

Paul started out as a painter, having a degree in Fine Art. He participated in numerous group exhibitions in Britain such as John Moores, Liverpool, and the Royal Academy Schools, plus travelling shows under the auspices of the Arts Council. He also exhibited in Germany. His painting became increasingly inspired by the geometry and numinosity of ancient monuments and this began to lead him deeper into an interest in archaeology. This resulted in him turning more toward writing and research with the consequence that he slowly shifted from painting and gradually relinquished his formal teaching of painting, drawing and photography.

Paul’s research interests in archaeology focus especially on “cognitive” aspects, trying to “get inside” the prehistoric mind, and this has broadened into the study of anthropological themes, especially what is known as “the anthropology of consciousness”. This in turn led him to become involved more generally in what is loosely termed “consciousness studies”. He has frequently combined these themes – such as writing a prehistory of the use of mind-altering substances, and examining anomalous phenomena of various kinds, especially supposed psi phenomena. This mix of archaeological, anthropological and consciousness studies interests has led him to co-founding and co-editing a new peer-reviewed, academic publication, Time & Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture (Berg Publishers). It is this mix combined with his Fine Art background, together with a growing concern he shares with Jon Wozencroft regarding the changes digital technology is bringing to modern perceptions, mental processing and understanding of the provenance of information, that has brought Paul to the Landscape and Perception project.

He has given a great many platform presentations on various aspects of his multidisciplinary range of subject matter to specialist, academic and general audiences in Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Germany, Norway, Holland, Switzerland, Italy and France. Venues have ranged from Glastonbury New Age “fairs” to some of the most prestigious universities and institutions in England and America. His portfolio of written work includes 26 published English-language books (plus numerous foreign-language editions), many articles for popular and specialist magazines, plus a range of peer-reviewed academic papers. (During this whole process he managed to deconstruct New Age myths about topics such as “leylines”, which has made him unpopular in some quarters). He has, additionally, conceived, co-produced, or appeared in television documentaries in the UK and the USA.


Selected Writings

Some Book Titles:
SACRED GEOGRAPHY, 2010,Gaia Books (Octopus Publishing), UK, USA, France, Holland, Norway.
SPIRIT ROADS, 2007, Collins & Brown, UK. (New edition of following title.)
FAIRY PATHS & SPIRIT ROADS, 2003, Vega/Chrysalis Books UK; Sterling-Barnes & Noble, USA. (Conceptual folk geography in the Old and New Worlds.)
MYSTERIOUS ANCIENT AMERICA, 2002, Vega/Chrysalis Books,UK; Sterling, USA. (The genetics, ethnology, archaeology, and ritual life of the pre-Columbian Americas.)
STONE-AGE SOUNDTRACKS, 2001, (TV tie-in title), Vega/Chrysalis Books, U.K. (Archaeoacoustics) ARCHAEOLOGY- THE STUDY OF OUR PAST, 2001, Ticktock Publishing, U.K. [For children 11-14 years]
THE SACRED PLACE, 2000, Cassell, London; Sterling, USA; AT Verlag, “Die heilige Ort”, 2006, Germany. (Development of prehistoric monuments from natural venerated places)
THE LONG TRIP, 1997, Penguin Arkana Original, New York; UK 1998. (Prehistoric magico-religious usage of hallucinogens.). Daily Grail revised edition, 2008.
RE-VISIONING THE EARTH, 1996; Simon & Schuster/ Fireside Original, New York, 1996. (Ecopsychology.)
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF THE STARS AND PLANETS [with Geoffrey Cornelius], 1996; Pavilion UK, Chronicle USA. (From astrology to archaeoastronomy.)

Some Peer-reviewed Academic Papers:
‘The Placement of Rock Art in Acoustically Significant Places in the Landscape’, in Landscape Semiotics, G. Nash (ed.), BAR/Bristol University, 2008.
‘A Preliminary Study on English and Welsh “Sacred Sites” and Home Dream Reports’ (with S.Krippner, R. Tartz, and A.Fish), in Anthropology of Consciousness 18:2 (2007).
‘Ears and Years: Acoustics and Intentionality in Antiquity’, in Archaeoacoustics, C.Scarre and G. Lawson (eds.), McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Monograph, Cambridge University, April, 2006.
'Did ancient shamanism leave a monumental record on the land as well as in rock art?’ in British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International Series S936, Oxford, 2001.
'The Archaeology of Consciousness', invited essay, Journal of Scientific Exploration, (1998). ‘Preliminary investigations and cognitive considerations of the acoustical resonances of selected archaeological sites', (with R.G. Jahn), Antiquity, vol.70, no.269 (1996).
'Acoustical resonances of assorted ancient structures' (with R.G. Jahn and M. Ibison), Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 99, no.2 (1996).
‘Acculturated Topographical Effects of Shamanic Trance Consciousness in Archaic and Medieval Sacred Landscapes’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 7, no.1 (1993).
'Three-dimensional aspects of apparent relationships between selected natural and artificial features within the topography of the Avebury complex', Antiquity, vol.65, no.249 (1991).

Magazine Articles:
As a freelance writer Paul has had a large number of articles – too many to list here -- published internationally over the years in both specialist and mass-circulation publications. Articles have appeared in Focus, New Scientist, Fortean Times (where he is also the regular archaeology columnist), Prediction, Hagia Chora (Germany), X-Factor, The Unknown, ReVision (USA), Elixir (USA), Resurgence, and publications by Readers’ Digest and Time-Life, among many others.


Paul is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Senior Research Fellow, International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) group, Princeton; a Full Member of the Society for Scientific Exploration; a Member of the Scientific and Medical Network.


fig.1 - Jon at Pentre Ifan


fig.2 - Paul working the “night shift” on Carn Menyn. Photo: Sol Devereux.