Reel 2 Real - Project Team

The Reel to Real Project Team

Christopher Morton
Project lead. Chris curates the photograph, manuscript, film and sound collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as being Departmental Lecturer in Visual and Material Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Enquiries relating to the PRM's sound archive will find their way to him: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Noel Lobley
Project researcher. Noel is an ethnomusicologist and musician who has worked extensively on African music and archives, especially Xhosa communities in Grahamstown, South Africa, and the Bayaka of Central African Republic. Noel was the full-time project researcher on Reel to Real (2012–13).

Marina Jirotka
Marina is Reader in Requirements Engineering, Director of the Centre for Requirements Engineering and Associate Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre. Marina brought together leading researchers and thinkers in e-research as part of the project to think through new ways of making sound archives accessible to researchers and the public.

Janet Topp Fargion
Curator of World and Traditional Music at the British Library. Janet oversaw the difficult digitisation of the early wax cylinders, as well as the work required on the audio data and cataloguing. She was also a key participant in the workshops associated with the project and continues to offer generous advice to the Museum.

Nathaniel Robin Mann
Nathan is a sound artist and musician, and composer in residence at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford Contemporary Music (thanks to the Sound and Music Embedded scheme funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation). Nathan worked closely with the Reel to Real project team as part of his residency at the Museum.

Peter Hudston
Peter worked on audio editing and digitization for the project as a result of a secondment from the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. Peter has a background in music, having studied classical piano at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada) and composition in electroacoustic music at Concordia (Montréal, Canada).

Daniel Burt
I.T. Consultant. Daniel is a freelance database and web developer and has been responsible for creating a digital asset management system for the audio files held by the museum, and linking this to an internal research database, alongside an online catalogue of the collections. Daniel was also responsible for creating the project website.

P1050603 Nathan Mann, Noel Lobley and Chris Morton among the music displays in the Pitt Rivers Museum

About the Project

Sound Galleries

Musical torchlit trails at the Pitt Rivers Museum

On Friday November 23rd 2012, the galleries of the Pitt Rivers Museum were plunged into evening darkness and bathed in Bayaka music and sound from the Central African Republic. Visitors were given torches to explore the galleries that were transformed into a rich forest soundscape with sung fables, snatches of laughter, beautiful variations on harps and flutes, and the stunning polyphonic singing of Bayaka women. Hidden surprises included mini projections from the rainforests and a visualiser designed by Nathaniel Mann, the PRM's Embedded Composer in Residence. The evening was filmed By Mike Day of Intrepid Cinema as part of the Reel to Real project, and complemented the Oxford City-wide Christmas Light Night organised by Oxford Inspires. A four hour playlist of Bayaka music from the PRM's sound collections, originally recorded by Louis Sarno, was curated on the evening by Nathaniel Mann and Dr Noel Lobley. The event was streamed online, and was watched live in the Central African Republic by Louis Sarno and some of the Bayaka community.