Centre for Sustainable Solutions

About the Phonoautobothy 

The Phonoautobothy project is the result of an international collaboration between Idlefield Art Lab and the University of Glasgow, and supported by GALLANT and the Canada Council for the Arts.

It is a unique solar-powered mobile music recording and live production studio built using upcycled materials; it is also the bespoke venue for a new collaboration between GALLANT and Matt Brennan (musician and Professor of Popular Music at the University of Glasgow).

You can book a free 20-minute session to record a song, a poem or whatever comes to your mind. We will have instruments, microphones and recording gear, all at your disposal. At the end of your recording session, you’ll take home a cassette tape containing your recordings. Open to sound makers of all ages and skill levels!

The Phonoautobothy has the following aims:

1. Showcase the use of renewable energy for power generation on a small festival scale to demonstrate that diesel generators can be replaced.
2. Demystify the use of renewable energy, demonstrating its use at a scale that people can actually see the direct results.
3. Research the influencing and communication role of cultural events in mobilizing environmental transition at individual, social, and infrastructural levels.

 

The need for the Phonoautobothy

Glasgow is famous worldwide as a live music venue city. While much live music occurs in pubs, the O2, the OVO Hydro and SEC Armadillo, there are multiple outdoor music events ranging in size from pop-up stages right up the Riverside Festival and TRNSMT. However, music of the power needed for these comes from high-carbon footprint diesel generators.

The Phonoautobothy aims to show what is possible through showcasing the use of renewable energy, in the form of solar power, to generate the electricity for a mobile recording studio at some of these smaller events.

Through a variety of partnerships, the Phonoautobothy will also support many other organisations:

• Glasgow City Council aims to be net zero by 2030, but this requires unprecedented mobilisation of stakeholders across the city, including the cultural sector (via Glasgow Life),
• Creative Carbon Scotland supports Scotland’s cultural sector to reduce its emissions and influence environmental transition,
• Artists (Idlefield Art Lab, Belle & Sebastian) are keen to address climate change and environmental transition, and their power lies in engaging their audiences through storytelling and influencing. The Phonoautobothy offers research expertise and resource to make sure any influencing is credible, impactful, and innovative.
• Glasgow’s community event organizers (Science Ceilidh, Doors Open Days, West Fest) and community arts charities (Beatroute) do important cultural work and reach wide and diverse audiences and the Phonoautobothy will benefit them through creating educational strands to their programming which serve public interest.

 

The Science of the Phonoautobothy

The project will be examined via survey and focus groups to investigate public perceptions on small scale solar energy generation. The data will then be examined, and results disseminated amongst GALLANT researchers. While much is known about the larger scale festival energy consumption and translation of this into carbon costs, much less is known of smaller scale event and if any scaling occurs between the larger and smaller scales. 

There is also scientific merit in using social research methods to better understand the influencing and communication role of cultural events to address environmental transition.

This project leverages Glasgow’s UNESCO City of Music status to research the potentially significant influencing role it could play to drive environmental transition around the world.