Luke Fowler, Janet Beat (work in progress)
Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow

A Sensation Never Yet Known is a new film work by Luke Fowler exploring the ongoing history of electronic music in Scotland. Fowler’s film combines footage of recent workshops led by Glasgow Library of Synthesised Sound (GLOSS) with explorations of the practice of UK composer Janet Beat, an electronic and electro-acoustic music pioneer.

The project is informed by Luke’s collaboration with GLOSS and with University of Glasgow musician-researchers Louise Harris and Kevin Leomo. Drawing on their respective practices, Fowler traces aesthetic and historical resonances between music made today and Janet Beat’s use of electronic instruments and experimentation with techniques such as visual scores. Extending Fowler’s long-standing interest in how cultural and political figures of the 1960s and 1970s are remembered, 'A Sensation Never Yet Known' also reflects his own practice as a musician and an artist-filmmaker.

Luke Fowler lives and works in Glasgow. Fowler questions the style and political implications of conventional modes of documentary through a varied practice which encompasses film, sound, installation and photography. He is concerned with finding new ways to meaningfully engage with marginal cultural figures, spaces and archive materials through the medium of 16mm film. His moving image works have charted an alternative history of Britain as well as considering significant international musicians and artists – revisiting the work of Margaret Tait, R. D. Laing, Patrick Cowley, and Brunhild Ferrari, amongst others.

He was nominated for The Turner Prize in 2012 and received the inaugural Derek Jarman Award in 2008. In 2014, Fowler was one of the recipients of Artists and Archives: Artists’ Moving Image, a unique residency programme based at BBC Scotland. In 2014, MACK published Fowler’s first monograph of his photo archive. Fowler has exhibited and shown his films internationally. His film Mum’s Cards was awarded the 2019 Scottish Short Film Award at Glasgow Short Film Festival and the prize for Best Short at Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival of Navarre, Spain. In 2023, Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait was awarded the La Scam International Award at Cinéma du Réel.

A Sensation Never Yet Known: Supported by GLOSS and Outer Spaces. Additionally supported by Glasgow International with funds from the Scottish Government's Festival EXPO Fund

WAITING LIST + NEWSLETTER