EASTLEIGH College has welcomed a sound installation and film artist as part of its visiting artists programme.

Stephen Cornford, whose work has been exhibited in the UK, Europe and Asia, gave pre-degree foundation diploma in art, design and media students insight into what he does.

He is a previous research fellow at the Sonic Art Research Unit of Oxford Brookes University and is interested in consumer audio electrics.

Mr Cornford reconfigures devices to achieve a range of new senses and noises.

His recent ‘Migration’ installation of 97 dictaphones on his studio wall mimicked the sound of migrating birds and insects.

He said: “The aim of my talk was to inspire the students by showing how I have developed my work, and how you can often start a piece which can lead onto other work, and take you in a completely different direction.

“As with my ‘Migration’ installation, I try to create something beyond a machines capability, and explore the idea of production to pollution. I also wanted to open the students’ eyes to how they can source materials, old and new, for their artwork.”

Student Sophie Wilson said she found his talk interesting.

“His installation work is of particular relevance to me as a lot of my work is installation based so I found it useful hearing about how he stages his work in various settings,” she said.

“After this course I will be progressing onto university to study fine art sculpture.”

Course manager, Dr Sebastiane Hegarty, said: “It was a real privilege to have an artist at the cutting edge of fine art and Sonic Art practice come and speak to the students today. He made his fascination with what could be seen as benign objects really interesting and encouraged our students to explore things in different ways.”

After the talk, Stephen had tutorials with several of the students, discussing their art work and university aspirations.