An Innate Waveform (Zine #2)
By Ruth Allen
‘An Innate Waveform’ is my second 28-page zine available now in a beautifully printed limited edition of 100.
Inspired by an edited collection of academic essays (Bodies of Sound, 2024) exploring sound, listening and gender I created this zine as a personal call-and-response to the source text (in a similar vein as my first zine) and in doing so found myself writing ‘sound notes as memoir’. The project started as a time-bound learning exercise - I wanted to read the source text for my own professional development as a ‘professional listener’ - but it quickly took on a small, but curious, life of its own in which the writing became praxis and I found new ways to think about sound, and write about it.
An Innate Waveform is my second self-initiated curiosity project between longer book projects. After publishing my second book Weathering through the traditional route, I wanted to spend some time making something of my own again - with full control over production, design and content. This is how Great Geological Controversies - Third Edition (Zine #1) came about. Setting myself small writing projects is where my writing started many years ago - it is one of the first creative outlets I remember having as a child - and it feels important for me to continue the practice deep into adulthood, as I am! Self-initiated creative projects have a raw magic all of their own, and are able to capture with more immediacy a current way of thinking, or preoccupation. I love the process of making my own products to be held and loved by supporters of my work.
An Innate Waveform explores the idea of sound as memoir. The genesis of the project was time-bound by design, and so the resulting zine presents episodic fragments that can only ever show something about memory as it dwells in the shortly-lived moment. As with the first, this zine brings together and introductory personal essay, the writing project itself in 30 vignettes, a movement practice to explore, and new photography from travel in 2024 that speaks to the themes within.
The zine is published on beautiful, naturally flecked recycled paper and card stock, uncoated and matte finish to suit the nature of the project. It matches my first zine in its size, volume and materiality. It relies on a muted colour palette, which echoes some of the colours of Weathering. It was printed just up the road in Leeds, UK.
Each booklet will be numbered inside the front cover in pencil. The print run is limited to 100. Once they are gone, they are gone.
