Contributors include: the exhibition curators (Martin Clark - Artistic Director Tate St Ives, Michael Bracewell - writer and critic, Alun Rowlands - artist, writer and Head of Fine Art and University of Reading).

They will be joined by Chris Stephens - Curator (Modern British Art) & Head of Displays at Tate Britain as well as exhibiting artists Jeremy Millar, Mark Titchner and Clare Woods.

Alongide the symposium there will be a screening of The Incredible String Band Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending introduced by the film's director Peter Neal and followed by a discussion with Adrian Whittaker. Adrian Whittaker is a music historian and freelance researcher who edited the definitive Incredible String Band biography, Be Glad - An Incredible String Band Compendium (Helter Skelter Publishing, 2003), as well as supervising a number of ISB CD reissues. He is currently collaborating with Michael Bracewell on a feature for The Wire about The Moodies, an obscure music and performance outfit from the early Seventies.

Other creative responses to the show include the screening of a new collaborative film Dominion by author Philip Hoare and artist Angela Cockayne, which in fifteen minutes evokes the mysterious shape and meaning of the sperm whale. 

Philip Hoare is the winner of the Samuel Johnson prize 2009 and is the author of six works of creative non-fiction, including Spike Island, England's Lost Eden and most recently Leviathan or The Whale, 2008 with the accompanying BBC2 Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick.

A new composition by experimental band Cyclobe integrates cutting-edge electronic music with a strong feeling for the English landscape. The work, The Woods Are Alive with The Smell of His Coming is a hymn to Pan, composed and performed by Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower with contributions from Mike York, Cliff Stapleton and John Contreras. Recorded at Strange Hotel, on the South East Coast of England, 2009.

About Cyclobe

Cyclobe are a musical duo formed in the late-nineties by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown. Unusual among electronic avant-gardists, they incorporate a wide variety of ethnic and folk instrumentation - Cyclobe's expanded line-up currently includes highly respected folk musicians Mike York (pipes, duduks and rebabs) and Cliff Stapleton (hurdy gurdy). 

Other recent guest musicians include Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, and Thighpaulsandra , known for his synthesizer work with Julian Cope and Spiritualized.  Cyclobe's next album will be released in early 2010, featuring cover artwork by New York artist Fred Tomaselli.

Both Thrower and Brown were, at various times, members of the legendary esoteric music group Coil. Formed in 1983 by Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson, the group dissolved in 2003 after Balance's accidental death but remain internationally celebrated for their sustained exploration of the musical avant-garde. 

Thrower was a member of the group from 1985 to 1993, contributing to the highly regarded albums Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and Love's Secret Domain. Brown joined in 2000 and remained until the group's demise in 2003, playing many live performances (including shows at London's Royal Festival Hall and Barbican), collaborating on the design of the group's lavish stage visuals, and appearing on the albums ANS, Queens of the Circulating Library and The Ape of Naples. 

Stephen Thrower's connections to the cinema date back to his work for Derek Jarman; working with Coil he recorded the soundtrack for The Angelic Conversation, Jarman's avant-garde setting of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and appeared in three of the director's most celebrated works, The Last of England, Imagining October and Caravaggio. He also worked on music for Clive Barker's Sex-Magick opus Hellraiser, scored Anna Thew's controversial Channel 4 commission Cling Film, and recently wrote electronic music for the Raindance award-winning British gangster film Down Terrace.

Ossian Brown is a painter and visual artist whose 'Celestiographic' pictures can be seen on the covers to Cyclobe's The Visitors and Luminous Darkness. His recent pictures, one of which ("Crown") is projected as part of Cyclobe's Dark Monarch presentation, constitute a magical bestiary of semi-anthrapoid hybrids, oneiric creature portraits and deliquescent dream totems. A leading collector and champion of the British visonary artist Austin Osman Spare (1886 - 1956), Brown has also collated several themed collections of early photography; his first collection will be published by Jonathan Cape in October 31st 2010.

The Woods Are Alive with the Smell of His Coming, will appear on their forthcoming album next year.