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Who We Are
Patrick Farmer
“Homeopathy was home before I knew.
During the pandemic I moved to Sheffield, and befriended a gentle Maine Coon, called Oscar. I’d later find out that he was quite famous, with many web pages dedicated to him. It took some time, but eventually he jumped on my lap, and as a friend said, started ‘making biscuits’, mimicking the process of trying to glean milk from the mother. After this, he curled up, and fell asleep. He’s a big cat, and I had no wish to disturb. Within reach was a copy of Richard Gerber’s book, ‘Vibrational Medicine’, I thumbed through, and was immediately drawn to the chapter on Homeopathy.
As I read I realised, I’ve been here before - I have a background, not only in music, but in sonic art and field recording. I was a touring drummer and electronics performer for many years before this, I also ran a record label, curated numerous music festivals and lecture series, I’ve published several books and essays, written many music compositions, exhibited my work all over the world, and was also a care worker for many years.
There will always be a place in my heart for Oscar, dear daemon that he is, because during his slumber, which lasted four hours, I became, well, what I can only describe as more and more awake, I realised then and there what it was I truly wanted to do with my life, and haven’t looked back.
Fifteen years previous, I had hit my head whilst installing a sound installation about melting ice, resulting in a number of
auditory and balance related disturbances, one of which was vertigo. I saw many an otologist and audiologist, time after time being told that there was nothing to be done. This destabilization ushered me out of music and into field recording and education, I got my PHD and began teaching at Oxford Brookes as a senior lecturer and started to manage the Sonic Arts Research Unit, under the auspices of which I still curate the arts journal, A Row of Trees.
After Sheffield I found myself in Malvern, and upon seeing homeopath Kelda White, after just four months, my vertigo was gone, and has not returned. In an enchanted stroke of synchronicity, Kelda had started running a homeopathy college just outside Malvern, twinned with the Southern College of Homeopathy, she said I could come for a taster session, and within five minutes of the first lecture, about arnica and decay, I realised just what a boundless ecology homeopathy truly is. My view of, not just the world, but the cosmos, continues to evolve, to metamorphose, taking many shapes, revealing many lives, utmost among them, my understanding of health, body, and soul. As part of a holistic practise, homeopathy continues to teach, humble, and enthral.”
Patrick’s education, experience and research includes Ba (2009, Middlesex), Ma (2001, Oxford) and Phd (2016, Oxford) qualifications in music, contemporary art and sonic art. He has been awarded an advanced module qualification at the School of Homeopathy (2023, Stroud), and is a graduate of the Southern College of Homeopathy (2025, London), part of the IHA, Institute of Homeopathy Accreditation.
He has taught sonic poetics, field recording, poetry, fine art, philosophy, music and sonic art at Oxford Brookes, across Foundation, Ba, Ma, and Phd, since 2015.
Patrick has given talks at venues and events such as Nottingham University, the Polish Cultural Institute in London, Tuned City in Brussels, the Canadian Embassy in Tallinn, The Walking Festival of Sound in Sweden, South London Gallery, the first Aural Diversity conference in Leicester, and the annual British Tinnitus Association Conference in Sheffield.
He has curated and organised the audiograft festival in Oxford for over ten years; the Sound I’m Particular talk series; The On Vibration lecture series; Sonic Art Visiting Practitioner Series; and the Compost and Height online record label.
He has had residencies, exhibitions and shows at COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow; The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London; Modern Art Oxford; Cafe Oto in London; International Notation Colloquium in Mexico City; Sirius Arts centre in Cobh; The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; Machine Project in Los Angeles; Goodbye Blue Monday in New York; Ftarri Festival in Tokyo; Aarhus’s Art writing Festival; Now Now Festival in Sydney, Australia; and a prolonged residency as part of a collaboration between Sound and Music and Forestry Commission England.
He has also published many music releases, books, essays and compositions, some of which have been taught as part of experimental writing modules at Harvard University.
Jessa is an artist on the periphery of many spheres of influence and therefore deeply centered in the liminal, ecotonal, relational and translational. She is compelled towards rhizomatic frameworks, pattern literacy and the ability of ritual containers to metabolize trauma. Her practice merges community organizing, ecological stewardship, durational performance, sound, somatics, sculpture, video, text and photography. Her process places trust in the autonomous energy of each expression, often behaving as an apparatus for dual vision, micro and macroscopic at once, so that we are better able to see ourselves in the ineffable wiggliness (chaos/irrationality) of nature and its harmonious systems/structures (order/rationality) in equal measure.
Jessa Carta’s relationship with sound and music is one of re-enchantment and offers subtle merging with the diaphanous messages carried in vibration. Her work often evokes a potency of place and touches the tethers of our entanglement with the living- dying world.
Jessa’s interdisciplinary approach is necessitated by the expansive subject matters that her work explores, particularly how two-legged people might reimagine ourselves within the web of cosmos. This path of inquiry meanders through the terrain of
spirituality, decolonial theory, musicology, ethnobotany, biomimetics, linguistics, regenerative economics, and land stewardship arts-based research.
Her education and research includes certifications as a natural builder from Cal Earth (2017, Hisperia, CA), regenerative earth stewardship from Occidental Arts & Ecology (2020, Occidental, CA, solidarity economy from LIFT Economy (2021, Berkeley, CA), placed-based material studies from Pocoapoco (2023, Oaxaca, MX), breathwork training from Infinite Crescendo (2024, Topanga, CA) and web-based tech agnostic composition and sound design with Max/RNBO and p5.js from School For Poetic Computation (2023, New York, NY)
Jessa is a founding member of the
Seattle-based experimental collective LOVECITYLOVE - a diverse, accessible, and inclusive secular “art church”. Here she co-curated and produced numerous shows and events including Yellow Fish Durational Performance Festival.
Alongside her art practice Jessa has aided in the expression of countless other artists, small business and established global companies as a multi-modal creative partner.
Jessa Carta