Slow bell takes its name from a signal once used in nautical navigation — one bell, ahead slow — and from the practice of tolling, a bell rung slowly at a funeral to mark a death.

The three works here were field recorded on the beach at Galveston and augmented with lap steel, piano, and bass synth. Guitar improvisations were layered with sounds captured on the island — birds, cruise ship horns, the ambient life of the Gulf — to create pieces that are at once site-specific and inward-looking.

The recordings accompanied an exhibition of databent photographs at the Galveston Arts Center, November 2025 – February 2026. Mom loved Galveston. This work is a tribute to the place and to her memory.

THE BOOK

Slow Bell the book is an unbound 8.5×11, 16-page, 4-color Riso-printed piece held together by a belly band. The pages are printed as posters of all the original exhibition images. When folded together the images collide in surprising ways, only resolving once the book is disassembled. The code of many of the digital images has been scrambled to create generative glitches.

Printed by Rising Tide Projects, Galveston. Edition of 55.

Available as a Book + Cassette Bundle on Bandcamp.

THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition featured nine large and medium-scale databent photographic prints along with two digital frames across the walls of the Brown Foundation Gallery, accompanied by an intermittent soundscape played on two speakers placed in opposing corners.

Among the original works, two photographs from Stone's mother's collection were included: one showing her as a five-year-old laughing lakeside while sitting on a car trunk, and another she took while posing as a press photographer — Billie Jean King exiting the "Battle of the Sexes" match against Bobby Riggs at the Astrodome, September 20, 1973.

Galveston Arts Center, Brown Foundation Gallery
November 15, 2025 – February 1, 2026

ABOUT PSO

Porch Swing Orchestra is an art project begun by Barry Stone that explores the interplay between still images and sound. Photographs and musical improvisations build a framework for deep listening and visual contemplation. Stone plays acoustic guitar with a Fahey-inspired picking style mixed with electronic effects — like My Bloody Valentine for a campfire. The sounds of the outside become part of the music.

Since 2018, PSO has collaborated with dozens of musicians, artists, poets, writers, and activists to publish over 240 unique combinations of images and sounds.

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