Nick Richardson

One thing everyone knows about Erik Satie is that he was an eccentric. There are many kinds of eccentric and Satie was most of them. He presented himself as a nutty professor figure, not a composer but a ‘gymnopedist’ and ‘phonometrician’. He dined – or so he claimed in his autobiography – only on ‘food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals’. He walked around Paris in priestly robes, then swapped them for a wardrobe full of identical brown corduroy suits; his interests included rare sea creatures, forgotten local history and the occult.

Christian Marclay​’s new show (at White Cube Bermondsey until 12 April) is all about teaching you to hear with your eyes. Surround Sounds, its centrepiece, is a soundproofed room full of people watching sound in silence. The graphic sound effects from thousands of comic books have been cut out, animated and projected onto the walls. Blue rectangles with the word ‘tap’ on...

To make​ a DIY tear-gas mask first cut the bottom off a large plastic bottle. Then turn it upside down and cut away a tall U-shaped area big enough to put your face into. Get a dust mask, soak it in vinegar and insert it into the bottle’s neck. Attach a couple of elastic bands to the edges and wear. These instructions, with accompanying diagrams, are printed on yellow paper and placed...