15 September 2008
Sound artists galore
Image: Formed in 1995, Toydeath coerce all their music from tortured electronic toys.
What is happening in the sound art world today? resonate asked a handful of young Australian sound artists some basic questions and got the following answers. The list will be added to as more replies come in.
Rob Curgenven – Matt Hoare – Jasmine Guffond – Lawrence English – Nick Mariette – Shannon O'Neill – Jodi Rose – Scott Sinclair – Thembi Soddell – Nick Wishart
Rob Curgenven
Tell us about your work. What is it that you do?
My work as a sound artist is focused on harmonics, textures and resonance, as articulated not only through instruments/objects, in space and place, but also in time and the dislocation of the remote – exploring slowly shifting layers in the fabric of fields of perception. The work often employs unprocessed field recordings on DAT, which aim to articulate the space in which they are made – not as documents or artifacts, but drawing upon the spatial and durational integrity of sound. Adjunct to this, immersive resonances are important in live performances and studio production: the manipulation of overtones and sound pressure in an analog environment (ie with a mixing desk, not with a computer), creating a physical (corporeal) dimension to the work as well as bringing non-linear, or perhaps post-architectural, elements into play. One challenge underlying this approach is translating the work into a range of environments – not just indoors.
Where are you based?
Having lived for much of the past eight years in Australia's Northern Territory, working in small towns and remote locations in radio, health and the arts as well as with indigenous people, this has had considerable impact on my approach to sound and also to space. Following the Federal Government Intervention into Remote Indigenous Communities (see: a report on the Australian Human Rights Commission website), I have relocated from the NT – at least until this policy is examined and changed – and am currently based in Milan and Berlin.
What are your working on at the moment?
Developing and touring the air+electricity project with overhead projectionist Katrin Bethge; working on some installations; a few CDs for my label Recorded Fields, including another sound atlas, solo electroacoustic work and a compilation project with artists from Portugal, Belgium, Poland and France. As well as playing a few tours and festivals.
Who do you work with?
Although frequently playing solo (partly due to distance in the Territory), I have worked with a range of Australian and European artists in live and improvised settings – from a statistician/ecologist, to visual/projection artists, guitarists, vocalists, drummers, noise and sound artists. Most recently, I have been working with Katrin Bethge (overhead projections, Hamburg) on the air+electricity project and last year with Sumugan Sivanesan (Sydney) exploring feedback/overtones and fieldrecordings.
Where can one experience your work live?
Live, since starting to play live again in 2004: galleries, festivals, concert venues, cinemas, pubs, bars and clubs – tours throughout Australia and around Europe.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
www.recordedfields.net
www.myspace.com/recordedfieldslabel
www.soundsunusual.com
Matt Hoare
Tell us about your work, in general terms. What is it that you do? With whom?
I make electronic music with my own instruments. Instruments which are all based on an idea of making sound with electricity, while incorporating the complexities of the real world. This usually involves some sort of mechanical element. So, my instruments are usually what you would label electro-mechanical. Most of the instruments have a strong visual component, designed as much with performance in mind as any aural ideas. Many of these instruments are experiments in making electronic music without loudspeakers.
What do you call it?
Music
Where are you based?
I live and work in Sydney.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on two ensembles of instruments:
A quartet of automated electro-mechanical instruments that make sound without loudspeakers – A sort of acoustic electronic ensemble. They use three ways of making sound: electric motors turned on and off at audio frequencies; electro-mechanical relays switched at audio frequencies; and live naked sparks triggered at audio frequencies.
And, a live electro band - 'Auto Whore'. The central instrument in the band is a windmill-type structure designed to produce, through magnetic induction, a regular pulse. It's called the 'Thwopper'.
Where can one experience your work live?
I just performed at Electrofringe 2008 in Newcastle. I will be performing at Hardware Gallery in Enmore sometime early in 2009.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
Clatterbox
And hopefully there will be some YouTube clips shortly.
Lawrence English
Tell us about your work. What is it that you do? With whom?
I create a range of works – auditory, installation, visual – concerned with representations of 'sound in space'. The works typically consider a relationship of time and place – counterpointing the two.
What do you call it?
I call it sound.
Where are you based?
Brisbane, Australia.
What are you working on at the moment?
Presently I am working towards an installation at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK. It will be a mixed media installation work exploiting on a variety of 'flat' locations in the peak district.
Where can one experience your work live?
This year – South Africa, South America, UK and Australia. Next year Japan and other locations.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
www.lawrenceenglish.com
www.room40.org
Jasmine Guffond
Tell us about your work. What is it that you do? With whom?
For the last ten years I have been working with Torben Tilly under the moniker 'MINIT'. Minit have been making records, exhibiting sound installations and performing live, developing works of varied scope, based on the use of processed acoustic, electronic, and found sound sources. Minit's music conveys a unique meeting of improvised abstract electronics and stripped back minimalist design, yet reveals in almost every case a penchant for the unexpected, either as a melodic twist into song or as a sudden implosion into chaotic spectral noise.
This year I released a solo record as 'Jasmina Maschina', focused on the musical form of song while continuing to manipulate electronic and found sounds, creating an atmospheric folk soundscape.
Where are you based?
Berlin, Germany.
What are you working on at the moment?
Recording a new Jasmina Maschina album. Developing a way to perform Jasmina songs live, a transition from a home recording production to live performance. I have been developing a midi foot controller in order to manipulate electronic sounds while playing guitar and singing, with the intention of keeping the live performance live and open to improvisation and spontaneity, and allowing the compositions to continue to grow and develop beyond the recorded versions.
Finishing Minit recordings. Setting up a website with collaborator Holly Herndon for an internet cassette label, 'Impossible Children'. An instant and one of a kind noise tape label, where the cassettes were produced on site by the pre-determined Impossible Children portable noise machine, over a four day period in Berlin this year.
Where can one experience your work live?
Currently at concerts in Europe.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
www.myspace.com/minitmusic
www.myspace.com/jasminemaschine
www.myspace.com/organeye
Nick Mariette - photo © Etienne Deleflie
Nick Mariette
Tell us about your work, in general terms. What is it that you do? With whom?
I'm a researcher, experimental electronic musician and sound artist, presently based in Paris and working primarily with spatial audio. This essentially means sound forms that represent space as well as frequencies – and even stereo or intentionally diffused mono signals can be spatial audio. I work with spatial audio recording, artificial spatialisation and playback, mainly using forms of binaural sound (made for headphone listening) or multichannel speaker diffusion. As an experimental musician and sound artist, I like to make and play with ambisonic field recordings, creating artificial soundscapes that have an immersive and affective quality. I've also collaborated on several performances and studio works as half of the duo Metasense with Somaya Langley. As a researcher, I do perceptual experiments and implement spatial audio systems for locative art works – for example, on the AudioNomad project with the sound-artist Nigel Helyer in Sydney from 2004-2007.
What do you call it?
I like to work with any possible means for putting sound work out into the world, from radio, live performance, studio works, film soundtracks, installations or even perceptual research. Most of my work is certainly experimental in the sense of testing and evolving ideas.
Where are you based?
I moved to Paris in April 2008 from Sydney.
What are you working on at the moment?
I'm working on a live spatial sound performance in Cologne in October, some field recording projects and technology for a large locative spatial audio work in Paris called SoundDelta, also on generative music pieces for iPhone with a small Austrian company called Reality Jockey. And not to forget, finalising my PhD thesis on locative spatial audio perception.
Where can one experience your work live?
Next, I'm performing at an event called Raummusik in Cologne on 19 October.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
http://soundsorange.net
http://www.last.fm/music/Nick+Mariette
Shannon O'Neill
Tell us about your work, in general terms. What is it that you do? With whom?
I work across music, radio, internet, performance, text, video and installation. Much of my work includes the use of manipulated found sounds and field recordings, often in combination with more obviously musical techniques. As well as making sound and music under my own name and as Time Being, I have been a member of the groups Wake Up and Listen, The Splinter Orchestra, Plenum, Projek Lansac and Undermind, and have collaborated with many other artists in various media, including filmmaker Husein Alicajic, choreographer Tess de Quincey and new media artist Mari Velonaki.
What do you call it?
It depends on the context. I'm happy to call much of what I do music. Sometimes it's more appropriate to call it sound art, sound design, radio, or just sound.
Where are you based?
Sydney, Australia. And online, most of the time!
What are you working on at the moment?
Completing a PhD on appropriation in Australian experimental music, which includes an examination of my own practice. I'm also doing related research on how the once radical technique of appropriation has in recent years become a central aspect of mainstream digital culture, through the emergence of 'mash-ups'.
Where can one experience your work live?
Sound art and experimental music festivals. Also smaller events, often at artist-run spaces.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
http://shannon-oneill.net
I also run the netlabel Alias Frequencies: http://aliasfrequencies.org
[Shannon's answers added to the article in July 2009]
Jodi Rose recording Bizovik Bridge, Ljubljana
Jodi Rose
Tell us about your work, in general terms. What is it that you do? With whom?
I amplify and record the vibrations in bridges, mainly in the cables, and make experimental music, sound installations and performances. This happens with a variety of collaborations, from the surround-sound symphony with Michael Bates at Sydney Uni, to Luka Dekleva and Luka Princic in an on-site event and expanded cinema performance in Ljubljana; with Emmanuel Rebus, who built a metallic bridge instrument for a performance at Mal au Pixel festival in Paris with live video by Yroyto; bridge performance and video in Singapore with Brian Gothong Tan and local performance artists; remixes by Darren Ng (Sonic Brat), Jacob Kirkegaard, Francisco Lopez and more; early performances with Mari Keski-Korsu (live video), Lasse Kaikkonen and many, many others.
What do you call it?
Conceptual sound art
Where are you based?
Most of the past 18 months in Berlin, with a 3-month sojourn in Singapore for ISEA Artist residency, a month on the Danube with European Sound Delta, nomadic floating sound and radio project, and currently in Zagreb, about to go live on Korcula island for the winter as a residency with siva) (zona . grey) (area . space of contemporary and media art .
What are you working on at the moment?
Filtering and compiling the past five to six years of recordings and experiences into a coherent archive, new online presence and writings.
I have just written 3 proposals for various projects in the new year, only one of which involves bridges... that one is to stream live sound from three bridges as part of the global bridge symphony. The others are for subterranean sound waves and locative sound projects in Paris.
Where can one experience your work live?
In a variety of places... most recently Ljubljana and Paris
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
http://www.singingbridges.net
http://myownspace.fr/jodirose
http://www.sound-delta.eu
Scott Sinclair
Tell us about your work, in general terms. What is it that you do? With whom?
Most of my recent sound work has been under the alias 'Company Fuck'. CxFx combines extreme vocal improvisation, digital noise, hacked electronics, and deliberate musical homage/parody. With no allegiance to one sound or scene, CxFx simultaneously plunders pirated pop music whilst also blowing apart the formulas of so-called 'underground' genres. Nobody is safe from the CxFx treatment. I collaborate sporadically with other extreme sound artists all over the world, the most recently active collaboration being 'Maxi Bacon' – my duo with Freeka Peeka (France).
What do you call it?
Noise.
Where are you based?
Linz, Austria.
What are you working on at the moment?
Making records.
Where can one experience your work live?
I tour semi-regularly in Western Europe.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
http://www.companyfuck.com
http://www.halftheory.com/maxibacon
http://www.halftheory.com
Thembi Soddell
Tell us about your work. What is it that you do? With whom?
Thembi Soddell's volatile sonic worlds morph, shift, rupture and dis-rupture into filmic atmospheres with a distinctly disquieting edge. Contorted into unreal environments and luscious masses of sonic textures, her sound palate sources field recordings, instruments and electronics to be suggestive but often unidentifiable. Her compositions exploit the dynamic extremes, toying with the listeners' sense of expectation and generating anticipatory suspense. She does work for CD, gallery installation, and live performance, and frequently collaborates with cellist Anthea Caddy.
What do you call it?
Sound art.
Where are you based?
Melbourne.
What are you working on at the moment?
A second duo album with Anthea Caddy.
Where can one experience your work live?
Live performances are becoming a rarity.
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
http://cajid.com/thembi
www.myspace.com/thembisoddell
Nick Wishart
What is it that you do? With whom?
I mostly circuit bend toys. Basically, I modify kids' electronic toys to make them into amazing electronic instruments. We play these 'Bentsruments' in an all toy band called Toydeath. You can view some of our toys here.
What do you call it?
I've been told it's Horror Pop.
Where are you based?
Sydney.
What are you working on at the moment?
We're getting ready to go to Europe for a tour. I've just modified a Thomas toy and have a backlog of mods I need to do.
Where can one experience your work live?
We play in Sydney mostly. We have shows at the Sando on 27 September, and an all ages show at the Bald Faced Stag on 5 October. After that you can see us in Berlin!
Where can one find it/you on the internet?
www.toydeath.com
www.myspace.com/toydeath
© Australian Music Centre (2008) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to reproduce this article either online or in print.
Subjects discussed by this article:
The Australian Music Centre connects people around the world to Australian composers and sound artists. By facilitating the performance, awareness and appreciation of music by these creative artists, it aims to increase their profile and the sustainability of their art form. Established in 1974, the AMC is now the leading provider of information, resources, materials and products relating to Australian new music.
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