Pocket Pianos

Posted on 2015-11-13 11:11:48 .

I have a new piece in the first concert of what will hopefully become a regular series:
Transmission is a new occasional contemporary music series taking place in the beautiful surroundings of St. Catherine’s Church on Telegraph Hill in South East London. Our aim is to present explorative and thought-provoking concerts which feature exceptional performers and composers in a welcoming and inclusive environment.
For our first concert we present a multi-keyboard extravaganza featuring pianos, toy pianos, reed organs, pocket pianos, harmoniums, homemade electronics and more. The programme features John Cage’s rarely heard classic Music for Amplified Toy Pianos alongside explorative works by some of the most inventive composers working in London and beyond today.

Come and join us on our new adventure! A bar will be available at the venue.

St. Catherine’s is easily accessible via the London Overground or Rail services to Brockley, New Cross Gate and Nunhead. Tickets only £6 (£4 concession).

Programme:
Patricia Alessandrini: Étude d’après Scarlatti
Ed Bennett: Crazy Legs / Gothic
John Cage: Music for Amplified Toy Pianos
Michael Finnissy: Sonata for Toy Piano
Lauren Sarah Hayes: Patience
Daria Kwiatkowska: Spin
John Lely: Four Reed Organs / Pocket Pianos
Nye Parry: Sinew (premiere)
Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata in D minor, K.10
Arlene Sierra: Painted Bunting

Performers:
Mira Benjamin (toy piano, reed organ, objects)
Ed Bennett (toy piano, reed organ, pocket piano, melodica, objects)
John Lely (toy piano, reed organ, objects)
Nye Parry (Indian harmonium, sound projection, electronics)
Xenia Pestova (piano, toy piano, reed organ, objects)

Venue:
St Catherine’s Hatcham, Telegraph Hill
Pepys Rd, London SE14 5SG

http://www.stcatherinehatcham.com

Overground and Rail: Brockley / Nunhead / New Cross Gate
Bus: 343 / 484

Illusion opens in Kuala Lumpur

Posted on 2015-10-04 21:26:25 .

The Illusion touring exhibition has moved on to Kuala Lumpur after successful runs in San Diego and Charlotte, North Carolina. The show, which features my installation Significant Birds as well as the beautiful The Point of Perception by Madi Boyd with my music, will be at Petrosains from 4th Sept 2015 to 10 Jan 2016. All pieces in the exhibition focus on forms of illusion, playing with and interrogating our perception. There is more about Significant Birds here and I have put together a little promo movie for Significant Birds which you can see on the left.

‘Jack’ at Make||Sound

Posted on 2015-06-05 11:00:31 .

I have created a new installation piece for the Make||Sound sound art festival that runs in Leicester from Saturday 6th June to Thursday 11th June in a pop up venue in the Highcross shopping Mall. The venue, a former Virgin Media store, will be transformed into an exhibition space for new sound works. My installation, entitled ‘Jack’ explores an idea I wrote about some 15 years ago, the Anxious Sound Object. Drawing on Harold Rosenberg’s notion of the anxious object, and artwork so realistic it causes anxiety in the viewer. The anxious sound object uses a concealed sound source to similarly evoke a possible reality. ‘Jack’ looks like a load of old rubbish!

Keynote at Make||Sound

Posted on 2015-06-05 10:03:24 .

In conjunction with the Make||Sound exhibition (see above) I will be giving a keynote talk at the Make||Sound symposium at The Curve in Leicester on Friday 12th June. Using examples from my own practice, my talk, entitled Public Engagement, Private Divorce, Contexts and Motivations in a Sonic Arts Practice eals (in part) with the relationship between the Artist’s motivations and narratives and the requirements of audiences, commissioners and funders.

York Music at 50

Posted on 2015-06-01 10:52:59 .

I have just completed a short (50 seconds!) piece for a concert at my Alma Mater, York University Music Department. The concert features 50 such work from composers who have graduated from the department in its 50 years of existance. It is part of a reuniun/celebration event to mark this Aniversary. I had a lot of fun writing for Cello and Bass Clarinet and am looking forward to the premier on Saturday 13th June.
The concert will be at 4pm in the Jack Lyons concert hall of which I have many happy memories!

Interactive Audio Workshop Porto Digital

Posted on 2015-05-05 10:49:22 .

I recently returned from a visit to Porto Digital, a hub for new media companies in Recife, Brazil. I was invited to talk and give a one day workshop on sound for interactive installation as part of a week-long series of training opportunitiesfor local sound designers and artists. The event was sponsored by the Department of Trade and Investment, through the British Consulate in Sau Paulo, and focussed on sound and music for film, games and interactive installation. The workshop included practical work with camera sensing techniques (colour tracking and frame differenceing) and gestural control using wii controllers. The day ended in style with a roughy hewn but entertaining performance of Frevo, a local dance, with a colour tracked umbrella!

BEAM in Kochi

Posted on 2015-02-07 17:39:08 .

Cathy Lane’s installation BEAM opens in Kochi in Kerala India on Sunday 8th February. The installation, created together with students from the Srishti media school in Bangalore, explores the lighthouses and maritime life of Kochi, through interviews with lighthouse keepers, field recordings and other found sounds. Sounds are mixed in the space according to real time AIS shipping data using custom software I developed for the piece, which allows the artists to assign sounds to different categories of shipping. the software tracks local shipping in real time and updates the mix according to the distances of ships from the local lighthouses as well as other data. The exhibition runs till 18th February at the Artry Gallery, Kochi and is satellite event of the Kochi Bienale.

Bird:Cage at ICA

Posted on 2015-02-07 17:30:57 .

My installation Bird Cage was featured as part of the Parallax05 event at the ICA on 7th Feb. The event aimed to unite “irreconcilable” musical approaches in a single concert and featured installations, improvisations and composed works in and around the theatre space in the ICA, featuring music from composers such as Ed Jesson, Paul Newland, Gwyn Pritchard and Sam Hayden. It was organised by the composition and research departments of Trinity Laban Conservatoire.
Bird:Cage, originally created for the John Cage festival Out of the Cage in 2012, features a single partial of the voice of John Cage, presented as a chirping speaker cone in a bird cage and is a kind of forerunner to my installation Significant Birds. At the ICA it was presented in the entrance to the concert and merged into the performance through a new sound clip revealing the source of the sound through the gradual transformation of an increasing number of electronic virtual birds into the recognisable sound of Cage reading his famous Lecture on Nothing.

Exploded Sound and Significant Birds paper

Posted on 2015-02-07 17:17:33 .

I have written a paper describing in detail the technical and aesthetic processes adopted in the Exploded Sound and Significant Birds installations. The paper appears in the current issue of the online sound arts journal Divergence Press and can be found here.
In it I discuss technical aspects of my approach to spatialising individual partials of complex sounds, alongside the aesthetic aims, describing the research process and some conclusions that have been drawn from experiencing the works in situ. The discussion locates the work within my wider research on navigable sonic structures.
The issue, edited by Eric Lyon, is devoted to approaches to novel approaches to sound spatialisation and also features a paper on the ZKM Klangdom, for which I am currently composing a new piece, growing out of a month long residency in Karlsruhe last summer.

Sculpting Motion

Posted on 2015-01-16 09:21:15 .

Madi Boyd’s new solo show opens tomorrow, 17th January, with a private view from 2 – 4pm and thereafter each Saturday from 12 – 4pm. The show features two large installation works, The Point of Perception and Projective Distortions, in which moving image is combined with sculptural objects in intriguing ways, playing with our perception of movement and form. I have designed the sound for both pieces which interact sonically to create an immersive environment to complement the play of light in the space. The show is at the Gerald Moore Gallery in the grounds of Eltham College on Mottingham Lane, London, SE9 4RW until the 28th February. The exhibition is co-curated by Art x Neuroscience (AXNS) and you can find more about the exhibition on their website.