Category: Visiting Practioners

Fari Bradley will only overview two aspects of her work – feminism and sketching. My work is very both vocal and silent.

Part of her PhD is about Practice is the research. In his book Re-imagining the sketchbook as a medium of encounter (2018), Nigel Power stated that sketchbooks can’t be integrated into learning. John Berger published a book that defends a symbiotic desire to get closer and closer, to enter the self of what is being drawn. Simultaneously, there is the foreknowledge of immanent distance. Such drawings aspire to be both a secret rendezvous and an au revoir! Fari practised this idea in a collaborative improvisation taken place in 2015 with Christopher John Weaver and Maxeem Meraki, where she tried to draw and sketch the experience:

What is it for sound artists this notion of sketching? How can we visualise sound as an improviser? “The music is an offering to the audience and not a shot. It encourages communication rather than consumption. Daniel Charles describes this coupling between audience and performers as the climax”.

She also debated where women are placed in the sound art scene in her work. Women take back the noise, an event organised by 47 women artists.

Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist that started her PhD recently – Listening practices for Social Art. She collabs with Soundcamp and Shortwave Collective. Her practice entails bringing sound to the masses. She helps communities build bonds with sound and empower themselves through it.

The Right to Record (2021) – Audio & Zine

For six months, I worked with a project group of four residents who have experienced long term ill health or disabilities to produce artwork through social practice, which has since developed into a political campaign…

https://www.sound-art-hannah.com/right-to-record

This is a fantastic project, and I consider this type of art the most interesting and complicated to develop for me.

Meet Me on the Radio (2021)

Meet Me on the Radio was a weekly radio show broadcast every Tuesday at 11.30am – 12 midday on Resonance FM between May 2020 – May 2021. It was conceived as a partnership between myself and Grant Smith with Meet Me at the Albany, a programme for over 60s by the Albany and Entelechy Arts. 

Lindsay Wright is a composer. She started in bands, orchestras and musical groups. She studied Musical Technology and later got a place in London’s National Television and Film School. The Mystery of D. B. Cooper (HBO), Mudlarks, and Lines.

The mystery of D. B. Cooper is a feature documentary about the hijacking of a plane in 70s America by a man known as D. B. Cooper. The film does not identify a suspect – but instead takes a broader look at the obsession around the unsolved crime. A mix of re-enactment scenes, archive footage and interviews go between a few characters who believe they know the true identity of D. Cooper. Interviews the writer of a book on the mystery, the flight crew who were there when the plane was hijacked and the law enforcement officers who worked on the case. The director wanted a quirky, Fargo flavour to the score. Co-written and composed with Tim Atack.

Analysis:

• It starts with the stereotyped 70’s music (wah wah guitar, heist-movie-style flute etc.) and our more modern score.
• She started by mapping out points in the footage that I wanted to mark, for example, the shot of the plane after “get me there, let’s go.”
• Change of tone from panic and hurry to the flight crew talking about their experiences keeping calm.
• The Triplet motif was a recurring theme for Cooper throughout the film.
• Created a sense of threat with the ongoing throughout the cue coupled with the chord swells
• I used a fundamental change as the cue was quite long, and didn’t want it to feel like it was treading water.

He’s having some fun:

• This is the theme of Jerry Thomas’ character.
• He has walked the woods of Washington daily for the past 30 years and believes that Cooper could not have survived the plane jump.
• We went through a few different versions of this cue to nail what the director wanted.
• His determination and obsession were quite isolating, but he didn’t have any personal ties to the case like some other characters.
• Slightly off-kilter sound world from the other character – quirky but still a hint of that 70s vibe to suggest he’s stuck in the past. 

 MUDLARKS (short drama)

• Two young homeless girls – Ansel and Skylar (Mirren Mack and Naomi Preston-Low)
• Live in a tent by the Thames and work in shifts.
• Take the VO into consideration -try to have the guitar motifs in the spaces between dialogue.
• She went through many interactions with this cue but tried to capture the city’s vastness at night with the intimacy of Ansel’s monologue.
• There is a very long introduction under the voice-over – using the synths vocals to create interest in the repeated guitar motif.
• The original demo was just guitar, vocals and percussion.
• Used Dom’s original drum programming

LINES

• Written during the first lockdown of the covid 19 pandemic
• sonically influenced by artists such as Patrick Jonsson, Angus MacRae, Keaton Henson, Johann Johannson, Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Poppy Ackroyd
• Live string trio – violin performed by Natalia Tsupryk, cello by Derren Cullen and viola by me
• Mixed by her
• Mastered by Katie Tavini
• 3 instrumentals and one vocal track, planning a series of EP’s in this format.

themes

• Exile was about leaving London and finding myself in a new place.
• Where The Light Touches to keep moving, keep figuring things out and keep on going during uncertain times
• Through Glass was a response to people only being able to see loved ones in care homes and assisted living facilities through the window – protecting them by staying away.
• On Fire was inspired by the idea of doing so much for someone else that you lose the ability to care for yourself
• Not something that I make public with my artist tracks, but I like to have a focus and them when I’m Writing.

musical traits

• timbre
• constant motion
• cyclical layers
• texture
• rhythm
• harmony instrumentation
• structure 
• slides
• bass
• space and depth

Lindsay’s approach to film doesn’t connect with my views on film, most probably because I’m used to a cinema that doesn’t rely on artefacts to prove its meanings. Many film directors argued about the usage of the soundtrack in a film and many criticised it when overused. I do believe that when sound is well-edited and conceptualised, the film doesn’t need music to prove itself to the spectator. However, I do recognise the amount of work put into these types of productions. In fact, it is rare the case where the sound team connects with the music department as they are separate on the workflow. About three weeks ago, I’ve finished editing the sound for a short film, and I decided to do 2 versions: one with only sound and another with the M+E. The director watched both versions and said “this film doesn’t work with music as much as I love how it works on the film”. I’m not trying to prove anyone, as this is not a matter of whether “true cinema” is or isn’t exempt from having music on it. However, it is not a matter of genre, but perhaps style and cinematic influences.

She was born in Dublin, now in London and NYC and studied fine art. She will release an album soon, but the release date is still undefined. It is complicated what is her practice about. She is an artist, but she’s also not. Is she a sound artist?

I don’t use the term sound art. Too ambiguous. I call it sound practice or new noise. If you make a piece of art with steel, it’s not going to be called steel art. Why does that happen with sound?

Vivienne Griffin

Why sound, and why does she navigate through this format? On the Somerset House web page’s biography, the header states “Griffin’s antidisciplinary practice includes electronic noise(…)”. But the same page refers to her practice product as audio work. This dilemma with nomenclatures drives the practice ambiguous and whether its existence is valid or not. It is again the postmodern machine deconstructing everything that already exists to create new perspectives and new ideas. This way of thinking – sound practice – fascinated me. I think it is important to question ourselves the reasons why we are making such type of products and I consider Griffins inquiries on the medium very important.

My practices are divided into two formats: studio and workshops.

Vivienne Griffin

In this brief, I will review two projects that she developed lately. The first will be to her perfomance with Paul Purgas, featuring Flora Yin-Wong, rkss, Joe Namy, Nik Nak and Annie Goh, called Latent Joy for Somerset House Studios with AGM. For the first time, AGM will partner with neighbours St Mary Le Strand, located across the newly-pedestrianised Strand Aldwych. Latent Joy is the collaboration that was set among artists that belonged on the same residency to be held on the first large scale event set by Somerset Studios after the pandemic.

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The voice, vernacular language and noise are used in text works (2D and aural) and free poetic form is applied to assemblages of objects (found and made). 

Somerset House Studios on Vivienne Griffin

Early in her career, she could be described as a musician/composer/performer. She’s now seen as a chamber musician/sound artist. She’s famous for doing live voice overlaying with digital devices to make rhythmic and abstract sounds.

About the instruments that she uses: I consider the instrument the combination of my voice and the electronics that I use. She started in the 1980s, and the instruments now are way different from the ones she uses now. She used to carry a rack of 7 analogue devices and a mixer with effects. In 1999, she transferred all her instruments to digital on a program called MAX. No tax flights no more. She built a MAX patch that could carry all her instruments. Over time, the tech advances could be helpful or a curse, as she reflects. New versions and plugins would come every year and it would be complicated to keep up with all these updates.

In the first performance, she used a delay unit – as simple as it is – and more and more delays were added from that performance onwards. However, they were called digital delays, but the controls or analogue. The software plugins maintain a certain consistent cadency for her work – more practical and more exact.

1990’s – PARTS OF SPEECH Performance and sound piece.

2010 – Baggage Allowance – a gallery exhibition with sound and showcased objects that died last year because of the flash plugin where it runs. But she wants to get back with it in a new way. By this time, she expanded her knowledge of sound and video installation. The installation has seven pieces, with sculptures. The bag x-ray: an interactive installation that analysed the baggage of each visitor. Antique trunk: old trunk that people would use to travel where sound and image would be triggered when the drawers were open. These drawers were filled with real objects so people could see them. Suitcase: a fool grown human sleeping inside a suitcase with the sound of Pamela’s voice muttering and mumbling.

2007 – She made an immersive setup. Sonic Gestures. Gestures associated with sound are showcased on 8 screens. It was showcased later in Oslo and Berlin.

She’s interested in many areas of the art world, but the sound is the centre of her work. Speech is what she considers to be the thing she most focuses on. After recording interviews with people, she figures out that those same artefacts possess rhythmic and melodic valuable material. MEMORY TRACE (2012).

Also, she’s been making chamber music performances with electronics. All her chamber works have a written score. She wrote a piece for Kronos Quartet – PAMELA Z and the Movement of the Tongue (World Premiere February 21, 2013, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco). Also for Sol Quartet – ATTENTION, while a video was played in the background, it would be used as a guide and notation for the quartet. The players are distracted by cellphones, calls, and texts, which change the end of the piece.

She is currently in Rome, working on Simultaneous.

She started to develop the S1 in 2014 in space, where she would do shows. “Many of the questions that I ask now, I wouldn’t ask back then (…)”. Some exhibitions: 

• Emily Jones: Orange Action Clinic (2015)
• Justin James: Reed Shining Bodies (2015)
• Marisa Jezak
• Tony Hope
• Coast2c New Year’s Eve (2015)
• Birch Cooper Ornamental Hypergate Conglomerate (2016): first time doing a generative piece, where Cooper would build his synthesizers. 
• Grouper (2016) was a slightly derivated form of the show to showcase experimental noise music. “The energy in the space was excellent (…)”. 
• Rachel Malin & Raque Ford: Raquel Raquel (2016). 
• Synth Library (2016). “Alisa Derubis approached me to build a space with synthesizers: ‘I can go to expos and bring stuff back(…)‘“. It was a space dedicated only to use the libraries, the same way a book library works, where you can use the synths to explore and obtain new practices or knowledge. Every synthesizer would have a patch synth so one can learn the synth profoundly. People that attended: The Creatix, Wizard Apprentice, Julius Smack. 

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Around the same time, she started working with Moog – “I don’t particularly appreciate being told what to do, but I had to put capitalism aside and make sure I could provide the artists I was working with the gear they need to create artworks (…)“. 

In 2016, Ghostship hosted a show where a fire took place, and many people died. “It was a very physical period. Many of my friends died. It changed our community forever. Nothing was the same after that. We were so traumatized. My flatmate was getting sued by many families (…)”. 

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Furniture, pianos, artwork, RVs filling Ghost Ship warehouse caused heavy smoke in fire, investigator testifies

Outside of their space, she taught in different projects: Moog Workshop (LA) and Kontaktor Festival (Latvia). “I’m proud of the outcome that S1 took. A no-budget production that allowed many artists to blossom (…)”.

In 2018, they were working with the Wysing Art Centre to collab in an exhibition called More of an Avalanche. Also, she collaborated with Keyon Gaskin in a show called Subharmonic. 

She abandoned S1 and supported Coaxial Arts in 2020, where she participated in a fundraiser. Before moving to Berlin, she lent some of her gear that she wouldn’t eventually use in LA, which is still on – Feminist Synth Lab. Later she started working on a new sound piece called EROTIKA 25. She was 30, and it was her first time leaving the continent. She performed in Latvia and other places – “I have to stop being a baby, and I should put it in the radio. Now it’s a permanent piece of living in the online world (…)”. She moved to Berlin, and she found out she had cancer. She burned out. 

“This day, I woke up in the hospital and thought, ‘I’m going to die. Yesterday I was doing loads of things, and now I’m dying. I’ve to take time, be at my body and heal. But it was hard. I kept second-guessing who I have all the time (…)'”. 

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During the pandemic, she released Sweet Hour (Enmossed x Psychic Liberation). It was the first she decided to use ASMR within sound. I’m ready to release more. In 2021, she released Fringe through Ecstatic Recordings. In 2020, it was a platform waiting to be released she designed it with a finish synth company, which focuses on the idea of manipulating ASMR – they named the project/platform AMQR.

People Like Us, or Vicky Bennet, has been a media artist since 1990/1991, but it wasn’t something she considered doing in the first place. She studied Fine Arts in Brighton in the 80s, and a course like this was pretty rare because you could work with time-based media. She started using Hifi that she would find at home, and by that time, sampling was pretty regular considering the dance and hip hop culture was taking place simultaneously. She had with her:

1. a double cassette tape
2. a mixer
3. Tv set
4. VHS video player
5. Radio tuner

She started doing mixtapes and sharing them with other people because everyone was doing them back then. There was no commercial purposes, only fun. The first outlet was radio, however. After submitting one of her tapes, festival Radio (Brighton) gave her a show. She later started working in a Sussex radio called Southern Counties Radio. She made radio shows out of the radio – “I would use my double cassette tape and record the radio the whole day without listening And when once I had a pile of tape, so I go through them and start making bits out of them and little radio pieces”. From this came out the piece Millennium Dome.

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Reusing ideas is the core of her work which resonates a lot with the musical genre plunderphonics. It’s a genre developed and conceptualised by the Canadian John Oswald. I set myself to listen to the most relevant plunderphonic albums ever made, ending up with more than 60 albums. 

In his essay Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative, John Oswald refers to the Experimental compositional technique of utilising and manipulating pre-existing audio sources to create a new composition like Sound Collage. The only difference between Sound Collage and Plunderphonics is the sample recognition, whereas, in the latter, it is intended to be recognised by the listener. 

John Oswald describes the practice by pointing to the digital sampler as the composition vehicle compared to the traditional method. In contrast, the piano is the centre of the piece. Ex.: Hip Hop’s composition vehicle is vinyl scratching and vinyl sampling. However, music containing samples and sample-based plunderphonics is still in radically different fields. Plunderphonics is driven almost entirely by the sonic desires of the composer, using the samples as an instrument, as opposed to using them as an added extra.

Another theme discussed in the essay is whether using these samples can be considered stealing or not. He justifies it wrong by mentioning the many times rock bands would copy other bands’ sounds and finishes with a Stravinsky quote: “A good composer does not imitate; he steals”.

Ex.: James Tenney’s Collage #1 (Blue Suede) is a Tape Music manipulation of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes”.

“Blue Suede Shoes” was borrowed from Carl Perkins, who composed it originally.

I am still listening to plunderphonic records by this day, but I’ve narrowed down the list for those who are interested in the genre:

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• The Avalanches – Since I Left You (2000)
• John Oswald – Plexure (1993)
• Panda Bear – Person Pitch (2007)
• The Rockwood Escape Plan – Dreamcast Summer Songs (2009)
• Ground Zero – Revolutionary Pekinese Opera (1996)
• father2006 – White Death (2015)
• Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven (2013)
• The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2001)
• Stock, Hausen & Walkman – Giving up With Stock, Hausen & Walkman (1993)
•  Ahnnu – World Music (2013)
• YES USB – NO USB (2012)

Rebecca is an artist from London that produces large-scale multichannel audiovisual projects. She has a predominant concept of using rhythm and musicality within video and sound editing to disturb the narrative flow by evoking a psychological and neurodivergent relationship to language, words, loops and noise – meditating on memory and its voices, while spatialising layers of sound, vibrations and visceral texts that fragment and repeat.

MOUTHS: is a project developed for David Dale Gallery (2021). It is a pop song with a lot of emphasis on vocals. In the performance, I used a red cover to defuse my silhouette.

WORDS ARE ANGULAR SHARP (2018): Rebecca started to pay more attention to sound in this project. I began to use sounds that usually edit them out as the central focus of my pieces. I started working with vocal percussion. It was released in Matts Gallery. 

EATING THE WALLPAPER COLLAPSES THE SHARP LINES (2019): How voices can be spatialised? It is an eight-speaker polyvocal performance that took place in Kunstraum. Apart from a live vocal performance, some other pre-recorded voices were going around the audience. The performers were wearing black suits, while the audience was lighting different RGB colours throughout the undertaking.

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LIQUID I (2020): 6 speakers installation that took place in Nottingham exploring vocal percussion. The breaking point of this piece started with carp fishing in Nottingham. She talked to a fisherman who describes the experience as landscape photography. The fished is captured, held by the capturer, and then shared in a large community of people that appreciate the same practice. Photographs circulate as trophies. In this piece, I was focusing on the carp experience that has been captured. Another motif was the mosquitos recorded in a Medical School. Rebecca collab with Sophie Jung.

THE KNOT COMMONS: Three-channel video performance in Southwark Park Gallery and Matts Gallery (commission) in 2021. Mouths spit water. Mosquito split blood. Everything is interconnected with rhythmic sounds. The three performers were placed in different locations in the installation, and they had other scripts.  

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He’s only been into sound and music. He liked circular objects and the motion that the turntables had. He uses the example of the bike to refer to movement and how can it take you to different places. 

CIRCLES – CYCLES – BALANCE

“Thinking about space and how can we use them.” Andrew talks about how he had to embrace spaces as places to perform artistically. He showed us a video where he tested the acoustics of his atelier with marbles – Andrew suggests, again, movement as the anchor point to provoke change. I moved the marbles; therefore, it made a rhythmic sound. He proceeded by showing us a video recorded in 2019 in Amsterdam, where he films a still shot of a park road, where multiple bikes cross by, suggesting its constant musical and rhythmical capabilities. This piece can be explored in so many ways. You can see and feel the rhythm with different tonalities.

“I’ll ask everyone to put their hands over your ears and just listen for 30 seconds. What do you guys get?”

“We are speakers and listening devices.”

Andrew also has done a lot of research into improvisation and conversation in the improvisatory 1:1 exchange part of the BT_3 Residency program at Beaconsfield Gallery 2021. “I asked Shabaka Hutchings a question, and he would respond in the clarinet”. “I don’t know how to explain, but this was a very healing experience.” https://beaconsfield.ltd.uk/b_t3-andrew-pierre-hart-11-exchange-w-andrew-hart-video-reports/

Lucia explains through a reel her first experience in the UK, Winchester. She didn’t speak English, and as she mentions, she had a culture shock. I was not particularly eager to go to the pub after uni, and I couldn’t communicate very well, so I would sit in a corner. People started saying that I had different personalities depending on the language I was speaking. She became interested in the gap between communication (languages) and how people get caught in that situation. She started with video art. With video, Lucia could see her behavioural response depending on the language she was speaking. In one of her video art pieces, she noticed that the sound would change a lot by speeding up and down the velocity of the image.

Lucia started researching sound arts and came across Jacob Kirkegaard’s 4 Rooms piece (Touch Records 2006). In this work, the artist goes to Chernobyl and records the room tones who four different interior spaces. She was fascinated by how it was possible to do recordings that way, which recalls Alvin Lucier’s I’m sitting in a Room (1969). Her first sound art piece came in 2009: Spring Piece, Listening by placing your ear on the window. It’s also about her experience in the UK back when she lived in Kings Cross. By that time, she lived in a place that she describes as being awful and decadent. Her window wasn’t double glazed and made a lot of noise whenever a bus passed by. She decided to use the same techniques that Jacob used in his piece. I was trying to work out how to record sound. I’m not musically trained, and I’ve zero knowledge of recording techniques. She kept interested in looping things as a visual and sonic experience. With “2 pm”, I wanted to enhance this idea. ‘Folding’ (2009) is another piece where she experiments with the phenomena, and by “folding”, she meant folding time. Hear One Near and Think of the Other was her last piece before she ended her PhD. It’s a 2-channel durational live performance that took place in 2011. Lucia wanted to invite the listener to walk through different areas. Two performers set it, and they would be playing samples live. In 2011 she played live signal feedback on a piece called Parallel Correlation.

She commented on her experience playing live digitally and in person. She reflects how signal feedback changes when it’s mixed remotely and through speakers into a designed space. Toshimaru Nakamura and Sachiko M. are two artists that reflect on the same topics in a video called No-input: “it’s like a sculpture.”. In 2016 she attempted for the first time No-input feedback in a piece called Inner Geography. I normally use broken mixers because they sound better and have more interesting sounds. Currently, Lucia keeps doing live performances with no inputs. In 2020, she performed Courier Despatch 3 00. In the same here, she performed with Steph Horak and Iris Garrels in an improv session called TRIO (SOLO: DUO: TRIO). I met them the same day we performed at CAFE OTO.

Richard Phoenix is an artist who paints, writes and makes music, helps make people be together and has been working with disabled people for more than 15 years.

Richard started working by playing in bands (Punk: Rock.) in 1997. Punk: Rock. He mainly played the drums. Most of them have been bands or projects embracing DIY ethics and involved with DIY scenes.

DIY: do it yourself. In music, it promotes the idea that anyone can become a musician and share their music. It empowers individuals and communities. 

In 2006 he went to a band called Beat Express to play in Brighton, which most of the members had disabilities. It was his first time, and he mentions it as one of the most beautiful gigs he ever went to. Richard supported these musicians with his knowledge of DIY and began discovering more bands like this one. PKN, a Finnish punk band he fell in love with, was brought to the UK because “I wanted them to be inserted in a place where others could love their music”. Constant Flux was founded so he could find finance to bring this band to tour in the UK.

 

In 2018, he designed a manifesto for the DIY community to follow along. Anti-racist, anti-homophobic. DIY as Privilege – 13 point Manifesto for musicians.

Disability – I use the social model of disability. The idea is that the environment, society, and culture surrounds someone that create barriers and obstacles that disable and exclude them. 

This term turned into a full pamphlet going into more depth about the people and ideas that underpin the manifesto. Published by Rought Trace Books and called DIY as a privilege: A manifesto. 

There is an audience for everything, and ideas of what is good music will always be political.

“Every art form is intimately related to a type of life experience. The difference between chamber music and jazz is not one of quality, finesse, or virtuosity but of two ways of life, which the people involved did not choose but were born into”

__John Berger

Also, in 2018, I had surgery on one of my ears, marking a step away from bands and music. I had to cancel everything I had planned for six months in terms of tours and gigs. I refocused on painting again and started to rebuild my social life.