crude awakening

this piece crude awakening was performed by chris black and myself in 2008 as part of our sonic arts studies at victoria university. the piece utilised radio static and a speaker chain whereby contact mics attached to speakers picked up sounds from speaker boxes and transmitted them to other set of speakers - this altered the sound as it traveled through the chain.

we also utilised contact mics picking up the sounds of guitar strings and wires being shaken and then further processed. we also placed a speaker against a shower bath, picking up this altered sound using additional contact mics on the bath. there was also an old operation game used.

a high point of the performance occured when chris sawed into a speaker - wot fun!

both chris and i loved the raw sounds generated using these materials. this was probably one of my favourite performances throughout the study period. i also thoroughly love working with chris. we did a larger version of this idea using the fixtures and fittings of the adam art gallery which i will post at some stage.

i wanna go home

this is another intuitive composition by my guitar student Vaitoa. i continue to enjoy this process of immediate composition - and who better to explore this with than Vaitoa. Vaitoa had a play with slide guitar and recorded two parts one after the other. he then sang freestyle over the guitar parts - the resulting song was i wanna go home.

we then made a home movie separate from the song and then placed the song with the visuals. the video begins with an improvised dialogue which beautifully leads into the theme of the song.

sound of the day - blind wanderings

well, i was sitting here listening to the backyard compositions of tristan and sebastian when i heard a backyard sound of my own - a kind of knocking and scraping that sounded like it was coming from the backdoor. it was a little unnerving actually as my mind went through all the possible known sounds of the house and tried to ascertain what it might be. the cat doesn't usually knock or scrape at the back door - no it's not him as he is right now staring at me through the front window. the only thing left was to investigate. upon opening the backdoor this is what i found

landscape as musical score - playing the backyard

a fantastic project in line with my house study beginnings - this live improvisation by tristan louth-robins and sebastian tomczak using field recordings from their backyards. the material was processed in real-time using ableton live/plogue bidule.

more information about the work can be found on disquiet and tristan's blog. sebastian also has a blog here

dark

this is an excerpt from one of the compositions i completed last year during my studies. it is composed from the recorded and processed sounds of chocolate factory machinery.

typhanee spotted in the u.s.a

this drawing was sent by tim from buck creek, u.s.a in response to the sonic creature recording of the typhanee (see below). it was very exciting to receive this from the other side of the world via postcrossing. a very delightful animal and a great description. thanks tim.

Typhanee

the continuing postings of sonic creatures. these are sound creatures which were made in collaboration with various people. they were asked to intuitively choose three objects and explore their combined sound-making potentials. the creatures were then named and described. i enjoyed this intuitive and organic way of working - some of the sounds were processed by me and i still question this intervention but it was how i felt at the time.

more can be read about the process that led to the sonic creatures here

i am looking forward to collecting more drawings of the creatures based on their sounds. so introducing the typhanee.

the typhanee was created by Caitlin. she used a wine glass with items inside and a spinning top. the resultant animal sounds include sound processing.