Sounds only

Woche 07-12 / 11.2.08 - 23.03.08

Australian Focus Nr. 3
von Johannes S. Sistermanns

01. Alex Carpenter / Chord from the Second Delphic Hymn / 20:49
02. Sonia Leber and David Chesworth / Almost Always Everywhere Apparent / 19:09
03. David Young / Scale part 1 / 3-8 und 10-12 / ca. 30:00
04. Rod Cooper / Estuary Nocturne / 06:35
05. Rod Cooper / Stratum / 17:38
06. Rod Cooper / Mandrel / 09:07
07. Rod Cooper / Pearlite / 06:28
08. Yoko Kajio / sound piece 2006 / 05:47

About the pieces and the composers:

Alex Carpenter / Chord from the Second Delphic Hymn / 20:49

Chord from the Second Delphic Hymn was inspired by Christodoulos Halaris’s reconstruction of an early Greek hymn to Apollo. It demonstrates perfectly my "obsessive-ness" as a composer, in that it embraces certain musical elements at the sacrifice of others. My intention in removing explicit melodic and rhythmic content was to reveal the textural and harmonic inflections normally obscured in traditional contexts where melody and rhythm rule. This activity could be regarded as a type of summoning. In this piece, several performers are instructed to repeat notes from the original hymn as fast as they can on various keyboard instruments. Performers are forced to postpone the physical requirements of their body and embrace a profound state of exhaustion, in which certain stylistic habits are abandoned in favor of a more direct sonic engagement. futher information: Stephen Whittington's review at www.realtimearts.net/article/issue69/7856 in which he talks about that piece. The piece is also mentioned in a radio interview transcription at transparentmeans.net in the section called "writing".
Alex Carpenter, January 2008, NYC

Alex Carpenter is an Australian composer, filmmaker and researcher currently residing in New York City. He has performed extensively as a soloist playing electric guitar and multiple amps, and has independently coordinated over twenty extended ensemble performance and multi-media events. Alex is currently preparing his Masters degree in composition for submission at the University of Adelaide, and has also studied music and philosophy under scholarship at Monash University in Melbourne. In 2002, Alex founded "Music of Transparent Means", an ever-evolving experimental orchestra which has featured as many as 21 players at one time. The group's monumental, ultra-minimalist and semi-improvised sound events, often presented inseparably with Alex's moving image work, have been enthusiastically received in a diverse and unlikely collection of settings, including art galleries, record store basements, concert halls, theatres and pubs. "Music of Transparent Means" has provided support performances in Adelaide for visiting sound artists such as Francisco Lopez (Madrid) and Will Guthrie (Melbourne), and has released several recordings on the Vanished Records label. Alex’s work is broadcast frequently in Australia and the US, and his music for the recent documentary "A Shift in Perception" has been awarded internationally.
www.transparentmeans.net

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth / Almost Always Everywhere Apparent / 19:09 (2007)
Singers from the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir and collected real world utterances

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth created "Almost Always Everywhere Apparent", an ambitious sound, structure and video project for the vast exhibition spaces at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. They were the recipients of the 2007 Helen Macpherson Smith Commission. Human voices resonated through a series of confined corridors leading to a central, cathedral-like space. The project referenced both Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon model prison design and the Cathedral as two architectural apparatuses with a surprising aspect in common: both rely on an unseen, all-seeing observer. And both use voices in interesting ways. 'A surprisingly taut density ... Leber and Chesworth seem to replicate the dynamics of Jeremy Bentham’s panoptic prison architectural system, where a central concealed overseer observes a perimeter structure of permanently silhouetted figures. Accentuated by the splintered choral singing, the installation equally hints at ecclesiastic architecture, of cloisters and interior domes. By combining panoptic and cathedral inspired space, the installation highlights their shared architectonic logic of an omnipresent overseer.'
Amy Marjoram, Real Time, October 2007

'What is most pertinent for this installation...is the belief that architectural forms and, in particular, the introduction of a new visual and spatial apparatus can change the nature of inhabitants... There is now the dread that everyone...may be transformed into their worst enemy.' Nikos Papastergiadis, Almost Always Everywhere Apparent, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 2007 ‘This "Gesamtkunstwerk"- where the arts meet and fuse - is restaged with an uncanny resemblance to the panopticon... You peer through each terminal eye and witness bizarre spectacles - a person levitating on the ceiling, a view of a choir from the dome, a group of people gathered on a ceiling, like sticky seaweed splattered into the corner of a room.’ Robert Nelson, The Age, 22 August 2007 ‘It doesn't take long inside the installation to realise that you have been coerced into becoming part of the work itself. Unavoidably, irresistibly, the watcher becomes the watched... You cannot simply remain a voyeur, but are forced to become a participant ... you imagine your own behavior being observed, silhouetted in the confines of the corridor.'
Martin Ball, The Age, 18 August 2007
www.waxsm.com.au

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth have collaborated since 1996, creating unique multi-channel sound and multimedia installations for a diverse range of arts and public spaces. A particular focus is the creation of sonic event spaces in the public domain. Leber and Chesworth were the recipients of the 2007 Helen Macpherson Smith Commission, for which they created "Almost Always Everywhere Apparent", a sound and structure project for Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. Public artworks include "The Master's Voice", a permanent soundscape installation for City Walk, Canberra, commissioned by ACT Public Art Program in 2001 and "5000 Calls", a permanent soundscape installation commissioned by the Sydney Olympic Park Public Art Program in 2000. "5000 Calls" was also installed in 2002 along Millennium Riverwalk in Cardiff, Wales, organised by Chapter Arts Centre, and in 2003 along Shoemaker’s Footbridge, Ljubljana, Slovenia organised by Cankarjev Dom Arts Centre. "Reiterations" (Elizabeth Street), an audio project for +Plus Factors commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2006 was also exhibited at the 2007 Madrid Abierto. Leber and Chesworth created The Gordon Assumption for the visual art program of the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2004, and Chesworth's opera "Cosmonaut" was featured in the festival's performance program in the same year. The video installation, "The Persuaders", was commissioned for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne in 2003. Leber and Chesworth collaborated with Simeon Nelson on "Proximities: local histories/global entanglements", a built-in soundscape along William Barak Bridge for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and "Oceanic Endless" for Melbourne's Cardinia Shire Council in 2007. Sonia Leber’s films have been exhibited widely at film festivals and contemporary art spaces including Germany’s Oberhausen International Film Festival, Madrid Week of Experimental Cinema, the Aurora Australis tour of galleries in Canada, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Australian Perspecta at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1994, Leber curated the sound art event Earwitness: Excursions in Sound for Melbourne’s Contemporary Music Events. David Chesworth began creating sound works in 1978 with groups including Essendon Airport. His music compositions and sound installations have since been performed and exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally. Major festivals featuring his work include Ars Electronica, Festival d’Automne de Paris, Big Chill, Paris Quartier D'été, Edinburgh International Festival and Melbourne International Arts Festival and Adelaide Festival of Arts, Sydney Biennale, SoundCulture and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Chesworth’s awards include a Churchill Fellowship and an honourable mention in Prix Ars Electronica. A full exhibition history and biography can be found at www.waxsm.com.au

David Young / Scale part 1 / 3-8 und 10-12 / ca. 30:00
David Young, Cynthia Troup, Rosemary Joy Aphids in residence with MUSiCLAB at Bains::Connective, Brussels

"Scale" is the result of a site specific collaboration inspired by the acoustic, architectural, poetic and historical properties of Bains::Connective, a socio-artistic laboratory in a disused art deco public baths complex in the Moroccan quarter of Brussels.
David Young (composer), Rosemary Joy (visual artist) and Cynthia Troup (writer/historian) collaborating with musicians Tom Pauwels (guitar), Fedor Teunisse (percussion) and Yutaka Oya (toy piano) during a month of workshops and rehearsals at Bains::Connective in July 2004. The project culminated in a presentation of music for toy piano, guitar and hand-made miniature percussion instruments in the tiled expanses of the Les Bains complex, creating miniature pools of sound, where once there were vast echoes of recreational clamour.
David Young, http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=212, http://www.aphids.net

David Young is a composer and the artistic director of Aphids. His music is performed in Australia, Europe and Asia, in contexts ranging from concerts to music theatre and installation. His music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles and musicians including the Ives Ensemble (The Netherlands), Fritz Hauser (Switzerland), Aequatuor (Switzerland), Norio Sato (Japan), Tosiya Suzuki (Japan), Yasutaka Hemmi (Japan), Manufacture Ensemble (Japan), Champ d’Action (Belgium), Ensemble 2000 (Denmark), and Australia’s Elision, The Song Company, Libra Ensemble, Australian Youth Orchestra, Speak Percussion, Michael Kieran Harvey and Aphids. As a composer he is preoccupied with exploring the relationship between sound and image, employing intricate and often miniature formats in unconventional settings. The music has been variously described as ‘musical origami’, ‘accessible, yet satisfyingly abstract’ and ‘quietly determined to be itself … an aural equivalent of seeing a world in a grain of sand’. As artistic director of Aphids, Young curates and collaborates on cross-artform projects. Young undertook an artist residency at Bundanon in 2006, an Asialink residency in Indonesia with Bengkel Theater Rendra, Jakarta, in 2004; and in Japan as part of the City of Melbourne Young Artists Award, 1996. Young was director of the 2002 Next Wave Festival, Melbourne’s multi-artform festival which showcased new work by over 600 young artists. He is a board member of the New Music Network (Sydney), RealTime? arts magazine, and co-founder of SoFA (Social Firms Australia). www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=212

Rod Cooper / Estuary Nocturne / 06:35 / Stratum / 17:38 / Mandrel / 09:07

Rod Cooper: Instrument builder, performer, sound artist and curator.
My interest in sound and music developed while completing my sculpture degree in 1988. The sound of metal sculpture revealed the possibilities for visual sculpture to become musical. I began construction of several musical instruments. In 1989 I established a small metal work business, creating furniture, architectural fittings and sculpture. The skills that I learned whilst building furniture have enabled me to gradually develop more complex instruments over the past decade. Usually an instrument takes between 2-3 years to develop and several months of construction in the workshop. I will sketch hundreds of ideas based on my observations of other acoustic instruments. They become metallic hybrids of more traditional instruments. I combine three or four essential ideas into an interface of strings, springs, idiophones and bowing mechanisms. Influenced by the acoustics of underground buildings, I began to seek out other environments in which to record. My explorations took me further into Melbourne’s sub-terrain where I explored storm water pipes, bridges and other industrial installations. I love exploring the relationship between the aural acoustic qualities inherent in my chosen locations and the timbre of my instruments. Electronic sound is incorporated via prepared tapes and computer compositions. In recent years my focus has centred on the stage. Last year I was awarded a grant through the instrument builder’s scheme of the Australia Council for the Arts and have spent most of this year developing prototypes and an instrument, which features continuos bowing mechanism. I perform regularly through out Australia and form part of the Make it up Club committee where I also act as a curator.
klunk@techinfo.com.au
www.clatterbox.net.au/live
www.makeitupclub.com.au/wrod.htm
www.abc.net.au/arts/adlib/stories/s859527.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/set/future.htm

Yoko Kajio / sound piece 2006 / 05:47

Using recordings from different sources; my voice, environment sounds, nature, and other sounds at different locations around the city . Each sound becomes an individual layer. A computer was used to individually modify the timing of the source sounds and edit the whole work. This piece was originally made for an art performance and the intention was to give it atmosphere and feeling.

Yoko Kajio works in the field of installation art, moving image, photography, sound, film and art performance. She received a fist class honours degree in the visual arts from the University of South Australia in 2000 and was awarded 'Best New Talent Installation Artist' in the Advertiser Newspaper Art Oscars of 2000. She has exhibited at such places as the Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai and the Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (Asian Traffic, Gnidrocer- nothing is permanent05, 2005), the Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney (Z, Wave 3, 2003), the Jam Factory Foyer, SALA moving image, Adelaide (deltitnu-R, 2002), the Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand and the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide (GLEAM, deltitnu 0-1,2001/2000). Her new moving image,‘Big Thumb’ won ‘Best Moving Image’ at the Advertiser Contemporary Art Award in 2007. She is going to the XXIV International Festival Sarajevo – New(Brave)World, Feb 2008 to showing her works, ‘A Space of Invisible Waves and Interaction of Sound Waves’ with Nine Dragon Heads. She is a core member of the Shimmeeshok – an art performance group who have been developing new multimedia performance work since 1998.

Hier werden Produktionen aus Archiven der Elektroakustischen Musik, wie z.B. dem Archiv der DEGEM oder dem IDEAMA- und dem DEGEM-Archiv des ZKM, dem Archiv des elektronischen Studios der TU Berlin sowie anderen internationalen Archiven und Dokumentationen elektroakustischer Kunst unter verschiedenen Aspekten präsentiert.