Day One: Thursday 7 November
Bathway Theatre
7-8pm: Concert 1 – Acousmatic + Mixed
Tim Yates – Gongblade Study No 1
with Joris Beets (Harp), Rob Parton (Synths and spatialisation), and Liam Frizzell: Audio engineer and spatialisation
This is a structured improvisation exploring the sound-world of found objects combined with traditional instruments, using spatialisation to find sonic perspectives that would otherwise be impossible. Placing your ears into the very centre of a large circular saw blade is not something that we can usually do; but here we’ll give it our best shot.
Tim Yates is a PhD student at the University of Greenwich, carrying out practice-based research in building immersive, interactive sound-art installations using spatial audio. He is also Research and Innovation Executive at Drake Music, a national charity working at the intersection of music, Disability and technology, using new technology and ideas to open up access to music for all. He is a musician, sound-artist, and technologist, and co-founder and co-organiser of Hackoustic.
Joris Beets is an inventor and multi-instrumentalist. His Delta Harp, reinvention of the classical harp as a wearable, electric instrument has revolutionised how harps can be used in modern music. Another of his inventions, the Harp-E, a flat pack DIY self assembly electric harp has brought the otherwise elitist instrument back to the masses. www.jorisbeets.com
Rob Parton is an electronic musician and sound artist with a passion for live improvisation, synthesis and technology. He is currently undertaking a Masters in Music and Sound Design at the University of Greenwich, exploring live improvisation workflows and composition using spatial sound. www.arconicsound.com
Emma Margetson – Shifted Trajectories
A work inspired by the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, featuring metallic sounds of coins, foil and bells shifting, contorting and transforming to new spaces. Shifted Trajectories was composed as part of the an IKO residency funded by the Arts Council England grant, Developing your Creative Practice.
Dr Emma Margetson is an acousmatic composer and sound artist working and living between London and Birmingham (England, UK). Her output encompasses acousmatic composition, sound art, acousmatic performance interpretation and, occasionally, live electronic music improvisation. Her research interests include sound diffusion and spatialisation practices; site-specific works, sound walks and installations; audience development and engagement; and community music practice. She studied at the University of Birmingham (England, UK) with Annie Mahtani and Scott Wilson for master’s and doctoral degrees in electroacoustic composition. The latter was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (M3C) and was completed in 2021. Her music has been recognised and performed extensively in concerts and festivals internationally, and has been the recipient of a special mention in the Biennial Acousmatic Composition Competition Métamorphoses (Belgium, 2020), the Excellence in Sound Art & Sound Design Prize in the klingt gut! Young Artist Award (Germany, 2018), and a First prize ex æquo in the Space of Sound Spatialization Performance Competition (Belgium, 2019). She has received a number of commissions and collaborations including those from Royal Observatory (Royal Museums Greenwich), The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and the Ikon Gallery. Emma Margetson is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound and Programme Leader of the Master of Arts Music and Sound Design course at the University of Greenwich (England, UK). She is also Co-Director of the Loudspeaker Orchestra Concert Series. Her work is available on several recording labels, including empreintes DIGITALes, Obs, Sonos Localia, and Urban Arts Berlin.
Marty Fisk – Chroma Quay
Beginning from recordings of a range of metallic objects, Chroma Quay explores the use of FFT-based spectral compression to distort material, and to imprint the timbral and tonal qualities of sounds onto one another.
Marty Fisk is a composer from Gloucester currently studying a PhD at the University of Birmingham. His research interests include electroacoustic live performance, novel sound interfacing technologies and interactive works; exploring the dynamics between performer, audience, and sound.
Dushume – Gaumukh
The Sound work “Gaumukh (Cow’s Mouth)” explores the complex connections between colonial history, environmental landscapes, and cultural narratives, with a specific focus on Copped Hall’s historical ties to the colonial era. This work critically interrogates those connections through sound, drawing on evocative materials and experimental techniques. The piece is inspired by the Gangotri glacier, where the glacial terminus resembles a cow’s mouth, a sacred site for Hindu pilgrims known as Gaumukh. The work responds to this imagery through a sonic palette that includes experimental sounds, murmurs, howls, and deep, abrasive noise, creating an immersive and unsettling auditory experience. Drawing parallels between the historical exploitation of landscapes and colonial trade routes, Gaumukh also references the budgerow, a slow-moving barge used to transport goods along the river Ganges in northern India. The sound materials mimic the slow, heavy motion of the barge, juxtaposing this with the harshness of the colonial legacy. Through uncompromising sound design, this work invites a poetic yet critical reflection on how past and present intertwine, offering a narrative that recontextualises historical exploitation in a contemporary sound art practice.
Amit D Patel, aka Dushume, is an experimental noise and sound artist, influenced by Asian underground music and DJ culture. His work focuses on performing and improvising with purpose built do-it-yourself instruments, and recording these instruments incorporating looping, re-mixing and re-editing techniques. Lack and loss of control are central to his work. He has a PhD in Music, “Studio Bench: the DIY nomad and Noise Selector” (2019), from the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is a member of the Sound/Image Research group at the University of Greenwich, London, and Principal Investigator for the AHRC Research Grant “Exploring Cultural Diversity in Experimental Sound” (2021-22) – https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FV010964%2F1
Simon Emmerson – Near and Far (at Once)
Commissioned by BEAST (Birmingham). I originally intended a work focusing on home made percussion instruments (as found in Stockhausen’s Momente): car spanners, dowelling claves, postage tube drums, plastic containers holding ball bearings. These do make important appearances but the work was originally intended for 2020 and took a new turn in lockdowns. The Sound Art Brighton Festival was planned for 2020 or ’21 but eventually took place in March 2022. Kersten Glandien, its curator-director, asked me for a short festival catalogue essay (‘The global dérive flâneur’). I created a narrative around an imaginary soundwalk from the off-shore Rampion windfarm through the City and on up to the Downs. This rapidly became the inspiration for this piece. There are real sound walk materials, but transformed and interspersed with meditations on the sound behaviours (or imagined behaviours) at the various locations. The starling murmurations so beautifully seen around Brighton’s piers lie behind a lot of the working. You may ignore the following programme of the work’s short scenes, here for the benefit of soundwalkers and psychogeographers: windfarm, beach walk, Palace pier (human and bird murmurations), North Laine, bee hive, A27 (pedestrian bridge), bluebell wood, Ditchling Beacon (hot air with larks descending). Commissioned for a big birthday of mine in 2020, it landed up in BEAST FEAST 2022 as a ‘happy birthday’ to BEAST [40] and to Jonty Harrison [70], long-time inspirations and friends, both. [SE]
Simon Emmerson studied at Cambridge and at City University, where he founded the electroacoustic music studio in 1975. He joined De Montfort University in 2004 where he is now Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Sonic Creativity. He has been a composer and writer on electroacoustic music since the early 1970s – most recently curating the Routledge Research Companion to Electronic Music – Reaching Out with Technology (2018) and keynote at EMS Network Conference 2021 (Leicester) and at MuSA23 (Manchester). He was Edgard Varese Visiting Professor at TU, Berlin (2009-10) and Visiting Professor and Composer at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (Perth) in November 2016. Recent works include for: Inventionen (Berlin), Sond-Arte Ensemble (Lisbon), Musiques et Recherches (Brussels), BEAST (Birmingham) and for soloists Darragh Morgan (violin), Philip Mead (piano), Carla Rees (flute) and Heather Roche (clarinet). He is currently mixing an album of recent works for NMC (due 2025) and at work on a new project with The Six Tones (Sweden). [SE]