Day Two: Friday 7 November
Bathway Theatre
6 – 7.30pm, Concert 5 – 360°
Rita Evans – Respondents
Respondents is a project that includes performance, a film and sound sculptures developed by Rita Evans. Evans collaborated with dancer Marguerite Galizia, who physically engaged with seaweed in different states, frozen, wet, and dried. In response to this, Evans adapted her works into a series of sonic choreographic sculptures that invite close listening. Later in the film, sculptures emit sounds from seaweed recordings captured beyond the human range of hearing. As the sculptures are performed, flexed, and moved, embedded sensors transform the sounds. The performance dialogues with organic elements such as air, algae, ground, skin, and water, creating space for the untranslatable.
Rita Evans (b. 1980, based in London) is a musician and sculptor who creates sonic sculpture at the intersection of performance and moving image. Her process involves collective inquiry and feedback methods of composing and improvising and developing spaces of multiplicity and communality. Exhibitions and commissions include: Whitechapel Gallery London Open Live Film Programme (2025); The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Art Lab: Sound (2024-2026); Tate Britain Sensory Commission, Rock, Wobble, Pluck, London (2024); Audiograft Festival of Sonic Art, Oxford (2023); Towner Eastbourne Performance Commission, Eastbourne (2022); Tate St Ives Commission: Solo exhibitions and performances, St Ives (2022); The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Artist-in-Residence, with an exhibition at Haus Gropius, Germany (2021/22). Evans was awarded the Stephen Cripps’ Studio Award (2015); Arts Council England Project Grant (2025); and Canada Council for the Arts (2024 & 2026).
Georgina Brett – Undivided
‘Undivided’ was written especially for the Amoenus ambisonic soundsystem in London.
It is the first in a series of studies into language and meaning. The exploration of the engines of vocal sounds, which, in this piece, are clearly separated into vowels and consonants.
The vowels describe the harmony, which is derived from the 5 note Indian scale called the Hindole scale. Here the notes are: E, F#, G, B, C#. Six separate, defined vowel sounds are presented ee, e, a, au, o, and u. There are several sections of chordal vowel harmony throughout the piece, in the later instances, the long held notes progress through the vowel sounds producing overtones.
All of the separate consonants in the English language are present in Undivided. Using maxmsp i created patches to make randomisation of consonants. There are collections of repeated, collaged consonants and periods of collections of individual consonants which embody and explore their inherent sound world, (listen for f and v especially).
Another compositional aspect in Undivided is several overt rhythms that derive from the rhythm of speech of 8 taglines.. Taglines can be unique in their ability to make us think something arbitrary, even though these sentences are commonly spoken. The sentences are slaves to repetition and are warped by the commercial world of brands. Along with the tagline rhythms, which are articulated using mostly plosives, (apart from one which uses the short vowel ‘i’ at the very beginning), there are also some intermingled spoken syllables and words from the taglines, but never the full tagline phrase together.
The ambisonic palette allows the long note chords to swell, rotate and retreat like waves, and gives the rhythms permission to scurry around after each other. The spatial element affording them room for their individuality, growing and disappearing. Undivided uses the ambisonic field to explore the formal within spatial music. Themes travel along gestural spatial motifs.
I am a composer specialising in live and pre-recorded ambisonic compositions, vocal live-looping and event organising. I have curated a number of multispeaker events in London, presented talks on ambisonics and took part in a short course hosted by 4DSOUND immersive sound system in London this year.
Director, Tuesdays Post : Live Progressive Ambient Sept 2012 — Present, London I set up Tuesdays Post in order to create a platform for performers of live music with electronics, (most notably looping pedals), who’s style combines: ambient, electroacoustic, minimal and improvisation. To date I have hosted 30+ concerts each featuring 3 or 4 artists.
Since September 2022 I have presented several concerts of 4-5 composers who performed with live ambisonics at Iklectik, London.
Director, Solidsilence Jul 2003 — Sep 2007, London Solidsilence was a business i started in order to publish live binaural CD’s of fieldwave soundscapes from eco-festivals in the UK. I produced 4 CD’s over this time.
EDUCATION – Birmingham University, MA in Electroacoustic Composition and Aesthetics Oct 1993 — Jun 1994, Birmingham I gained a scholarship from my undergraduate to study at Birmingham. I wrote several electroacoustic compositions using Pro Tools and Logic Audio and wrote a thesis on the work of Iannis Xenakis and the semiotics of Electroacoustic music. I also sang in ‘Momente’ by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Edinburgh University, Bachelor of Music with Honours 2:1 Oct 1988 — Jun 1992, Edinburgh In my final years of study I specialised in Electronic Composition, Music Technology, Acoustics, Music of the Avant Garde and performance. I was also the Music Director of The Bedlam Theatre, (the university theatre company), composing music for several plays.
georginabrett.co.uk
Chang Meng, Donna Kim & Zhao Jiajing – Wet Utopia: Rehydrate by Tea
Wet Utopia – Rehydrate by Tea is a multi-sensory immersive tea ritual performance blending moving image, tea ceremony, scent, sound, and movement to explore rehydration as both a poetic and political gesture. Rooted in the maritime trade history of the Cutty Sark, the performance reflects on how tea—once cultivated, compressed, and circulated through imperial routes—mirrors broader systems of ecological extraction and colonial dryness.
From eastern hydrofeminist and hydrocritical perspective, this piece treats water not only as a substance but as a method—a medium that connects bodies, environments, and historical trauma. The ritual unfolds through a slow, meditative tea preparation, accompanied by live soundscapes and abstract movement. Each action—pouring, steeping, breathing—reactivates a memory of compression and release, dryness and return.
Through the interplay of scent, sound, the audience is invited into a shared sensory field. The tea becomes a conduit, rehydrating not only the leaves but also the histories and relationships that have been compressed or silenced. Even after desiccation, the traces of relationality remain—in the water, in the body, and in the gaps between people.
This live performance becomes a choreography of resonance—of becoming wet again—across time, geography, and the body.
Chang Meng is an transdisciplinary artist and PhD researcher at the Future Creative Centre and the Sound & Image Centre at the University of Greenwich. She holds dual Master’s degrees in Information Experience Design (MA) and Arts & Humanities (MFA) from the Royal College of Art, and has an academic background in musicology. Her artistic practice focuses on multi-sensory, post-immersive storytelling. Using water as a fluid narrative medium, she continuously explores ecological intimacy and, through the concepts of rehydration and empathy, constructs sensory connections across diverse forms of existence.
Donna Kim is a movement artist who delves into the essence of her being through the universal language of dance. As a choreographer deeply rooted in the traditions of Korean dance, she perceives tradition not as a static relic of the past but as a dynamic, evolving force that resonates with the present. Her artistry is a passionate journey of exploration and self-discovery, forging profound connections with audiences worldwide through the power of movement. From her performances in dance films to her appearances in commercials, Donna has collaborated with a wide range of artists, taking on roles as a main dancer, choreographer, and model. Career highlights include a project at the Zaha Hadid Gallery, participation in The Resolution festival (London), the London Design Festival, and features on Nowness Asia.
Zhao Jiajing is an electroacoustic composer and sound artist based in London. His practice spans sound, installation, and new media, exploring themes of temporality, technology, digital cultures, and nature. Since 2019, Zhao has focused on spatial sound, creating multichannel compositions and installations. His work has been presented internationally at events and venues such as IRCAM (FR), ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), Soundcinema Düsseldorf (DE), Barbican Centre (UK), Sound/Image Festival (UK), Espacios Sonoros (AR), ICMC，NYCEMF (US), ISCM New Music Miami (US).
The Light Surgeons – Tokinokawa
“時の河 : TOKINOKAWA” (A River in Time) is an immersive 360° audiovisual installation exploring Japan’s rich cultural history and the affordances of archives in the past, present, and future, co directed by Christopher Thomas Allen and Tim Cowie, featuring music by Midori Takada.
Created by UK media artists The Light Surgeons in collaboration with renowned Japanese percussionist and composer Midori Takada, the piece reflects on time, memory, and the evolving nature of archives. The work recontextualizes newly restored films from the BFI’s Japan on Film archive alongside contemporary footage gathered in Japan by filmmaker and researcher Christopher Thomas Allen. This visual material is spread across six panoramic screens and enhanced with custom software that introduces a speculative, near-future layer of machine interpretation. Animated infographics simulate a world where archives are continuously mined by semi-autonomous AI, offering audiences a unique perspective on how the “artificial gaze” might reframe history and memory. Themes include the cyclical nature of life, humanity’s relationship with nature and the built environment, tradition, rites of passage, and the impact of accelerated modernity. These threads come together to form a kaleidoscopic meditation on past, present, and future. The project involved bespoke software pipelines developed with Artists & Engineers, using YOLO and other ML models for visual analysis, and metadata classification via the AI tool Synoposis by Special Circumstances (NYC). Originally commissioned by the BFI as a live cinema performance, the work was adapted into a six-screen installation during the 2021 pandemic. It premiered at BFI Southbank (Dec 2021–Feb 2022) as part of the BFI Expanded programme, with support from Yamaha UK, The Polonsky Foundation, and The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. In 2024, it was tested successfully in the IVSL space at Norwich University of the Arts during my Research Fellowship, and I see this as a strong opportunity to share the work again in a new academic context.
Christopher Thomas Allen is a media artist, filmmaker, creative producer and academic based in East London.
He is the founder and creative director of The Light Surgeons, a media arts studio that creates moving image work, live audio-visual performances, immersive installations, and interactive experiences that sit at the intersection of music, documentary film, research, real-time animation, and various creative technologies.
He established the studio in 1995 where he has brought together unique teams of different creatives to collaborate and co-create audio-visual work for the past 30 years. The studio represents an extensive network of creative talents that work in the complementary fields of audio-visual production, post-production, interaction design, research, and creative producing. Through the collaboration of this network of award-winning artists, filmmakers, animators, designers, and software developers, the studio produces a diverse range of creative projects that blur the boundaries between art, design, film, interaction and academic research.
The Light Surgeons continue to craft and tour groundbreaking audio-visual performances, installations, and experiential projects that combine in-depth research into a range of different human-focused stories, socially conscious subject matters, and themes that enlighten and move their audiences internationally. As the creative director and leading artist, Christopher Thomas Allen combines his passion for documentary filmmaking and storytelling with the symbiotic creation of original music and a keen eye for design that gives the studio’s work a unique style and feel.
Tim Cowie is a composer, sound designer and audiovisual artist whose work combines electronic music production with classical composition and minimalism. He blends synthesised sound with acoustic instruments, found sounds, tape loops and field recordings to create sonic textures and musical structures that transcend genre boundaries With a particular focus on spatial audio, he expands his practice beyond traditional stereo formats, exploring immersive sound environments. His compositions are rooted in conceptual ideas and critical thinking, incorporating narrative and thematic layers that harness the emotional power of sound.
https://timcowie.com