Day Two: Friday 7 November
2-4pm: Talk 2
Studio 1, Bathway Theatre
Dan Stern – Listening-With as Resistance: Spatialising Polyphony after Deleuze and Glissant
This paper emerges from a practice of spatialising sound through polyphonic improvisations on tenor saxophone within multichannel environments.
My starting point is the question of how power might be challenged through ontology, critique, and musical technique in spatial music settings. The academy offers the initial resources for developing this threefold entanglement; however, the resulting practice of critical musicianship is intended to emerge beyond institutional boundaries.
Drawing on Deleuze’s concept of difference-in-itself (Deleuze, 1994), I trace how, even in their criticality, certain modes of relational art sustain asymmetries of power. I contrast this with Édouard Glissant’s poetics of Relation and Opacity, which offers a model of relation grounded in resistance.
Three sonic vectors shape my argument: the trope of contrary motion in Western counterpoint, the individuating dynamics of African-American jazz improvisation, and the critical uses of polyphony in both aesthetic and political terms. These are explored through my practice, in order to ask how relationality might be reimagined not as Sameness, but as a form of listening-with: an attunement to difference, opacity, and asymmetry.
I align the futurity of this practice with broader movements in decolonial thought, in which the ongoing struggle to articulate what Gilroy (2000) calls a post-race society remains central.
Dan Stern is a UK-based composer and improviser whose work explores polyphony as a form of listening-with. Performing on tenor saxophone, clarinet, piano and keyboard, he creates immersive sound environments that invite audiences into shared experiences of time, space and attention. Drawing on early polyphony, experimental improvisation and spatial sound practices, his music resists hierarchy and embraces multiplicity, offering alternative ways of hearing and being together.
His practice is grounded in PhD research into sonic relationality, in which he investigates how polyphonic improvisation can challenge dominant structures of listening and authorship. Working between post-structuralist thought, Black Studies and decolonial aesthetics, Stern explores how sound can enact forms of political relation through spatialised time.
He has collaborated widely across jazz, classical and interdisciplinary contexts, performing, composing and recording with artists such as Dave Liebman, Tim Garland, Robert Mitchell, Gwilym Simcock and Andy Sheppard; with ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta; and in cross-arts settings at institutions such as Central Saint Martins, as well as with multimedia artist Ed Berriman.
Jesse Austin-Stewart – Approaches to Spatial Music for Audiences of All Types of Hearing
Spatial Music relies on audiences having equal and full range amplitudinal and spectral hearing in both ears in order to accurately perceive spatialisation. If an audience member does not have equal and full range amplitudinal and spectral hearing in both ears, then engagement with spatial audio may present differences from the intended compositional result. In acknowledging this issue, the author has engaged with the hard of hearing and d/Deaf music community and created various compositional strategies that can be used to aid creation of spatial music for audiences of more broad types of hearing.
The paper presented will outline previous work within the field, the interviews with the d/Deaf and hard of hearing community, new strategies developed, new works developed based on those strategies, and the responses from the d/Deaf and hard of hearing community to the newly developed works based on those strategies.
Jesse Austin-Stewart (he/him) is a sound artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a composer and is currently a lecturer at Massey University.
Jesse’s work explores ways to make the field of spatial audio more inclusive. This creative practice often explores the intersection of spatial audio and disability and hearing. He has written works for contemporary dance and film and composed and curated performance art works and sound installations. Jesse has exhibited across Aotearoa, Japan, Australia, Czech Republic, Greece, Sweden, and France.
Brona Martin – Knowledge Exchange Activities
Dr. Brona Martin will present an overview of Knowledge Exchange activities happening at the Sound/Image Research Centre. KE is the way in which we share the specialised knowledge and expertise that we have in the SOUND/IMAGE Research Centre to benefit others, supporting economies and society. This presentation will discuss some of our recent KE activities such as our Artist in Residence scheme and the development of short courses, while outlining our future plans for engaging with communities outside of the university.
Brona Martin is an electroacoustic composer and sound artist from Banagher, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Her compositions explore narrative in electroacoustic music, acoustic ecology, oral history, sound and heritage and spatial audio techniques.
Her works have been performed internationally at EMS, ACMC, ICMC, NYCEMF, ISSTA, ZKM, BEAST, Balance/Unbalance, Sonorities, MANTIS and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. She has been guest composer at EMS, Stockholm and Associate Artist in Residence at Atlantic Centre for the Arts, Florida.
Brona is a Lecturer in Music and Sound at the University of Greenwich where she teaches post production sound and composition for film and games.