Exploring sonic and audio-visual practice
Thank you to everyone who came to be a part of #soundimage19! It was a weekend full of concerts, talks, screenings, performances unpacking the audiovisual and sharing ideas!
We had a really fantastic programme, with guests visiting us from all over the world. Below are some of the images from the weekend.
We’re excited to release our full programme for this weekend. And exciting array of talks, performances, concerts, screenings and installations.
Book your place via Eventbrite.
An impulse is a signal which is entirely zero apart from a short spike of an arbitrary shape. Footprints of creatures is a journey into a terrain consisting of multitudes of small impulses, bent and shaped through networks of delays and filters. Although the sound materials are of an abstract origin, they are heard as through a sense of characterizations of space and object. The movement, shifts and turns in the sounds forms and disbands new relationships between sounds and their spaces and creates narratives before breaking up into abstraction.
Footprints of creatures is composed in 5th order higher order ambisonics and is
presented in stereo.
Ulf A. S. Holbrook is a composer, sound artist and doctoral research fellow at the RITMO Center for Interdisciplinary Study on Rhythm, Time and Motion, Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. The focus of his research is on the perception of sound objects in spatial audio representation systems at the convergence of signal processing applications and sonic creation. His research proposes the soundfield as a link between a sound object and the spatialisation of sound masses which share the same multidimensional space. His work is performed and exhibited in galleries, as well as at festivals and conferences internationally.
A composition in which air-related sounds like breath, insecticide pulveriser, swords being swung, pan flute made of recycled straws and horse’s whinnies dances with modular synthesis and melodies inspired by Messiaen. It tells a story, it tells a story so much that you can almost see the sounds. You can see the story.
It is Voish of Magic.
It is an airy world of fairies, sensuality and intimacy.
Véro Marengère is a composer and sound artist based in Montreal. Graduated from the Digital Music program of University of Montreal, her work is strongly influenced by Suzanne Ciani, Anna Friz, Holly Herndon and the experimental underground scene of Montreal. She creates musical compositions and performances aiming to carve a dialogue between sensuality and sound. Shaped by her work within the field of dance and instrumental music, her language blends together elements of music, sound design, dance and live performances. In the midst of her versatility, her artistic concern remain constant: fostering intimacy through the intangible and finding a balance between digital processing and organic sources.
Un-(Synthetic Hair) is a trio of violin, cello and double bass. Using recording of improvisations, the material throughout the piece becomes gradually more processed, allowing for the exploration of resonant acoustic instruments within an entirely flexible electronic sound world.
tried calling, Mx uses material recorded from a few days spent in the north of Scotland with friends Bobby Kakouris and Andrew Herrington. The piece follows a journey through Eden Court in Inverness where we attended a music conference and interrupts itself with jumping between the surrounding hills and countryside around where we were staying. Featuring “Mother Whale” by Megan Airlie.
Harry Gorski-Brown is a musician living and working in Glasgow, Scotland.
Rewind looks back over a 40-year association with the studios at the University of Birmingham, both as undergraduate/postgraduate student in the early days of BEAST through to undergraduate/postgraduate external examiner. A lot has changed, and some of it can be heard in this piece, including sounds/extracts of pieces made in the studios during this time.
Thanks for sounds to: Anonymous, Jonty Harrison, Jo Hyde, Andy Lewis, Adrian Moore, Alistair MacDonald, Nick Virgo, Rachel Williams.
Rewind was commissioned by BEAST for BEAST FEaST 2019 and premiered in the Dome Room, Bramhall Building, University of Birmingham on 2 May 2019.
Pete Stollery studied composition with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, where he was one of the first members of BEAST in the early ’80s. He composes music for concert hall performance, particularly electroacoustic music and more recently has created other work, including sound installations and internet projects. In 1996 he helped to establish the acousmatic collective invisiblEARts and in 2004 he was part of the setting up of sound, a new music incubator in NE Scotland. His music is published by the Canadian label empreintes DIGITALes.
The name of the composition is referring to the madrigal Sì dolce è’l tormento by Claudio Monteverdi. The composing process started with one short sample I cut from the recording of this madrigal. Later on the general ideal developed and moved far from Monteverdi, but the concept of something fragile and torturing at the same time remained.
Einike Leppik is an Estonian composer and audiovisual artist. She is living currently in Tallinn and teaching audiovisual composition at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Leppik graduated from Antwerp Royal Academy of Arts in 2011 and later proceeded her studies at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Audiovisual Composition. In 2017 she received her Master’s degree in Classical Composition. During her studies she followed internships at the State Conservatory of Music “Giuseppe Tartini” in Trieste (supervised by Paolo Pachini) and at the Conservatory of Music “Benedetto Marcello” in Venice (supervised by Riccardo Vaglini). Leppik has taken part in different masterclasses and her music and installations has been presented and performed in numerous festivals such as Estonian Music Days (Estonia), Summersound (Finland), Segnali (Italy), Videoformes (France), eviMus, InSonic (Germany), Gaudeamus Muziekweek (the Neatherlands) and Àgora Actual Percussiò (Spain). Leppik has been writing acoustic and electroacoustic music for different ensembles and solo instruments, her special interest is combining the field of sound with other forms of art. She has been composing also for short movies, dance performances, installations and her own audiovisual works. Her main interests in music is its communicative and synaesthetic quality.
Erstwhile was composed using SPEAR – an application for audio analysis, editing and synthesis. It works in the following way – an analysis procedure represents a sound with many individual sinusoidal tracks (partials). This analysis is then time stretched, processed and spatialized. This process helped me to alternate density in an evolving manner, and to texture and tone.
Neil O Connor Composer and Performer has been involved in experimental & electro-acoustic music for the past 21 years and has performed in Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and the US. His work has been shown/performed at MOMA, New York, IRCAM Paris, Institute of Contemporary Art, London and has held residencies at the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art and EMS – Swedish Institute of Electro-Acoustic Music, Stockholm, Sweden. Neil has worked / collaborated with members of the Crash Ensemble, Philip Glass Ensemble and the Glenn Branca Ensemble. Neil studied at Trinity College (M.Litt/PhD Mus) under Composer Donnacha Denheny and has lectured in Composition and Performance Technology since 2005 at Art Institute of California (San Francisco), The Institute of Audio Research (New York City) and Trinity College (Dublin). He is currently based at DMARC (Digital Media Arts Research Centre), Dept. of Computer Science, University of Limerick, Ireland.
In this piece I wanted to explore the relationship between the sounds of ordinary or ‘miscellaneous’ rituals and routines (represented by objects such as pans and a wine bottle) and ‘sacred’ rituals (represented by objects such as a prayer bowl). I was interested in how these everyday sounds can transcend their origins to suggest associations with rituals that carry more meaning or significance. At times in the piece these sounds move towards purity, harmony and even the suggestion of voice, while at other moments they become layered, noisy textures that circle and envelope the space.
David Holland is an internationally performed composer and researcher with a particular interest in music technology and education. In 2017 he was awarded a PhD in the field of Music, Technology and Innovation from DMU, which was sponsored by the Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. His research has focused on widening access to new forms of music and the powerful role that creativity can play in this. He received the Rolf Gehlhaar Award for Electronic Music Composition from Coventry University (UK) in 2010 and was a finalist in the 2014 Bangor Dylan Thomas Prize for Electroacoustic Composition at Bangor University (UK). His work has recently been broadcast on Czech (Vitava – Radiocustica) and Dutch (Concertzender) radio. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at De Montfort University (DMU) (Leicester, UK) on the Creative Economy Engagement Programme funded by the Midlands4Cities partnership. He also works as a part-time lecturer at DMU and a researcher on the EU Interfaces project concerned with bringing new music to new audiences.
I aim to make compositions that place us in a situation or state of mind. The sounds, although mostly abstracted, may reference occurrences in life, living in our bodies and in this world. I use my own field recordings, medical diagnostic sound, electronic abstractions and processing. This is a multitrack composition which I will play as a stereo file over the diffusion system. The title refers to the sounds that occur underneath, in water or skin maybe, suggesting an otherness to what we normally perceive with our ears.
As I am from a long tradition of Visual/Fine art practice, when I studied sound design & music technology at London College of Communication, I was struck by the use of visual language, such as shape, form, background and foreground, gesture and so on. The spatial and therefore corporeal aspect also fitted with my previous focus and thinking, where the human presence is there even in its absence. My sound compositions explore the spirit of being in a particular space, situation or state of mind. My first album was released on 21st September 2019 with the label Linear Obsessional.
I have performed with Linear Obsessional at The Loudspeaker Orchestra in St Alfege Church, University of Greenwich concerts, where I played my composition ‘Savour the day’ over a 20 speaker diffusion system with musician Sue Lynch improvising on flute & clarinet. Composed for Desire lines, for musicians to improvise. I have screened films at the IKLECTIK and Hundred Years Gallery, improvising with laptop, and have played with Sue Lynch, tenor saxophone and clarinet, Richard Sanderson, melodeon, and Charlotte Keeffe, trumpet, as well screened a silent film for improvising musicians at the IKLECTIK during the London New Wind Festival organised by Catherine Pluygers. I participated with Bicrophonics during The Summer Pedalling Games with Velocipede sketches’, a sound piece for ERNA a sonic bicycle which was ridden around London Fields Park. I first performed at The Horse IMPROV club at the Dog House in Kennington London with a solo improvisation with film and sound files. In 2008 while a student at LCC I performed at the Southbank Centre, London as part of David Toop’s laptop orchestra, Unknown Devices, with The London Sinfonietta and The RNCM, a 30 minute improvisation with projections by Pablo Fiasco. I have a BA in Fine Art (painting), an MFA and an MA with distinction in Creative Technology. It was on this MA that I started to work with sound, I continue to exhibit my visual pieces in galleries.