My vocal composition HearAfter has been selected to be part of an exhibition at The Auricle Sound Art Gallery in Christchurch, New Zealand. The exhibition, and installation Transnational Express will run from 3rd – 26th July 2014.
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 is part of The Stranger that is next to me – which is presenting a collection of audio works from practitioners around the world concerned with and focused on The Stranger at Errant Bodies/Project Space in Berlin. Organized by Brandon LaBelle in collaboration with Osso, Lisbon.
A recording of Songs for a Stranger: (v) in the midst has been selected for the documentary audio compilation Voix Brutes Vol II, to be released by Audition Records on 15th May 2014. The focus of the Voix Brutes compilations is the voice in live performance – its extended forms, techniques and possibilities.
More info including the list of selected artists is here.
[ar093] VOIX BRUTES | International Compilation | Vol.II listen
More info here about Songs for a Stranger.
And here’s Vol I – listen
Lateral has been selected for here. now. where? – a project in which a collection of soundscapes from different ‘sensibilities, languages and formats’ will be diffused inside local taxis through the sound and radio art platform Saout Radio. The project is curated by Younes Baba-Ali and Anna Raimondo and seeks to explore a notion of ‘delocalisation in the present moment through the experience of listening in the urban space’.
Lateral has been selected for the first Framework radio show of 2014. which will have a series of broadcasts during the week 12th – 18th Jan 2014 starting with Resonance fm on Sunday 12th. Broadcast details are here.
Originally produced by the Gallery of Modern Art, HearAfter was installed in the Round Room on the 2nd floor balcony from 25th October – 2nd December 2013.
HearAfter is a contemplative, immersive pre-composed sound installation inspired by the life cycle, memory, and the process of decay. HearAfter is a pun on ‘hereafter’, which means ‘in the time to follow’ and is often associated with questions about experiences after death. With this in mind, the piece HearAfter, through the present moment of a listening experience, at one level might be heard to tap into memory – a sense of something past, gone, altered or retold, but at the same time could suggest a kind of anticipation of a future that is both factually certain yet remains unknown.
While the human voice is often considered primarily as a communicator of words, I am artistically interested in its potential as sonorous, expressive and sculptural material. The sounds of breathing and an array of vocal gestures weave together with other abstract sounds into a collage of overlapping cycles and collisions.
Producer curator Katie Bruce talks, after the preview, about our first meeting and the HearAfter work at the GoMA blog
2014
Transnational Express, Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery, Christchurch, NZ
Ohrenhoch Sound Gallery, Weichselstr. 4912045 Berlin-Neukölln
2013
25 Oct – 2nd Dec, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland
I’m delighted that my HearAfter sound piece will be installed for a month at the ohrenhoch gallery in Berlin in early January as part of their Sunday Series.
Day of the Dead Mini-Fest, co-produced by Gallery of Modern Art and Final Fling.
Date: 2nd Nov 2013
Venue: GoMA, Glasgow
Many thanks to Katie Bruce and all at the Gallery of Modern Art.
My composition Word of Mouth will be part of a collective sound installation for the Música Viva Fringe Festival 2013. The installation runs 16th November 2013 – 5th January 2014 at the CAAA Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs, Guimarães, Portugal.
“The installation offers visitors an immersion into distinct soundscapes under the theme of “text-sound composition”, originally selected by Miso Music Portugal for the 2012 Sound Walk/Garden”. More info here
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 has been selected for the Nuite Blanche event at Festival Futura this coming August.
The event is taking place at Espace Soubeyran, Crest, Drôme, France. The festival is chocka with concerts from 22nd – 24th August and Nuite Blanche runs over from 24th – 25th.
Some exciting news arrived – I won the IAWM Pauline Oliveros Prize for electroacoustic media for my studio composition Post-Industrial Broadcast #1.
The full winner’s list and other info will be available at the IAWM website.
One Autumn Night is an encounter, a dialogue between two contrasting kinds of musical material: one is human and lyrical, using voice sounds and simple sung melodic fragments, the other is clearly digital and artificial but is subtly inflected with speech-like gestures. The drama, which unfolds in two waves, is a negotiation that nods to the complexities of striving for a thoughtful interaction between humanity, technology and nature.
Events include: 2013 Acoustic Frontiers, Radio, Ottawa, Canada, 2012 RadiaLx, Radio Art Festival / 88.4 FM, Lisbon, Portugal, Basic.fm, broadcast by Pixel.Palace, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, WEALR, 2012 New Music Festival , Cal State Fulerton, US. 2011 Lights Out Listening Group, The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow
Fretwork has been selected for the first album Undae! Electroacoustic I/II from the Undae! concert series in Autumn 2012 in Madrid. The album is produced by the netlabel Thrmnphone.
My piece Word of Mouth has been selected for a Musica Viva Festival Sound Walk/Sound Garden, an immersive soundscape installation with a theme of “sound-text composition” at the Goethe-Institut in Lisbon, Portugal, More info at MisoMusic Portugal
Word of Mouth is fixed medium work (4′) that uses the human voice as the only sound source. Structurally the piece uses gestural phonemes to project a range of non-linguistic vocal sounds on the breath, which are extended and woven together to evoke metaphorical and spatial associations.
CAAA Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs, Portugal (Fringe Música Viva 2013)
Radio 6: Cafe Sonore, Netherlands (Musica Viva Sound Garden)
France Musique Radio: ‘Electrain de Nuit’, Christian Zanesi (Musica Viva Sound Garden)
Música Viva Festival Sound Garden, Lisbon, Portugal (2012)
RadiaLx, Radio Art Festival / 88.4 FM, Lisbon, Portugal
Lights Out Listening Event, Glasgow
A 30 min programme of my works has been selected for broadcast at the RadiaLx 2012 Radio Art Festival, which is hosted by Rádio Zero in Lisbon, Portugal.
I’m delighted to say that Lateral is programmed in the AIR/EAR – Instalación Radial – running through June and July and hosted by Radio-System in Argentina.
Hit or Miss has been selected for the International Computer Music Conference to be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia in September 2012.
Breathing Space has been selected by Anna Raimondo for diffusion in the gallery of the Institut de Culture de Rabat in Morocco from 26th May – 2nd June 2012.
Fretwork (2013) draws its compositional language from the intimate physical gestures associated with playing the guitar – the act of plucking becomes transformed metaphorically into a range of percussive attacks, pops and clicks. While the piece unfolds as an abstract sound collage, fragments of recognisable guitar sounds emerge and recede amidst more decorative falsely extended vibrations and resonances. Available at Bandcamp
Selected Performances
Acoustic Frontiers, CKCU 93.1, Canada
Last Friday Listening Room UCSD, Enter the Octagon, UC San Diego, US
Sweet Thunder Festival of EA Music Listening Room, San Francisco
Radio Circulo FM100.4 Madrid
NoiseFloor Festival, Stafford, UK
Featured on Thrmnphone Netlabel Album, Spain
New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2013, US
Undae Project, Madrid, Spain
Lights Out Listening, The Old Hairdresser’s, Glasgow
Originally commissioned and created for High-Slack-Low-Slack-High – a suite of audio works relating to the Clyde River curated by Minty Donald for GI Festival of Visual Art – Lateral was made as a live, site-specific installation set in Dixon Street, Glasgow. Subsequent to that event I created a studio version of the work.
Dixon Street is a main thoroughfare that runs from the river directly up through the city’s main shopping artery. The aims of the work were to highlight a sense of disconnection from the river and to create multiple cross currents by merging the river sounds of Lateral and the sounds of the city environment. The work was projected over large horn speakers mounted in the street between two buildings, creating a view down to the river. Six vocalists added a further layer of human presence with their resonant tones both emerging out of and being subsumed by the undulating sound density of the site.
The starting point for the work was the idea of a ‘Lateral System’ – a system of navigational aids comprising shapes, colours and numbers, used to guide boats up river channels into ports and docks. However, the multiple resonances of the word ‘lateral’ took on greater significance in the work through the associations and digressions that emerge with the notion of a flowing river. Place names, numerical information from tidal charts and signal/radio sounds serve as signposts along the way, rooting the work in a real world place. But the perpetual flow of water and the periodic rhythms of a vocal landscape contribute to a sense of multiple spatial and historical resonances, and to ideas of flowing with and against the current.
Many thanks indeed to Claire Docherty, Kirstie Edgar, Jessica King, Morag Stark and Hanna Tuulikki for their live vocal contributions both on site at Dixon Street and at the closing event in the Clydeport Authority Headquarters.
2016
‘Inter-#6’ (Glasgow)
Curated radio show ‘Glasgow Soundscapes’ WebSynRadio (France)
2015
Curated listening hour at Brooklyn Acoustic Ecology Festival (US)
LOLG project Shona Island (Scotland)
2014
(25 Feb – 2 March)
Here. now. where? Saout Radio, 5th Marrakech Biennale
(12 – 18 January)
Framework Radio broadcasts
12th london, uk ::: resonance 104.4fm
13th amsterdam, nl ::: concertzender
13th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
14th south devon, uk ::: soundartradio 102.5fm
14th maribor, si ::: radio marš 95.9fm
15th lisbon, pt ::: radio zero
15th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
16th coimbra, pt ::: rádio universidade de coimbra 107.9fm
16th lisbon, pt ::: radio zero
17th ljubljana, si ::: radio študent 89.3fm
17th brussels, be ::: radio campus 92.1fm
17th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
18th london, uk ::: resonance 104.4fm
18th new york state, us ::: wgxc 90.7fm
18th brasilía, br ::: rádio paisagem
2012
Foldover, WOBC 91.5 fm, Ohio
Time/Zones, Akademie der Kunst, Berlin
AIR/EAR Installation, Radio-System, Argentine
High-Slack-Low-Slack-High, GI Festival, Dixon Street, Glasgow
High-Slack-Low-Slack-High, GI Festival, Clydeport HQ, Glasgow
My work Lateral was commissioned for High-Slack-Low-Slack-High curated by Minty Donald for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art in April 2012. For more information and performance times visit Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and also the Facebook page High-Slack-Low-Slack-High.
Commissioned Artists: John Cavanagh, Minty Donald/Nick Miller, Douglas Morland, Nichola Scrutton, Hanna Tuulikki
A group of artists with shared, but diverse, interests in sound, space and place – have created audio works to be performed in public spaces close to or on the River Clyde over five days during the Festival (Monday 23rd – Friday 27th April 2012). Each performance is timed to coincide with high tide. In these citywide performances, the natural cadences and flux of the river, once significant in the tempo of Glasgow life, will again leak into the urban fabric.
On Saturday 28th April, all five works will be performed in the Trust Hall of Clydeport Authority Headquarters, an opulent, circular, Edwardian boardroom overlooking the Clyde. Here, the sonic interpretations of the river’s tidal cycle will permeate a building that stands as symbol of Glasgow’s maritime heritage.
‘High-Slack-Low-Slack-High reflects on the functional and symbolic roles played by urban rivers in contemporary cities – and in particular, the role of the River Clyde in Glasgow today. It’s common belief that, following the decline of shipbuilding and other maritime industries, Glasgow turned its back on the River. Now, while the riverbanks are undergoing significant regeneration, the water itself remains a relatively dead space. Through interweaving the natural cadences of the tide with contemporary urban rhythms, High-Slack-Low-Slack-High is an invitation to re-imagine the relationship between river and city – beyond the legacy of Glasgow’s industrial and manufacturing past.’
Perpetually rising and falling yet constrained within manmade embankments, detached from the city that once saw it as symbolic of its industrial prowess, the tidal river is taken as an invitation to reflect on ideas of change and continuity, nature and culture, in relation to the contemporary, post-industrial city.
(press written by Minty Donald)
Performances
23 April – Hanna Tuulikki, Bell’s Bridge, G51 – 3.15pm
24 April – John Cavanagh – Riverside Museum, G3 8RS – 3.45pm
25 April – Nichola Scrutton – Dixon Street, G1 4AL – 4.05pm
26 April – Douglas Morland – Clyde north waterfront between Victoria and Glasgow Bridges, G5 – 4.45pm
27 April – Minty Donald/Nick Millar – citywide – 5.25pm (and throughout the week)
28 April – 5pm and 7.30pm – Clydeport Authority Headquarters
Songs for a Stranger is a collection or cycle of five electroacoustic works that draws metaphorical inspiration from the many senses of the word ‘stranger’.
Everyone feels like a stranger sometimes – when travelling somewhere new; returning home; confronting solitude. Some feel estranged in close intimacy; others find connection through anonymity.
Songs for a Stranger movements:
i A Fragile Memory (4’40)
ii Blowing In (5′)
iii Solitude (4’26)
iv I Said You Said (5′)
v In the Midst (4’39)
The piece was premiered in the intimate ‘dark space’ at The Arches LIVE! Festival in September 2011, performed and diffused over a 4-channel speaker system. I invited Swiss vocalist Céline Hänni to rehearse and perform the work for Arches Live. Sound diffusion: Graeme Truslove. Many thanks indeed to all at The Arches.
Songs for a Stranger was further supported by a Creative Scotland Quality Arts Production Award.
I am very pleased to say I received a Creative Scotland Quality Arts Production Award for the development of vocal performance work Songs for a Stranger.
Songs for a Stranger is a collection or cycle of five electroacoustic works that draws metaphorical inspiration from the many senses of the word ‘stranger’. The work was originally created for, and supported by, Arches Live Festival.
**** Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman 23/0911, Arches Live!, Glasgow
……And down at the rough end of the basement, in a bare tunnel of a room, there’s composer Nichola Scrutton’s Songs For A Stranger, a 25-minute piece that moves beyond the limits of language into five segments of abstract electronic sound, accompanied by the increasingly fierce and brilliant vocal improvisations of Scrutton and her performing partner, Celine Hanni. There’s a central moment of meditation – titled Solitude – that recalls the deep resonances of Tibetan chant; then a final, shattering visit to what sounds like a dying rainforest, as a fierce richness of animal sound gives way to crackling cataclysm, and the soft, low sigh of a final breath….
*** Mary Brennan, The Herald (“…as a live performance, full of vertiginous vocal techniques, it was always impressive…”)
Some of my works have been selected for ‘Soundgate’ – an exhibition of sound art in Aalborg, Denmark at the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Utzon Architectural Centre and Platform 4. The works will also be streamed online for the duration of the exhibition.
An excerpt of Sustenance has been selected for the Deep Wireless 7 CD produced by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA), as part of the annual Deep Wireless festival in May, a month-long celebration of radio art. NAISA is based in Toronto and produces performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art.
Sustenance is a studio composition (14’37) that explores human interaction with objects and processes that make up our daily existence. The sound materials progress through sections, each defined by a specific sonic/material character drawn from the objects and processes used in cooking. At a higher level of structure, the work traces a general transformation from dry to wet, reflecting decay. Selected for various international broadcasts, SONUS online listening library and for NAISA Deep Wireless 7CD, produced in Toronto, Canada.
Breathing Space (7’56) is an early studio composition that uses the human voice as the only sound source. As the title suggests, the driving force of the work is the breath and its potential to evoke different sensations of space. Breathing Space continually overlaps the border between the literal and metaphorical, and the ambiguous relationship between ‘natural’ and processed sounds. The form proceeds as a relatively free exploration of these multiple vocal possibilities but comes to pivot on a transformation from intense saturation to extreme reduction. The work was selected for a range of international broadcasts on experimental radio.