Sound Thought 2014Be·ta: An exploratory operation

Glasgow University’s annual festival of Music, Sound, Performance and Research

CCA, 10th-12th Jan 2014

soundthought.co.uk

INDEXSchedule

Friday 10th, 1100 to 1500 ......................... 4 & 5Friday 10th, 1530 to 1800 ......................... 6 & 7Friday 10th, Evening Concert, 1900 ............... 8Saturday 11th, 1100 to 1330 ........................... 9Saturday 11th, 1400 to 1700 ......................... 10Saturday 11th, Evening Concert, 1900 ........ 11Sunday 12th, 1130 to 1700 ..................12 & 13

Biographies and abstracts

Paper Session 1, Friday 1200 .............. 14 to 16Paper Session 2, Friday 1545 .............. 17 to 20Paper Session 3, Saturday 1500.......... 21 to 23Paper Session 4, Sunday 1130 ............ 24 to 26Friday Evening Concert, 1900 ............. 27 to 32Saturday Lunchtime Concert,1200 ..... 33 to 36 Saturday Evening Concert, 1900 ........ 37 to 43 Audiovisual works / installations / performances ............... 44 to 52 Listening posts ...................................... 53 to 55

CCA 5: Installation

1130- Patrick Lydon 1300 Transport Me: 741 Metro Stations

CCA5: Closed Rehearsals

1400 Philip D’Alton 1430 Isabel de Berrie

1500 Konstantinos Vasilakos

4

1100

1200

1300

14:00

1500

Sound Thought: Beta Friday 10th January 1100 to 1500

1330 Buffet Lunch: Saramago Café

5

Club Room

1100 Welcome Address Dr. Drew Hammond University of Glasgow

Papers

1200 Chris Dooks Introducing The Idioholism Vinyl Trilogy

1230 Chris Sheridan To what extent does ‘country music’ meet the perceptions of the potential audience?

1300 Jamie Fyffe ‘So what’ – Borrowed materials and collabor- ative authorship

Cinema: Audio/Visual

1200- Leslie Deere1600 Untitled

Richard T.C. Nelmes Hiraeth

6

CCA5: Closed Rehearsals

1530 Philip D’Alton

1600 Aidan Deery

1630 Isabel de Berrie

1700 Jünk Teller

1730 Andrew Hill

1800 Konstantinos Vasilakos

1530 Coffee Break Saramago Café

1600

1700

1800

Sound Thought: Beta Friday 10th January 1530 to 1800

7

Club Room

Paper session 2

1545 Andrew Hill Understanding Interpretation, Informing Composition

1615 Konstantinos Vasilakos Live coding and mapping, a symbiosis

1645 Mark Summers Lamination is easy, de-lamination is not

8

CCA 5: Evening Concert

1900- Konstantinos 2015 Vasilakos - it all ends with a noise Andrew Hill Perpetual Motion Jünk Teller Isabel de Berrie Reclamations

INTERVAL

2030- Aidan Deery2145 Balconry

Philip d’Alton Timeless 8

Martin Curtis-Powell Harmonics

Seth Rozanoff Music for percussion and electronics

Sound Thought: Beta Friday 10th January Evening Concert

9

Cinema: Installation

1100- Georgia Rodgers1400 Late Lines remix

CCA 5: Closed Rehearsals

1000 Elizabeth Ford

1030 Roswitha Gerlitz

1100 Brianna Robertson

1130 Coffee Break Saramago

CCA 5: Lunchtime Concert

1200 Elizabeth Ford The Chamber Music of William McGibbon

1230 Roswitha Gerlitz An Exploration of the Chorus as Protagonist in Contemporary Opera Performance

1300 Brianna Robertson-Kirkland Training a Prima Donna: Exploration of singing treatises

1330 Buffet Lunch: Saramago Café

Sound Thought: Beta Saturday 11th January 1100 to 1330

10

Cinema

Paper session 3

1500 Ralph Whyte Richard Strauss at the Intersection of Idealism and Commercialisation in America

1530 Lucy Hollingworth Four Nordic Riddles: How an inspiration is causing an improvisa- tion to become a new piece for orchestra

1600 Jacqueline Noltingk Musica Viva and Musica Nova in Glasgow

1700 Conference Dinner: Saramago Café

CCA 5: Closed Rehearsals

1400 Steve Hollingsworth with Alison McGillivray

1430 Alexander Horowitz

1500 Nicola Singh

1530 Neil Simpson

1600 Random Order

1630 Mark Summers

Sound Thought: Beta Saturday 11th January 1400 to 1700

11

CCA 5: Evening Concert

1900- Mark Summers 2000 Laminate

Random Order Collective A Poem Without A Tongue

Neil Simpson limp limb

INTERVAL

2015- Nicola Singh 2115 Eurhythmy

Alexander Horowitz Shost 8000

Steve Hollingsworth with Alison McGillivray Blind Sight

Sound Thought: Beta Saturday 11th January Evening Concert

12

CCA5: Audio/audiovisual posts (all day)

Tom McVeetyA computer based signal processing and control system for electric cello

Kim WalkerGareth, Martin, Martin, Gareth, Colin, Martin!!

Kim WalkerMomaerdom

Thomas McConvilleShop

Thomas Leyland-CollinsPolymorphous Entities

Andrew ReemanBuilding Layers

Calum ScottEigenfunction

Plus more…

1400 Performance Alex Rigg and Guy Veale Sporopollen

Sound Thought: Beta Sunday 12th January 1130 to 1700

1130

1200

1400-1700

1600 Coffee Break: Saramago Café

13

Club Room

Paper session 4

1130 Teresa Winter Contributions to Experimental Radio by Delia Derbyshire (1964-5)

1200 James Lavender Affirming Chance: Experimentation between Sound and Philosophy

1230 R. Jenai Talkington The Distance of Sound

1630 Closing Address Dr Nick Fells University of Glasgow

Cinema: Installation

1200- Iain Campbell F-W 21400 In / am_avinestar_ (

1500 Richy Carey The Message

1530 Bethan Parkes

14

Biographies and abstractsPaper Session 1 (Friday 1200)

Chris DooksIntroducing The Idioholism Vinyl Trilogy

In this 20-minute presentation with a record deck and my recently part-published coloured vinyl records, I postulate how the ‘phonographic arts’ may offset Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Wherever medicine has abandoned its caring role, or simply has no available cure, sufferers of incurable chronic illnesses frequently turn to experimental and experiential strategies.

Such strategies can seem an outlandish or surreal response to illness; for example, working closely with an abandoned and decrepit harmonium in the Scottish borders or making music derived from Twitter-length statements about the universe - may not be on the medical map - but to sonic artists like myself, these processes are a way of life and form part of a series of coping mechanisms.

Such a mechanism is ‘appropriated’ sound, enabling exhausted people to author works. An example of this is my piece Referendum, where I stand in between two competing Scottish pipe-bands rehearsing for a competition in Ayr. By choosing where and when to place a field recorder in the cacophony, results is a fairly respectable experimental composition, where the band’s off-cuts become my prime cuts.

The methodologies flagged above [harmonium, twitter and other works] resulted in two vinyl records each in an edition of 500, published by Canada’s Komino Records and a Scottish arts partnership respectively. I’m fund-raising the third. Recent reviews of the works - both finished and unfinished - have featured in THE WIRE and I’ve made appearances at academic symposia at Bristol University and University of Kent.

15

Chris Dooks, was a director of The South Bank Show, now works as a professional artist in music, film and new media - and is a doctoral researcher at The University of The West of Scotland. In 2013 Dooks was successful with a funding bid within Creative Scotland / Visit Scotland’s The Year of Natural Scotland awards, in which he made a feature film entirely from the music found within Doric accents and similar dialects. Dooks has recently had two works published from his soon-to-be completed ‘phonographic’ PhD.

See www.chrisdooks.bandcamp.com www.dooks.org and the doctoral site www.idioholism.com

Christopher James SheridanTo what extent does ‘country music’ meet the perceptions of the potential audience?

This research project looks at the genre of music widely referred to as ‘country music’ and investigates the extent to which it meets with audience perception.

It considers the image and accent of the ‘country’ performer and challenges the notion that a songwriters’ geography dictates whether or not he or she can create ‘authentic’ country music.

The research is carried out via qualitative methods of enquiry (appropriate literature, documentary etc.), an in depth quantitative study of recognised ‘country’ songs – a process which the researcher calls ‘active listening’, which directly influences the projects creative output: a recorded collection of original ‘country’ styled songs.

In doing this, the researcher aims to test the theory that musicians - who do not fit the country music stereotype, can still make authentic and valid contribution to the ‘country’ canon.

Christopher James Sheridan is a musician and songwriter from Glasgow. He has been performing throughout the city and further afield since 2004. In 2012 he graduated with a 1st class Honours degree in Community Arts and is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Songwriting and Performance at the University of the West of Scotland.

16

Jamie Fyffe ‘So What’ – Borrowed Materials and Collaborative Authorship in Jazz

This paper examines the Miles Davis composition ‘So What’ (Kind of Blue, 1959). Previous work tends to focus on its modality (Kernfeld, 1981) whereas this study examines the collaborative nature of its genesis. It argues Davis composed the piece by reworking existing musical materials which had recently aroused his interest. Davis borrowed from contemporaries he admired through (1) sound recordings; (2) social and intellectual groups; and (3) recording sessions, reassembling these items to produce an influential recording woven from borrowed thread.

Using musical analysis as its primary tool, the paper will identify the main building blocks of ‘So What’ and trace those constituent elements back to their sources. Beginning with melodic design, harmonic structure and rhythmic form, the study will identify separate genealogies for each by examining influential sound recordings. It will also reassess evidence regarding who composed the introduction to ‘So What’ and highlight the collective nature of the development of modality in jazz.

The examination forms a case study designed to illustrate collaborative authorship in jazz. In addition to illustrating the effectiveness of Davis’s compositional strategy, it questions romantic notions of individual genius and highlights the inadequacy of copyright law in comprehending complex creative processes involving multiple participants.

Jamie was a professional musician for five years before teaching music in The Lake District for another seven. He is in his second year of a PhD at University of Glasgow entitled ‘Collaborative Authorship in Jazz: The Repertoire of Miles Davis’.

17

Paper Session 2 (Friday 1545)

Andrew HillUnderstanding Interpretation, Informing Composition

This paper will present results and reflections emerging from empirical research into audience interpretation of electroacoustic audio-visual works. And the subsequent development and modification of the composition “Perpetual Motion”.

Within the process of composition, the composer must decide how to effectively draw relationships between these time based media and their various abstract and mimetic materials. This process usually has no codified laws or structures and results in relationships that are singular to the individual artworks. The composer uses their own experience and intuition in assessing how best to associate sounds and images and they will use their own interpretation of the materials to evaluate the how successful they are in realising their intentions. But what is there to say that the interpretation made by the composer bares any resemblance to interpretations made by audiences?

The current research sought to assess any trends or commonalities in how people interpret such works. Utilising a combination of empirical research, composition and scholarly study, the project investigated various theoretical approaches to interpretation and the occurrence of correlation between compositional intention and audience interpretation.

The project challenges structuralist approaches to interpretation, drawing together theoretical materials and empirical research findings in support of a post-structrualist model of interpretation that demonstrates the absolutely vital role played by context – the framing of the artwork in the consciousness of the individual audience member.

Andrew Hill (1986) is a composer of electroacoustic music, specialising in studio composed works both acousmatic (purely sound based) and audio-visual. His works have been performed extensively across the UK, as well as in Europe and the US.

18

His works are composed with materials captured from the human and natural world, seeking to explore the beauty in everyday objects.

www.ahillav.co.uk

Konstantinos VasilakosLive coding and mapping, a simbiosis

There is a wide range of hardware devices ready to serve as the mediator between human agency and the digital domain. Of these, the devices that use physical gesture to transmit the data into the musical application are called gestural interfaces.

The design of the software component that describes the ’correspondence’ of the interface variables to the sound synthesis parameters is of great importance. It can be argued that this ’mapping’ of the input data from the external device to the musical environment (sound synthesis engine etc.) is the most crucial component in the design of ’interactivity’ between human agency and sound output.

In this paper I compare some examples of different mapping strategies that I have investigated through custom-made digital environments developed in the SuperCollider programming language. I have evaluated the relative merits of using fixed or pre-determined mappings as well as real-time mappings through the practice of ’live coding’. I reflect upon the ’on the fly’ modification of mappings using ’live coding’ and the use of ’hackable’ mapping that allows for transitions between interaction models based on constraints, conditions, and interaction possibilities.

Finally, I elaborate on the importance of ’dynamic’ mapping techniques in the context of their application to higher level musical characteristics such as the articulation of musical structures and form. I shall also describe some examples of musical material created during improvised ’live coding’ performance that have been used as source material in the composition of fixed media pieces.

Konstantinos Vasilakos (Athens, GR. 1980) is a computer musician, he holds a Bachelor in electronic music (2009, Aegean College, Athens

19

Greece, validated by University of Central Lancashire, Preston) and a MMus degree in electroacoustic composition (2011, Utrecht School of Arts, The Netherlands) under the supervision of Hans Timmermans & Niko Langenhuijsen.

Currently, he is working towards a Ph.D at the Music & Music Technology Department of Keele University under the supervision of Mike Vaughan & Rajmil Fischman, His music is informed by the tradition of studio tape composition as well as the wider range of live electroacoustic improvised music.

His current research focus is in the real time interactivity between computer based compositional environments and gestural interfaces.

Mark SummersLamination is easy, de-lamination is not

This paper presents my work Laminate and its work-in-progress companion De-laminate, both for improviser and 4-channel computer system.

Laminate uses a relatively simple delay and feedback system to turn audio from the improviser into four channels of immersive sound that become increasingly layered over the course of the piece. The resulting piece is conceptually simple, yet offers the improviser a number of different experiences over its course.

An analysis of Laminate, in terms of aesthetics, technical issues and performance practice, leads into a discussion of its companion piece De-laminate. Starting where Laminate finishes, De-laminate strips layers from the four channels. This process is much less straightforward to achieve technically, and the methods used impact on the aesthetics of the final piece far more than in Laminate. Potential processes for both computer and improviser in terms of aesthetic outcomes and performance practice will be discussed.

20

Mark Summers is a performer and researcher who specialises in improvisation on the viola da gamba, largely in conjunction with live computer processing. He has spent time as a professional musician, performing early and contemporary music, along with a period in information science research. Mark is currently under-taking doctoral research at the University of Sheffield, lookingat the performer’s experience of instrumental improvisation with interactive computer processing.

21

Paper Session 3 (Saturday 1500)

Ralph Whyte Richard Strauss at the Intersection of Idealism and Commercialisation in America

In April 1904 as part of his American tour, Richard Strauss gave two concerts in a New York department store. Strauss’s American critics were quick to point to the incident as a sign of the composer’s base commercial motives. Considering the fact that public musical life interacted with commercial forces and little could be done to oppose the interaction, I ask why Strauss’s department store concerts were a locus for journalistic opprobrium, looking to the American music criticism’s idealist paradigms during the period and Strauss’s previous reception in the country. In conclusion, I discuss the messy but not always contradictory relationship between the strands of idealism and commercialism and contend the reason Strauss provoked particular ire was his unwillingness to maintain an image of detachment from commercial arrangements. This adds to a growing body of literature on the reception of European music in America while also paying attention to a broader social history.

Ralph began his education in the state sector in Scotland, while receiving double bass, piano and composition lessons at the junior school of the RSAMD. Ralph undertook an academic music degree at King’s College London, writing a dissertation on film music and eroticism in 1950s Hollywood. Following this, Ralph stayed at King’s to pursue a master’s degree in historical musicology with a dissertation on the extent to which Hanns Eisler’s film music realised his modernist ideals. In 2012, Ralph received a Dean’s Fellowship for a PhD in historical musicology at Columbia university in New York.

22

Lucy HollingworthFour Nordic Riddles: How An Inspiration Is Causing An Improvisation To Become A New Piece For Orchestra

I encountered a little known orchestral piece called ‘Flowings’ from 1985 by Swedish composer Carin Malmlöf-Forssling (1916-2005) during my preparations for my research into the work of twentieth century women composers. The raw, fresh and exploratory nature of the piece connected directly with creative ideas I was exploring when I wrote an improvisation for orchestra and voices for students at Edinburgh University called ‘Four Nordic Riddles’ in 2010. ‘Flowings’ prompted me to revisit the improvisation and contemplate ways in which it might be recomposed into a fully notated orchestral piece. This presentation explains how I have analysed ‘Flowings’ in order to understand why the piece works for me, and how I am applying ‘Flowings’ as a model to the ongoing work of recomposing ‘Four Nordic Riddles’. Using extracts of sound and video and examples from the written scores and of the analytical process, I explain how ‘Flowings’ has moved from being an inspiration to being a practical model for this new work, and address some of the implications of using this model as a creative stimulus.

I have had two lives as a composer. The first was nurtured at Manchester University in the 1980s. I worked as a freelance performer/composer, had work performed by the SPNM and won prizes at the YAA Young Composers’ Competition at the Huddersfield Festival. ‘The Endless Knot’, commissioned by viola player Susan Bicknell, was premiered in 1994. For nearly 20 years circumstances in my life made composing impossible, but I returned and obtained an MMus in Composition with Nigel Osborne in 2012. In 2013 I commenced my PhD in Composition and Dissertation at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with Gordon McPherson.

23

Jacqueline NoltingkMusica Viva and Musica Nova in Glasgow

Musica Viva was a way of presenting new music pioneered in Munich and taken up by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. In Glasgow, the Scottish National Orchestra and its principal conductor Alexander Gibson presented a short series of Musica Viva concerts (five in all) in 1960 and 1961 to introduce audiences to music which had not previously been performed in the city and in some cases had not been played anywhere in Britain. Musica Nova, which the orchestra promoted in conjunction with Glasgow University between 1971 and 1990, was a small-scale festival: a concentrated period during which a number of concerts were given, including recitals and concerts by other orchestras and ensembles as well as the SNO itself. These events explored a range of contemporary works, concentrating on (but not exclusively devoted to) the works of four or five composers. Musica Nova was promoted on eight occasions.

This paper will ask why such concerts were thought to be necessary and how they introduced audiences to new orchestral music. What were the responses to them at the time? Do we know what any of the composers thought? And how does the presentation compare with what some orchestras do now?

After working as an administrator for a number of musical organisations including the Royal Scottish National and the BBC Symphony Orchestras, Jacqueline Noltingk is now studying for a PhD at Glasgow University. She is looking at the ways Scottish orchestras have commissioned new works and presented concerts of contemporary music in the period since 1945. Case studies will include the SNO’s Musica Viva and Musica Nova concerts, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s relationships with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sally Beamish.

24

Paper Session 4 (Sunday 1130)

Teresa WinterContributions to Experimental Radio by Delia Derbyshire (1964-5)

Delia Derbyshire is one of the most recognized members of the first generation to make electronic music in Britain—a neglected area in academic music history that is only beginning to be understood. While she is one of the most culturally celebrated of its exponents Derbys-hire’s work remains obscure, with most of it unpublished on archival reels at the BBC. What will detailed research into her music add to this new understanding? Recent research by Louis Niebur has shown the lack of institutional support for electronic musicians in this country. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop— setup to produce sound effects and incidental music for radio and television— provided the only major centre for its creation for most of the 1960s. It was here that Derbyshire created most of her work. I will present research from archives and interviews into some of her collaborations in experimental sound broadcasting at the BBC. My aim is to demonstrate the scope of her work apart from the Doctor Who signature tune for which she is famous, while bringing to light some fascinating but forgotten examples of sound art in public broadcasting.

Teresa Winter is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Music, University of York

James LavenderAffirming Chance: Experimentation between Sound and Philosophy

In a highly suggestive footnote to Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari make a rare reference to the work of John Cage in order to approvingly cite it as an example of ‘art as experimentation.’ They go on to affirm his specific definition of experimentation as indicating, quite simply, ‘an act the outcome of which is unknown’ (Anti-Oedipus, pg.405).Though brief and unelaborated, this reference to Cage’s sonic

25

experimentation in fact implicates a significant methodological crossover between the work of Cage and Deleuze. According to Deleuze, we do not think through an act of will or a love for truth; rather, we think only under the constraint of a contingent and fortuitous encounter with something which forces us to think, precisely insofar as we are unable to recognise it or subsume it under a readymade concept. Thinking, then, must itself be experimentation—and philosophy must become a ‘dice throw’ that is ‘capable of affirming the whole of chance’ (Difference and Repetition, pg.250). This affirmation of chance common to both Deleuze and Cage points towards the possibility of a mutual resonance between philosophy and sonic practice rather than a reflection by the former on the latter; this paper will explore the possibility of these methodological proximities constituting an ‘interference’ (Cinema 2, pg.268) between sonic and conceptual experimentation that would relinquish any priority of one term over the other. Only on this condition can we conceive of a properly sonic form of thinking that remains perpetually open and incomplete.

James Lavender is a PhD student in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on intersections between the work of Gilles Deleuze and John Cage in order to pursue a new relation between philosophy and sonic practice. He is currently co-editor of the journal parallax.

R. Jenai TalkingtonThe Distance of Sound

On the fringe of artistic and geopolitical dialogue, sound mapping, the digital translation of site-specific sounds into alternative contexts, is slowly garnering critical attention as an emerging practice. This paper identifies how visual mapping conventions are challenged through the dissolution of traditional topography. Beginning with a historiographical approach, I identify how contemporary iterations of place inherit the Enlightenment division between global and local, detachment and belonging, impartiality and familial ties. Then, I examine the theoretical implications of using sound as a medium to navigate the distance between the global and the local to create new avenues for dialogue.

26

Geographer Denis Cosgrove notes how maps have both globalising and localising agency, providing freedom from local prejudices, as well as recognition of the local within it. Historian Amanda Anderson argues that the Enlightenment initiated a split between global cosmo-politanism and the desire for a situated and embodied experience, an argument of particular importance today as modernists, feminists, and post-structuralists continue to reject claims of scientific or cultural objectivity.

Alternatively, sound mapping embraces distance to subvert the global/local rift. Linked to digitisation and technological exchange, sound submits to collaboration, remix, amateur participation, dematerialisation, and de-authorship. Listening activates place reproduction and appropriates space as both intimately local and globally applicable. Examining works by emerging sound artists Davide Tidoni, Kathy Hinde, Ian Rawes, and the Locus Sonus Lab, I argue that sound maps can renegotiate distance and redefine the margins of intimacy to challenge the global/local divide.

R. Jenai Talkington graduated from The King’s College in 2007 and completed her Masters of Arts at Brooklyn College in New York City, specialising in contemporary art theory and the political discourse of outer space while working as a public educator at the Brooklyn Museum. She is currently an architectural research student at the University of Edinburgh, exploring aural and technical methodologies that reconstitute distant places. Her interests expand across art, science, and technology and include astrophysics, data sonification, geography, art history, and the representation of place.

27

Friday Evening Concert (1900)

Seth RozanoffMusic for percussion and electronics

Music for Percussion is derived from the shekere and hand bells. The material the player has interacting with the electronics in performance can be viewed as a small layer of colour mixed in with the larger patterns and layers of the electronics. The piece on the whole tries to manage a variety of raw and processed sounds that enhance the player’s performance.

Seth Rozanoff(born Michigan) is a musician living in Glasgow doing PhD research at University of Glasgow under Nick Fells. Future collaborations include a work with electric guitarists Olivier Jambois(SPA), Pascal Jadry(SWE), and Taylor Levine (NY), as well as percussionist/composer Dave Stockard. Seth has been the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship in The Netherlands, a Santander Mobility Award in Brazil, and a Netherland-America grant.

David Stockard is an improviser and composer from Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. He read music at Queen’s University of Belfast, studying composition under the guidance of Piers Hellawell and Simon Mawhinney. As a performer David is an active drummer and member of the free-improvisation quartet ‘Foirm Fada’. Recent performances include Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music (SARC ‘13), Hilltown New Music Festival (Hilltown House ‘13).

Isabel de BerrieReclamations

Reclamations is a continuously evolving series of compositions created by reusing or “reclaiming” material from rehearsal or workshop recordings of acoustic compositions, generally my own. These are often recordings which are unfinished, unsuccessful, or were captured using low-quality equipment. The moments which find a prominent place in the reworkings are generally those arising accidentally from the original

28

notation, such as the faint sounds where the bow begins to make contact with the string or an accidental glissando. This compositional process leads to reconsideration of the possession of musical material and the concept of authorship; while reclaiming control by manipulating the captured sound, I also relinquish it, in recognising that I have only curated, not created, the acoustic textures my original score suggests. As the series progresses, it develops from recognisable instrumental sounds towards increasing abstraction, yet without severing the threads which hold the new music in indebtedness to the original.

Isabel de Berrié is currently completing her DPhil in Music (Musicology) at Oxford, where she previously gained an MSt with Distinction. She received instruction at Cambridge from Jeremy Thurlow and Giles Swayne, also participating in courses and masterclasses with several renowned composers. In addition to acoustic performances across the United Kingdom, Isabel has recently focused on electroacoustic techniques and incorporating non-conventional instruments into performances; she also currently performs with OxLOrk laptop orchestra. In 2013, Isabel was the recipient of a High Profile Achievement Award from Wolfson College, Oxford.

Konstantinos Vasilakosit all ends with a noise Konstantinos Vasilakos (Athens, GR. 1980) is a computer musician, he holds a Bachelor in electronic music (2009, Aegean College, Athens Greece, validated by University of Central Lancashire, Preston) and a MMus degree in electroacoustic composition (2011, Utrecht School of Arts, The Netherlands) under the supervision of Hans Timmermans & Niko Langenhuijsen.

Currently, he is working towards a Ph.D at the Music & Music Technology Department of Keele University under the supervision of Mike Vaughan & Rajmil Fischman, His music is informed by the tradition of studio tape composition as well as the wider range of live electroacoustic improvised music.

29

His current research focus is in the real time interactivity between computer based compositional environments and gestural interfaces.

Andrew HillPerpetual Motion

This work was inspired by and developed exclusively from materials collected in the Paternoster lift at the Attenborough tower, Leicester. The paternoster lift itself is in constant motion, the open compartments slide slowly between floors in a never ending loop, rising and falling, passing constantly in a seamless flow of perpetual motion.

Andrew Hill (1986) is a composer of electroacoustic music, specialising in studio composed works both acousmatic (purely sound based) and audio-visual. His works have been performed extensively across the UK, as well as in Europe and the US.His works are composed with materials captured from the human and natural world, seeking to explore the beauty in everyday objects.

www.ahillav.co.uk

Aidan DeeryBalconry

Balconry opens a window on real and imagined soundscapes, and the spaces in between. The source material was mainly recorded on a balcony overlooking a train line, and points towards the city centre of Belfast. The balcony links inner and outer worlds, acting as an immediate portal between the enclosed, indoor space of the apartment and a vast urban environment. The coalescence of spaces creates ambiguity, as one space merges and interacts with the other. Technology, both inner and outer, exacerbates this tension as it has ingrains itself in the sonic environment. The fusion of these elements triggers our imagination, revealing unexpected spaces.

30

Aidan Deery is a composer from County Armagh, Northern Ireland and is currently undertaking research at SARC (Queen’s University Belfast) into electroacoustic composition informed by various aspects of the soundscape. His output to date almost always makes use of field recordings, and ranges from fixed medium to instrument and live electronics. Aidan has had his work presented at a variety of festivals, including Sonorities and Festival Futura, and at concerts in countries including Ireland, UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Argentina and USA.

Philip d’AltonTimeless 8

Timeless 8 is an 8 channel composition which was composed early on in my research. It uses recordings made within and around the Albert Memorial Clock in Belfast. It is an abstract piece, which uses the history of the clock and its surrounding area as a score. Although the piece is technically “finished” it is a piece that I will always feel the urge to revisit mainly for the reason that I walk through this space nearly everyday and hear and experience new things.

Philip d’Alton is an Electroacoustic/Soundscape Composer from Dublin, Ireland. Philip completed a BSc and MA in Sonic Arts at Queens University Belfast. He is currently carrying out research towards a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition in the School of Creative Arts, Queens University, Belfast. The research involves creating place specific compositions based on the history of national landmarks.

Martin Curtis-Powell Harmonics

The work takes a handful of sampled recordings of guitar harmonics and proceeds to use these as a foundation for sonic exploration. The interesting approach was in the nature of this challenge: to see how far manipulations of these few samples could yield interesting musical results and to see how many differing transformations could

31

be achieved. I was interested in the possibilities for transformation and the creation of intriguing and captivating material from a relatively small pool of sounds. The work necessarily relies upon repetition; the initial sonic motif is reiterated throughout the work, albeit subjected to transformations and differing representation. There is much use of pitched material, and these pitches (derived from the original samples) are manipulated and transformed in myriad ways.

Martin Curtis-Powell is a composer specialising in electroacoustic music. He completed his undergraduate degree at The University of Sheffield and won the Philip John Lord Composition Prize. Prior to this, he worked as a composer, performer and sound engineer for over a decade in the field of rock/heavy metal music and performed worldwide during that time, releasing several records. He has just concluded his studies for a PhD in electroacoustic composition under the supervision of Dr Adrian Moore at The University of Sheffield.

Jünk TellerThe members of Edinburgh based acoustic and electronic network improvisation group, Jünk Teller, propose an improvised performance that will explore the group’s recent and ongoing research into performer relationship within improvised music. This unique collaboration provides a setting that encourages the ongoing experimental process of instrument design and performer interaction.

The collaboration in its current state utilizes computer network technology to transfer performance data (current and average frequency, amplitude and articulation) in real-time between the performers individual interactive electronic systems. An environment is therefore established in which the systems listen and react in a similar fashion to improvising human performers and become influential to future musical decisions.

In interactive electronic music it is often the case that the physical actions of a human performer can appear detached from their resulting sound. Jünk Teller are concerned with the physicality within electronic

32

music and through an ongoing process of performance software development, experiment with methods of re- connecting electronic sound with its visual source.

The use of network technology has allowed the group to develop this approach to aid a more cohesive relationship between the performers. By allowing the systems to interact with each other, the causal actions of an individual improviser can be used to influence the electronic output of another. This helps to reinforce the bond between the two and can emphasise performer interaction.

Jünk Teller’s approach is experimental and their practical research into performer interaction is an ongoing process that allows the continuing development of cohesive relationships in improvisation.

Jünk Teller is the network dependent collaboration of signal processing, free improvisers Tristan Clutterbuck (hand-made stringed instrument with electronics), Tina Krekals (saxophone with electronics) and Stewart Houston (clarinet with electronics). The group are current students and recent graduates from The University of Edinburgh’s Digital Composition and Performance postgraduate course. They practice acoustic and electronic network improvisation, perform regularly across the UK and have released three recordings in 2013. The members are also founders of the larger BOAR Collective and have recently been awarded a grant to curate an improvisation festival at Cafe Oto in February 2014.Examples of the groups work can be found at http://junkteller.bandcamp.com and http://boarcollective.tumblr.com.

33

Saturday Lunchtime Concert (1200)

Elizabeth FordThe Chamber Music of William McGibbon

William McGibbon (1696-1756) was a leader of eighteenth-century Scottish musical culture, but his music has been largely neglected since his death. For the first time, the disparate parts of his music have been re-assembled and a clear sense of his compositions can be had, showing that far from having faded into well-deserved obscurity, his music is rich with variety, interest, and whimsy, well worthy of attention from musicians, scholars, and audiences.

Elizabeth Ford is a PhD student in music at the University of Glasgow. Her research concerns the flute’s role in eighteenth-century Scottish musical life. She studied music and philosophy at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and earned a Master of Music in historical musicology and baroque performance practice, focusing on the pedagogical writings of Jacques Hotteterre, from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. Her baroque flute teachers include Colin St. Martin and Stephen Schultz. Elizabeth has performed, presented, and taught in a variety of orchestras, universities, conferences and festivals in West Virginia, Maryland, Paris, and Scotland.

Allan Wright studied harpsichord with Dr David McGuinness, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with his BMus and Masters degrees. He is the organist at Glenburn Parish Church, Paisley, tunes pianos and harpsichords, and also teaches at the University of Glasgow Music Department. While he is interested in early harpsichord and organ repertoire, the bulk of his research is in the music of Frank Zappa, and in particular Zappa’s less well-known orchestral works. Allan plays continuo for the Eris Ensemble and the “Baroque Music in the Pub” sessions at the Drake Bar in Glasgow.

Aaron McGregor is studying for a joint Mmus in Historically Informed Performance Practice between the University of Glasgow and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 2009 with a 1st class Bmus (Hons).

34

His performing experience includes leading NYOS and the RSAMD symphony orchestra, performing concertos (Edinburgh University, NYOS, RCS) and performing with ensembles such as Concerto Caledonia, Ludus Baroque, Dunedin Consort and The Erskine Quartet. Notable prizes include the Janet Buckley Early Music Prize, Thomas Beecham Instrumental Award (Edinburgh University), Willie McPherson Violin Prize, Dunbar Gerber Chamber Music Prize (RCS) and the Donald Dewar Award.

Roswitha GerlitzAn Exploration of the Chorus as Protagonist in Contemporary Opera Performance

My work has led me to question the definition of opera and the role of the chorus today. How can the chorus serve both as protagonist and collective? (What is the relevance and meaning of the classical chorus for contemporary opera practice?) This paper explores the potentials of the merging of opera, live art and choral performance. I am particularly interested in the idea of the chorus and the use of voices within live art and an important element of my research will be an investigation into the history of chorus. I will also look into audience attitudes and follow its later development in relation to the present communication technologies to evaluate its relevance and meaning for contemporary practice.

My presentation will be a juxtaposition of lecture, performance and live demonstration: it will give a brief overview of the traditional role of the chorus and concludes its progress in the twentieth century which saw its renaissance in the nintheennineties. While the audience becomes familiar with the subject, the performance emerges.

The idea behind my thesis and performance is to airlift the Greek chorus into contemporary practice as the sole driving force throughout the performance:

35

as a protagonist, initiator of audience participation, acoustic medium in a global community and as a musical tool to produce a innovative choral performance which abolishes the demarcations of live art and theatre.

Roswitha started her career in theatre as a stage and costume designer working in London and internationally. She has exhibited work as a visual artist and has written, directed, designed and produced multi-disciplined performances and founded her own company Mistress of Time to further her development as a practitioner.

Her work incorporates spoken and sung word, movement, operatic elements, sometimes digital images and has involved working with groups of actors, dancers, artists, acrobats and musicians in established theatre spaces. At present Roswitha investigates the possibilities to combine site specific approach with opera and life art.

Brianna Robertson-KirklandTraining a Prima Donna: Exploration of singing treatises

Castrati (castrated male singers) in eighteenth century Europe were leading musical figures who dominated performances on the operatic stage. This voice type is now lost to the modern world as the act was banned in the early twentieth century. The very existence of the castrati brings up a number of questions: what did they sound like; how did they influence the operatic world; what legacy did they pass onto other singers? We may never hear what these operatic castrati actually sounded like, but they have left behind a small glimpse. Special collections, here at The University of Glasgow hold a number of singing songbooks, which were written by some very famous castrati. These were used in order to train both castrated and non-castrated vocal performers in the art of singing. I will perform some of the music contained within these songbooks, highlighting some of the exercises used to train an eighteenth-century opera singer and singing some of the most popular arias from the eighteenth-century operatic stage that would have drawn some singers to the singing profession. It is my belief that the castrati have influenced the way in which modern operatic singers train and perform. They certainly influenced composers such as Mozart and

36

Haydn, whose music we continue to perform in these modern times. In performance, can we unlock the secrets of the elusive bel canto technique?

Brianna graduated with 1st class honours from The University of Glasgow, Bachelor of Music degree. She was granted the Edward Caird Award to allow her to continue her studies in a joint degree course between the Royal Conservatoire of Glasgow and the University of Glasgow studying for a Masters of Historically Informed Performance. She is currently undergoing PhD research on the 18th century castrato singer Venanzio Rauzzzini and his students.

Throughout the year she takes part in many concerts and competitions. Brianna took first place in the Glasgow Music Festival’s Opera and Oratorio also winning the Judith Richmond Memorial certificate and the Janette Clanachan Memorial Award for performance of Opera and Oratorio. She was awarded first place in the opera category of the Edinburgh Music Speech and Dance Festival, where she also won the Alice J. Fleming medal. She is currently a Lanfine Choral Scholar with The University of Glasgow Chapel Choir. Upcoming events include performances recording arrangement of Burn’s songs for The Centre for Robert Burns Studies, performances in the West End Festival and she will take the lead role in The Tall Ship production of HMS Pinofore playing Josephine this coming June.

37

Saturday Evening Concert (1900)

Mark SummersLaminate

Presented here in a version for improvising viola da gamba and live electronics, Laminate explores the noise-making capabilities of the instrument. Closely-captured cracks, creaks and groans are brought together by the computer and dispersed around the audience, building up layered masses of immersive sound.

Mark Summers is a performer and researcher who specialises in improvisation on the viola da gamba, largely in conjunction with live computer processing. He has spent time as a professional musician, performing early and contemporary music, along with a period in information science research. Mark is currently undertaking doctoral research at the University of Sheffield, looking at the performer’s experience of instrumental improvisation with interactive computer processing.

Random Order CollectiveA Poem Without A Tongue

In 1965 two radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson made a chance discovery of mysterious noise coming from outside our galaxy. They discovered that 1% or less of this noise comes from the background radiation left from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Those signals were named cosmic background radiation. They are responsible for part of the white ‘snow’ that can be seen and heard on analogue TV screens while in between channels.

The fact that it is scientifically proven that we can witness the leftover heat from the fireball of the Big Bang on our TV screens sounds more like fiction than science. It keeps the mystery of the origin alive. ‘A Poem Without A Tongue’ juxtaposes the scientific enquiry of the origin with existing and made up oral and written narratives. By mixing facts with myths we try to interrogate the boundaries of different types

38

of knowledge. Scientific and fictional sources are put together in an attempt to reformulate the possibility of dialogue outside the certainty of rigid categories, to create space for whispers to be heard.We created a book consisting of several ‘origin’ narratives and stories (already existing and new ones created by us) and we would tell and read out loud some of them in a performative lecture. There will be a noise composition in the background. Different media are used as a time device covering a non-linear journey from ritual and shamanic to analytical and controlled.

Random Order is a collective of four artists whose practices expand from sculpture, film, performance to new technologies and immersive environments. The sound plays a role in our individual practices but becomes a primary concern in our collective. Our projects seek to understand how sound affects perception of spaces and everyday life. We interrogate sound’s potential to relate to the environment and to open up both collective and individual stories and histories. Through exploring the acoustics of sound we deal with the physical properties of it, which further implicates a direct engagement with matter. We use a wide array of processes in our projects including DIY sound kits, field recording and both analogue and digital processes. By merging and cross-referencing new technologies and craft devices we propose heuristic assemblages that create sound bridges between cultures, processes and different modes of expression.

Neil Simpsonlimp limb

Over the past 18 months, I have been taking degraded audio sources of various kinds (eg low quality youtube clips, low bandwidth mp3s, cheap cassette dictaphones) and have been manipulating their output digitally using granular synthesis. As a result, I have created a number of carefully constructed tracks, links to which accompany this proposal. I am currently developing these tracks to include heavily processed vocals, which I aim to perform live.

39

Oo is an attempt to ruin both continuity and fragmentation, to do so physically and acoustically, while being observed. Nothing I have done prior to this work seems relevant as background I’m afraid, at least not in this format. “Even attaching an “I” to it seems awkward”. Whose flaccid words are these anyway? Yours or mine? Shut up.

Nicola SinghEurhythmy

Eurhythmy – ‘harmonious movement’ – expresses the creative principles underlying music and speech through movement. Developed by Dr Rudolf Steiner in 1912, it is based on the premise that rhythm is the primary element of music, and that the source for all rhythm may be found in the natural rhythms of the body.

Dr. Steiner describes how when human speech or music sound forth, the air is ‘sculpted’ into rhythmic gesture. This idea of spatialized rhythm and pitch is further extended in the form of Rhythmic Gymnastics, another Eurhythmic technique in which rhythms are manifest in dynamic movement sequences using copper rods or balls.

As part of Sound Thought 2014, Nicola Singh will present a performance that demonstrates the principles of this technique, through the use of song, movement and rhythmic gymnastic apparatus.

The abstract structure of the Eurhythmic method will be used to create an improvised, unstable performance that directly challenges the idea of the finished product, the consumable or easily aestheticized. By appropriating this pedagogical technique, Nicola Singh aims to question the way in which meaning is created and interactions formed in relation to movement and sound.

This performance reflects the artist’s wider concern with the performative role that language, movement and sound play, both in reflecting on reality and in shaping our understanding of that reality.

Newcastle-based artist Nicola Singh works across performance, visual

40

art and experimental music to question our understanding of the ways in which we interact with, create and affected by our environment.

She holds a BA Hons Contemporary Music and Visual Performance from Dartington College of Arts, MA Curating (Distinction) from Sunderland University and a practice-led MRes in Performance from Northumbria University.

She has taken part in BALTIC Artist Mentoring, Edinburgh International Summer School and shown work at Prague Quadrennial Festival 2011, Freud Museum, Battersea Arts Centre, Bristol Arnolfini and Whitechapel Gallery.

Nicola is currently a practice-led PhD student at Northumbria University.

www.nicolasingh.co.uk

Alexander HorowitzShost 8000

I propose a performance in ongoing development, with the first performance of this work taking place in The Old Hairdressers on 19th November 2013. The work is for an infiltrated string quartet, that is, one where the viola has been replaced with a VJ who is also playing sound from his clips.

The quartet’s material consists solely of snippets of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, whilst the VJ uses both a range of recordings of this same string quartet, as well as other clips related to the concert hall tradition, including applause and tuning, and even footage of string masterclasses and interviews with famous conductors and performers, frequently taking soundbites out of context.

The piece aims to present a clash of the traditional concert hall environment and the postmodern condition of having unlimited access to data - how does the latter affect our respect for the former, and is the concert hall still a relevant form of expression?

41

Alexander HorowitzBMus (Composition), RSAMD 2009-2013

Composer @ www.alexanderhorowitz.com Arches LIVE 2013 - ‘One Day This Will Be Long Ago’ Edinburgh Fringe 2013 - ‘Toi Toi Toi’ (4* Broadway Baby) SMC Composition Marathon 2013 - ‘Bachelorette’ BAFTA Scotland New Talent 2011 - Best Original Score (nomination)

Multimedia Artist @ www.eyegrid.net Whisky Bond 2013 - ‘B Y O BEAMER 2013’ Glue Factory 2013 - ‘DEEP VEIN THROMBOSIS’ City Halls 2013 - ‘CONJUGATION’ The Old Hairdressers - ‘I_CONSUME_IT_CONSUMES_US’

Creative Director - Gregor SAMSA Gregor SAMSA: Launch @ The Old Hairdressers (19th Nov 2013)

Steve Hollingsworth with Alison McGillivrayBlind Sight

An improvised performance with classical cellist Alison McGillivray where I (an untrained non musician) play her baroque viol, whilst she uses a proximity oscillator to obtain sounds from neon, shaped as various sound waves-triangle, saw tooth and sine. We perform against a projection of a fire coming into flame then dying out. This piece was performed only once before as a part of PLUG 13 at RCS on 3rd May 2013. The piece operates on several levels- The imminence and danger of a potential failure. The opposition of a classical instrument versus the basic electronics of a proximity oscillator, which derives its sound from the scattered pieces of neon formed to symbolise sound waves. There is an obvious risk attached to each of our temporary new roles as we tentatively try to assume the others identity and become familiar with each instrument in real time over the course of a fifteen-minute performance. Free of usual ego associated with a traditional musical performance concerned with virtuosity and musicality. We are both fragile and bare before the audience as we attempt to develop both a

42

provisional identity and strive to become a whole through unspoken communication mediated through sound.

Vulnerable

Steve Hollingsworth is a Visual Artist based in Glasgow. He graduated with an MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 1994. Since this time he has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has participated in several international residencies, including the research program at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan. He has taught at several institutions including Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee and Northumbria University. He is currently a PhD candidate at RCS, Glasgow.

Alison McGillivray is internationally recognised as a baroque cellist, gamba player, director and teacher. She was principal cellist and soloist with The Academy of Ancient Music and The English Concert for many years, and has been guest principal with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and English Baroque Soloists. Alison teaches at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

43

Audiovisual works / installations / performances

Friday

Patrick M. LydonTransport Me: 741 Metro Stations

Transport Me is a project whereby the artist rides the entire lengths of world metro rail systems, taking photos and sound recordings at each station. In Seoul, South Korea, he has documented the entire metro system, 483 stations in total as of 2012. A work in progress, the Transport Me installation currently includes audio recordings from metro stations in Tokyo (Japan), New York City (USA), Seoul (South Korea) — three of the largest metro rail systems in the world — juxtaposed with sounds from Houston (USA), and Glasgow (Scotland), two of the smallest metro rail systems. In its current ‘alpha’ stage of development, a total of 741 metro station platform recordings are included in a six-channel soundscape. Eventually this project aims to weave the largest and smallest metro systems in the world into a large scale image and sound experience. Patrick Lydon is a research-based artist working at the intersection of culture and ecology. Employing a range of mediums and venues, his work encourages exploration and rethinking of humanity’s habits and roles within ‘built’ and ‘natural’ worlds. He has recently exhibited works in Scotland, United States, Japan and Korea, and is currently working in the Art, Space & Nature MFA programme at The University of Edinburgh. Please visit www.pmlydon.com to learn more.

44

Leslie DeereUntitled

I captured the sounds of myself alone in the spaces I stayed, this included hole in the wall hostels and seemingly empty beach hotels in San Francisco and LA. I became intrigued by the peculiarities of a suspended moment or void within very large bustling cities. The loose theme is that of a solitary traveller, intersections in journeys or explorations of unassuming spaces.

I am a London based artist working with a variety of media. I have a BA Honours degree in Sonic Art and hold a Masters Degree in Communication Art & Design from the Royal College of Art. I have exhibited internationally with solo shows in Italy and Switzerland and have a permanently installed sound sculpture at the Forever Institute in Geneva. Limited edition runs of CD’s and books are represented in London’s Rough Trade Records and X Marks the Bökship. Most recently, I have completed sound installations forKew Gardens and the SoundUK organisation.

Richard T.C. NelmesHiraeth

‘Hiraeth’ is a Welsh word that loosely translates as ‘Longing’. It is a visceral yearning not just for your home, not just your country, but for the Wales of the past. It is more than missing a culture, a language, a lifestyle, a stereotype or community - it is felt as the resonating, piercing call of the Land to the spirit, flesh and blood of its absent child. But how much is real? How many compartmentalised and idealised memories and false recollections haunt and taint lived experiences? This work seeks to explore the boundaries of fact and fiction in the Hiraeth, as experienced by a formerly absent son, by juxtaposing and interweaving sampled and synthesised image and sound in an immersive environment.

Richard T.C. Nelmes (born in 1985 in the former Mid Glamorgan) has recently embarked on a PhD in AudioVisual Sacred Music composition, under the supervision of Andrew Lewis at Bangor University, following a

45

colourful time of reading Medicine, then Music, at Keele University.Whilst at Keele, Richard was honoured to collaborate with Diego Garro on the piece Visitation Adagio, which won the Visionen Visions 2012 Award at the Festival of Moving Sound and Visual Arts in Hannover.

Saturday

Georgia Rodgers Late Lines remix

I composed Late Lines in early 2013 by working closely with the cellist Severine Ballon to develop a palette of extended sounds and electronic processing techniques. The first performance of Late Lines was by Severine at City University, London in June 2013. The performance was recorded, mixed and mastered by myself.

I propose that my four-channel remix of the piece (Late Lines remix) is presented as a fixed sound installation. Re-presenting it in this way raises questions of finished-ness and fidelity. What are we hearing? Are we listening to a recording of the live performance? Or a new work? Or something in between? (A resurrection?) It is an evolution of the piece, a new aspect of the performance, in a different space and time. An overlap. What aspects of sound and performance are foregrounded in this new format? What is lost?

The question of finished-ness is particularly relevant to a work such as this where collaboration between the composer and instrumentalist was crucial in its development. When performed by a different cellist, or the performance is played as a fixed installation, how much is the same? How much is different? It is a new work, but also a continuation.

Georgia Rodgers is in the second year of a PhD in Music Composition at City University, London, studying part-time under the supervision of Dr. Newton Armstrong. She specialises in music for acoustic instrument and live electronics, with a particular interest in spatiality, temporality, the perception of sound and the human experience of listening.

46

Georgia holds a BSc in Physics with Music and an MSc in Digital Composition and Performance, both from the University of Edinburgh.Georgia also works part-time as an acoustician for a firm of consulting engineers

See http://polarpatterns.wordpress.com for more details.

Sunday

Alex Rigg and Guy VealeSporopollen

Alex Rigg (Oceanallover) is collaborating with Guy Veale (Brendworks) to look at the relationship between sound, movement and the environment. This collaboration will look at sound as a creative force: sound becoming a cause for and not a result of movement.

The project began as part of the Environmental Arts Festival Scotland, for which we presented the work at Clatteringshaws Dam, Galloway. This was made possible through the EAFS team and with kind help and permission from both the Forestry Commission and Scottish Power.The audience will be given wireless headphones with a choice of three channels presenting a complex and interlocked score designed by Guy. Ambient sounds from a variety of sources will be combined with secondary sound interventions made for the wider landscape.

The performance is a combination of sound layers with a visceral and intense performance by Alex Rigg that is fuelled by and reacts to the audio, with the audience able to select their own soundtrack.

Alex Rigg Alex studied Fine Arts at Glasgow School of Art and at the University of Ulster and since has had a prolific career in practicing various artforms. As well as having thirty years of practical experience in building large-

47

scale structures in timber, steel, cloth and stone, he has also been creating and delivering live events since 1982. Particularly iconic are the large-scale willow, steel and timber fire-sculptures that Alex and colleague Trevor Leat create together for festivals and events, including the Wickerman Festival and many past Hogmanay events. Similarly, his work in physical theatre, dance, sculpture and design has been shown internationally and his company Oceanallover has created many innovative events, bringing new audiences to physical performance.

Iain Campbell F-W 2In / am_avinestar_ (

I record my places and make them public

The clips make for extremely ordinary viewing

The exciting part is feeling the edge of these notes

The _ of _ being fixed

This part isn’t _

Iain Campbell F-W 2 is a composersuperimposerperformerclown

He used to play and write for instruments,then improvisednow just does things (documents)

He (me) is primarily interested in music and consumption and considers audience to be over there

Lives in Glasgow.

48

Guy VealeActive in Scotland’s cultural scene since 1992, with sound and music at the centre of his work. Initially gaining experience through DJing at venues worldwide, he has moved toward the production of music for projects in several art-forms. With an increasing number of commissions for theatre, film and online material, he continues to experiment with both representational ‘foley’ sound design and abstract compositional work for soundtracks. He is especially interested in exploring appropriate contexts for the use of both non-representational, “absolute” music and concept-led, representational “programme” music, as well as blurring the boundaries between the two. The Brendworks label was primarily set up to showcase “contemporary traditional” Scottish music, to provide examples of “creativity under constraint” and conceptual works that take a structuralist approach to the reworking of unrehearsed recordings. One of its main objectives is to strengthen existing international and local partnerships, as well as to forge new working relationships with artists and non-artists alike.

Richy CareyThe Message

The Message will be a new composition exploring music’s inherent dual ability and inability to communicate meaning and its use as a mode of communication in the digital age.

A practical response to Nicholas Cook’s Music and Meaning in Commercials and Simon Reynolds’ Retromania, the work will be a performance of live vocals and sequenced rhythms built from Morse Code which will be broadcast in real time via Skype through a series of physical spaces, then introduced back into the live performance.Cook’s assertion is that “music in the abstract does not have meaning” but “has the potential for the construction or negotiation of meaning in specific contexts” has interesting implications when used as a mode of communication through the internet, which Reynolds describes as an environment where “our relationship to time and space has been

49

utterly transformed” and “distance and delay have been eroded to nearly nothing”.

In this work I will explore the relationship between both the ideological appropriation and nullification of meaning and the physical altering and distortion of the sound as it travels through narratively concurrent spaces. By performing it in real time with the original I hope to question the audience’s perception of the temporality of meaning in music. Using Morse Code as a structure to build rhythm questions both musicality as communication, and the historical potential of music in digital form, challenging Reynolds’ contention that through digital reproduction “a copy of a copy of a copy is basically the same as the original”.

The title is a joke.

I am a Glaswegian composer currently studying for an MSc in Composition for Screen at the Edinburgh College of Art. This work is the first of a series where I aim to investigate the flexibility of meaning in music and how this aesthetic potential relates to music’s relationship with other art forms. I am particularly interested in the traditional partitioning of distinct art forms and how music is used as a conduit between works and audience within them.

I have previously been awarded Arts Trust Scotland and IdeasTap funding for projects in this field.

Bethan ParkesBethan Parkes is a PhD candidate in Sonic Arts at the University of Glasgow. Her work explores the inherent dimensionality of sound, the spaces it articulates and the affective potential of these spatialities through multi-channel/ambisonic compositions and installations. She has exhibited works at conferences and festivals in the UK and internationally, including at The Hunterian, The Arches and the CCA in Glasgow; The Royal Dockyard Church, University of Kent; and Hochschule Darmstadt, Dieburg.

www.bethanparkes.net

50

Thomas Leyland-CollinsPolymorphous Entities

For a while now I have been increasingly interested about the ideas of Japanese radio artist, Tetsuo Kogawa. He proposes an alternative to the modes of communication which we have become so used to; that of broadcasting, always striving for wider coverage to address more people. He has devised a miniature FM transmitter which is relatively easy to make with a few basic components which might facilitate a much more diverse form of communication amongst people within the immediate locale, and consequently could provide the means for creating a far richer and diverse audio topology than the current model.

“Our potentially diverse, multiple and polymorphous space is almost homogenized into a mass. Therefore we need permanent effort to deconstruct this situation. In order to do this, to use a very low-power transmitter is worth trying. Small transmitter can be easily made by your own hands.” - Tetsuo Kogawa

My work explores the dialogue between sound and space. More specifically, it focuses on the relationship between the soundscape and our perception of the surrounding environment. Therefore, my work is concerned with the possibilities of how sounds are, and can be, used in a social context. Currently my practice has a focus on utilising technologies which have become redundant within the sphere of today’s consumerist society and consequently are now freely available yet still retain the potential for creative endeavour.

51

Listening posts

Kim WalkerGareth, Martin, Martin, Gareth, Colin, Martin!! (2006) - All the names shouted during a one hour Sundayleague football match.

Momaerdom (2013) - Composition of field recordings gathered in Moray, Scotland. Released on Framework Seasonal #Issue 6, Framework Radio, Estonia.

Walker’s work has moved towards exploring pathos and concepts surounding seriousness, the mundane, nonsense, failure, success and humour. She creates settings in which the playful, ordinary gesture can suddenly invoke existential and poetic meanings. Walker’s engagement with the world around us comes from an observatory position - her gaze looks towards human interactions, the natural word and the spaces in between these two sites.

Kim has exhibited widely through galleries, screening fesitvals and radio broadcasts, including Southhill Park (UK), Mess Hall (Chicago IL), Heaven (Chicago, IL), Area 405 (Baltimore, MA), Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA) and Cooper Gallery, DJCAD (UK).

Tom McVeetyA computer based signal processing and control system for electric cello

Using a unique 6 string electric cello and computer based signal processing, electro-acoustic music is created through improvisation and formal composition techniques.

Tom McVeety has performed throughout the US as a solo electric cellist. He has been a member of symphony orchestras, rock bands, and early and new music ensembles. He has performed for modern and flamenco dance, created music for film and theatre, and is a former New Mexico Artist in Residence. He is currently a graduate student in Theory and Composition at the University of New Mexico, and in his second year as

52

the Robb Fellow.

Thomas McConvilleShop

This piece draws largely from painting and literature, with a particular focus on the works of James Joyce, the paintings of Picasso and the photographic work of David Hockney. Through researching these topics I have become interested in how time and perspective is sensed in my compositions. In this piece I create forms and processes within the music which emulates the cyclical structure of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. The installation will be a cyclical piece of music which begins halfway through a musical phrase and ends halfway through the same phrase, in order to create an ‘endless’ piece of music when looped. Each cycle of the piece will last approximately 8 minutes before beginning again. The work will also contain elements of cubism in which sounds will be heard from several positions at once, giving the listener multiple perspectives of the same piece.

Thomas McConville is an Irish composer and sound artist, working in both acoustic and electro-acoustic composition. His works have been performed throughout his home country as well as across Europe and America as part of acclaimed concerts, festivals, installations and gallery exhibitions. He has been published in the world’s largest selling computer music magazine, broadcast by electro acoustic pioneer Christian Zanesi and is currently awaiting the release of an album on Schematic records. He studied Composition at the Dundalk Institute of Technology, where upon completion he was invited by the renowned composer Francisco López to take part in a compositional residency in South Africa.

Andrew ReemanBuilding Layers

Building layers explores time, pulse and rhythm. This piece was realized in the composer’s home studio in Sheffield, England in 2013.

53

Andrew Reeman was born in Blackpool in 1988. He gained a BSc in Music Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University followed by an MA in Sonic Art at Sheffield University. He is greatly interested in using abstract material to create interesting structural forms and developing real-time systems that create relationships between sound objects. He is also interested in the development of various software to aid creativity, composition and learning.

Calum ScottEigenfunction

The initial concept for this piece was drawn from the historical study of acoustics – specifically French physicist Louis De Broglie’s ‘wave particle duality’ theory which later formed the basis of wave mechanics and proposed that all matter has wave properties. A popular classroom demonstration of the De Broglie wavelength theory involves the exhibition of longitudinal waves on a weighted string via a vibrating needle. I based my initial experiments around this demonstration, replacing the needle with motors and then speakers in order to set up an audiovisual relationship driven from the same source of vibration. A period of experimentation was then required in order to develop a visual and sonic language from which to create the finished piece. The visual and sonic aesthetics were developed in tandem and in tension, each shaped by their physical link to the other.

Calum Scott is an AHRC funded PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow based in the music department. His doctoral research investigates the significance of the physical object in contemporary sound art through a practice-based portfolio of sculptural sound works.

calumscott.wordpress.com

54

55

Sound Thought 2014 is produced in association with:

CCAUniversity of GlasgowESharp

The committee would like to thank:

Ainslie RoddickCCA staffSarah McNultyDr Drew HammondDr Nick FellsBob RaffertyThe University of Glasgow Chancellor’s FundThe University of Glasgow Creative Practice Fund