Mini WofS 2009

9 November - Creative Arts Building Huddersfield University

The theme of the installation is 'shadows', the challenge is to create pieces that happen below the surrounding ambient sound: music that must be sought out rather than music that imposes itself.

• The recordings used in this installation are of an improvised performance that was part of WofS 2008 which was a Weekend of Speakers in St Paul's Hall. As part of Mini WofS 2009 these sounds are observed approximately 17 months and 120 meters removed from their source. Also, the nearly 42 minute stereo recording is being replayed across a six channel speaker array, so with overlap and relative time dilation the result is a circa 17 minute arrangement.

• This installation owes a lot to the struture/process of the Whitney Music Box, but instead of a single set of partials being arpeggiated I've superimposed three different sounds in the hope that coinciding partials will form new sounds as they slowly loop around.

• Jeremy used to dream about table tennis with such intensity that he sometimes found it difficult to sleep. He went to see the doctor about it and once cured he never played table tennis again.

• A Sound Check for Smytheson
• Masked morphologies and timbral extremes invite the listener to explore the space housing quiet interplay between sonic material

• This installation piece was created specifically for mini-WOFS in response to the brief of “Shadows”. The piece combines live audio with pre-recorded sound files taken from various closed-in spaces around the building. The live sounds of atrium space are selected and sequenced alongside the “hidden” audio, with the intention of bringing otherwise closed spaces out into the open. As people go about their everyday business, they may find themselves subconciously evesdropping on the building as a whole.

The ground floor of the atrium will be used as a performance space with audience invited to experience the audiovisual event from the second floor balcony.

FaceBook event

• A live performance of fragile.flicker.fragment - an ongoing work based on the paintings of Pip Dickens.

• This short piece dates from early 2008 and represents my first multichannel work. It is the second in a series of “untreated” pieces, which consist solely of sequenced recordings of a custom-designed DSP instrument.

• Dunblane

• Composed in March 1996, this 8 minute piece uses 4 synthesizer presets from the Emu Proteus sound module as its sole source material. These take the form of long, sustained string / flute-like tones. It was composed using an early MIDI sequencer called C-LAB Notator (the great-grandfather of Logic) which had a unique function in that numerous sequences (containing a maximum of 16 tracks) could be juxtaposed or overlaid / overlapped, enabling, in this case, quite complex and smoothly developing harmonic fields to evolve over time. One failing of the software was that if a note reached its end point during one of these overlapping sections it would cut off with a sharp abruptness. Fortunately these occasional interjections created a satisfying contrast to the ersatz strings.

• A vague tonality is set up at the start with a sustained low drone which returns towards the end. In-between the harmonies stretch far away from this. The macro-structure is a simple and symmetrical upward then downward registral arc. Microtonal inflections are used throughout.

• Whilst composing the then unnamed work, I heard on the radio the awful news of the Dunblane massacre which unfortunately became associated in my mind with the piece and perhaps began to influence it. Subsequently I never felt able to play it publicly. Enough time has now passed for me to feel comfortable for it to be heard and though by today’s standards it is rather primitive in its sonic world, it is, I hope, worth at least one hearing.

• Dense

• 'Dense' is an exploration of space through sonic activity, inspired by machine activities and realized through the ChucK programming language 'Dense' also explores performative aspects of laptop playing.

• Rather than exploring space through the use of isolated sonic gestures 'Dense' uses layers of ever changing sound to explore the environment.

• 'Dense' is designed to be performed with a mobile audience able to explore the changing sonority through their own movement.

Short link to here http://www.inclusiveimprov.co.uk/miniwofs09

FaceBook event

Mini Wofs Development here