I’ve put together a little album of music I recorded earlier on in my PhD when I was experimenting with using my modular to control and sequence a Waldorf Blofeld synthesiser via MIDI. The recordings are all edits from longer improvisations and tend towards fairly abstract and sometimes disastrous outcomes.
The release is also available as a tape - high bias real-time recorded 25 min per side cassette. Edition of 20
I have a releaseTransductions coming out on June 5th with Room40. The album was recorded using a Diskclavier, an acoustic piano that can be controlled by an external MIDI source. In this case, a modular synthesiser is producing the MIDI data through an improvised performance of a generative patch design. Transductions is an attempt to reduce some of my approaches to electronic music down to a simpler form, retaining the structures and systems but swapping the limitless tone colours of a synthesiser for the timbre range of an acoustic piano.
My own interest in electronic music has often focused upon dynamic, complex and often noisy sounds made possible through synthesis, more recently focusing upon analog modular synthesisers as the source of these emissions. Through my use of modular synthesisers I have become more aware of my interest in systems that generate musical structure, especially when the line between timbre and composition structure becomes difficult to identify.
The compositions for Transductions were produced using simple analog components such as low-frequency oscillators (LFO), wavefolders, clock dividers and sample and hold circuits, interconnected to create complex dependencies and feedback loops, resulting in precarious systems that respond erratically to subtle interventions. Perhaps echoing Joel Chadabe's description of performing with his own electronic music systems as being akin to 'sailing a boat on a windy day and through stormy seas'. (The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music).
The title Transductions and the various track names refer to a shift in energetic form, from electric to kinetic through the Diskclaviers solenoid, from kinetic to sound vibration, from a vibrating car to vibrating body as I dose with my cheekbone against the passenger window during a long road trip. I have worked almost exclusively with electronic sound for so long; hearing and seeing the piano's physical body shake made me appreciate anew the complexity of the real world.
Tranductions can be preordered here.
For the past 4 years I have been working with Ben Byrne on a something that started a an improvised noise project Nadir, over that time we've played a bunch of gigs and released a few short EPs. The project has shofted a great deal since it begun - its still noisey and it is essentially improvised but the process is very generative and we've found a sound that I think is quite distinct from what is normally called noise music.
Have a listen and pick up a copy here.
I had the privilege of performing in a duo with Heddy Boubaker (France) for The Now Now in January this year. We were pretty happy with the outcome and have put the recording up on Soundcloud.
Live recording at Now NOW 2015, recording by Jon Hunter
Tele Visions Afterlude is a new iteration of the Tele Visions project. A number of self-generating TV channels continuously play the live TV pieces and selected screen works from the original broadcast. Viewers can navigate through the works by pressing the buttons on the coffee table (created by the amazing Sam Bruce) to change channels and rewind or fast-forward through each piece. Tele Visions Afterlude is at once an archive of the original broadcast, a solution to presenting a large volume of screen works in a gallery context, and a reference to what post-analog TV has become.
Curated by Critical Animals as part of This Is Not Art Festival. The artists in Desiring Machines meditate on the traces of human experience in data, make human interventions into the realm of the machine and find ways in which technology aids social exchange. In doing so they convert the visual and technological effluvium that occupies our lives into material that encourages empathy and connection.
Featuring work from Tega Brain, Dylan Hammond, Victoria Hempstead, Kirsty Hulme, Ben Kolaitis, Down Joy Leong, Jake Moore, Sara Morawetz, Kate Vassalo & James Lieutenanat, and Alex White.
Video / sculpture installed at CarriageWorks for FBI's 10th birthday. Community radio has been a big part of my life for a long time and FBI have genuinely changed this city in the last 10 years - so I was very excited to have this opportunity. The work was installed in a corridor on the way to the toilets - with 8000 punters there from midday to midnight its definitely the biggest audience my work has been exposed to date!
More info on the birthday here.
I have a work at First Draft form 7 to the 21 of August. It is a dual screen installation showing analog video using a generative digital control system. The work is part of a series of activities I'm undertaking this year in response to the shut down of analog TV in Australia.
Artists statement:
The introduction of Television came with much possibility for art making but as a broadcast platform it has rarely delivered remaining closed off aside from some occasional incursions.
However the technology itself offered an instantaneous raw and unmediated audiovisual language that was utlised by several artists before video became a viable medium in the mid 1960’s. This direct manipulation of a TV through electricity or magnetism was the beginning of video synthesis.
Analog TV broadcasting is being shutdown, 2013 will be the last year these signals are transmitted in Australia. Slight Lull utilises a video synthesis system to generate a video form with audio signals. Continually drooping, “Slight Lull” simulates a sort of never ending moment of turning off, voltage dropping and winding down.
This project is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Music Board
Andrew Frost from the Art Life wrote a short review of the work here.
On the weekend I headed along to Cemeta13 and arts festival held in Kandos (western NSW) and performed at the opening party at the Railway Hotel. Here is a recording of the performance:
For the past week or so I’ve had a installation video work atTime Machine a festival curated and organised by the folk who run Serial Space.
The video is produced by my LZX video synth, which is being controlled by a Reaktor patch. The patch uses data from a camera in the space tracking the audience. As a person enters the space a new sound and video element is randomly generated. These various elements are sequenced and variations extrapolated.
Live AV inprov recording.
I’ve recently revisited a slightly abandoned video art making practice. I used play a lot with analog video using a huge sony professional CRT making use of the separate inputs for vertical and horizontal sync along with an ancient test oscillator plugged into various inputs.
Unfortunately after moving house with the 30kg + sony for about the 4th time I lost my patience and left it for the council to pick up.
Silent version of video work made in 2007 using HP square wave oscillator from 1960's and fed back mixer going into Sony monitor on RGB and V + H sync.
Video using LZX modular video system controlled by eurorack modular synth patch. I’m interested in performing with intrinsically linked audio video - using both modulators of the audio and the audio itself to effect the image.
