Today is the opening of Salon, an exhibition celebrating the artistic work of professional services and technical staff at the University of Brghton’s School of Media. Salon has been organised by academic administrator Claire Levitt, curated by SSGT Haley Moyse Fenning and showcases the work by eleven technical and administrative staff from the School of Media. Included are a sculpture and 500 copies of a new instructional text piece by Joshua Legallienne.
Immateriality is a travelling sonic arts exhibition that is touring the UK July 30th until 7th August 2019. It has been curated by DMSA staff/alumni Joshua Legallienne and features the work of DMSA graduates Ecka Mordecai and Jordan Edge, alongside newly-commissioned pieces by international artists Ingrid Plum (DK) and Robert Stokowy (DE) and UK artists Ben Jeans Houghton, Daniel W J Mackenzie, and David Leslie Stearn. More information about the tour can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/664673170668278/
Before the official launch of our Master’s programme and a much needed holiday break we talk to our recent graduate Amanda Brooks who presented a very ambitious experiment in immersive and 3D sound titled ‘SINKHOLE’. We hope to be able to present Amanda’s project again in the coming year! Stay Tuned and read below to learn more about her.
DMSA: Three important words that represent you as a creative person
AB:Progressive, Classical, Spooky
DMSA: When did you start working with sound and music?
AB: Live bands since 1984, sound phenomena since 2009 after my guitarist/sound guy had a stroke and there was no-one else who wanted to engineer the bands sound. I took the job on.
DMSA: In what ways has the DMSA course supported or helped you to develop into who you are today creatively and professionally?
AB: The DMSA course has inspired me to compose differently, it has helped me to develop technically which is one huge reason why I applied for the DMSA B.A and to understand the concept of sound art on a deeper level.
DMSA: Can you tell us a bit more about ‘SINKHOLE’, the piece you presented in our degree show this year?
AB: My final degree project ‘Sinkhole’ is about travelling sound lines, vertically, horizontally, and diagonally engulfing and surrounding the listener on a large scale (5 meters high sound cylinder) Inspired by Austrian architect and sound artist Bernhard Leitner. The concept derives from modern life as a human being where everything seems to be a race against time. ‘Sinkhole’ represents standing in a insurmountable sink under a giant tap where the listener hears pipes creaking and swelling, then the inevitable ‘water’ comes as sound, crashing vertically onto and around the listener. It is sonically big as well.
DMSA:You have been performing in quite a lot of bands. Any gigs coming up?
AB: I don’t have any gigs right now as I ‘walked’ from my two bands, ‘Undercover Agents’ and 20+ year old ‘Soul x Press’, I felt stuck and stagnated. Personally, from time to time, I do feel the need to maintain my place in the ‘un-comfort zone’ so I started a new project ‘Ditch the Demon’ where the music and band members are a little more ambitious.
DMSA: Other plans for the future? projects, events, visions?
AB: The future: I have applied for the DMSA M.A. which I am very excited about, I feel I need to continue my journey into all the aspects of sound phenomena in the field of sound art and design. I have a vision to gig, compose, freelance as a sound artist/designer and a session vocalist. I may even become an acoustician as well and sort out some live music venues !!
1-9 June | DMSA Facilities| Grand Parade, University of Brighton The private view is on the 31st of May and starts at 4pm. Last Entry – 9.30pm Weekday opening times are from 10am until 5pm, and weekends from 12pm until 5pm. FB Event
We are honoured to be presenting to you the works by our third year students consisting of an eclectic mix of sound and musical compositions, live AV performances, experimental films, sound murals, generative art and installation pieces. Spanning across this wide range of practices and processes, all the works are supported by an underlying thread of challenging our perceptions and engaging us in a more attentive process of listening, feeling and experiencing.
This year we are happy to nominate four of our student pieces for the Nagoya Award and the newly launched Ithaca Awards. An * will be added next to the nominated pieces.
Good luck to all our students and congrats on their hard work!
Detailed schedule to follow.
AD Design: Jedd Winterburn
::Works on Display::
Thom Aurelius – MAX (Animation) | SS1
MAX is a short, animated film that depicts a story of a young boy, Max, who is experiencing the struggles of fitting in socially at high school. The project itself is a collaboration between two creative artists, Thomas Aurelius (producer, composer and sound designer) and Peter Golijanin (animator).
The animation’s main intention is to use the power of punk-inspired musical motifs and naturalistic sound-design to represent the feelings of Max as a character and the world that he is living in. This results in the audience relating themselves to the character of Max and his onscreen experiences.
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Sonny Bacon Sonny Bacon – Lost In Process ( Experimental Film) | SS1
Lost in Process is an audiovisual experiment intended for large screen projection. The film explores sound’s ability to evoke, shift and steer atmospheres in combination with visual material. The audio of the piece was created using a variety of elements, featuring self-captured field recordings, foley and manipulated instrumental compositions.
The visual material was created through the recording and arrangement of still and moving image content captured using an array of visual technologies; DV Tape, 35mm and 16mm film. Themes of destruction, time and surveillance are presented as the experimental film unfolds.
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Danny Baron – A Call To Perish (Immersive Radio Play) | SDL
A Call to Perish is an immersive radio play, which explores a fictional settlement that takes a turn for the worst. The play travels through different areas of the settlement, highlighting its diverse and unique soundscape, executed through diffused sound. The main concept behind this project is to use sound to create an observable story for the listener without any visuals or, in other words, the internal cinema. This project is to be exhibited in a 5.1 surround sound setup, optimising the realism and making it as engaging as possible for the listener.
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Amanda Brooks – Sinkhole (Sound Installation) | Performance Studio
Sinkhole is a multi-channel sound art installation exploring themes of descent and life’s daunting threat of ‘going under’.
Using processed field recordings taken in various railway transport systems, the piece extensively uses audio relocation and movement, with sound panning between multiple speakers in an immersive cylindrical formation. The audio of the piece is manifested as a heavy volume of ‘water’ dropping onto the listener, creating a feeling of standing in an insurmountable sink under a giant tap. The sound then takes on different directions, engulfing the listener horizontally, vertically and diagonally.
The digital audio workstation Logic Pro X audio was used, alongside a fundamental production system with IRCAM plugin software. T.R.A.X Voice Transformer v.3 was utilised for sound processing with S.P.A.T Revolution controlling the vertical, horizontal and diagonal movement of the audio.
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Duncan Cabral – Digital Forest (Surround Sound Composition) | SDL
Digital Forest is a surround sound composition that utilises environmental sounds to create a sonic space. Examining concepts of audio exploration and immersion, Digital Forest looks at sound’s potential to transport a listener to another place. Sound design, soundscape building, and surround sound mixing are all used within this work. The digital audio workstation Logic Pro X was used extensively, with plugins such as Serum, ES2, ESE being utilised alongside hardware synthesisers such as the Korg Monologue, Microbrute and Yamaha CS.
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James Carroll – London Atmospheres (Experimental Film) | SDL
London Atmospheres aims to utilise soundscapes and visuals in order to capture the urban atmosphere found in various locations of London. Exploring the relationship between sound and image in film, London Atmospheres focuses on how atmosphere and tension is created. The footage of this piece was shot in central London at night in order to relay the intended atmosphere, with field recordings of the various London locations also being taken.
The soundtrack London Atmospheres uses musicality alongside environmental sounds in order to create an immersive piece, with a sense of underlying suspense in order to capture the listeners attention. A variety of software was used in the recording and editing processes, such as Adobe Premiere Pro CC, FL studio 12 and Logic Pro X.
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Jack Cleary – FLUCTUS (AV Performance) | Performance Studio
Fluctus, which is Latin for waves, explores the concept of brightness in sound and visuals.
The work synthesisers the ideas of musical “Brightness, Flux and Logos” presented by philosopher Heraclitus, which attempt to describe how the universe works.
Brightness is a sonic quality determined by the number of harmonics, the more harmonics the brighter the sound. Flux is fluidity whilst Logos is structure, generating the tension necessary for the string to vibrate to create sound.
Inspired by classical Indian and ambient music, the performance is produced using Ableton and a collection of electronic instruments. The visuals, created in Touch Designer, are vibrating lines organised into a spherical shape while the timbre of sound informs the colour of the visuals through interaction with an OSC controller.
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Nile Ezra – Nightshift (Musical Composition) | SS1
Nightshift is a series of three atmospheric instrumental tracks, which explore themes of darkness, inspired by science fiction and horror films such as Interstellar and The Shining. Using the digital audio workstation Ableton, various sound design techniques such as sampling, granular synthesis and Foley have been implemented to create varying aspects of sounds reminiscent of nightfall.
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Daniel Fadil – Erosion (Short Film) | SS1
Erosion explores the physical forces at the coast as a metaphor for Britain’s erosive nature towards languages from other shores, with the sounds of the physical washing out eternally those of a minority culture. In this case, the examined language is Romany, or rather, the remnants of it familiar to the artist. Even in its distanced existence from British influence, it has still been diminished to the point of no longer being a language. A narrative based on isolation and foreignness is used to play out the history of this phenomenon.
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Tarek El Goraicy – Singularity (AV Performance) | Performance Studio
Singularity is an audio-visual live performance of two songs from of my upcoming release Human Condition.
The presentation, containing elements of improvisation, consists of one laptop running an Ableton Live set, which is navigated through the use of a MIDI controller. Live synthesizers and live vocals are utilised, with a second machine also generating realtime visual projections through the use Touchdesigner and a MIDI-interface.
The performance aims to present a coherent interactive relationship between sound and visuals in the context of an immersive live performance, countering the traditional DJ/laptop-performance of electronic music.
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Brianna Leeds – The Safe Space (AV Installation) | SDL
The Safe Space uses a quadraphonic audio set up to combine meditative tones and abstract art, forming an encompassing environment of mindfulness and peace. This project integrates research from the field of colour therapy, music therapy and spiritual influences. In the safe space the audience can gradually disengage from personal symptoms of anxiety or stress by experiencing the serene audiovisual display in their own time.
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Olivia Louvel – The Whole Inside (Generative AV Installation) | SDL * ITHACA AWARD NOMINEE
Guidance: this work contains sensitive content.
The Whole Inside is a generative sound mural combining artificial and human voices, expanding the plastic dimension of voice on contouring the body.
The work confronts femininity and abuse, when the body is being depersonalised, subsequently dissociated as a defence mechanism to cope with a traumatic event.
The harrowing polyphonic vocal composition is based on a text sourced from the Incels (involuntary celibates) forum. On debating how to murder a woman, some members of the Incels community propose diverse actions, one being to rape her then to “take a surgical knife, cut open her abdominal area and remove the organs”.
Since October 2018, the site incels.me has been suspended due to the content that violated the domain’s anti-abuse policy. Applying principle of conditional logic, the randomised audio is carrying on indefinitely, revealing itself to the experiencer over time.
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Jamie Moore – The Lily Pond (AV Installation) | Performance Studio *NAGOYA AWARD NOMINEE
Consisting of three large projector screens and 6.1 channel surround sound, The Lily Pond is inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies series (1914 – 1926), in a modernisation of their concepts. The work runs for a total length of 1 hour 40 minutes, creating a slow moving and enveloping spectacle on a grand scale, which cannot be interpreted in the same way from any viewpoint or temporal instance.
It uses field recordings and video taken at Monet’s garden in Giverny, as well as images taken of his paintings at Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, re-imagining the works and expanding them into a multi-sensory environment, within a contemporary context.
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Joseph Purefoy – Sampling the World (Musical Composition) | SS1 – 229
Sampling the world is a five track EP exploring the art of sampling in an attempt to demonstrate the vast possibilities found in manipulating and repurposing a sound. The work was produced with the digital audio workstation Logic Pro and focuses on expanding audio from its original context, shifting sound to a new sonic dimension.
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Dominic Rae – Fits the Frame | SS1 – 229
Fits in The Frame is an experimental folk-inspired concept EP. Informed by themes of narrative, Americana, analogue photography and folk music, it aims to explore the gap between the continuous, uninterrupted flow of time and people’s tendency towards quantizing the idea of time into discrete, separate moments and sections.
A key facet of the EP is the consideration of ‘Morii’, the desire to capture a fleeting moment, which brings together the ideas of music, photography and storytelling by each component’s intrinsic nature: music as continuum, photography as instantiative capture, and storytelling as a bridge between the two.
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Luke Vosper – My Bedroom (AV Performance) | Performance Studio
Stemming from a desire for a more natural and immersive way of composing and performing electronic music, My Bedroom is a studio and live setup that focusses on DIY and self-built hardware and instruments. Drawing inspiration from a space used for composition, performance, and instrument construction, My Bedroom explores an improvisation-based approach to electronic music.
As well as analogue and acoustic instruments, My Bedroom takes full advantage of digital tools. Using custom software and patches alongside complex synthesis techniques and an extensive sample library, this allows the music of the piece to be created in an improvisation-driven, performative way.
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Matt Were – Piano I Ching (Prepared Piano / Interactive AV Installation) | 229 *ITHACA AWARD NOMINEE
Piano I Ching is an interactive audiovisual piece. The audio from the installation starts when a webcam picks up movement within close proximity to the piano. This results in solenoids and motors being triggered, brushing, scraping and hitting the piano, giving a familiar object a completely new vocabulary of sounds.
Each casting yields two trigrams (a hexagram), and each of the trigrams is associated with a sound sequence relevant to the time of the year. This piece attempts to create a synthesis of a Western cultural icon, the piano, with an Eastern cultural icon, the I Ching, by interpreting the latter divinations through sound on a prepared piano.
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Jedd Winterburn – Zenith (AV Composition for multiple screens) | Performance Studio *ITHACA AWARD NOMINEE
Zenith is an audiovisual installation that incubates the practise of attentive listening, inviting the listener to discover an awareness of sound that can enrich one’s life after the event. The unique viewing experience of Zenith is notably engaging, operating over two screens and 4.1 surround sound in a highly curated environment. Hosting a palette of noise curated to explore the fringes of musicality, Zenith aims to promote the abstraction of sound’s form and function.
Wednesday 5th June | 12-8pm
Performance Studio, Grand Parade fb event page
Join Us for this year’s DMSA DAY, a full day of presentations, talks and performances, showcasing the work of our 1st, 2nd and 3rd year students, including experimental music, diffused audio pieces, experimental film, sound & moving image collaborations, sound art and radio art pieces as well as DYI and interactive instruments and processes.
This year we have the honour to have Kathy Hinde as our guest speaker.
Kathy Hinde’s work grows from a partnership between nature and technology expressed through audio-visual installations and performances that combine sound, sculpture, image and light. Drawing on inspiration from behaviours and phenomena found in the natural world, she creates work that is generative; that evolves; that can be different each time it is experienced. Kathy aims to create work that gives rise to a poetic and reflective experience that enriches an appreciation of the everyday, inviting a heightened awareness of the world around us.
Also, Radio Cascabel will be coming down to Brighton for a brief presentation of a new project space and sound art venue to be launched in London and to seek collaborations and proposals from our students.
The event will close with immersive audio-visual performances by Tarek, Luke Vosper and Jack Cleary. The performances start at 5pm.
The event is sponsored by the Creative Sound & Music Research Group (School of Media, University of Brighton).
The Creative Sound & Music REG, the University of Brighton’s School of Media and the Centre for Digital Media Cultures, are happy to host a workshop and a talk by pioneering artist Teri Rueb on June 4th. Details and how to book below.
Teri Rueb Workshop: Experimental acoustic holography
Your chance to participate in a workshop with the internationally renowned artist and scholar Teri Rueb who is Professor of Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado.
The workshop will be of interest to postgraduate (PhD and MA) students interested in digital or audio culture/art (theoretical or practical) and also to undergraduate students with a keen interest in these topics.
Imagine a field of sound that is constant, yet made up of different tones, chords and beatings at the granularity of about 6 cubic inches. This workshop will present a model of a heterogeneous three-dimensional sound field currently under development toward full-scale installation. We will focus on discussions of individual experience of this prototype as a way of revealing the subjectivity of listening and hearing.
There will be a lunch break at the workshop.
Research/Artist Talk: Sound and Sense: Hearing, Listening, Walking, Stillness
The internationally renowned artist and scholar Teri Rueb who is Professor of Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado presents her latest work, followed by time for questions and discussion/Q&A.
How are the senses reconceived within the milieux of mobile media and sound reproduction technologies in particular? Sound has become the primary spatial medium I am engaged with as an artist. I am recently rethinking the sonic dimension as I move from a mostly headphone-based practice to a new inquiry that embraces the reproduction of sound through loud speakers in both public outdoor and more rarefied indoor settings. This talk will address critical questions that lie at the core of media aesthetics through a series of works staged as responsive sound environments delivered via mobile media and/or custom loud speaker installations.
Our second year student Jade Gunner has been accepted for an internship at Criterion Games (EA) as an audio designer, working on creating and implementing sounds and audio for their upcoming games.
Jade has been developing a very unique sonic vocabulary that is present in all her sound design work for the course and beyond.
Here you can watch Jade’s portfolio that she developed during her studies on the course:
and ‘Her Body’, an audiovisual piece about the objectification of the female body in creative media industries
Jordan Edge and Joshua Legallienne (DMSA Team) will be among the invited artists to participate in this year’s Koumaria Residency.
Organised by intermedia collective Medea Electronique since 2009, the goal of the residency is the creation of an educational experience for the participants that will inspire and exalt their future work. The cross-cultural dialogues that the residency engenders both create new artistic speculations and smelt older assumptions. Past residents have formed lasting friendships and new artistic partnerships. Medea Electronique, being an eclectic art collective, is interested in people from diverse cultural and artistic backgrounds. For us the residency serves as a model for future creative endeavors.
The 6th iteration of the soundcamp at Stave HIll Ecological Park will take place over the International Dawn Chorus Day weekend (4-5 May) with a program of live sounds of daybreak together with installations, walks, workshops and discussions exploring urban ecologies and sound.
The event is organised by Dr Maria Papadomanolaki and her colleagues at Soundcamp. This year it will also feature a new ‘Single-Material Performance’ by Joshua Legallienne (DMSA Team and DMSA alumni).
In Single-Material Performance, one or more performers manipulate a giant, bio-degradable plastic sheet to produce a range of complex sounds and rhythms. Due to the particular physical properties of the material, the sheet animates with very subtle changes in air pressure; causing the material to create sound as it interacts with itself. Performers respond to the fluctuations in air pressure by altering the form of the material to shape the sounds produced. The piece reveals the invisible and inaudible; sonifying infrasonic (sound waves below the lower limit of human audibility) variations in air pressure of the environment.
More info on the soundcamp project can be found here. The full program is here.
As part of the International Women’s Day 2019 campaign to #BalanceforBetter, Sound and Music showcase the profiles of 31 composers and their unique contributions to composition in the UK. Alumni Akiko Haruna and Guoda Dirzyte, current student Jade Gunner and DMSA Course Leader Dr Maria Papadomanolaki are profiled in the showcase that is part of the online archive of British Music Collection.
British Music Collection provides unparalleled access to the modern history of composition in the UK. Established in 1967 as a means for contemporary composers to deposit scores and recordings for performers to access, it now consists of almost 70,000 works and recordings from over 3000 20th and 21st century composers and sound artists.
The value in the collection is undeniable – providing access to over 50 years of contemporary composition – but it’s not without fault. The underrepresentation of female composers, or those who identify as female, across the original collection is stark, and a reminder of the progress that has been made, and must continue to happen, in and across new music.
Much of the British Music Collection now exists here online, and this provides a great opportunity to readdress this imbalance and the original aim of the collection: providing access to the work of contemporary composers.
