Exploring Boundaries: A DMSA Graduate Show Special Part 2 | Ruminations in Sound

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

The DMSA Graduate show has been offering to audiences a mix of engaging, thought provoking and aesthetically diverse experiences. Works from our students have received prestigious awards for their outstanding quality. The Graduate Show is also a chance for our students to curate, coordinate, build and promote their show, to work as a team and show the world that they are ready to enter a competitive and difficult field. Moving beyond the traditional career paths often associated with digital music production and sound arts, our students engage with the social aspects of sound and how sound can prompt us to thing of wider issues and questions.

Have you ever wondered what the sound of The Cloud is? What is our place within the digital divide, what happens to our voices when uploaded to the cloud? PJ Davy’s Heads in the Cloud is a 13.1 multi-channel, sound and light installation concerning the digitisation of our lives through the internet. Recordings of social media, blog, and website posts, vocalised by the original, online-authors, move throughout the installation; transforming into intense, digital noise as they navigate through a central, audio-visual matrix. Caged LED lights and a central 360° loudspeaker act as a physical manifestation of the internet, presenting an audible, visual focal point for the encounterer. Heads in The Cloud presents a physical, human experience to reflect on our relationship with technology and each other, in an increasingly digitised world.

Ivan Arbiol Camp’s The Return of the Forgotten is a generative sculpture of refused electronics arising from a rejection to claim a space in modern society. Sounds come from the interaction between functional and dysfunctional devices interfering with each other as a form of conversation between necessity and ecology. The piece asks the question about the use and abuse of technology and the impact of these habits on the environment.

Liam Eshghi-Luck’s The Cacophonic Hospital is an Audio-Visual composition containing imagery and sound from different spaces within hospitals throughout London, Surrey and the South-west of England. Outside of just field recording the piece incorporates foley work from research of patient and staff experiences whilst also utilising a custom software made within Max/Msp, that determines the output of alarm sound throughout the latter of this composition. The aim of this composition is to embark the audience on a journey across hospitals throughout England, in the more densely populated and the not so populated Hospitals. The idea being that noise in the hospital persists whether busy or not, and much can be done to change health care design sonically for the sake of patient and staff satisfactory.

Chrstopher Brindle’s Dying Imperfections uses a custom made low power radio transmitter tool kit to create a series of site-specific radio graffitis recorded onto cassette tape. The piece explores the imperfections in how we capture sound and the effects on our perception of the sound when the flaws in the mediums are pushed to extremes. These circuit elements in the toolkit change and mutate the sound as it iterates through the circuit multiple times, with the tape loop echo, the sounds changing pitch and levels of distortion ultimately removing familiar sounds from the context we know them, in and creating new sonic landscapes.

Jasmyn Bloch’s Femporis is an exploration into the concepts of rebirth and new life; considering the constant state of flux and growth we experience throughout our lives. It is a consideration of the notion that something peaceful can then turn traumatic, to then become something new, like birth but also like life. The ebb and flow of ups and downs, yet one cannot exist without the other. The piece prompts the audience to feel as though they have just experienced a ‘change’; a shift in thought or person; to think more about the deeper roots within themselves, and remind them of the constant changes and ‘births’ they have experienced throughout their lives, whether they are small or considerable changes.

Michael McKeown’s Aquarium Music is an electroacoustic installation that has taken place in the Brighton Sea Life Centre in May 2018. The installation featured six pieces composed entirely of naturally sourced sounds that reflect the sonic environments of the marine life in the aquarium. Some of the sounds within the compositions were manipulated by the movement within certain enclosures, making the audio content unique to each section of the centre.Aquarium Music‘s immersive soundscape sets up a process for educating the audience and of creating a more authentic and appropriate sonic environment.The piece on display in Room 229 in Grand Parade brings the six compositions in one small room, blending them together as one environment, re-constructing the atmosphere of the aquarium for the listener.

PROGRAMME

Performance Studio:

Private view: 1st June
Aki Purser / Jeph Vanger (1800 changeover)

2nd – 3rd June:
Jeph Vanger // Sφera

4th June:
DMSA Day / Alvaro Villar-Castillo // SONORAMA

5th June:
Alvaro Villar-Castillo // SONORAMA

6th – 8th June:
JORDAN LEWIS // THE N0VA GATHERING

9th – 10th June
Aki Purser // 記憶 (MEMORY)

Sound Diffusion Lab:

1st – 3rd June:
Oli Johns // The Miraculous Land – Library

4th – 5th June:
Edward Scott // Lissajous Sounds
PJ Davy // Heads in The Cloud

6th June:
Liam Eshgi-Luck // The Cacophonic Hospital

7th – 8th June:
Edward Scott // Lissajous Sounds

8th – 10th June:
PJ Davy // Heads in The Cloud

Ongoing Installations
Room 229
Oskar Jeff // Reconstructing Tapes
Sophie Kiarie // Soul
Liam Eshgi-Luck // The Cacophonic Hospital
Michael McKeown // Aquarium Music
Bobbie Cook // Hard Shoulder

Room 228
Jasmyn Bloch // FEMPORIS

The Shower room
Ivan Arbiol Camps // The Return of the Unwanted

Sound Diffusion Lab Foyer
Jack Lister // Flood the Box

Exploring Boundaries: A DMSA Graduate Show Special Part 1 | SoundSpaces

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

Sound is a medium that invites participation, reflection, action and reaction. Sound operates across boundaries of senses, media, materials and forms. This year’s graduate show pieces from our students present a range of approaches into these observations. With an emphasis on both the physical-visceral and the emotional-ethereal affect of sound, the different works exhibited in the DMSA area in Grand Parade (East Wing, Back Building across the courtyard, 3rd Floor) pose a series of complex questions that the visitors will play a leading role into deciphering.


Jeph Vanger’s Sφera is the result of a one year field research in Berlin, Klingenberg Am Main, Athens with people such as Hans Peter Kuhn & Markus Klug. Sφera is a multichannel sonic environment where the physical presence of sound and the ongoing engagement become the priority. The symphony of (1) a hand-built subwoofer, (2) an also hand-built multicell horn speaker and (3) the 3D audio speaker IKO are creating a sonic “atmo-sphere” where the encounterer is able to experience sound in its spherical existence. The piece pays tribute to the mournful sound of the Foghorn, using original recordings from the Foghorn Requiem (2013) field performance in which more than 50 ships gathered on the North Sea (UK) to perform an ambitious musical score. Using walls, floors, human bodies as tools of a spatial orchestration, the sound surrounds the listener and enables him or her to be a fundamental part of the installation. Borrowing a few words from Dr Kersten Glandien: “What it can mean to be an empowered active encounterer rather than a passive overwhelmed consumer?”

A peformance of Sφera is scheduled for the Private View, June 1st at 7pm. Book your tickets.

SΦΕRA from Jeph Vanger Sound on Vimeo.

Sound is enveloping and ambiguous, simultaneously of the body and beyond it; a trigger of memories, senses and sensations. Sophie Kiairie’s Soul positions the listener in complete blackness-blindfolded with their ears as the only means to navigate through a binaural soundspace of familiar-like creatures and environments. Soul is a short first-person immersive audio play. In Soul, you are placed in the shoes of a soldier undergoing training in a facility in order to gain heightened hearing senses that in turn help you the soldier in combat against unknown creatures that have invaded the planet, eating people’s souls. They do so to strengthen themselves, and to feed their Queen, who is to give birth to a King strong enough to conquer the universe. It starts at the end of the training in a facility, where scientists have placed you in a training room where they proceed to load 4 different sonically simulated environments to explore.

Oliver John’s The Miraculous Land is a 40 channel generative, ambisonics inspired sound installation. For the majority of its everlasting duration it sonically comprises of an electroacoustic sound design driven construction of a room in a library. At points the illusion of the library intentionally deconstructs itself, separating sounds from their sources and manipulating them to create intangible realities. This makes each of the 40 loudspeakers individually decipherable, creating surreal illusions of movement within the three dimensional soundspace. Because of this, one becomes attentive of its artificial creation, which puts light on the constructed sonic environment as a digital soundscape.

PROGRAMME

Performance Studio:

Private view: 1st June
Aki Purser / Jeph Vanger (1800 changeover)

2nd – 3rd June:
Jeph Vanger // Sφera

4th June:
DMSA Day / Alvaro Villar-Castillo // SONORAMA

5th June:
Alvaro Villar-Castillo // SONORAMA

6th – 8th June:
JORDAN LEWIS // THE N0VA GATHERING

9th – 10th June
Aki Purser // 記憶 (MEMORY)

Sound Diffusion Lab:

1st – 3rd June:
Oli Johns // The Miraculous Land – Library

4th – 5th June:
Edward Scott // Lissajous Sounds
PJ Davy // Heads in The Cloud

6th June:
Liam Eshgi-Luck // The Cacophonic Hospital

7th – 8th June:
Edward Scott // Lissajous Sounds

8th – 10th June:
PJ Davy // Heads in The Cloud

Ongoing Installations
Room 229
Oskar Jeff // Reconstructing Tapes
Sophie Kiarie // Soul
Liam Eshgi-Luck // The Cacophonic Hospital
Michael McKeown // Aquarium Music
Bobbie Cook // Hard Shoulder

Room 228
Jasmyn Bloch // FEMPORIS

The Shower room
Ivan Arbiol Camps // The Return of the Unwanted

Sound Diffusion Lab Foyer
Jack Lister // Flood the Box

DMSA Show featuring Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner)

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

On June 4th members of the audience and students will have the chance to experience a unique mix of works from our first and second year students as well as the degree pieces on display by our third year students. Expect an eclectic selection of innovative multichannel digital music compositions, interactive installations, audiovisual pieces and films, radio art experiements, custom instruments and generative pieces.

In the occasion of the DMSA show we will also have the honour to have internationally acclaimed artist and composer Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner).
Scanner traverses the experimental terrain between sound and space connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music.

He scored the hit musical comedy Kirikou & Karaba (2007) and Narnia ballet (2015) based on the popular children’s book, Philips Wake-Up Light (2009), the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2012 and in 2016 installed his Water Drops sound work in Rijeka Airport in Croatia.

His work Salles des Departs is permanently installed in a working morgue in Paris whilst Vex House, the residential house he designed a permanent soundtrack with Chance de Silva architects, was finished to critical acclaim in 2017.

Committed to working with cutting edge practitioners he collaborated with Bryan Ferry, Wayne MacGregor, Mike Kelley, Torres, Michael Nyman, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson and Hussein Chalayan, amongst many others.

DMSA Show is happening on the 4th of June, 12-6pm, Performance Studio, GP.
DMSA Show is curated by DMSA Alumni Maja Mihalik.

L4 Students to present work as part of Soundcamp 2018 | May 5-6

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

The 5th edition of soundcamp will be taking place on the 5-6 May at Stave Hill Ecological Park in London. DMSA Course Leader Maria Papadomanolaki (co-curator of soundcamp and member of the SoundCamp collective) will be bringing a group of L4 students to the event. The students will have the opportunity to develop and present a project as part of the event in collaboration with Tom Fox of Vulpestruments/Hackoustic.

More info about the event

The fifth edition of Soundcamp will take place on the 5-6 May to coincide with the International Dawn Chorus Day.

During the event, Stave Hill Ecological Park becomes an audio observatory where visitors can
camp out overnight in the Stave Hill meadow and take part in a varied program of arts and ecology activities including:

Ecological survival games with Animal Diplomacy Bureau
Live 24 hour broadcast of daybreak around the earth
New sounds from Amazonia by Izabela Dluzyk
Site Specific interventions and installations by Alexandra Spence and Brigitte Hart, Tom Fox with students from University of Brighton’s Digital Music and Sound Arts course.
After dark performance by Noah Angell
Analogue photography: pinholes and cyanotypes with Ky Lewis.
Dawn chorus walk with David Darrell-Lambert, John Cadera, Richard Page-Jones
Workshops on DIY broadcasting, mixing, pit fired pottery, foraging, site tours, bat walk

Storytelling for Earthly Survival with Donna Haraway by Fabrizio Terranova

Food from Leon Lewis. Beer from Clarkshaws. Cake from The Dancing Baker. Coffee from the Lazy Coffee Van.

FULL PROGRAM TBA SHORTLY: http://soundtent.org/soundcamp_camp.html

Visiting is free, but please consider making a donation.
Camping is free for children. Adults need to book a camping ticket each.
Sign up for workshops on site.

CLiC Listening Workshop

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

L5 student Jack Cleary will be leading a listening workshop as part of CLiC.

CLiC is offering an exciting, one-off workshop, that aims to engage you in attentive listening.
Participants will engage in a number of simple, equipment free activities both with the group and individually.

This free workshop gives you insight into the practice of acoustic ecology and will help us build a bigger picture, of how listening can improve life. The practices are relevant to those whom studying sound or music. Specifically: acoustics, production, sonic arts, sound sculpture and activities where listening to sound types is most prominent, wellbeing or associated topics, psychoacoustics, architecture and communications are some examples.

What is CLiC?

CLiC is a new social enterprise that is designing a corporate wellness program, based on acoustic ecology; peoples relationship to the environment through sound.

DMSA Feature: Jade Gunner (Y1 Student)

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

Jade Gunner is the first of our first year students to contribute her thoughts to our features series. Jade’s entusiasm for experimentation has allowed her to create some fascinating work as part of the course but also outside it as it is clearly documented on her soundcloud page.

DMSA: Three important words that represent you as a creative person?

JG: Unique, Unafraid and Experimental!

DMSA: When did you start working with sound and music?

JG: I have always been interested in Sound and music throughout my life, I’ve always been fascinated by how it’s made. When i was 14 I started to learn guitar, then later on moved onto the ukulele. In college I studied creative Media Production, and started working with digital music/sound design through that. The project I did that made me realise I wanted to do this course was removing all the Sound from a game clip and re creating all the atmospheric music, Sound design, ADR and Foley. I feel in love with it from there.

DMSA: What made you choose the course and in what ways has the course supported or helped you so far to develop creatively?

JG: I chose this course as I was looking around for courses that focused on experimental music and working with sound. This course looked perfect for me, and when I went to an open day I realised it had everything i was looking for. I have been given so many opportunities to be creative, which is what i wanted. I have been able to do so much more than I imagined studying here so far, from learning how to use different studio set ups, Surround Sound, how to make atmospheric sound and Sound in Space. I am very excited with more boundaries I can push with my creativity!

DMSA: What are your plans for the near future? projects, events, visions

JG:I want to expand my portfolio more and create different styles of digital music. I am also looking for different artists from other courses that I could collaborate with, for either music purposes or sound design/art. I have also been very interested to visit the event: Splitting The Atom, as I know they do experimental music nights there which would been brilliant to experience.

Listen to more sounds from Jade via her soundCloud.

Aki Purser selected as a participant for this years RBMA in Berlin

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

Third year student Aki Purser has been selected to participate in this year’s Red Bull Music Academy to be taking place in Berlin. RBMA is an internationally acclaimed event where an eclectic group of emerging artists are given the chance to collaborate, create and learn from a series of sessions led by world-known music producers and industry specialists. The competition is often high and it not unusual to see participants from the Academy becoming professionals soon after their graduation. Aki’s unique approach to sound, image and dance made here stand out and in their own words

‘From the refined piano of Chilly Gonzales to the elegance of modern dance icon Pina Bausch and the precisely engineered music of producer Alva Noto, there is a certain delicacy connecting the influences of Brighton-based artist Akiko Haruna. Trained as a pianist, violinist, flautist and dancer, she is fluent in the rules of music and composition, which she now breaks with her experimental noise output. Akiko’s current project comes after two years as a professional dancer, during which she appeared in music videos for artists including AlunaGeorge and John Newman. Now a full-time music student, Akiko flexes her myriad abilities in her own work, including the 2017 video for “i, omega,” a surreal black-and-white pastiche in which she dances, stretches and smiles eerily at the camera over the glitches and fuzz of her far-out soundscape.’

Well done Aki!

International Women’s Day Special

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

Digital Music and Sound Arts doesn’t mean a men-only club: we support equal participation to the course by male and female artists and producers; an aim that is still difficult to achieve as female students often either choose more safe pathways or are not confident enough to choose a creative sound course.

It needs to be said that some of our most exceptional work in this course has been created by female students and some of our notable alumni are female who hold competitive posts in the field. We want to make our students feel empowered through the course to explore their unique creative perspectives, to take risks, to feel inspired and to be self-driven.

In celebration of International Womens Day, we would like to use this space to precent some of the work produced by our students and alumni which we feel give a well informed perspective of the breadth of creative outputs that the students have developed over the years. There are of course many notable student works missing from this feature and we hope to be able to bring it to the foreground in another occassion in the near future!

We begin with Jade Gunner who is a student currently in her first year in the course. Jade’s ‘Watercolour Spaceship’ is a fascinating exploration of colour, texture and timbre reminiscent of expressionist painting.

Merging music with dance as well as other forms of art and media is something that we encourage our students to do as part of their learning process. Aki Purser is a student currently in the third year of the course who has been developping an intersting and unique body of audiovisual work. Her piece I, Omega encapsulates the intensity of her work combining contemporary dance aesthetics, electronic collage and experimental visuals.

Olivial Louvel, currently in her second year in our course, is exceptional in creating fascinating synapses Facross voice, computer music and digital narrative. You can enjoy her work in situ at the Roayl Pavilion Gardens via the ReHear audiowalk.

'My Crown' by Olivia Louvel from Cat Werk Imprint on Vimeo.

Rebecca Davis aka Ecka Mordecai is the artist behind our beautiful banner but also an alumni of the course. Ecka, currently a freelance artist, cellist and curator, has developed a subtle yet texturally layered palette of sounds, images, objects and actions while studying in the course. Sand:blink is a wonderful audiovisual experience into her unique world of microsounds and textures.

Guoda Diržytė is an experimental music instruments designer, composer and sound artist living between the UK and Lithuania. A recent graduate from our course, Guoda received the Nagoya (Partner University, Japan) Award of Excellence for her excellent piece Kokon Dansetsu Ma [古今 伝説 間] which she developped during a residency in Nagoya.

Beth Chesser is an artist experimenting with sound, noise and music and how they work combined with moving image and new media. ‘Enso’ is her final degree piece for our course, a beautifu stop motion animation film.

Amanda Brooks is a musician, composer and sound artist currently in the second year of our course. She is the lead singer of the band Undercover Agends and her work has been featured in Lewes Light Festival, ReHear Audio Walk (Brighton Digital Festival 2017) and more recently in a fantastic ‘Christmas’ compilation entitled ‘View from a hill’ by the eclectic label Linear Obsessional.

Last week’s DMSA feature presented the work of currenty third year student Jasmyn Bloch. Jasmyn’s powerful mix of voice, femininity and electronics is beautifully demonstrated in her piece Alter, a celebration of the feminine and of women and a great way to end this feature!

DMSA Feature: Jasmyn Bloch (Y3 Student)

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

This month’s feature welcomes third year student Jasmyn Bloch, a classiclally trained singer with an electronic music twist who through her explorations in our course developed new and engaging pathways of addressing issues such as voice, embodiment, femininity and the emotional affect of sound and music. Her upcoming multimedia installation entitled ‘FEMPORIS’ will be exhibited at this year’s degree show.

DMSA: Three important words that represent you as a creative person
JB: Feminine, intimate, emotional 

DMSA: When did you start working with sound and music?
JB: I started working with sound at a very young age, experimenting with all sorts of different instruments, but nothing really stuck. My true musical beginnings started when I found my passion for Classical Singing; this was the portal through which I found what sound, and especially voice, meant to me and what it could communicate to others. I remember being gob smacked the first time I sang in front of an audience, because by the end of my performance a lot of the audience were crying. I always knew music effected my emotions deeply, but to see others react so vividly to something I had sung was a turning point, I knew then I had to work with my voice and my emotions.

DMSA: In what ways has the DMSA course supported or help you to develop into who you are today creatively and professionally?
JB: The DMSA course opened my eyes to a lot of experimental, more artistic ways of approaching music. Before this course I was well versed in more mainstream electronic music, but had no idea of the plethora of ways music and sound can be used, creatively and powerfully, to evoke emotions and create statements. During my time here I believe I have created projects that I will continue to work on well past my graduation, but also planted seeds of ideas for my future work and concepts.

DMSA: What are your plans for the near future? projects, events, visions
JB: I am currently working on a multimedia sound installation called Femporis, which is a conceptual womb piece that will be a part of the Brighton University Degree Show this June. This piece is an exploration into the soundscape of the womb, but also considers the concepts of safety, nurturing and rebirth. I hope to continue down this vein of feminine works and create a trilogy of pieces that are focused on the female body and voice. Post University I plan to create a platform for young female artists in Brighton, a website and bi-monthly exhibition space, where they can show their work and be a part of a supportive collective, showing female sound and artworks in a unified space. 

More info:
http://jasmynbloch.weebly.com/

Experimental Film Project | Direct Animation onto 16mm Film

Posted on by Maria Papadomanolaki

Monday 12 February | 5:30-8 | Performance Studio, GP

Digital Music and Sound Arts students are invited to join Design for Digital Media students in a workshop on direct animation onto a 16mm film. This project will offer the students the opportunity to work with the physical elements of direct animation on to the film.
Participants will be provided some film stock to work on to create a few seconds of 16mm film footage that can be looped and played through a 16mm projector, the work will then be video captured and edited on the computer to create a final outcome.

The process of direct animation involves scratching into the surface of the film’s emulsion to make sequential patterns and shapes, or painting images, textures and shapes on to clear leader, negative and positive mark-making, and possibly contact printing in the dark room.

The workshop will also explore the historical contexts and ideas born out of the early years of experimental film production especially focusing on the Cinema of Attractions.

The Brief:
Students will work to the theme of ‘negative and positive’ and expole sequential animation of pattern and form, light and dark, subtle and overt mark making, try to convey different oppositional moods by the colour or texture and emphasis of the marks they make. Or they could attempt to portray an idea that has an oppositional message to the original image (if there is one on the film). Or merely consider two opposing ways of looking at an image as a sequence.

There is an additional optional extra theme of Altitude
If students opt to make work with this theme, the resulting work can be entered for selection as part of a group screening at the Towner Gallery in April more info to come…

The Final Outcome:
A short (30 to 120 seconds) moving image piece that explores the theme of Negative/Positive (or Altitude). This can be either presented as a film loop on the projector or as a digital outcome.

Be experimental . . .

The workshop will be led by Louise Colbourne and Jim Hobbs.

Spaces are limited. Booking necessary.