Intermedia research
Composing, performing and reflecting upon new work within the spectrum of contemporary practice.
Composing with live electronics
Paul Archbold: Music for superinstruments
Paul's interests in composing new work employing live electronics grew from research projects with the cellist Neil Heyde and the oboist Christopher Redgate to realise classic experimental works of the 1970s with new computer technology and software. Several of his recent compositions feature patches written in Max/MSP to capture and process the sound of the instrument in real-time, and interact with the soloist in a precisely co-ordinated manner. These new works exploit extended performance techniques and use electroacoustic technology to expand the expressive range of the instrument and instrumentalist: a little night music (oboe and live electronics), Penumbra (cello and live electronics) and two collaborative works with Christopher Redgate Improvisation and Doublings. Fluxions (for solo oboe, ensemble and electronics) was premiered by Christopher Redgate and Ensemble Exposé at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2009. The CD Impacts and Fractures: chamber music of Paul Archbold will be issued on the Metier label in 2011.
Oded Ben-Tal: Semantic interaction
This project involves developing strategies for interaction between musicians and live electronics at the semantic level whereby the computer listens to the inputs and responds musically in real-time. It has led to Anemoi (a collaboration between flute and live electronics with flautist Helen Bledsoe, which was premiered in 2005 in Tel-Aviv, and performed in 2007 at the Spark Festival in Minneapolis) and to Still Life for microtonal trumpet and live electronics. Still Life was commissioned by Steven Altoft and premiered by him at the 2nd UK Microfest in 2007; in 2010 Stephen recorded the piece at Coombehurst Studio for a CD of new works for microtonal trumpet. Zaum: Beyond Mind is a performance/improvisation collaboration with Caroline Wilkins for bandoneon, voice, and electronics.
John Ferguson: Machine-Assembled Dislocation
'Machine-Assembled Dislocation' is an instrumental assemblage based around the electric guitar; it utilises floor-mounted effects pedals and accelerometer data from multiple games controllers (via STIEM software 'JunXion'). The aim is to conjure a phantom auditory presence with which the performer must struggle. Perhaps useful in illuminating this idea is 'I Like America and America Likes Me' by Joseph Beuys; what John is searching for is something that would provide a similar drama and immediacy as Beuys' coyote. This practice explores the dialectical relations between precision and indeterminacy. Key concepts include touching at a distance, negotiating inertias, setting processes in motion and intervening within established trajectories. All of these to some extent sideline what might be perceived as the autonomy of a performer, foregrounding environmentally situated aspects of performance, rather than just the actions of the performer themselves.
John Ferguson: Performing Technologies: Re-Animating the Live
Trevor Wishart defines Sonic Art as a 'convenient fiction for those who cannot bear to see the use of the word "music" extended', although this might be a useful position from which to tell one side of a story, Sonic Art also foregrounds the ecological connotations of David Tudor's 'Rainforest', Christian Marclay's reuse of recorded media, and the hardware hacking/circuit bending practices of Nicholas Collins and Reed Ghazala. Modifications made to hardware make it possible to access a functionality that is inherent to the technology, but which has been previously masked or otherwise unheard. John aims to adopt a broad environmental consciousness, reflecting William McDonough's assertion that if we must have such a thing as 'design', it should reflect intention. The net result of such an evolution would be that rather than recycling defunct material, it ought, in the first case, to have been designed in such a way that it can be reused, deconstructed, or otherwise redeployed beyond its initially intended function. Through this project John suggests that the resistant materials of post-digital electronic music, in resisting not just the advances of those who perform them (hence the creative possibility of unpredictability), can also offer a metaphor through which to ask one central question: how might the technologies of Sonic Art be utilised to resist the perpetual acceleration of industrial civilisation? His methods of interpreting this question currently focus on the reanimation of dormant and discarded technologies.
John Ferguson: Whistle Pig Saloon
'Whistle Pig Saloon' is the live-audio collaboration of John Ferguson and Robert van Heumen (live-sampling virtuoso and former managing director of the Studio for Electro Instrumental Music - aka STEIM - in Amsterdam). A self-titled CD was released by Creative Sources Recordings in 2009 which received favourable reviews (Wire Magazine, Vital Weekly, The Squid's Ear, etc) and led to exciting concert opportunities, most notably the Borealis Festival for Contemporary Music in Bergen, Norway and DNK Amsterdam in Holland. A co-authored artist's note appears in Leonardo Music Journal (LMJ20); this discusses collaborative practice and is accompanied by audio excerpts of concert recordings. A second CD in collaboration with Bennett Hogg and Paul Bell is scheduled for 2011 and further concert appearances are planned.
Louise Harris: Open-source technologies for live performance, composition and improvisation
This project involves the use of the open source programmes puredata and processing to create a multichannel composition and spatialisation tool which can be utilised for live performance as well as in an installation setting. The system, systemic, uses a physics-based visual environment to control the behaviour and position of sound objects within the horizontal sound field, and can be customised to work with pre-existing sound sources or to synthesise sound live.
Music and the other arts
Oded Ben-Tal: Gesture, sounds, space
This creative exploration takes place at the intersection of interactive technology, improvised dance, and digital environments in collaboration with dans sans joux 2. It has led to Suna No Onna, a movement-design performance premiered in 2007 at the Laban theatre Studio; this hour-long piece is based on the famous Japanese novel and film 'Women in the Dunes'. It has also resulted in Ukiyo (moveable world) - an audiovisual performance/installation funded by the British Council cross-culture exchange with colleagues at Keio University in Japan.
Philip Chambon: Music choreography - collaborations with dance and film
Philip Chambon is a composer for film and television, and has collaborated as a composer with choreographers, dancers and visual artists. He has worked extensively in the popular music business as a songwriter, performer and producer. His research interest centres on how open, rather than closed, collaborative processes can be developed, with a particular focus on:
- Jamming, fluidity and intuition as part of the collaborative process
- The collaborative process as a mapping of small creative steps
- How music technology, song and the popular music aesthetic can relate to this process
Philip's collaboration with director Martin Williams on the factual film Inside Planet Earth (2009, Discovery Channel) explores the use of compositional techniques across many genres. These include the integration of orchestral textures with contemporary r 'n' b and hip hop processed beats. Inside Planet Earth was first broadcast on the Discovery Channel in early 2009 and a DVD was released in the USA in June 2009.
The collaboration with director Leon Chambers on the short film The Long Lonely Walk (2010) explores whether a composed track can successfully replace a "temp" track of a well known song, and the possibilities of a music soundtrack helping to unify a visual narrative set in three different eras of someone's life. The composition integrates acoustic 12-string guitar, voice and sound design. The film was premiered at The Curzon Cinema, Shaftesbury Avenue in London in February 2010 and has since won Best Short Film at the Chicago United Film Festival, and two Accolade Awards - Award of merit: Short Film, and Award of Excellence: Sound Overall Impact.
Louise Harris: Symbiotic audiovisual systems
This is an ongoing research project in which Louise attempts to build and programme systems which deal with audio and video as equal elements in the composition process. The project is intended to have two distinct outcomes: first, the creation of fixed media audio/video pieces for performance and installation; and second, the building of self-sustaining, symbiotic audio/video systems for installation.
Helen Julia Minors: Music, Text and Translation
What role does translation play in various musical contexts? Helen Julia Minors is editing a collection of essays, under contract to Continuum Books (forthcoming Winter 2012), which tackles the transference of sense between music and text, meeting theory and practice-based research from across this interdisciplinary field. Case studies include reference to opera libretti, surtitling, art song, musicals, poetry, painting, sculpture, transcription, collage, biography and accessibility. Minors' own contribution is a chapter exploring translation in the music of Erik Satie. Her project has developed to incorporate work on Debussy's engagement with text, which has been included in the Tenth Portsmouth Translation Conference (November 2010).
David Osbon: Words to music
In partnership with Rainfall Productions and the film director and producer Stephen Hay from Leeds University, David Osbon is involved in a multi-layered collaboration involving the composition of live and electro-acoustic music for film, and the representation of a composer within the film narrative. This has resulted in Prelude: Words to Music, a film premiered in June 2009 and due for showing at the Cannes and Edinburgh film festivals. It will be followed by Flydrive, a film involving A-list resources and the composition and creative exploitation of music in the orchestral domain.
Caroline Potter: Satie Intermedia
Erik Satie was a key figure in the arts in turn-of-the-century Paris, and his creativity exploded in several different directions in 1913. Caroline's project investigates the interrelationship between his music and his pioneering surrealist play, Le piège de Méduse, and Quatre poèmes d'amour. The paper was presented at our Satie event 3 hosted by Gresham College on 16 April 2010 which also featured a paper by our research student Grace Cheung. Caroline is now exploring the sources and relationships of text and music in Satie piano works.
Diana Salazar: Perceptions of space
Sound carries the potential to communicate a wide range of spatial information, from implied shapes, motions and trajectories, to complex environments. A major aspect of Diane's research is the construction of space, specifically looking at the relationship between internal composed spaces (essentially 'virtual' in nature), and external spatial elements, including the performance mode and context of a work. This research has been undertaken through the composition of acousmatic (fixed-media) works in surround sound formats (most recently Bosonica (2009), a large-scale work for 5.1 audio) and also stereo format (most recently Papyrus (2008)). For stereo works, Diane is particularly interested in exploring the translation of compositional space into the listening venue via the performance practice of sound diffusion, often utilising surround systems of 40+ channels of sound. She is also keen to compare my composition of 'concert hall' music with the approaches taken when her practice is relocated into unconventional sites, or collaborative contexts. Her output in this field includes collaborations with theatre, film, and dance practitioners, together with site-specific work. These prove to be rich environments for exploring discourse between extra-musical spatial implications and composed spaces. Recent research has included The Spindlesongs Installation (2008), a site-specific eight channel sound installation for Quarry Bank Mill in Styal, and an ongoing collaboration with Finnish dancer and choreographer Sari Lievonen, which explores strategies for navigating sonic space through dance.
Composer/performer dialogues
Paul Archbold: Revealing the composer/performer dynamic
Revealing the composer/performer dynamic: unmaking and making the contemporary string quartet is a research project designed to define and promote new models of creative production and presentation. It will bring together several new audiovisual techniques to capture, document and analyse the processes of 'unmaking' and 'making' in the creation and interpretation of contemporary work, in collaboration with the Arditti Quartet and the film-maker Colin Still. The research project builds on an ongoing artistic partnership between the Arditti Quartet and Kingston University, including the international composition workshops for composers at the beginning of their career (led by the composers Brian Ferneyhough in 2008 and Wolfgang Rihm in 2010) and public concerts promoted in collaboration with BBC Radio 3. A video documentary will be created in 2010 examining the Arditti Quartet's preparations for the première of Brian Ferneyhough's 6th String Quartet at the Donaueschingen Festival.
Paul Archbold: RedArchDuo
As the RedArchDuo, Paul Archbold collaborates with the oboist Christopher Redgate to research, realise and perform new work for oboe and live electronics. The duo has commissioned compositions from young composers, given public performances in Mexico, Germany and the UK, produced recordings on the CD labels Metier and Oboe Classics, and been broadcast by Mexico Radio and BBC Radio 3. RedArchDuo will perform new works for oboe and live electronics at the LancMAC conference in Lancaster in July 2011.
Paul Archbold: Shadowing the cello
In 2002, Neil Heyde invited Paul to make a new computer realisation of the electronics for Brian Ferneyhough's seminal work Time and Motion Study II (for cello and live electronics) for performance as a duo. Following several public concerts, they made the video documentary Electric Chair Music (Optic Nerve, 2007) which features interviews with the composer and performers, and includes a performance of the work. Electric Chair Music will be shown at the BBC Symphony Orchestra's festival Total Immersion: Brian Ferneyhough on 26 February 2011 at the Barbican Centre.
Tim Ewers: Lines of communication
Tim's work as a composer focuses on issues of communication; understanding the aesthetic concepts and gestures of music of the past, building new ideas on those foundations and communicating them to performers, audiences and students - not just at university but also in schools and the wider community. Communicating is a fundamental part of a composer's work, not just as a teacher but as someone involved in a dialogue as part of a musical process that actively involves performers and listeners. He has called his ongoing composing project Lines of Communication (the title of his 1990 string quartet) because one of his preoccupations is with line and how musical events are related to each other; how beginning and end are defined and established and how hierarchies are used in both line and harmony to shape music. Partnerships with performers are an important part of Tim's work and he is particularly interested in exploring new ways of delivering music to audiences. Recent collaborations have been with Jane Manning and Jane's Minstrels, The Delta Saxophone Quartet, Morphosen, the Fibonacci Sequence, Gemini and the 10/10 Ensemble. Full details of these works can be seen on his website 4.
Helen Julia Minors: Gestural Analysis of Music and Dance
Where is the mutual point of understanding for dancers and musicians? Exploring the notion of gesture and musicality, Helen Julia Minors has been working on models of analysis drawn from conceptual integration and metaphor theory which can be applied to both interpretation and collaborative creation. They can also be applied to teaching the performance arts in collaborative modules.
David Osbon: Growing culture
David Osbon's compositional activity within the domains of orchestral and chamber music, is concerned to sustain and build the continuities represented by such genres as symphony, concerto and sonata (a CD of his three piano sonatas was released in March 2010 with an US release in April 2010 and his Clarinet Concerto will be performed in 2011). His 3rd Symphony is due for completion in January 2011.
Mike Searby: Interviewing composers
Mike Searby managed the Research Informed Teaching Project (funded by Kingston University) which involved the videoing of a number of active composers to provide a resource for student composers which will be available online. The questions asked focused on the various composers' technical approaches and on advice they would give to young composers. The composers chosen covered a wide range of approaches including Judith Weir, Steve Martland, Katharine Norman, John Lunn (composing for film), Michael Finnissy, June Boyce-Tillman (composing for students and children), Steve Goss, Tim Ewers and Mike Searby. Chris Caldwell from the Delta Saxophone Quartet was also interviewed to give a performer's perspective on working with composers. Extracts of some of the above interviews appear on a DVD of new music produced by the Delta Saxophone Quartet and FMR (2010) which includes compositions by Michael Finnissy, Steve Goss, Tim Ewers, Mike Searby and Gerald Barry. All the interviews will be used by postgraduate and undergraduate students.
Diana Salazar: Perceptions of space
Sound carries the potential to communicate a wide range of spatial information, from implied shapes, motions and trajectories, to complex environments. A major aspect of Diana's research is the construction of space, specifically looking at the relationship between internal composed spaces (essentially 'virtual' in nature), and external spatial elements, including the performance mode and context of a work. This research has been undertaken through the composition of acousmatic (fixed-media) works in surround sound formats (including Bosonica (2009), a large-scale work for 5.1 audio) and also stereo format. For stereo works, Diana is particularly interested in exploring the translation of compositional space into the listening venue via the performance practice of sound diffusion, often utilising surround systems of 40+ channels of sound.
Most recently she has been investigating the rhythmic and timbral elements of Tango and their possible 'translation' into a stereo acousmatic work intended for sound diffusion. Much of this research was completed during a composer residency at the Fundación Destellos in Mar del Plata, Argentina during July and August 2010.
Diana Salazar: Gestural Discourse in Mixed Music
Following on from her exploration of spatial aspects in fixed media music and its dissemination, Diana's mixed (live and electroacoustic) compositional output explores lines of communication between the agential space created by a live musician on stage, and more 'virtual', constructed sound-spaces. Preliminary research in this area has already been undertaken through the composition of Pavakoothu (2007) for clarinet and electronics, Tipuana Tipu (2010) for marimba and electronics, and Chemistries (2007), a large-scale work for flute, violin, cello, accordion and electronics, which was commissioned and premiered by the Symposia ensemble, with a further performance by the Roots Ensemble at the International Computer Music Conference in 2008.
Currently Diana is exploring these themes through the composition of a large-scale work for bass flute and electronics, commissioned by Creative Scotland. By working closely with flautist Richard Craig and drawing on the unique sonic resources of this unusual instrument, she is examining the construction of gesture relationships in mixed music composition alongside strategies for notating such relationships. In particular, she is utilising aspects of causality, source-cause discourse, and examining to what extent cross-modal references, particularly physical and visual analogies, may be used to assist the composer in blurring the boundaries between the real and the virtual. The work, Tekahtoa, was premiered at the Sound Festival in Aberdeen in November 2010.
