Conference Programme

Michel van der Aa's Key Note Speech will focus on the interdisciplinary character of his oeuvre. For Van der Aa, music is more than just organized sound or a structuring of notes. His music has expressive power and an idiomatic sense for the stage, combining sounds and scenic images in a play of changing perspectives. Dramatic personages take on various identities or have an alter ego: musicians on the stage, not always audible, mime or lip-sync with their electronic counterparts on soundtrack. The virtual space that emerges works its way into the mind of the audience. Van der Aa plays with this conceptual space in the same way the graphic artist M.C. Escher

used perspectival illusion, causing seemingly three-dimensional images to clash with the two-dimensional surface of the paper. Sound, in Van der Aa’s book, is malleable: it can constantly assume other forms, sometimes recognizable, sometimes not. Van der Aa is in fact a playwright in music. His sounds – like real people – can be flexible or stubborn; they either take control or get the short end of the stick; they reinforce or counteract each other, affecting audiences with their expressive power.

Van der Aa is a child of his time. Not only the use of soundtracks but also the inclusion of visual elements in Van der Aa’s compositional pallet enhances the theatrical aspect of his art. In 2002 Van der Aa completed a  program in film directing at the New York Film Academy, where he learned the art of 16 mm filmmaking. He wrote and directed a number of short films, including 'Passage'. He also created the film projections for his chamber opera 'One' and for his opera 'After Life'. In applying film images and soundtracks as additional instruments, he effectively extends the vocabulary of his music.

When Lautreamont wrote of a chance dissection of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table, he could hardly have foreseen that his idea would become a motto for the production of visual art. The surrealist movement took Lautreamont at his word, using the unlikely juxtaposition of ordinary objects to provoke an experience of what Andre Breton called the marvellous. Breton never extended his notion of the marvellous into sound, and a subsequent history of juxtaposition in sound work, including music concrete, neo-avant-garde and Krautrock remains to be written. This paper aims to trace the surrealist paradigm in the work of just one sound artist, Steven Stapleton. More commonly known as the principal artist behind Nurse With Wound, Stapleton has been influenced by all of these movements in sound, as well as by the visual philosophy of the surrealists. This paper will extend Breton's notion of the marvellous from the optical to the auditory by analysing the Nurse With Wound album, "The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion", in the light of concepts developed in the subsequent history of surrealism. This art movement and the philosophy of Breton have proved most fruitful for art theory in the twentieth century, often standing as the paradigm for debates over the avant-garde, as well as for uses of psychoanalytic and post-psychoanalytic ideas. I want to argue that "The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion" can be considered on the borders sketched by this largely French and American theoretical history. Its chaotic collage of sounds puts Breton's theory of the marvellous into practice in the realm of sound art, yet unlike the productivity of visual surrealism it also enacts a simultaneous negation of this very same marvellous. To make sense of this transition from the visual to the auditory this paper turns to a series of conflicts: between Breton and Bataille; psychoanalysis and the French anti-psychiatry movement; and finally between composition and improvisation. The terms developed in these conflicts offer theoretical opportunities to make sense of the anti-sense of "Sylvie and Babs". It is through the postmodern turn represented by the latter that a theory of marvellous auditory effects comes to the fore. Terms such as horizontally (Bataille), repetition (Deleuze), reverberation (Deleuze and Guattari) and noise (Attali) come to stand for this effect, and to elaborate its variations.

David Chesworth is one of Australia’s premier New Music composers, having written for music theatre (notably Chamber Made Opera and the Melbourne Festival), his own group (the David Chesworth Ensemble), as well as other commissions in theatre, dance and music, both locally and overseas. Chesworth’s status as a successful independent artist has however tended to overshadow his collaborative compositions with Sonia Leber. As Wax Sound Media, the pair design sound installation works for major public commissions. Although influenced by Chesworth’s musical concerns, the work of Wax reflects rather different aesthetic values to that of Chesworth’s own independent practice. In particular, the work of Wax Sound Media is focused on the use of highly crafted found sounds, field recordings and other sources which are manipulated to create novel sonic environments designed to interact with the specific qualities and histories of the sites within which Wax’s commissions are located. One notable but rarely discussed feature of the duo’s practice is the way these interactions often exceed the expectations and designs of the artists, producing surprising relationships and fluid, destabilised affective landscapes within the urban environment.

This paper will survey the work of Chesworth and Leber as Wax Sound Media, focusing particularly on their most recent installation, Proximities, located on the William Barrack Bridge in the city of Melbourne. Commissioned as part of the Contemporary Commonwealth 2006 arts festival and associated civic works, the bridge crosses the rail-yards and tracks leading to the city’s central hub, and the piece incorporates vocal samples representing various peoples which make up the modern Commonwealth of Nations. The work thus encourages the viewer to relate the experience of walking to the spectacle of transport, urban renewal and the modern cityscape, together with the sounds and vibrations of various Australian migrant population, indigenous song and the words of Australia’s Commonwealth neighbours. Through a combination of sound, image and sensation, the work suggests a conflation of space and distance, a modern yet also somewhat nostalgic sense of placelessness which abuts a more concretely-located sense of history, colonialism and loss. In short, Proximities is a highly complicated, ambiguous piece, whose referential richness—almost inevitably—exceeds the ability of the artists to fully manipulate this material, combining sound, image and experience in a suggestive manner which allows these different aspects of social life, history and sound to both elide each other, as well as to form a complicated, critical dialectic of place and sound. By focusing on sound and image, it is my aim here to examine some of the contradictory readings enabled by the work of Leber and Chesworth, and to play them off against each other as in a vast echo chamber—a metaphoric space whose properties reflect those of Wax’s opus as a whole.

Dominion is a composition which combines the sound world of Ruined Piano with ocean sounds. It is inspired by the Pianos on the Beach  - a defining image of the early days of white settlement in West Australia.

Dominion  isn’t a naïve sound scape but a thorough going integration of elements –

Ruined Piano as Ocean – Ocean as Ruined Piano. Using the resources of Protools the rhythms of waves for example can be applied to the sounds of the Ruined Piano and vice versa. Although this sounds formalistic, Dominion, is always open to surprise and change and at each stage I improvise to shape and reshape it. Sound work/music that is rather like the ocean itself.

A DVD ‘vision track’ has been cut to the music. This is the opposite of a conventional film score where music and sound ‘mickey mouse’ the action. The vision track will function ‘at an angle’ to the sound and music – and will cross freely between differing experiential regions – “an outback road as the ocean.” After long periods of darkness there are sudden images, and the idea of ocean emerges mysteriously and late.

Dominion will be presented on DVD in 5.1 surround, together with the vision track – also on the DVD

It is not what we see that inspires awe, but the knowledge of what lies beyond our view.
Robert Falcon Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery (1905)

In January 2004 I journeyed to Antarctica as part of Antarctica New Zealand’s education programme and as an Honorary Antarctic Artists Fellow.  My proposed study (entitled Sounds of Antarctica) involved producing a substantial portfolio of original compositions and related educational resources, many of which have now been completed.  With specific reference to apposite excerpts from seven of these scores I want to share the holistic experience of how they were inspired, how they were conceived and constructed and how the landscape and environment shaped their composition.  I also want to link this creative process to other facets of my creativity with reference to examples of my written responses and paintings. 

Another dimension of the study of Antarctica is the historical context, which pervades much of the literature on Antarctica, particularly the “Heroic Age” of Antarctic exploration.  This aspect has found its way into my work, both figuratively and in the abstract.  Curiously, it was the explorer Ernest Shackleton who summed up my experiences succinctly when he talked of Polar exploration as being not an outward journey but one within oneself.  That was something I was not prepared for and which became a significant factor in my work on my return; I immediately expected Antarctica to fill me artistically but in a land devoid of vegetation, perspective, colour and even access to the outside world that process took a long time.  On many levels the continent takes, it rarely gives.

This paper will focus on the creative process as it was a particularly interesting one.  How does one create the sense of awe and space that one is confronted with on The Ice without being either obvious or trite?  What are the challenges the creative artist faces in a place where humans are unwelcome and there is very little stimulation for the senses?  How many musical tone-colours are there for white?  Through my works I will trace my musical thinking, how it has been affected by my surroundings and how my musical approach has altered in creating these scores.  I also want to trace the artistic process as it relates to the quite different disciplines of the written word, auditory experience and the visual.

Lecture/performance

As a musician, writer and artist I think I am uniquely positioned to address many of the issues raised by this conference.  The initial reaction to Antarctica is usually a hugely positive one and it generates an enormous amount of interest.  That I have experienced the icy continent as a creative artist and then absorbed this into my work gives me an ideal opportunity to address the aims of the conference of investigating the dialectic between sound and image and how space is visualised in music and in visual art by the same artist.

I would like to share my experiences translating the visual splendour of Antarctica into sound using excerpts from CD recordings of the orchestral works cryosphere (a finalist in the 2006 Lilburn Composition Prize), fanfare for a frozen land, sinfonietta, two chamber works katabatic and three antarctic sketches along with live performed excerpts from adeliesong (for two clarinets) and meditations (for piano).  I will perform excerpts from the last two works (NB for adeliesong I will perform with a prerecording of myself).

Included in this presentation are my written responses during and after my trip and paintings  I have done since my return.

Performance arranged from three works by CHRISTOPH HERNDLER - IM SCHNITT, DER PUNKT (2 clarinets), SUPERMIXEN (electronics), STREIFEND, DER BLICK (video)

The different components of  “Perth, 28.04.07” exist as independent works, but can also be assembled as a single composition. The module character of my notation makes it possible to combine single parts in a very easy way.

In “Perth, 28.04.07“ the video "STREIFEND, DER BLICK" („gliding, a glance“), the electroaccustic work „SUPERMIXEN“, and the notation, "IM SCHNITT, DER PUNKT" (“cutting, the point“), have been put together to create an entirely new composition.

All three works have their underlying form of continuity in common, for example the hand which glides along the walls and floors of a house in one continuous shot, a notation which has neither a beginning nor an end, and a constantly changing computer generated sound flow.

Petra Stump – clarinet

Heinz-Peter Linshalm – clarinet

This talk will incorporate discussion of how the audiovision of both AUREVELATEUER and BEAUTIFUL CYBORG have been developed in contradistinction to the modernist notions of sound-image collage.

Philip Brophy has scored and sound-designed his own film as well as numerous works by other directors. Working across film, video and audio, his current audiovisual projects include the performance of live music to videos/films (the Beautiful Cyborg series & Aurevelateur); Dolby 5.1 video installations (the ongoing series Fluorescent & Evaporated Music); and live surround-sound performances (Voiceless & I Am Piano). Having created the Soundtrack stream in Media Arts at RMIT, he continues to lecture and publish internationally on film, sound, and music. His recent publications include 100 Modern Soundtracks for the BFI, London.

Much of the power of the cinema experience lies with the sound track, and the way it interacts with what happens on the screen. The effects of certain ranges of low frequency sound featured in presentations of film music compositions in the cinema can add an extra dimension to that experience. This paper discusses a number of techniques that have been used to enhance film soundtracks in the history of western cinema.

When, with our eyes shut we run our hands along a surface, the rubbing of our fingers against the surface, and especially the varied play of our joints, provide a series of sensations, which differ only by their qualities and which exhibit a certain order in time. (Bergson 1960 p 100)

In this paper I will explore the sonic relationship of sound to the development of new imaging technologies through Atomic Force Microscopes. In 2003 UCLA scientist James Gimzewski positioned a sensitive instrument called an atomic force microscope over a cell to try to detect its motion and the microscope picked up regular vibrations. These virbrations can be translated to sound files so one can listen to variations on various material structures at an atomic level. Anne Niemetz a sound artists who worked on the 2004 Nano exhibition suggests that, “the AFM can be regarded as a new type of musical instrument”. (Niemetz 2004)

The issues of the relationship of Nanotechnology to sound will be clarified through a discussion of my current research on the molecular particles that exist at the point of transition between the skin and gold. The data gathered at an atomic level is investigated to present sonically what is transferred at the point where the materials of skin and gold make contact. The idea of contact is related to the way that the AFM scan the surface of objects not by optics but by touch. The small stylus 10 nanometers at its tip is analogous to the old record player stylus as it touch the grooves.  Working at a molecular level, Nano technologies offer new ways of exploring the infinitely small sonically by defying ocularcentrism and constructing sonic maps of new post-perspective spatialities.

Bergson, H. (1960). Time and Free Will: An essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. New York, Harper and Row.

Niemetz, A. (2004). Singing cells, art, science and the noise in between. Design/Media Arts. Los Angeles, University College Los Angeles. Master of Fine Art: 39.

This paper examines issues related to the representation of non-linear time in interactive audio-visual works  - in particular the apparent paradox of creating interpretable narrative from non-linear processes is discussed.

The question is approached from the perspective of non-linear sound works, discussing the issues in this medium before exploring the potential analogies that might be found in works incorporating images and text.

The analogies between sound, image and text present a very broad range of potential problems and solutions to the questions raised. Therefore the discussion focuses on two works by the author Splice and Mr. Lucky as exemplars of a subset of sound-oriented concerns within audio-visual works.

It was Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski's imaginative productions of "sound and image" at early Adelaide Festivals of Arts that inspired in me a fascination with the audio-visual medium, a fascination that persists today. In those years (early 60s) I would often stand outside the primitive electronic music studio of Dutch pioneer Henk Badings at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide, and marvel at the weird sounds he was making. Later, I was part of what I believe was the first electronic music class in Australia, taught by Peter Tahourdin at the University of Adelaide using a Moog synthesizer Mark III. I went on to study electronic music at the University of York in England before returning to set up the Electronic Music Studio at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

I created my first audio-visual piece - an installation - as a student in York. In Sydney I worked with photographer Penny Tweedie and others on multimedia performance events, using whatever slide and other projectors I could get my hands on. At City Art Institute, Eric Gidney had access to a six-projector Electrosonic control system, which Penny and I used for "Kdadalak (For the Children of Timor)" (1977), a piece commissioned by Vincent Plush's The Seymour Group and subsequently seen and heard in many parts of the world. The six-projector system was unwieldy, and unreliable, so we did a two-projector version of "Kdadalak" (not as spectacular but more intense).

In the late 70s and early 80s, I worked on the music, with students and others, for a number of large-scale "environmental events" at Wattamolla Beach in Sydney's Royal National Park that combined dancers, divers, acrobats, spectacular live images, lasers, and so on.

In the early 80s the Sydney Conservatorium of Music invested in a nine-projector Clear Light control system based on an Apple ][e computer. Students and I used this for audio-visual experiments that led to audio-visual pieces presented at annual concerts by the group watt. More and more of the pieces I did were concerned with the continuing occupation of East Timor by Indonesia. Later, when advances in technology had seen the retirement of the slide projector system and adoption of laptop computers and LCD projectors, all my audio-visual pieces now showed concern for human rights abuse in particular situations (East Timor, then Afghanistan, Iraq and West Papua). I am, of course, often accused of composing political pieces by people - whose politics are invariably different from mine - who claim that art and politics should not mix. In this paper, and in my presentation, I will discuss the development of my own audio-visual art and its relationship to politics and argue my view that all art is political in some way.

The marriage of the senses that we know as ‘synaesthesia’ remains one of the most baffling areas of neurological enquiry. Theories about how it occurs and what purpose it might serve have changed over time as a better understanding of the intricacies of the brain has emerged. The idea of cross-modal association has also fascinated artists for centuries, particularly where the relationship between the visual and aural senses is concerned. This paper traces the development of synaesthetic art from the abstractions of the colour organ to current work with audio-visual equivalence (including the author’s own research) contextualising the work in relation to brain evolution and biologically determined sense perception paradigms. Using various examples of attempts to fuse the aural with the visual, the paper will demonstrate that recent work in the field forms a continuum with these earlier investigations and highlights a deep fascination with forging some tangible link between visible and audible phenomena.

This round table discussion will focus on the ways music is manipulated within, integrated into and effected by different video media. The rich diversity of experience of the different members of the panel will provide views on how music and video can fit together in different video applications; Tanja Visosevic on video and mobile phone art; Roly Skender on Vjing, Tristan Fidler on commercial music video, Wendy Graham on musician directed music video making and Chris McCormick on games and installation.

This paper aims to provide an overview of composer Angelo Badalamenti’s contribution in the creation of the dark and dystopian nightmares in the films of David Lynch. The pair have had a unique working relationship since their first film together Blue Velvet (1986) and have consequently gone on to work on six films together, a live performance piece, a ground breaking television series as well as several music albums for singer Julee Cruise. Through his use of dark sound textures and moody orchestration, Badalamenti compliments the theme of dread in the familiar that is prevalent in the films of David Lynch. The following is an analysis of the dark heart of the Lynch/Badalamenti partnership.

Sound is an exemplar of transience and presence: undeniably material, yet utterly temporal; a manifestation of energy, briefly occupying the physical world. Exploring this temporality through the concepts of immanence and repetition, the paper poses questions about how sound practice might inform understandings of how people occupy time through sound.

Immanence is a state of 'being in time' (Heidegger, Deleuze) in which the observer is intently focused upon experiencing, rather than interpreting. It describes an intentional, conscious engagement with the physical world, in which the connection between audience and the object of their attention is emphasised.

Converting static images into music is of course attempting the impossible, but the inevitable failure takes us close to the philosophical core of the visual and musical arts. In this talk I will discuss and illustrate several of my more recent attempts to convey paintings in sound in 'Manhattan Epiphanies' and 'Scenes from Bruegel'.