I recently worked on a project with Glass/Installation artist Ruth Allen. She made me a ‘resonating vessel’. A glass vessel based on the idea of playing resonance percussively. The vessel is sung into and then i use my hand to shape and play with the resonance. We had the chance to explore the idea for her opening at the Glassworks in December. I did some movement/performance as part of it too as well as doing the sound design/music for the installation. Below are some images from it taken by Angus Kendon. I am looking forward to developing the project further.
Quite a number of my instrumental pieces and some songs are being used in this exhibit by collaborator and friend Sarah Moss at the Powerhouse museum this month. I also designed a surround sound soundscape to go with it. Check it out if you can.
I have posted some reviews of my album here.
And my video for Skin which I edited, shot, animated and choreographed dance for will be featured on Skope magazine’s web site this month.
This is a clip off my phone. An installation piece I did the sound for, with artist Ruth Allen, at the Frankston Arts Centre. It is in a window box display and can be seen by the car focussed culture who drive past. The sound was an accidental throw together of the sounds: from the street including some very well timed truck noises, the sounds that were actually being pumped onto the street of mine, plus an overlay of some of the sounds i did for the installation (bowed piano) and a layer of Brian Siskind’s (FOGNODE) lap steel to top it off. He has a gorgeous EP, all lap steel, called “porch music” check it out HERE
There is a lot of dissonance going on in this accidental 3 min phone vid mix job …but somehow in a rather soothing way.
This track marked the end of the process of creating the album ri-solv. It is made up of the beginnings and ends of tracks and is a meditation on death, life, acceptance – gain and loss, beginning and end, dualities of all kinds are quashed in ri-solv. There is no more either /or in ri-solv. Samsara the concept of the wheel of life, the fabric of human reality, the veil of illusion… reflects a similar notion. Everything is as true as everything else. or not………but then… (just kidding) : ) Oh and if you like this track feel free to download it, embed it, torrent it, have your wicked way with it in which ever way you choose. i’ll be happy if you just give it a listen.
Excellent to reconnect with talented and visionary glass/installation artist Ruth Allen this month through an installation at the Frankston Arts Centre in Melbourne. I have sent down 3 sound pieces which will be pumped out onto the streets of Frankston. Two are old pieces written for other projects but which suit the nature of the work and one was designed especially for this installation using sounds made by playing various bits of Ruth’s glass work. Here are some snippets of the sound.
For more information on Ruth Allen’s work go here.
You can also see some video snippets of our previous collaborations under the name GENERATE with dancer Tammy Meeuwissen. Look under video section for “the dome” & “SKIN-LESS” here. It is a flash site with video and audio documentation of my collaborative cross artform work 1998-2008. It takes a few minutes to load but its interactive and fun to explore.
It has always been a delight to collaborate with Ruth Allen as her mind is a fire of ideas and she is a powerhouse in terms of manifesting the unlikely verging on impossible. Working with her creatively is working magic. Bringing the underlying beauty, asymmetrical complexity and resonance of the world to the fore for all to see. She also introduced me to Buckminster Fuller whose ideas and work have always been a great inspiration for us both.
We will be doing a “meet the artist” event on the 21st of February. Love Melbourne!
A month of loss and revelation through death, completion and resolve. A dear loved one Danius Pilka has departed and yet, as death seems to do, he is now more present than ever in the fibre of my being. Such complex webs are woven through love, music and friendship. I am blessed to be part of a wonderful creative community who filled his room with love and music in his last week. When worlds collide… i will always cherish the moment when the “specialist” walked into his hospital room to be faced with eight musicians playing, singing and tapping on hospital equipment. The look on her face was priceless. In name, a specialist in cancer she was also a specialist in maintaining the facade that the body is a machine whose every action is preordained by the observations of science. “He is dying” she sharply told us.. ” it is a clinical process”…………………. hmmmmmmm.. It may well be a ‘clinical’ process but our responses to it are, like everything, entirely culturally constructed. How we engage with it and make sense of death is of utmost importance to how we live and understand our place in the world.
Death brings a simplicity to life. The corporeal knowledge of death enables one to more fully appreciate life in the moment .. to know that the beginnings and the ends of things are more akin, than all that goes between. More -that when focussed on the beginnings and ends of things one realizes there is nothing of substance in between. At least nothing worth getting too upset about. I guess this is why life supplies us with love. It is our way of recognising what is and isn’t us. It drives us to a sense of union while making us completely aware we are in the end completely alone. The only love which prepares us for death is that which is not attached to the mirage of another or indeed ourselves. It is beyond the constrictions of any notion we can entertain. Loving another as truly as we can, as a reflection of the love in everything including ourselves is the only love which will not tear us apart with longing. The only love which will allow us to depart the world in peace.
oh and a sneak preview of the lyrics to a new song that has been emerging this week kinda on these themes.
flawed but beautiful
aching with life
flawed but beautiful
fallen in time
fallen with you
we’re in love with eveything
imploding cells
imploding minds
we’re in love with everything
rising through
oozing out
of the constricting notions
which blind our days
and yes the photos are mine… see my flikr site for more
