an improvised sound project
Lyndon Blue, Lauren Brown, Matthew Gingold, Cat Hope, Kynan Tan
22 June – 18 August 2013
PICA Central Galleries
Presented by PICA and TURA New Music | Curated by Leigh Robb

Opening Friday 21 June, 6-8pm
To be opened by Tos Mahoney, Artistic Director Tura New Music, the opening will feature performances by Matthew Gingold with his Bulb Orkestra, and Cat Hope and her Abe Sada project with the sculptural sound work AmpStack.

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an improvised sound project is an exhibition of sound and music in multiple formats which launches new pieces by five outstanding Australian artists. Each artist has designed a work for extended play within PICA’s galleries, speculating on what it means to visualise and encounter sound and music today. The works are each systems unto themselves, often manipulating the creative process of improvisation while relying on programming, code, algorithms and applications to generate or run new compositions.

Matthew Gingold has made an extraordinary self-playing orchestra in which the instruments are light bulbs and relays, creating a symphony of signals, shadows and electronic chatter. Cat Hope’s sound sculpture of seven bass guitars and amps is a reverb tower of feedback, in dialogue to Lauren Browns wall of text, a silent catalogue of sounds meditating on the way we listen to, share and talk about music. Kynan Tan’s double projection and multi-screen work creates isolated and controlled sonic and visual chambers, a counterpoint to Lyndon Blue’s interactive installation in which the film footage of the Hindenberg disaster and a soundtrack composed by the artist is manipulated using the theremin, creating a strange malleable music video.

This exhibition unites radically different manifestations and improvisations on the theme of seeing and shaping sound. Ruminating on the fringes of the musical encounter before, during and after the live gig or performance, the works in the exhibition are random and responsive offerings for our senses, profoundly shifting the registers that we usually associate with sound.

more info – PICA
facebook event

Wintering is a new contemporary dance work inspired by the fragility and strength of an iced landscape. Created by West Australian choreographer Aimee Smith, Wintering uses dance along with imagery and sounds collected from the Arctic environment to explore the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. This meditative and immersive work asks audiences to consider what it is to live in a changing and disintegrating world, to sit with the tension of beauty and destruction, hope and fear. Wintering opens a conversation about climate change not by facing the familiar politics of the issue but instead bravely attempting to reveal the subtle, emotional and disquieting nature within.

Take a look at the Pozible Campaign.

“Kynan – a prodigious music-meets-art-meets-science wizard – has been blessing esoterically-inclinced audiences in Australia, Germany and Japan for the last few years with his audiovisual experiments. Tonight he’s offering live iterations of tracks off his latest album, rætina, with Shy Panther bandmate Ben Santostefano accompanying on acoustic drum kit. Kynan himself handles electronics and visuals, using a laptop and his home-made software patches I can’t profess to understand. What I can tell you is that the result is unique, beguiling and uncanny, sitting at the intersection between instrumenta, left-of-leftfield hip hop, electronica noise, melody, and abstract sound art. The familiar sound of drum kit provides a reference point from which to appreciate the curiosity of Kynan’s compositions, emphasizing unusual time signatures, shifts in tempo and accent. Meanwhile Kynan elicits drones, patters, swells, modulations, glitches, clicks and booms to envelop us in an otherworldly gauze of synthetic resonance.”

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from the facebook event

Considered by many as the high priests of left-field electronic wizardry, Darren “Actress” Cunningham & Daniel “OneOhTrix” Lopatin bring their cochlea bruising live shows to The Bakery for a world class showcase of avant garde computer music.

— ϟϟ ACTRESS [UK] + ONEOHTRIXPOINTNEVER [US] ϟϟ —

— ϟϟ Saturday March 16th [-The Bakery-] ϟϟ —

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— ϟϟ Leaving / Basic Mind / Reece Walker & Emerald Cabal
— ϟϟ Kynan Tan / + Ben T & Clunk on DJ duties.

Actress —>

“It’s medicine, that’s what music is” – (D.J.Cunningham, 2010)

One of the UK’s most fascinating musical figures, and the founder of Werk Disks (Zomby, Lukid) afro-futuristic weirdo Actress has established himself as a fiercely individualistic voice, with even his most obvious influences twisted into nearly unrecognisable binary code wreckage. His 2008 album Hazyville immediately cemented Actress as one to watch, winning hordes of fans across the entire musical spectrum, while blurring the boundaries of the dance-floor and the bedroom. Often distorted, submerged and heavily filtered, his records flick from heartbreaking digitized shrieks, to violent kick drums stomping through the fog. Actress is ‘not’ your regular techno producer, not that he ever rrreally makes techno. He just makes Actress music.

OneohtrixPointNever —>

“Lopatin has accomplished something many musicians making so-called experimental music fail to do: open our ears to new sonic possibilities and, more importantly, force us to reconsider and rewire some of our most basic assumptions.” (Wire, January 2010/311).

Oneohtrix Point Never is Daniel Lopatin, a Brooklyn based lo-fi synth head whose work has brought him to the forefront of the modern electronic composition scene. In the two years since ‘Rifts’, his Oneohtrix Point Never project has become one of the new synth-music underground’s most reliable purveyors of trippy, arpeggio-heavy psychedelia. His brand new album ‘Replica’ has been called ‘a true modern masterpiece in noise music’ & ‘an immaculately paced album, veering from placid ambient interludes to quietly chaotic constellations of found sound’. Upon release of the album glowing reviews poured in, Pitchfork awarded a ‘Best New Music’ tag, and the unmistakeable black and white skull of the cover art popped up on more end of year best of lists than you can count, furthering Daniels life long desire to communicate deeply and efficiently in the realm of electronic music.

Tickets: http://bit.ly/ZeV8oF

ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ ϟ —-<

“a celebration of everything great art should be, powerful and confronting, yet thought-provokingly cerebral at the same time”

pleasures synaesthetic & crystalline

sam gillies: tura 25th anniversary, robin fox, kynan tan, clocked out

Kynan Tan, Multiplicity (still)

WHEN STRIPPED BACK TO RAW RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SIGHT AND SOUND, GOOD EXAMPLES OF AUDIO-VISUAL PERFORMANCES CAPTURE AN ALMOST PRIMAL BRUTALISM THAT DIRECTLY STIMULATES THE SENSES THROUGH CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS.

For Robin Fox the synaesthetic connection between sight and sound is the primary focus of his musical practice, while Kynan Tan has been moving in a similar direction for some time now, with a more distinct, thematic focus that underpins the music/visual relationship. Utilising dual screen projections, Fractal Shale featured an impressive display from two contemporary Australian artists in top form, in the first concert of four celebrating Tura New Music’s 25 Years.

kynan tan

Tan spent much of 2012 expanding his audio-visual language, a process that started with the premiere of Consciousness, the first part in a proposed three-part work that explores ideas of perception, thought and networks. At Fractal Shale, Tan performed the newly created second part of this series. Shifting between familiar touchstones of glitch and noise, Multiplicity is largely constructed from a range of familiar components (the hum of sine waves, the pulses of raw data and a mixture of other sonic elements). The implementation, however, of these elements gives voice to unique compositional structures that alternate between the tightly regimented and expansively freewheeling. Tan manages to shape information and data streams into a thematically satisfying narrative of six works that revolve around human interaction, climaxing impressively with a map of interconnected data hubs from across the world. The high-pitched chatter of these exchanges is masterfully manipulated into a dense labyrinth of texture.

The relationship Tan draws between sight and sound always favours the obtuse, while never being entirely unpredictable. This results in a work that immediately and clearly communicates its ideas while playing with the audience and their perceptual expectations. Ultimately, it is Tan’s ability to play with tension and expectation that makes Multiplicity such an original and engaging work.

robin fox

Robin Fox, New Work for Synchronator photo Brad Serls

In New Work for Synchronators, Robin Fox manipulates the red, green and blue layers of video projection through multiple devices known as synchronators, fuelling a work propelled by the pure relationship forged from the conversion of sound energy to light energy. A continuous, half-hour work, the music was primarily derived from simple, raw synthesis that often pushed the boundaries of frequency perception, resulting in pulses of sound and colour. The work evolved slowly through juxtaposition of colour, shape and sound, with ephemeral structures being born from repetition before dissolving into a new state of falling sheets of colour or visuals akin to a broken TV with sound to match. The work was uncompromising yet playful, the exploration of pure synaesthetic relationships between sight and sound, nothing more nothing less, and fiercely unapologetic. On the dual screen setup, Fox’s New Work for Synchronators was a brutalist spectacle at its best, pure unrelenting interaction that slowly wore the audience down through the multitude of differences born of stream of consciousness-like changes.

TURA’s second anniversary concert was a celebration of everything great art should be, powerful and confronting, yet thought-provokingly cerebral at the same time.

TURA 25th Anniversary Concert 2, Fractal Shale, Robin Fox, Kynan Tan, Dec 1

Sam Gillies is a Perth-based composer and sound artist. He is one of three presenters on public radio RTRFM’s experimental music program Difficult Listening.

RealTime issue #113 Feb-March 2013 pg. 33

view full review on the RealTime website

TÉ + CYCLE~ 440
JAPAN TOUR 02/2013

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Té = Andrew Brooks (saxophone) + Kynan Tan (computer)

Cycle~ 440 = Kevin Penkin (piano) + Sam Gillies (computer)

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OSAKA
02 – DOCKGAVOTTE @ Yuno Museum – Té + Cycle~ 440 + Kanchen Junga + psych-F&PSYCHOLONICA – http://yunobi.blogspot.com.au/

03 – Miniatures @ MIIT House – different improvisational groups – members of Té + Cycle~ 440 + Jerry Gordon + Yangjah (dance) – http://miit-house.blogspot.jp/

04 – @ Hokage – Té + Cycle~ 440 + 毛羽毛現(KEUKEGEN), 馬車馬(BASHAUMA) – http://www.kaguraenterprise.jp/hokage/schedule2_2013.htm

05 – @ Nu Things

KYOTO
08 – Minamo Tour @ UrBANGUILD – Té + Cycle~ 440 + Minamo (12k/room40), ASUNA (ao to ao) / Sonir(Yuta Uozumi aka SjQ) w dobames(Akinori Yamasaki / Yuki Nakgawa) – http://sukimaindustries.blogspot.jp/

TOKYO
09 – a(n) arrangement(s) @ Kosmos Lane Studio and Gallery – Té w Kouhei Harada + Cycle~ 440 + DURHA – https://www.facebook.com/events/474517489260987/

11 – bliss in the dark @ Next Sunday – Gargle + Yusuke Kamijima + 關伊佐央, Té + Cycle~ 440 – http://nextsunday.jp/info.php?selectyear=2013&selectmonth=2

12 – Test Tone @ Super-Deluxe – Kynan Tan AV + Cycle~ 440 + Peter Knight / Yoshio Machida / Andrew Brooks – http://www.soundispatch.com/ttsnews/

16 – Grind Buddha Vol. 2 @ Komyoji Temple – Té + aoki hayato / haruka nakamura – http://www.komyo.net/web/kamiyacho.html

My eyebrows always creep north (just a little) when I read something publicized as groundbreaking, or fresh, or “cutting edge.” It’s not that I disapprove of the desire to experiment and innovate; that’s a noble enough pursuit. Leaps into the unknown, flirtations with the hitherto unthinkable; these things reap new techniques, new forms, new processes and new modes of expression. And while it’s risky to think of art and music as some kind of linear progression of advances and refinements, it’s true enough that experimentation and revolution allows art-forms to adapt, to remain relevant, and to feel potent.

It’s just that too often, that thing billed as “cutting edge,” isn’t at all. It just wears the aesthetic of innovation, a shiny metallic bodysuit, a few bells and whistles. Products like iPhones and flavoured waters are chronic offenders, but you get it in the arts: music crowned as edgy because of some weird costumes and effects pedals. Art that’s daring and avant-garde ‘cause there’s some circuitry or bodily fluids involved.
None of this stuff is new, but it still shocks the squares, so we’ll conveniently call it radical.

Okay. But so what? Well, it begs the questions: what do we expect of our experimenters? What distinguishes true innovation from arts that simply appear peculiar or abstruse? And if we haven’t yet exhausted the possibilities of our established genres and traditions (let’s assume we haven’t, you know, can of worms) – what makes experimentalism meaningful, beyond simply doing something different or ‘new’?

On Saturday night I find myself on one of those little pivot-points of space and time. What to do? I should leave the house I suppose. But go where? Oh! “FRACTAL SHALE” is tonight. Shit, forgot to get a ticket. Maybe I can weasel my way in as a reviewer. Sweet, Kynan’s keen. Sun sets. Zoom into town. Scuttling past flickering buildings. Collect tickets and sink into a shadowy seat.

KYNAN TAN is steering a spaceship with two enormous screens at its fore. His control panel consists of at least two laptops and some blinking boards and devices. The room – PICA’s performance space – is dark and cosy, like a small cinema, and the huge screens dominate your vision even when they’re not illuminated. After a brief introduction from Tura head Tos Mahoney, Kynan glides into his audiovisual performance entitled multiplicity.

Luminous squiggles – like dancing lengths of glowing string – appear one by one on an implied grid across the two screens. They writhe and twist slowly, almost as if underwater, and as each appears it brings with it a new humming frequency. The sound waves undulate too, and suddenly you become fiercely aware of what you perpetually take for granted: the synchronicity of sight and sound. When we see something move, in life or in film, we conflate it with whatever sound coincides. Here, both image and audio are abstract – their connection is only assumed, not assured, and they needn’t produce or influence one another. Yet our brains make that leap of logic, and right now Kynan is exploiting and foregrounding our own mental process to remarkable effect. The squiggles warp and change colour and soon the black backdrop begins to wash out into a stark white. It ends the first of a series of audiovisual ‘vignettes,’ that are by turn dramatic, pensive, beautiful, intriguing and confronting.

Soon, tremendous bass blasts accompany flashes of bright white in a semi-regular cacophony that recalls nature’s own brutal spectacle: lightning, and simultaneous thunder. It’s loud and merciless, but it doesn’t feel obnoxious. By making these blasts visceral and almost terrifying, Kynan distills one of potentialities surrounding light and sound – the potential to trigger physical responses and induce intense emotions. I wonder whether it might damage my eyes or ears or brain, and suddenly I grin with delight. I’m experiencing art and music as not only exciting, but as dangerous, and that hardly ever happens. It’s like I’m hearing Hendrix for the first time or something.

More vignettes follow, variously exploring interactions between image and sound, motion and ideas. A mountainous terrain plays out both as film and as a floating, rotating topographical diagram, accompanied by deep and glacial tones. Particularly moving is an emerging smattering of lights that soon prove to represent cities on a world map, eventually joined together by countless spider-webs of light. Paired with a pattering and weaving digital soundscape, it eventually grows into a hulking monolith of light and we tip towards it like a slowly falling astronaut, beautifully articulating the immensity, density and fragility of modern human networks.

An interval now – and while Kynan’s performance was one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen for a long while, my senses certainly appreciate the respite. After the yin-yang injection of espresso and red wine, I return to the dark den of extreme power.

ROBIN FOX has been mentoring Kynan Tan through the JUMP program, guiding and expanding the young artist’s work in the field of computer-generated audiovisual art. In a charming pairing of prodigy and grand veteran, the two perform an extended work each this evening. Mr. Fox’s is entitled New Works for Synchronator, and, at least on paper, is simpler and more singular than Kynan’s work (no wonder I guess, given the title of the latter). Here, the majestically bearded Robin Fox traverses the colour and frequency spectrum, presenting the two as tightly bound together. The synchronator device effectively converts sound into image, by rendering audio input as video sync pulses and colour coding.

The correlation between sound and sight, then, is much more literal here than with Kynan’s piece; a technical, electronic conversion process as opposed to a human intuitive one. The results are fascinatingly varied: sometimes Fox’s synthesizer textures seem to poetically align with the coloured bars and washes appearing on screen; at other points, the synchronicity feels unnatural, uncanny and perhaps jarring. Each is compelling, and the dynamic between the two offers an ongoing point of interest. So too does the incredible dynamic of intensity, fluctuating endlessly between points of cacophony and reverie. It’s a pure exploration of light, synthetic sound, and ideas that approach melody and rhythm but remain cloaked in curious abstraction. We leave with wide eyes and buzzing brains.

Kynan Tan and Robin Fox have taken to the realm of audiovisual experimentalism with unique though clearly confluent approaches. Neither lean heavily on any one tradition; you can trace influences, but it would feel fickle. Both are lurching into territory which is unflustered by trends or conventions, instead seeking unfamiliar but bold ways to both express the ineffable and present primal forces (light, colour, lowness, highness, loudness) in all their glorious immediacy. In doing so, there was a sense that FRACTAL SHALE was truly exciting and innovative, all the more so for its modesty; neither artist is a self-proclaimed pioneer of anything. They take the road less travelled, not for its own sake, but because it is the path that allows them to articulate rich ideas and create moments of great power. This, perhaps, is the value of experimentation: the simple opening up of such avenues. You won’t find either of these guys trying to convince you how remarkable their work is. For me, they’ve done that already; Fractal Shale was a twinned performance I won’t forget for a long, long time.

The 2013 NOW now Festival is coming up in January!
Mega. Awesome!

Come and celebrate with a FREE gig to launch the festival program!

The festival is gonna be HUGE affair (5 nights of killa music, an exhibition of sound works and installations and some amazing daytime events too). It only seems fitting to launch the program with an equally HUGE gig.

Performances by:

***HARD HAT
(Kusum/Peter Blamey)
http://www.kusumnormoyle.com/about/
http://pblamey.wordpress.com/

***CHRIS ABRAHAMS
http://www.thenecks.com/bio
http://soundcloud.com/room40/chris-abrahams-jellycrown

***HOLY BALM
http://holybalm.tumblr.com/

***KYNAN TAN (WA)
http://www.kynantan.com/

***RAPAPORT
http://www.rapaport.com.au/

FREE FREE FREE. WOOOOOOOOOO!
+ there will be a mega awesome raffle with killa prizes. yeah!

The night kicks of @ 7.30 Doors open @ 7

The Red Rattler
6 Faversham St
Marrickville

audio-visual
8:3 dual screen projection, stereo sound
approx. 30 min

// video excerpt

// description

multiplicity draws tiered levels of relationships between the seen and heard, creating an interconnected web of synaesthetic experience. multiplicity is a work that attempts to illustrate, to bring to life through computer-generated sound and image, the idea of the multiple, the numerous, the singular. In doing so the work questions relationships between objects, the way in which things grow and evolve over
time.

Cities are laid out in sequence, the networks between points illustrated by fragile beams of light. Cells appear and grow in communities, then amass to create a singular entity. Computer data zips through the pipeline, gradually increasing in frequency, complexity and noisiness.

multiplicity forms the second work in Kynan’s ongoing series of audio-visual works
regarding perception, thought and networks, following on from consciousness, which
explored data collected from sleeping brain activity.

// reviews

“Kynan’s performance was one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen for a long while”
“beautifully articulating the immensity, density and fragility of modern human networks”
- Lyndon Blue, Cool Perth Nights, 2012126
link

// performances:

20121122 – Fractal Shale @ Tape Projects, w Scott Morrison, Motion, Reformed Sax Offender
20121201 – Fractal Shale @ Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Performance Space, w Robin Fox

// stills