Composing Environments explores recent sonic possibilities in interactive computer art. The works comprise of sound installations about participation and composition. Each of the works addresses technology and aspects of identity, participation and consumerism within the ‘music studio’.
Wilson’s ‘Re-Composed Environment’ re-contextualises environmental sound from widely recognised methods in fixed-media collage composition as a real-time generative work. Using a live input located over Myer’s Park, the data is manipulated to create a generative composition for four channel surround. The variables in weather, in loudness and sonic diversity from the park and Auckland City will impact the music to change with the environment.The installation becoming a musically temporal being in itself. This work seeks not to record the city, but to musically co-exist alongside and amongst it. In contrast, a second fixed-media work for headphones addresses environmental sound composition tradition, seating listeners in opposition to each other as ‘responsive’, confrontational and interactive, instead of passive or solitary.
Mitchell’s work focuses on communication protocols and landscapes, using surveillance and relationships to compose ‘digital utopias’. The musically driven computer programming techniques consider how technology mediates experience in ways that can be simultaneously humorous and sinister. ‘Parasite’ is a web server hosting a hybrid video chat room and physical computing environment located on the Audio Foundation stairs. Online and local visitors contribute directly to the installation and ‘share’ the sounds of their environment, which are then triggered by visitors (online and physical) to light a up staircase, which selects streams of audio for playback to participants.
‘Re-Composed Environment’ online component – click through to interact: http://parasite.ngrok.com/
‘Guest’ is a ‘topographic’ composition environment, based on the theories of Iannis Xenakis. Upon a sandbox onto which a landscape and cursors are projected, connected to a stochastic synthesiser. The work explores the lines between play, avant-garde composition and drone warfare.
Bios
Brooke Mitchell lives in Wellington, is a graduate of the New Zealand School of Music and University of Auckland Politics Dept. with an interest in the convergence of both topics.
Flo Wilson is a composer, performer and artist based in Wellington, New Zealand. She is a graduate in Composition/Sonic Arts from the New Zealand School of Music. Under her alias ‘Foxtrot’, she has recently completed a trans-Tasman tour, including playing Camp A Low Hum, Chronophonium, Lines of Flight festivals. In addition, Wilson has composed and performed original works for Dunedin-based sonic artist Rose James and the New Zealand School of Dance, the latter of which she received the Lilburn Trust Composition Award. flowilson.com
Opens Thursday 4 September, 2014. Featuring a video response work by Ziggy Lever and performance by Nigel Wright.
Runs until Saturday 27 September, 2014. The artists will both give workshops on the day and will perform works to conclude the exhibition in the evening.
Thanks to the Audio Foundation, Jeff Henderson, Chris Cudby and Josephine Jelicich for their support.
Special thanks to CNZ and Becks for their continued support.
Closing performances by Flo Wilson & Brooke Mitchell – Saturday 27 September, 7pm start, koha entry