The Frankensonics Sound System is a bespoke 16-channel system capable of presenting complex multichannel and ambisonic compositions. It was first assembled in 2023, following the gifting of some thirty passive bookshelf speakers to the Audio Foundation by artist, Colin Woods – Sony, Aiwa, Sharp, Pioneer, Phillips speakers of various sizes, qualities and cosmetic states.

Following the presentation of four pieces in 2023, the system was broken down and rebuilt.

Disassembled. Reassembled. New parts. New arrangements.

Stronger than ever, the Frankensonics Sound System is ready to once again give three-dimensional voice to a fresh programme of ambisonic and multichannel compositions by:

Andrew McMillan
Ben Leonard
Eli Larkindale
Fern
Ivan Mršić & Reuben Derrick
Liam Frizzell
Malcolm Dunn
Rob Thorne
Ziryab

More information about these artists and their work can be found below.

Opens: Thursday 13 November, 5.30pm, with refreshments by Liberty Breweries.
Hours: The Frankensonics programme will begin at the top of the hour at 12pm and 2pm, Wednesday – Saturday
Closes: Saturday 6 December

Special events:
As part of this programme, we will also be hosting micro-listening sessions. These limited capacity events will provide an ideal listening experience complemented with a glass of wine or cup of hot tea or coffee, Liberty Beer or AF’s in-house non-alcoholic punch. Sessions will run for 90min.

Frankensonics micro concert 1 – Wednesday 19 November
Doors 6pm, music from 6.30pm
More info // Tickets

Frankensonics micro concert 2 – Thursday 27 November
Doors 6pm, music from 6.30pm
More info // Tickets

Frankensonics micro concert 3 – Wednesday 3 December
Doors 6pm, music from 6.30pm
More info // Tickets

Andrew McMillan’s latest interests and pursuits include researching and developing an artistic practice incorporating interactive gestural interfaces for electronic instruments, converting real world data into sound and composition, and network performance. This research is currently being undertaken in a PhD at the University of Auckland Music School.

Ben Leonard (BJ Leo) is a Taamaki–based composer and sonic artist working with spatial audio and spectral decomposition. His practice explores deconstruction and reconstruction of sonic spectra in multichannel environments, considering how spectral and spatial processes shape perception. Through techniques of spectral fission and fusion, sound is decomposed into its partials and redistributed through ambisonic and multi-array loudspeaker systems. This year he is undertaking a residency at SpaesLab, Berlin and 4DSOUND, Amsterdam. He will present new work from these residencies at Audio Foundation.

Eli Larkindale is a Melbourne born, Wellington based multi instrumentalist and composer. Larkendale’s compositions span different styles from Folk to Totalism, Drone, Free Improvisation and Noise Rock. He plays a variety of music live as a solo artist and performs frequently live with self described “Brutalist Rock” band, Their Eyes Were Flowers. In addition to several albums with Their Eyes Were Flowers, Larkeidale releases ambient compositions under the name Less Bliss and has authored several electronically based works for a variety of contexts.

Cascades II was composed with synthesisers, tape loops and electronic feedback manipulation. It is the second composition of Eli Larkindale’s that uses Minimalist techniques such as polyrhythm, phasing and the layering of many voices. In conjunction with digital manipulations, these techniques slowly “disintegrate” the piece by stretching and cutting/looping the material as it passes in time. The piece can be consumed either from a sweet spot in the middle of the loudspeakers or an installation type work where the listener can move around the physical space to explore the various sounds and the way they interact at different places.

Fern’s work explores the use of analog mixers, DIY electronics, outboard effects and feedback loops to produce experimental works across a range of styles. Their practice explores the use of analog mixers, DIY electronics, outboard effects and feedback loops to produce experimental works across a range of styles. Fern’s work for Frankensonics will explore the intent and outcomes of environmental creation and storytelling, making the most of the medium and context.

Ivan Mršić & Reuben Derrick’s collaboration, Maungarei Springs Wetlands, was, as the title suggests, created at Maungarei Springs Wetlands, a reclaimed and regenerating eco-sancuary near the Auckland suburb of Mt. Wellington. Existing on the site of a former quarry, Maungarei Springs Wetland is once again home to a population of native birds including pūkeko, tūī and pīwakawaka, as well as various ducks and other waterfowl. Presented as recorded, this piece presents multiple views of a lived interaction between players and environment – a passage of time wherein each influenced the other.

Reuben Derrick is a musician based in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa/New Zealand, whose work encompasses solo improvisation, diverse collaboration and field recording. His compositions frequently draw upon field recordings and improvisation to consider ways performers might engage with sonic environments.

Ivan Mršić is an interdisciplinary visual artist, percussionist, composer and improviser whose long-running practice builds on the foundations of avant-garde music, performance, experimentation and art. His practice operates on the assumption that virtually anything can become a musical instrument under certain conditions. This expanded understanding of sculpture, sound, music and musical instruments has led Mršić to work with discarded everyday objects, fascinated to explore their sonic potential. He is a regular performer at Vitamin S and at many of New Zealand’s significant improvised music events such as the 2010 Sound Invention Convection Festival.

Liam Frizzell is a sound artist from Te Papaioea, currently bankrolled as spatial audio technician for the University of Greenwich in London, UK. His work focuses on broken things – sounds spectrally decomposed and restructured, hardware mangled and bent, things that develop their own cadences and characteristics as they slip away from intended functionality.

Nodding toward entropy, the central concern of Frizzell’s composition, Long Work, is with the evolving disorientation that can be found in incessant reduplication, and how incremental desynchronisation of a sound’s spatial, spectral, and temporal qualities provide listeners openings to entrancement and/or destabilisation. There is a heavy focus on repetition, density, degradation, and how energy can be conveyed in the dialogue between mechanisms of automation and the interference of human subjectivity.

Malcolm Dunn is a guitarist, artist, and acoustician based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. He creates improvisational soundscapes as a member of the Lower Bar Collective, as a solo artist under Colm, and frequently participates in non-idiomatic improvisation sessions at Vitamin S. As an acoustician, Malcolm specializes in the acoustic design of buildings and the simulation of virtual acoustic environments. His creative work is especially focused on exploring the relationship between sound, performance, and space.

Saint Kevin’s Arcade in Central Auckland has long been a hub for creative music, art and night-life. This sound work, St Kevin, is inspired by the physical space, its association with local art and music as well as the 6th Century Saint who shares its name. Its foundation is an ambisonic (immersive audio) recording made walking through Saint Kevin’s arcade on a typical Tuesday night. This has been overlaid with guitar and electronic sounds expressing the above themes.

Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu, Tainui) is an internationally renowned Māori anthropologist, taonga pūoro musician, and award-winning composer. Blending tradition with innovation, Thorne’s work has been at the forefront of the revival and renaissance of traditional Māori instruments for over 25 years, crossing orchestral, electronic, jazz, and free improvisation, leading to solo and collaborative performances around the world.

Of his work, Tōrino Hau (Porotiti, Kōhatu mirimiri, Pūtōrino, Rehu Toroa, Hue Puruhau), Rob has shared the following:

Tōrino- spiral, coiling, twisting motion
Hau – wind, breath, vitality, spirit

Tōrino Hau is one of the ngā-hau-e-whā tekau-mā-rua (the forty-two winds) that Tāne-nui-a-Rangi ascended through on his cosmic journey to retrieve the baskets of knowledge (ngā kete o te wānanga).

When Tāne ascended the heavens, he passed through twelve realms (ngā rangi tekau mā rua) and encountered, or travelled with, various hau, each representing a type of energy, vibration, or spiritual current.
Tōrino Hau is one of these transitional forces – a wind of ascending spiral motion, signifying the dynamic pathway between realms.

The spiral movement reflects the aranga ake (rising up) and heke iho (descending) of knowledge, spirit, and energy.
It embodies the idea that enlightenment and spiritual movement are not linear, but spiral upward, reciprocal, returning upon themselves in higher understanding with each cycle.

Ziryab is the experimental music moniker of DJ star zi!. Born in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada with North African roots, Ziryab spent the first half of 2025 in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara for an exchange in Sonic Arts at VUW, where she originally composed the 16-channel piece The Pounding in my Head is Gone. Realised from sonic pieces of the land that she gathered in her travels, as well as recordings of pianist friend Trantham Gordon, it reflects the peace of mind she found through the slower pace of life in Aotearoa.