Black Field Plates turns the gallery into an instrument that absorbs sound from its environment. Using a network of steel plate microphones, arranged in dual feedback loops this installation composes music through a process of dynamic equilibrium. The work is sensitive to movement and architecture and demonstrates how a complex ecology of sound can be formed through simple electronic elements. The recursive process of listening and response, and the idea of complexity formed from simple elements combine to present an analogy for relationships enacted between natural phenomenon and communications technologies.
The work draws loosely on some object-based systems developed within cybernetics in the early 1950s that were mechanical analogues for processes such as human cognition and social interaction. In the process they posed questions about what it meant to be human. Black Field Plates draws on concepts of recursion employed within these objects, by presenting an analogue audio feedback system composed from simple electronics that enacts a dialogue with its immediate environment.
http://conversationtheory.wordpress.com/
Nathan Thompson is an artist and musician from New Zealand, now based in Austinmer, NSW. His research explores relationships between time, sound, noise and signal through an object-based approach to systems and cybernetics. Recently he exhibited in Drawn From Sound curated by Cat Hope at Spectrum Gallery, Perth (2013) and the Australia Council, Sydney (2014). He has performed both solo under the name Expansion Bay and in collaboration with Sandoz Lab Technicians, Eye, and Sleep, and featured regularly in the Lines of Flight festival in Dunedin NZ. He has released music on numerous labels including Corpus Hermeticum, Last Visible Dog, CPSIP and Siltbreeze. He has presented work at festivals including Space and Place Stockholm (2006) and ISEA Singapore in Cloudland: Digital Art from Aotearoa (2008). He continues to explore new possibilities within sound, object-based composition and improvisation, and is currently working on a PhD in experimental sound installation at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Opens Thursday 2 October, 5.30pm start.
Performance evening: Nathan Thompson w/ Rachel Shearer, Mitch & Takuni – Friday 3 October, 8pm start, koha entry
Exhibition runs until Saturday 1 November.
Image by Nathan Thompson
Special thanks to CNZ and Becks for their support.