Commissioned this new work by sound artist Achim Wollsheid.
This work examined how the internet, as a site for interaction, dissolves convention with regard to the shape, boundary and structure of media. The artist produced an abstract graphical interface, via which participants were able to influence the parameters of a sound generator, effecting things like audio tone, density and complexity. The impact of those changes could be seen and heard by other participants visiting from other locations, who were also able to contribute to the real-time manipulation of the collaborative composition.
Tate Online 2011
Co-curated this presentation of work by Italian composer Luigi Nono, presented within Tate Modern’s collection galleries.
Nono was one of the most important avant-garde composers of the early twentieth century and a contemporary of many of the key figures in the Arte Povera movement. For this presentation, a surround sound system was installed under the floorboards of Tate Modern’s Arte Povera collection display, amplifying voice recordings that had been cut up, sped up and in every way disrupted. This recorded material was intermittently accompanied by a live solo vocalist.
Curated in collaboration with musical director Richard Bernas, Tate Modern collection galleries, London 2009
Commissioned this series of work by sound art collective Ultra-red.
Using techniques reminiscent of the Situationist International, this sound investigation was realised through a combined method of field-based interviews and site-specific recordings. The artists worked closely with recent immigrants and undocumented workers, taking them on a journey to significant sites of previous racial struggle that were not always aware of their historical antecedents, to ask the question, “What is the sound of anti-racism today?”
Distributed via Tate Online in the lead up to an exhibition and live performance at Tate Britain, London 2008
Produced a 3D sound field recording of this performance by Tony Conrad.
Unprojectable was site-specific commission, utilising the immense space of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall to extend an exploration of projection and duration. Billowing scrims silhouetted the performance, which involved the intermittent clang of industrial percussion mixed with a string quartet, including Conrad playing the violin with an electric drill and hand-held phonograph arm. This documentation aimed to capture the complex interplay of the work’s spatial and acoustic dynamics, through the use of sound field recording techniques.
Recorded during a live performance in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and distributed via Tate Online 2008
Commissioned a series of radio art works by sound artist Chrstof Migone, accompanied by an historical overview of radio art practice by Helen Thorington.
Migone makes audio pieces from the body’s mistakes, foregrounding incidental matter and visceral debris. Foursome consisted of four thirty-minute episodes, in which the artist translated Samuel Beckett’s absurdist theatre piece Quad.
Four dancers were invited to describe Beckett’s work as they watched video documentation of it being staged, then again from memory, through movement and in a drawing. Recordings from these sessions were subsequently composed into four interweaving and discombobulated episodes.
Broadcast on Resonance FM, London 2007
Commissioned a new work by sound artist Sarah Washington.
This commission took form as an eight-part series of three-minute episodes exploring the roots of language, communication and consciousness. Working with translators, speaking in an array of tongues from Ancient Hebrew to contemporary Mandarin, the artist recorded different interpretations of the biblical story, The Tower of Babel. These recordings were then cut up and manipulated, to form a discombobulated sequence that challenged understandings of structured articulation and our relationship to meaning.
Broadcast on Resonance FM, London 2007
Produced and technically directed the performance of work by composers Alvin Lucier, John White and Stuart Marshall.
Presented in conjunction with the conceptual art exhibition Open Systems, the program featured audio works that made use of systems as a generative device within musical composition.
The program was accompanied by critical texts authored by Seth Kim Cohen and Ben Borthwick.
Tate Modern’s Auditorium, London 2005
Produced and technically directed the performance and recording of works by Luc Ferrari, David Grubbs, Eric Roth, Kaffe Matthews, Olias Nil and Achim Wollsheid.
These avant-garde composers and sound artists were commissioned to create scores from verbal instruction, found sound, poetry or other music, so long as it was delivered exclusively in audio, with no written notation, conducting, physical cues or gestures.
Instrumentalists: David Toop, Rhodri Davies, Neil Heyde, John Edwards, Tony Bevan and Andrew Morgan.
Performed live in the Tate Modern Auditorium, with documentation distributed via Tate Online 2005
Commissioned a series of short audio works by Christian Marclay, a pioneer of the experimental turntable movement, who operates at the intersection of art and music.
Believing that the categories distinguishing ‘serious’ music from its opposite are both arbitrary and arcane, the artist presented his collection of over 1200 Christmas records as a publicly accessible archive. Each evening, the display was activated with live performances by the artist and other notable London DJs. Short audio snippets were subsequently extracted from recordings of those live sets and distributed explicitly for sampling, re-use and remixing.
Performed live at Tate Modern and distributed via Tate Online 2004