Douglas Kahn, noted academic and theorist, will be speaking at the Museum of Contemporary Art this Thursday 19th November from 6.30 – 8.00pm.
Bookings are essential, to reserve your place please email the MCA or call the number listed below.
The November Art Monthly Australia ‘Arts of Sound’ edition guest edited by Douglas Kahn, which also includes a DVD of works by Australian artists, will be on sale at a special one-off lecture event price of $8 each or 2 for $15.
Also listen to Douglas Kahn on ‘New Music Up Late’ with Julian Day (prerecorded) this Saturday night (14th) on ABC Radio National 10:30pm to 12:30pm. The show will be available online for four weeks.
I contributed a review of Severed Heads’ Adenoids box set to the current issue of Art Monthly Australia. Tom Ellard has written a response. If I have time I may write something about that here, but I’ll probably just discuss it with him over a beer.
 Festival of Sound Arts
Sydney
24 – 27 June 2009
Liquid Architecture 10 will be a landmark occasion for the festival and for sound culture in Australia. Celebrating its tenth consecutive year, the Liquid Architecture sound arts festival will be held across three city venues, The Performance Space, the University of Technology Sydney and Hermann’s Bar, presenting an exciting program of contemporary sound arts. With a decade of experience to draw upon the diverse program features live events and installations showcasing the highest quality sound work in an intense, focused listening environment.
In Sydney, Liquid Architecture 10 presents a program of performances, installations and artist presentations. The breadth of diversity of artists and artistic practices includes meticulous recorded work, improvised instrumental performance, new sound for screen work, radical uses of digital technology, inventive self-made sound making devices and historically informed practices.
Sydney Directors: Jennifer Teo & Shannon O’Neill
Production Manager: Sarah Davies
liquidarchitecture.org.au
Program
Download the LA10 Sydney Program
Download the LA10 Sydney Program [Flyer] [6.6Mb]
 WED 24 JUNE
Exhibition: Correspondence @ Performance Space
Wed 24 – Sat 27 June
FREE
Opening Wed 24 June (6:00pm)
Performance by Ruark Lewis & Rik Rue
Scott Arford (USA), Ruark Lewis & Rik Rue, Lauren Brincat, Vicky Browne, Josie Cavallaro.
Memory Flows: Nigel Helyer, Greg Shapley, Maria Maranda & Norie Newmark, Jacqueline Gothe & Ian Gwilt.
A composition of works interrogating ideas of sound, music, conversation and silence. In Memory Flows, artists from the UTS Centre for Media Arts and Innovation collaborate around the shared theme of rivers, accessing the flow of memories via objects, sounds and projections.
THU 25 JUNE
Forum & Performance @ Bon Marche Theatre, UTS
Forum: Sustainability of Sound Arts in Australia
3:00 – 5:00pm
FREE
Julian Knowles (Queensland University of Technology)
Paul Mason (Australia Council for the Arts)
Sarah Last (Australian Network for Art & Technology)
Somaya Langley (Electrofringe)
Nat Bates (Liquid Architecture)
Gail Priest (RealTime) via Skype
Julian Knowles will be joined by a panel of leading voices from Australian sound culture to discuss important
issues around the sustainability of contemporary sound arts practice in Australia.
* Image Ecologies Launch – Level 4, Tower Building, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo 6-8pm
Memory Flows Performance: The Field
8:00 – 9:00pm
FREE
Chris Caines
Shannon O’Neill
Jessica Tyrrell
Artists improvise together on themes of memory and water, responding to each other and to audiovisual material from sources including the ABC’s Pool website. This performance will also be streamed live online at http://www.communication.uts.edu.au/centres/cmai/.
 FRI 26 JUNE
Concert One @ Performance Space
7:30 – 10:30pm
$25/20
Thomas Koner (DE)
Garry Bradbury (SYD)
Cat Hope (WA)
Alex White (SYD)
The full spectrum of sound will be explored in this concert, from noise and infrasound, to intricate detail and atmospheric ambience.
 SAT 27 JUNE
Concert Two @ Performance Space
6:00 – 9:00pm
$25/20
Asmus Tietchens (DE)
Plump (Dave Brown/ Phil Samartzis/ Marc Rogerson) (VIC)
Whirlpool (Chris Abrahams & Kraig Grady) (SYD)
Somaya Langley (SYD)
New instruments, new approaches to traditional instruments, and a major figure in the history of electronic and experimental music.
 10 Year Anniversary Celebration @ Hermann’s Bar
10:00pm – late
$20/$15
The Evolution Control Committee (USA)
Buttress O’Kneel (VIC)
Puzahki (QLD)
Atone (SYD)
Loom (SYD/ACT)
DJ Lieutenant Colonel Spastic Howitzer (SYD)
DJ Corporal Leper (SYD)
Come and celebrate Liquid Architecture’s 10th birthday at this special late night show, featuring the pioneers of the mash-up, the Evolution Control Committee (USA). A night of breakcore, cabaret, dub and more, with some of Australia’s finest underground talents.
Tickets
SPECIAL Season Pass $50/$40
Both concerts + entry to closing night party at Hermann’s Bar.
BOOKINGS:
For Festival Pass, Concert One & Concert Two
Ticketmaster http://www.ticketmaster.com.au
For Hermann’s event only
The ACCESS Centre, Level 1 Manning House, University of Sydney Ph: 9563 6000 Email: info@usu.usyd.edu.au
Venues
Performance Space, Carriageworks
245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh
Access info: http://www.carriageworks.com.au/visiting_us.php?subpage=getthere
University of Technology Sydney
UTS Bon Marche Theatre, 755 Harris St, Ultimo
Access info: http://www.fmu.uts.edu.au/disability/cbaccess.html
Hermann’s Bar
Cnr City Rd & Butlin Ave, University of Sydney, Sydney.
Access info: http://www.hermannsbar.com/About/FAQ/Default.aspx
Accessibility
 All venues are wheelchair accessible. Accessible toilets.
Festival Partners & Supporters
Liquid Architecture 10: Sydney is proudly presented by Performance Space, Centre for Media Arts Innovation (UTS), Alias Frequencies and Plum Industries.
Liquid Architecture is assisted by the City of Sydney, NSW Department of the Arts, Sport and Recreation, and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Additional support from Goethe Institute & Sound Travellers.
After a brief hiatus Alias Frequencies is back in 2009 with many wonderful things to come. Here are some new and updated releases:
Lucas Darklord – Handheld Apocalypse
These selections represent a sample of individual works, experiments and never-to-be-finished pieces produced between 2005 and 2007. Some pieces mark the beginnings of failed projects or redundant tangents, whilst others came to be for unknown reasons. All compositions are intended for most appropriate use in managerial meeting rooms, executive boardrooms, vaults, darkness, at volume and with influence. It is advised that this composition be played in all work places both before and after work each day. This music is without genre and is Dark Corporate Techno, Dark Grinding Corporate Ambience, Dark Corporate Art Core and 21st Centuary All Family Punk.
Lloyd Barrett & Paul Forbes-Mitchell – Humming through Schizophonic Air
The pieces on this album were created using a specially designed system code-named “Habitat”. Autonomous artificial agents feed on live and prepared sound and vision, excreting their own mutated variations which are then collected and presented for listener edification. The process is the culmination of combined research by Paul and Lloyd in the construction of a live electro-acoustic audiovisual engine that draws from both academic and underground practices.
Also updated:
Lucas Darklord – Asmoir
These are the sounds received from our first interdimensional probe, Asmoir. This epic work now includes parts 4, 5 and 6 plus high quality images. The current duration is over seven hours. The concluding parts 7, 8 and 9 will be released later this year.
2009 ELECTROFRINGE FESTIVAL – CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Electrofringe is now calling for proposals for the 2009 festival. We
are looking for creative expressions from artists, sound artists,
performers, media makers, digital filmmakers, researchers,
cross-artform practitioners, curators, producers, writers,
experimenters, enthusiasts and anyone who doesn’t fit these boxes.
Electrofringe is a five-day festival of electronic arts and culture
held from the 1st – 5th October 2009 in Newcastle, Australia.
Electrofringe is part of a group of festivals collected together under
the This Is Not Art umbrella. Electrofringe is committed to fostering
creative and innovative use and re-use of technology and electronic
artforms, while focusing on artistic development and skills exchange.
Electrofringe seeks proposals in the following program areas:
Artist and project presentations, workshops and demonstrations,
panels, interventions, live art, performance (Electro-Performance),
residencies (Electro-Residencies), mobile works (Electro-Manoeuvre),
online artworks (Electro-Online) and single-channel video works
(Electro-Projections & Electro-Être) plus special events (something
you want to propose).
All presentations, panels, workshops, demonstrations, panels,
performance, residency, intervention, live and mobile works submission
proposals are due by TUESDAY 31st MARCH 2009.
Only online artworks (Electro-Online) and single-channel video works
(Electro-Projections & Electro-Être) submission proposals are due by
SUNDAY 31st MAY 2009.
See the Electrofringe website for submission details: www.electrofringe.net
Over the last few years Don’t Look Gallery has presented a diverse
array of challenging experimental technology-based art from its
shopfront in the outer-inner-west suburb of Dulwich Hill. Sound,
video, computer art, vintage technologies, installation and conceptual
art describe just some of the forms that have raised eyebrows in this
modestly sized art space.
We are currently looking for artists (and potential artists) who may
want to show at Don’t Look Experimental New Media Gallery in 2009.
Exhibitions run for 10 days (or longer by agreement), the rent is
cheap and we help with publicity, setup and concept (if you wish). If
you are interested in having an exhibition please email a proposal and
CV (no more than two pages in all) to dontlookgallery@gmail.com.
In 2009 we will be also be starting a fortnightly experimental
sound/new media performance night. If you’re a musician and/or artist
and want to try out something new, again please email
dontlookgallery@gmail.com with a short description of the work and a
CV.
We look forward to hearing from all artists who are into making work
that doesn’t fit neatly into a gilded frame, squarely on a wall!
I have a chapter in this new book:
Very shortly the book Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia will be hitting the streets.
Written by artists, producers and participants in alternative music-making, and including a companion CD, Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia explores the development of forms, ideas and scenes from the 1970s to the present.
It brings together a wide range of musical experimentation, from post-punk, noise, appropriation, electronic dance and listening music, to free improv, computer process music, experimental radio, instrument building and audiovisual fusions. More soon…
To accompany the book, a website www.experimentalmusicaustralia.net has been created to bring together information about experimental music and sound in Australia. There are 3 features that invite your input:
National Calendar: a web-based calendar (it’s a little bit ugly, but it’s free), to bring together listings from across the country. So if you have a gig, festival, exhibition, conference etc that you’d like listed you can send through information. If you produce multiple events or series you can have editing access.
Artist Directory: Hopefully a comprehensive map of people working in experimental music and sound across Australia. If you would like to be included, download the form, fill it in, and email back, or contact for further information.
Resource List: This is a mega links list starting with information drawn from the book on all things experimental music from gigs, organisations, online journals and a bibliography. Already an unwieldy monster, feel free to send through additions/suggestions.
For all of the above email: info <at-sign-here> experimentalmusicaustralia.net
I’ll email more when the book is ready for our hot little hands, but in the meantime help make the website a valuable resource!
thanks
Gail Priest
NB: The website www.experimentalmusicaustralia.net is an unfunded, independent activity undertaken to accompany the book Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia.
Out November 2008
Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia published by UNSW Press
RRP $29.95
ordering information
For a limited time there is a
20% pre-order discount
Written by:
Julian Knowles
Ian Andrews with John Blades
Cat Hope
Shannon O’Neill
Bo Daley
Alistair Riddell
Jim Denley
Virginia Madsen
Sean Bridgeman
Gail Priest
edited by Gail Priest
The printed publication Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia was funded by the Australia Council Music Board as part of a series of publications.
[via Nick Mariette]
 Liquid Architecture 9: Festival of Sound Arts
Sydney 11 –12 July 2008
@ The Factory Theatre
105 Victoria Rd, Enmore
TICKETS: $12 (including booking fee)
From The Factory Theatre box office (02) 9550 3666 or online at www.factorytheatre.com.au
Liquid Architecture, Australia’s premier national sound-arts festival celebrates its ninth year with live performances, surround sound presentations, audio-visuals and recorded work, screenings and installations, featuring our most imaginative musicians, composers, sound designers and media artists in a sense-specific feast for the ears.
SYDNEY PROGRAM
Friday 11 July – 7:30pm
$12
TOY.BIZARRE (Bellac)
ROBERT NORMANDEAU (Montreal)
LAWRENCE ENGLISH (Brisbane)
NAT (Melbourne)
JACQUES SODDELL (Bendigo)
KUSUM NORMOYLE
Saturday 12 July – 7.30pm
$12
ANDREW PEKLER (Berlin)
MARCUS SCHMICKLER (Köln)
METALOG (Sydney/Melbourne)
KAZUMICHI GRIME
NICK WISHART + HIROFUMI UCHINO
HEIL SPIRITS
IVAN LISYAK
TOECUTTER
An international screening program featuring new A/V works. Plus an installation program exclusive to Sydney, featuring:
CÉDRIC PEYRONNET (Bellac)
JODI ROSE
RENE CHRISTEN
MELISSA HUNT
MARK BROWN
JASON SWEENEY
JESSICA TYRRELL
The first TEN people through the door each night will receive an ERIKM cd – Stéme (Room40). Giveaways courtesy of Room40.
FULL PROGRAM AND TICKETING DETAILS: www.liquidarchitecture.org.au
My review of this year’s NOW now festival has just been published by RealTime.
UTS Music.Sound.Design Symposium 2008
February 13 – February 15
Investigating Cross – Disciplinary Practice in the Areas of Music, Sound and Design.
Featuring : Kees Tazeelar (Netherlands) / Ernest Edmonds (UK) / Yasunao Tone (Japan)
+ Many More
Three Days of Keynotes, Panels and Workshops from 10am to 6pm at UTS.
Two nights of performances from 8pm at the ABC Studios, Harris St featuring Donna Hewitt, Julian Knowles, Philip Samartzis, Kees Tazelaar, Peter Blamey, Robin Fox, Darrin Verhagen and Yasunao Tone, all in glorious eight channel surround sound.
And… Robin Fox in Residence in the new UTS Interaction Studio
All free and open to the public!
For more information, the full program and contact details to book your place at the performances check out:
www.hss.uts.edu.au/utsmsd2008/
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/10/17/1192300857463.html
Marcus Westbury
October 18, 2007
In the music scene there has always been a pretty strong division between those who play original music and those who are derisively, and sometimes unfairly, dismissed as covers bands. What’s the point of being in a band if you’re not playing your own songs? When was the last time that duo with a keyboard and a drum machine from your local RSL club had a breakthrough hit?
It’s not that covers bands aren’t talented, don’t make good music, don’t entertain or even have a good time. Hell, put enough drinks in me and I’ll hit the dance floor to an ’80s pop classic or wave a lighter with half a tear in my eye to, say, Flame Trees.
But no one seriously goes out of their way to suggest that covers bands are the most vital or important part of the music scene. Why then are covers bands – of the high-culture variety – receiving the bulk of arts funding?
An overwhelming amount of arts funding in Australia goes to organisations that either exclusively or primarily play covers. Think symphony orchestras, opera companies and state theatre companies that produce comparatively little in the way of original, innovative or even Australian work. Like classic hits radio, they are busting out the chart-toppers of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Confused? If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, grab yourself a copy of the Australia Council’s annual report. The nation’s cover bands, mostly the state-based symphony orchestras, collectively receive just under $50 million each year from the council.
Whether that figure seems average or outrageous would depend on the context that you choose to put it in. The context that I put it in is the $4.8 million pool that every single musician in Australia who isn’t in a symphony orchestra competes for every year. That’s more than a 10-fold disparity between the orchestras and everyone else combined.
The Sydney Symphony receives nearly $9 million each year. That is more funding than goes to all of Australia’s visual artists, or all of the nation’s writers and publishers, or all the dancers, or all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, or all the community art practitioners.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m no heathen or unreconstructed postmodernist. Okay, I’m a bit of a heathen but I’ve never entirely got the postmodern thing. My problem is not that we still fund classical European culture, it’s just that we fund so bloody much of it and so very little of everything else.
My argument isn’t about form and it isn’t an extreme one. It’s about scale, equity and magnitude. I do think it would be a loss if Australians were to lose all connection with our vast and glorious European cultural heritage.
But Opera Australia receives more than $10 million a year from the Australia Council. Sure, opera is lavish, expensive and glorious but I simply cannot think of a single sensible, logical or sane reason why one opera company is valued roughly on par with more than 400 separate organisations supported by the music, dance, literature and inter-arts boards of the same organisation.
Great art to me creates a resonance and opens up possibilities; it isn’t the echoes of the past. It’s not something you reproduce proficiently. Art is made out of anger or curiosity or awe or beauty or because you’re in love or want someone to fall in love with you.
Artists don’t just preserve the past. They make new things from the sum total of human experience. They tell new stories and find new ways of telling stories from the tools and influences that they have around them.
Culture isn’t something that happened in Europe centuries ago that needs preservation. It’s actually all that messy, beautiful, inspiring and wonderful stuff that is happening around us right now. Arts funding should reward innovation not preservation and vibrancy over bureaucracy.
Most importantly, no one art form or institution – however regarded – should have its funding quarantined and its position privileged so that it is never tested against all the other possibilities to which its resources may better be put.
Marcus Westbury is the writer and presenter of Not Quite Art on Tuesday nights on ABC TV. marcus.westbury@gmail.com
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