Side FX
(2025)
author(s): Irina Österberg
published in: Research Catalogue
Across diverse mediums and form, the ‘human’ body, however transient, remains my main subject of events. What is seen, in the eyes of my mind, take place on surface, lens, material, and morph with one another, with the living moving body, disfiguring each other and reconfiguring themselves after consumption.
Embodied and disembodied appearances, reflect on the visceral and urgent presence of the human, live, body. At the start, the notion of mirror: a constant ever-changing image that is formed and deformed as each breath brings life to the body. Different media such as drawing, photography, printmaking, painting, voice, word, sound and video, interrelate with as output a universe of heterogeneous appearances, each with a common denominator: movement of the body and movement of the soul, between the gestural expression of charcoal drawing, the analogue and digital/post-produced sounds, still and moving images, to the carefully crafted and re-elaborated copper plates delivering prints.
At the moment these are called Side Effects, each one a bi-product of the previous step in the process of feedback loop.
“anthropomorphs”; two dimensional images derived from the superimposition of drawing and moving body (drawing>photo>painting>print)
“hesitations”; the more visceral exploration of embodied voice-movement integration, exploring frequencies and resonances of vocal output rooted within the organs of the body
“ghosts”; are the anthropomorphs restituted a third dimension. Sculptures rendered independent to move again, suspended in space, relating to nothing but to their history and to one another.
“multiplicity”; anonymous portraits overlapped and stop-motion animated, searching to grasp the ever-changing nature of (one)(multiple)self, faced with memory and its loss, ancient stranger twins, imagined encounters or the union of multiplicity as one.
Feedback Saxophone: Expanding the Microphonic Process in Post-Digital Research-Creation
(2024)
author(s): Greg Bruce
published in: Research Catalogue
The microphonic process is the term I use to encapsulate how microphones, loudspeakers, and related media are used to support, extend, and innovate musical practice. In this research-creation thesis, I contextualize, document, and analyze my own application of the microphonic process – feedback saxophone. My feedback saxophone system combines the unique characteristics of the tenor saxophone with the idiosyncrasies of various microphones and loudspeakers to produce and manipulate acoustic feedback. While there are examples of similar systems, there is no standardization and little documentation exists outside of audio recordings. Furthermore, my work employs feedback in a systematized fashion that challenges its conventional, indeterminate use in performance and composition.
To support this research-creation, I discuss the history of the microphonic process, examine contemporary “microphonic” practices, and use these findings to describe and analyze my own works. For the history of the microphonic process, I discuss how microphone amplification changed popular vocal technique through the work of early-microphone singer Bing Crosby. I then discuss how microphonic instrumentaria were variously employed by avant-garde and popular artists using the examples of Mikrophonie I by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hugh Davies’ feedback work Quintet, and the guitar-feedback practice of Jimi Hendrix.
Following this discussion of instrumentaria, I establish the contemporary context in which my research-creation occurs by examining two present-day microphonic saxophonists, Colin Stetson and John Butcher. I use their distinct electroacoustic practices as a springboard to explain recent musical-technological trends: from the accelerating consumption of digital media in the new paradigm of sound, to the reactionary concepts of post-digitalism and the minimally augmented instrument. Lastly, I describe the creation of three concert etudes for my post-digital, minimally augmented feedback saxophone system, and critically examine the new works’ processes of creation, musical materials, and aesthetics.
HOW DO YOU WORK? Conversations, drawings and responses (Vienna)
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Adelheid Mers
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Preliminarily in 2012, and formally in 2013/14 , I asked experimental musicians and composers in Vienna "How do you work?". Based on those conversations, I created two drawings of what I call each artist's "epistemic engine", or the way I understood them to work. One drawing was a free form exploration, and the other mapped my notes onto the "Fractal 3-line Matrix", a diagrammatic instrument that emerged in my work in 2011, after the informal round of conversations. On sharing the drawings with them, artists were invited to produce a response in a medium of their choice. This project was supported by the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.
Preliminarily in 2012, and formally in 2013/14 , I asked experimental musicians and composers in Vienna "How do you work?". Based on those conversations, I created two drawings of what I call each artist's "epistemic engine", or the way I understood them to work. One drawing was a free form exploration, and the other mapped my notes onto the "Fractal 3-line Matrix", a diagrammatic instrument that emerged in my work in 2011, after the informal round of conversations. On sharing the drawings with them, artists were invited to produce a response in a medium of their choice. This project was supported by the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.open exposition comments (0)