“Sonic Spaces for the Stray”: (Dif)Fusing Dis-location in Sound Installation and Performance

Andrea Parkins

This project examines subjectivity and its embodiment through the application of interactive electronics within sound installation and performance. It employs a merging of theory, method and practice that has not been fully researched to date and which represents a valuable addition to sound performance and electroacoustic composition. My artistic research focuses on an ongoing series of improvisational/compositional experiments, moving between a dedicated workspace and sound production studios where I will work with acousticians, engineers, and programmers. The aim is to develop gestural/embodied approaches for applying interactive electronics within sound performance and fixed-media composition—mining tensions between failure and fluency; and diffusion strategies that highlight correspondences between embodiment, sound and space—emphasizing tensions between absence and presence. Foundational research includes studying methods and applications for investigating spatialization and psychoacoustics, employed by artists including Maryanne Amacher. I will also study concepts/methods developed by artists such as George E. Lewis, focusing on interaction between algorithmically-based technology tools and physical gesture in musical improvisation. This research also engages with Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytically-based writing on abjection and the sublime, grounding my studio-based research in theoretical inquiry that engages with subjectivity and embodiment. Supplementary research will address psychoacoustics, aural architecture, and spatialization theory and technologies. The outcome of the project will be twofold: a body of sound installations and performances demonstrating an interactive approach to addressing relationships between the body, materiality, sound, space and situation; and a set of reflective writings that articulates the poetics and affective aspects of this multi-layered inquiry. The completed project will offer new knowledge production in the field of artistic research, and transmission of interdisciplinary knowledge to creative practitioners.

Andrea Parkins: "Sonic Spaces for the Stray”: (Dif)Fusing Dis-location in Sound Installation and Performance

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Parkins, A. (2018) "Nothing to be Scared Of," Eckhardt, Julia (ed). Grounds for Possible Music: On Gender, Voice, Language

and Identity. Berlin: Errant Bodies.

Scrimshaw, W. (2017). Immanence and Immersion: On the Acoustic Condition in Contemporary Art. New York and London:

Bloomsbury Academic.

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