PRESENCE / NÆRVÆR
(2024)
author(s): Natasha Barrett
published in: Research Catalogue
Outdoor, site-specific sound installation.
Akershus festning, courtyard outside the Resistance Museum.
Opening event: 15.00, 16th September
Open daily, all weather 10.00-18.00. 17th September – 15th October.
Composed and produced by Natasha Barrett.
Subliminal Throwback complete documentation
(2024)
author(s): Natasha Barrett
published in: Research Catalogue
Subliminal Throwback was a site-specific outdoor 3-D audio sound installation located in the amphitheatre between Gydas vei 8 and Slemdalsveiein 11 at Majorstuen, Oslo. The work was created by Natasha Barrett as part of the Reconfiguring the Landscape Project hosted by the Norwegian Academy for Music in Oslo.
Subliminal Throwback marked the end of a year-long process researching and experimenting on this urban outdoor sound landscape, and includes the application of innovative technical and artistic approaches to investigating its potentially interesting qualities - acoustic features, sounds that pass us by, or qualities too fleeting to pay heed to amidst our other thoughts and activities.
Sansing i Strandsona
(2024)
author(s): Natasha Barrett
published in: Research Catalogue
“Sansing i Strandsona” was a 3-D sound installation sensing the environment of Hvervenbukta - a small bay on the east side of the inner Oslo Fjord. The work was installed inside a beach pavilion dating from 1765 and was played back over 24 small loudspeakers arranged in a 3D dome. “Sansing i Strandsona” played from the 10th-16th August 2020. The work was approximately 20 minutes long and ran in a continuous loop.
UVTOWER
(2024)
author(s): Andrea Guidi
published in: Research Catalogue
The UVTOWER is a generative installation and interactive performance instrument which produces dense post-rave music.
Score: Mechanical Asynchronicity – audio album
(2024)
author(s): Martin Scheuregger, Danica Maier
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition is the online, open-access audio album of 'Score: Mechanical Asynchronicity' by Danica Maier and Martin Scheuregger. The album allows you to play full ensemble versions of the project's two pieces, and also mix your own versions of each piece by combining and balancing the individual instruments. It accompanies the publication of a related 40-page book on the project from Beam Editions.
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.