Physical interfaces, materials, objects, surface exciters, and frequency modulation produce audible and physical vibration. In a stand where it did shake, objects positioned on the vibrating interfaces create small, percussive, localized sound in reaction to the signal. The work is an installation and performance. In performance, I work with the dynamics and rhythms of the component elements and their kinetic actions, sound and silence. Group Exhibition, Latitude 53, Edmonton, 2018
a stand where it did shake, 2018
A Pen. A Sponge.: Low frequency signal transferred to physical interfaces via vibrotactile transducers results in a kinetic sonic performance. Cycles of frequency modulation trigger material sonic actions as recurring composition of acoustic-electronic sound. A stylus circumnavigates around the interior perimeter of a glass bowl as spectral sonic writing. A sponge moves in the speaker cone to create sonic texture. Touring Exhibition (Chatham, Toronto, London, Hamilton, Guelph) organized by Vibration Fusion Lab, 2017-2020
A Pen. A Sponge., 2017
<Video> https://vimeo.com/21854633
Study in FM: Variation: Base frequencies relate to states of mind and body and the Earth’s electro-magnetic field. Kinetic and sonic actions of materials add a layer of analog sound. The empirical combines with experimental play in an endless loop of recurring signal. Group Exhibition, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Saskatoon, 2017
Study in FM: Variation, 2017
<Video> https://vimeo.com/210866309
Posted by ellen at 9:47 pm on March 23rd, 2017.
Categories: AUDIO.
Surface : Signal is a 4-channel performative installation using objects and physical interfaces, low frequency signal and vibrotactile technology. Table interfaces are “stages” for objects (glass bowl, whisks, metal funnel), materials (garlic skin, pebbles, aluminum foil, road salt) and object-assemblages. Signal generated in Max/MSP is transferred via puck transducers to physical interfaces, activating the surfaces directly and the objects indirectly. Objects perform variably as harmonic, staccato, cacophonous or drone sound.
Sounds Like Audio Festival, Saskatoon. Curated by Eric Mattson.
Video: vimeo.com/178658336
See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/oral_records/sets/72157670796846890
Posted by ellen at 7:18 pm on October 31st, 2016.
Categories: PERFORMANCE.
Interdisciplinary collaboration (dance, new music/theatre) and independent projects using Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons as source material and influence. Stein shifts the identity and stability of words as perceptual, spatial and playful experiment. Her emphasis on sound and rhythms over rational sense privilege the body, sound and the mind state over conventional meaning.
Book Chair Table (2014): a new media chamber music theatre piece for oboe, double bass, voice and electro-acoustic instrument by composer and vocalist, Lia Pas. My instrument uses materials, objects and actions for sound and image creation. The composition involves fixed and improvisational elements, repetition and experimentation with polyphonic sound and projection. Performed in Core Series V, a collaboration of PAVED Arts and the Saskatoon Symphony.
Book Table Chair (2013): a sound and movement research intensive with dancer Kathryn Ricketts. Our inquiry into text, character, sound and story uses physical objects, and live and spoken word (female and male) recordings of Stein’s text to explore relations of objects, movement, sound, space and performative actions. Experimentation and improvisation opened up our process as interdisciplinary investigation. The project was supported by Nightswimming Theatre’s Pure Research.
<LISTEN> BookTableChair 1’11”
Posted by ellen at 12:29 pm on March 24th, 2016.
Categories: PERFORMANCE.
she i her is an open work of image, text, video, sound and light. Language(s) intersects with somatic rhythms, experimental writing with structure, and knowing with uncertainty with overlapping subjectivities. Texts by Woolf, Stein and Cixous, and walking through Parisian streets as a dérive were my influences and process. I privileged direct experience before language. Woolf and Stein’s texts opened up the imperceptible and chance, stream of consciousness and language/word play. Cixous proposed writing as a form of journeying through the world using one’s body as transport. The project is an iterative exploration of processes, materials, visualization and analysis of sound.
Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina
Video (6’08): https://vimeo.com/142544432
Curatorial Essay: she i her_Curatorial_At the Dunlop
The interdisciplinary installation uses disjunctive elements, integrated as a poetic, conceptual and progressive inquiry into language, translation and transcription. Media includes videos as animated notation, performative text and field recordings using projection and flat screen monitors and intoned sound (vocal, strings and virtual piano. Laser-cut prints on paper are glyphs of the original text. The project has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions.
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan
Posted by ellen at 8:11 am on March 24th, 2016.
Categories: MULTI-MEDIA.
Playing with Gertrude is an interactive installation for sound and image creation inspired by poems from Stein’s Tender Buttons. Objects and text(s) are props, players and instruments. Participants perform the installation as direct actions triggering spoken word recordings and creating new sounds and text-images through experimentation, play and interaction. Sound is output to 8-channels; text-images are projected as a live feed.
Co-production residency of Charles Street Video and NAISA, Wychwood Barns, Toronto. Also see Performative: Book Table Chair.
View video: https://vimeo.com/123158793
Posted by ellen at 7:47 pm on October 25th, 2015.
Categories: MULTI-MEDIA.
Durational live collaboration with Robert Luzar using objects, architectural features of the gallery, extended techniques and bodily actions for sound-making. Our actions included bowing, dragging and pouring with glasses, bowls, lids and other assorted items. Our bodies perform objects and materials within fragile structures, uncertainty and shifting decisions. Reverberating materials, frequencies and frictions transform the gallery into an acoustic chamber of resonance, dissonance, experimentation and perpetual (un)quiet.
Performance at G Gallery, Toronto, coordinated by Yam Lau. The work occurred within the context of Alexandre David’s project, My work has no meaning unless it is used.
view video: https://vimeo.com/122457326
Posted by ellen at 10:37 am on March 17th, 2015.
Categories: PERFORMANCE.
Walper Hotel, CAFKA, Kitchener
ping ting tootle is a situated installation in the main stairwell of the Walper Hotel using existing fixtures, transducers, and live and recorded sound. Contact mics positioned behind brass handrails capture events on their surface — a hand sliding, a ring pinging, fingers strumming — and trigger recordings of spoken word and cell phone rings. Hotel guests, staff and visitors perform the stairwell through intentional or chance actions, releasing or creating spoken word, technological tones and percussive rhythms. Output to multiple speakers, sound animates the stairwell as residue and improvisational sound.
<LISTEN_1> PingTing4 00’25
<LISTEN_2> PingTing3 00’25
Posted by ellen at 2:49 pm on September 9th, 2013.
Categories: OFF-SITE.
Place Markers: Mapping Locations Probing Boundaries, curated by Peter Dykhuis
Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax
in pulse, a collaboration with Kim Morgan, is a research-driven project using mobile technologies to collect bio-data (heart beat) and locative video as an inquiry into affect, bodies and urban space. Our first site was Paris. We collected data in select arteries of the city – La Defense, Les Passages, Bastille Market, Forum des Halles, Layfayette Department Store, La Gare du Nord – using a dérivian structure of chance encounters and play. Our field recordings took into account different ways individuals – ourselves and other people – reacted to and experienced people, places and things. As a gallery installation, projected video was synchronized to the sound of the differentiated rhythms of our pulses amplified through subwoofers, emphasizing the eye and somatic presence of each of us. Raw video footage was presented on a Google map.
in pulse is part of a three-year SSRHC Research and Creation Grant, Tracing the City: Interventions of Art in Public Spaces. Subsequent locations for our field work were Halifax, Regina and Saskatoon.
View video here.
Posted by ellen at 6:46 pm on December 20th, 2012.
Categories: MULTI-MEDIA.
Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, New York
Collaboration with interdisciplinary artist, Lezli Rubin-Kunda using live action, drawing and sound. Marking Space is an interaction in and with a space, materials and media through mark-making and sound. Our conceptual inquiry is the relationship of the sound of drawing / the drawing of sound using the gallery as a laboratory space for in-situ production. As artists, we bring our independent practices and our shared philosophical and poetic investigations into questions of knowing/not knowing, presence/absence, visible/invisible, doing/undoing and not doing.
<LISTEN> SeedWall 2’42
< LISTEN > Pipe 0’42
Posted by ellen at 2:02 pm on January 27th, 2012.
Categories: PERFORMANCE.
Epcor Centre Calgary & Sounds Like Audio Festival, Saskatoon
Strung is a collaboration with Jeff Morton for AKA’s inaugural Sounds Like… Audio Festival. Four 8-foot long horizontal interfaces are equipped with musical and industrial materials, strings, resonant materials and objects. Analogue sounds are captured with pickup mics; spoken word sound files are triggered by specific actions. Sound is output to four speakers as recursive, spatialized sound. Seasonal Waves, a 14-channel work for the +15 Soundscape at the Epcor Centre in Calgary used the same physical interfaces, without spoken word sound, and a structural approach to the composition. The work was installed for one year, until August 2012.
Posted by ellen at 6:22 pm on December 16th, 2011.
Categories: PERFORMANCE.
