The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 7-30 April, 2016
Opening: Thursday 7th April, 6-8pm
Facebook event

‘Sharks are older than dinosaurs. They’ve evolved with the planet developing extraordinary perceptive mechanisms learning to navigate in straight lines at depths as great as 400m by tracing the shifts in the earth’s magnetic crust. They are still considered just to be extremely aggressive and are slaughtered in vast numbers for their fins to make soup. A shark in fact has to be one of the most sophisticated of earth’s animals.’ KM 2009

Developed after Matthews month’s residency on the Galapagos Islands (2009) in which she dived with, recorded underwater and filmed hammerheads, the piece uses the traces of six sharks to play six digital oscillators live, variably mixed with processings and underwater recordings making a music that thrills and relaxes as it spins audience through new architectures.

Sonic artist Kaffe Matthews was born in Essex, England and lives and works in London. Since 1990 she has made and performed new electro-acoustic music worldwide with a variety of things and places such as violin, theremin, wild salmon, Scottish weather, NASA scientists, bicycles, hammerhead sharks, school children, desert stretched wires and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Made by Kaffe Matthews in  collaboration with the shark (Sphryna Lewini) trackers Cesar Peñaherrera, Dr Alex Hearn, James Ketchum, Dr Peter Klimley,(UC Davis) and MigraMar,   and with Dr Adam Parkinson on software instrument coding. Matthews Galapagos residency was supported by the Charles Darwin Foundation, the Galapagos Conservation Trust , the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Platform build courtesy Chris Reddington.

www.kaffematthews.net

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 3rd-31st March, 2016
Opening: Thursday 3rd March, 6-8pm
Facebook event

FOREST FIRE simulates “the accident” by pulling real-time online weather data from ecologically volatile regions in California, US. High temperatures in conjunction with wind speed, coupled with low humidity, create conditions optimal for combustion. This work utilizes these parameters to synthesize the sound of a forest fire engulfing the listener in the situational dynamics of disaster when environmental conditions are ripe for nature to exploit. Sound is fully synthesized with computer software and fire predictions are heard in the form of hissing, crackling, creaking, flames and wind. Sound synthesis and visuals are realized using the visual programming language Pd (Puredata) and draw inspiration from the sound design work of Andy Farnell.

m.e.grimm has been experimenting with digital and analog sound, in various forms, since the mid 1990’s. An artist based in Ithaca, NY, Grimm teaches media arts and technology theory. More of his work can be found at megrimm.net

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 4th – 28th February, 2016
Opening: Thursday 4th February, 6-8pm
Facebook event

176 is a 2-hour tape piece for two pianists who don’t use their fingers, only playing with all other parts of their arms, very softly and with no sustain pedal. Featuring two usually dexterous performers, the strategy is an inbuilt subversion mechanism of their typical techniques, thus existing as a complete anomaly in their respective oeuvres. Two Steinway Ds were recorded at ABC Melbourne, close miked at high gain to exaggerate the tactility and fragility of performance. The Auricle installation is the world premiere of this work.

Chris Abrahams (B. 1961, Sydney) is best known as the pianist for the legendary Australian trio The Necks. He made a name for himself in Australia as part of Mark Simmonds’ Freeboppers in the 80s and as a close collaborator of Melanie Oxley’s in the 90s. Abrahams can currently be found in close playing partnerships with Australian composer Anthony Pateras, German percussionist Burkhard Beins, and Italian laptop composer/linguistic deconstructionist Alessandro Bosetti.

Anthony Pateras (B. 1979, Melbourne) is a composer, pianist and electro-acoustic musician. His work explores sound and its mutation through varying constellations of notation, improvisation, electronic and acoustic materials. Pateras’ compositions have been performed worldwide and he has toured his own bands since the late 1990s. Aside from recently releasing tētēma: geocidal with Mike Patton, he runs the Immediata label, which will be releasing a series of 15 investigative CDs with interviews and essays throughout 2016/17.

Recorded by Christopher Lawson, Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank, Melbourne. 5.1  mix and master by Byron Scullin, Deluxe Mastering, Melbourne.

http://www.thenecks.com/bio
http://anthonypateras.com/

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 7th – 30th January, 2016
Opening: Thursday 7th January, 6-8pm
Facebook event
An exploration of the materiality of the digital and the inaesthetics of spam, waste, and the digital banal.

“The digital realm is an avant-garde to the extent that it is driven by perpetual innovation and perpetual destruction” Sean Cubitt, interviewed by Simon Mills, Framed.

Error Message is an installation work comprised of digital audio-visual elements that engage with the aesthetics and methodology of the glitch, aggregated with found sculptural elements comprised of e-waste. The work seeks to explore the underlying materiality of the digital, and the relations of production that constitute and sustain the aura of the digital. The generic desktop landscape wallpaper, given both its ubiquity and its implicit gesture towards a romanticised yet simulated environmental exterior, is employed as an aesthetic and conceptual departure point, as well as the original data-input for these explorations.

Richard Benjamin Keys is an artist, writer and electronic musician who is currently based in Lyttelton, New Zealand. Richard’s work explores the convergence of media technologies, spatiality, subjectivity and political-economy employing a critical materialist methodology that seeks to interrogate and explore what underlies given techno-sociological surfaces. He produces and performs electronic music as Voronoi, and runs the label/mix series VMR. He was the founder and curator of the New Zealand Sound Map (2012-2014), and is the co-editor of New Zealand’s only Sonic Arts journal Writing Around Sound. He has exhibited and performed his work throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Richard currently works as the Assistant Gallery Manager of the Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery in Christchurch New Zealand. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Media Studies, and a Masters of Media Design, from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 3rd – 31st December, 2015
Opening: Thursday 3rd December, 6-8pm
Facebook event

Fate Of Things To Come (a conference of stones) 2013
Three channel synchronised video and sound installation. Duration 9’48”

No ordinary stones these, and what better community to discuss the fate of things to come – a collection of song/stone voices from diverse geophysical sources.

A stand-alone work symbolizing harmony and solidarity, Fate of Things to Come was originally devised as a contribution to Lines in the Ocean, an exhibition in support of the establishment of a fully protected ocean sanctuary around the Kermadecs, a unique region of mostly underwater volcanoes located north of Aotearoa/New Zealand between White Island and Tonga. Five years of negotiation have finally succeeded with NZ Government announcing approval this year of the Kermadec Sanctuary proposal.
Full ratification will occur in April 2016)

Credits:
Camera by Bruce Foster
Sound recorded by John Kim
Devised, performed, edited by Phil Dadson 2013/14
Produced with the support of:
Pew Charitable Trust
CNZ Arts Council of New Zealand
Colab Creative Technologies/AUT University Auckland.

Exhibited: Silo Summer of Sculpture, Auckland. 2013. ‘Lines in the Ocean’ exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile, 2013 & Tjibaou Cultural Centre, New Caledonia 2015.

Phil Dadson’s transdisciplinary practice includes digital video/audio and installation, performances and exhibitions, building experimental sonic objects, graphic scores, drawing, music composition and improvisations on invented instruments. Following membership of the foundation group for Scratch Orchestra (London, 1969, with Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and others), Dadson returned to New Zealand to establish Scratch Orchestra (NZ), and later From Scratch (1974 – 2004), remembered as New Zealand’s most original rhythm/performance group, known internationally for its funky rhythms and compelling performances on original instruments. Appointed to the Elam School of Fine Arts Sculpture department in 1977, Dadson was made Head of Intermedia/Time-based arts in 1986; a position he held and was influential in until 2001 when he left to focus on his personal practice. He has been the recipient of many key awards and commissions including a Fulbright Cultural Travel Award to the USA, an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2001, Antarctica Artist Fellowship in 2003, ONZM in 2005 and various International research residencies including a Wallace/Fulbright Headlands residency award for 2016. He lives in Auckland with his wife Camilla and loves nothing more than drifting off shore in a kayak. He is represented by Trish Clark Gallery, Auckland.

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 5th – 29th November, 2015
Opening: Thursday 5th November, 6-8pm
Seminar: Saturday 7th November, 3pm
Facebook event

KL Soundscapes is an interactive algorithmic composition playing sounds in rhythmic patterns, at volumes and speeds determined by you the gallery participant. The rhythmic patterns are integer-based transcriptions of modern musical notations of the folk idiom – in this instance the notation of a traditional Malaysian percussion ensemble. The sounds are composed from selected field recordings gathered during Timings’ artist residency in Malaysia during July – September 2015, along with mathematically produced generative synthesis. The combined effect of the synthesis produces a harmonic structure of detuned whole tone scales.

The artist would like to invite you to take the time to explore the rhythmic patterns, field recordings and synthesis firstly as an artist’s descriptive experience; and secondly as several signs comprising a system, and their relative meanings in the context of a temporal framework where modality focuses on the digital vernacular.

Paul Timings is a sound artist who performs experimental music; composes field recordings and electroacoustic recordings; and organises sound. KL Soundscapes is a result of an international artist residency awarded by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, and was primarily organised when Timings was located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a three month period. Paul will give a Saturday Matinee artist seminar on the 7th Nov from 3pm, speaking of his experiences and arts practice in Malaysia.

The composition’s interface was designed by sound artist Nicolas Woollaston.

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 8th – 31st October, 2015
Opening: Thursday 8th October, 6-8pm
Performances: Friday 9th October from 7pm
Facebook event

An iteration of Helga Fassonaki’s project Khal with the original 16 scores and recorded interpretations by the participating artists. In addition five local artists will be performing Fassonaki’s scores live on Friday 9 October at the Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery.

While residing in Tabriz, Iran for a month in 2014, Helga Fassonaki made 16 sculptural ‘scores’, which were sent abroad for 16 female artists to interpret. In order for these scores to be performed in a legal fashion, they had to be unleashed from the laws that rule post-revolutionary Iran, laws that forbid women from singing in public because of ‘the seductive quality of the female voice’. Sending these scores out into the world to be performed was an attempt to bring attention to this law whilst also acting as a gentle protest in the form of a disguised language traveling freely and unbound by governing law.

The scores, their performances and reinterpretations are collectively entitled ‘Khal’. Different iterations of Khal are being presented in galleries in the US and New Zealand in 2015 where the scores and their interpretations by the recipients of the scores are being displayed, heard, and reinterpreted – presenting the idea of a ‘living score’ as an archive open to edits, renewal and dialogue. As the series unfolds from one event to another, Fassonaki seeks to create a composition of voices and actions. Like the idea of Khal – a derogatory term in Farsi for Iranian Pop music that was sent to Iran by Iranian US immigrants in the form of homemade mixed tapes so that Iranian residents could listen to their country’s own pop stars.

The original recipients of Fassonaki’s scores include Kali Z Fasteau (NYC, NY), Kelly Jayne Jones (London, UK), Heather Leigh (Glasgow, Scotland), Jenny Gräf (Copenhagen, Denmark), Zaïmph (Brooklyn, NY), Chiara Giovando (Los Angeles, CA), Shana Palmer (Baltimore, MD), Purple Pilgrims (North Island, NZ), Rachael Melanson (London, UK), Christina Carter (Austin, Texas), Gabie Strong (Los Angeles, CA), Ashley Paul (London, UK), Angeline Chirnside (Auckland, NZ), Matana Roberts (NYC, NY), Rachel Shearer with Beth Ducklingmonster (Auckland, NZ), and Kathleen Kim (Los Angeles, CA). Additional participating artists thus far include Suki Dewey, Fariba Safai, Nazanin Daneshvar, Yasi Alipour, Laura Sofia, Julia Santoli, Jo Burzynska, Helen Greenfield, Sarah Kelleher, Ella, and Gemma Syme.

Helga Fassonaki, a recent transplant to New York City, creates and curates sound and visual installations, group situations, films, and performances that utilize and question temporality, power structures, subcultures and the human body as a sculptor of sound in space. Floating between worlds of sound and visual art, Fassonaki borrows from one to set up the rhythms and pulses that inform the other.
www.helgafassonaki.net
Also see www.vimeo.com/album/3309705

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 3rd – 27th September, 2015
Opening: Thursday 3rd September, 6-8pm
Facebook event

Black Series II focuses on process, the physicality of the materials and the making of the objects themselves, with abstract concepts of liminality being imparted on the objects by the creator. Wood, clay, paint and other malleable materials manipulated by the hand are paired together with specifically designed electronic sound. Contrast between maximal/ minimal elements, the sculpture as a whole and the detail upon the panels are important components. The visual and sonic elements of the work come together to envelop and repulse, to reflect and absorb the viewer.

Jason Wright is a composer and sound artist working across performance, sound installation and videography. Jason holds a Master of Music in Sonic Arts and Composition from New Zealand School of Music. Creator and curator of the Low Noise Exhibition series, Parliament 2013, Toi Poneke 2015.

Photography © Marine Aubert 2015

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 6th – 30th August, 2015
Opening: Thursday 6th August, 6-8pm
Facebook event

Scale is part of a series of observations of music traditions within the New Zealand Catholic Church. Discords and harmonies inherent in the multiple cultures present in this single Church are explored through Webb’s a capella voice-works.

Olivia Webb’s sound based art practice centres on the human voice as a way of exploring the histories of sites and spaces. Olivia draws on her experience as a classical singer, using a capella song as a way of revealing and ushering forth silent traditions and experiences embodied in space and place.

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 2-31 July, 2015
Opening: Thursday 2nd July, 6-8pm
Facebook event

Continuous Flow Machines is an 8 channel 3rd order ambisonic soundscape (60’00’’) recorded at the Pfleiderer Institute for Fluid Machinery, Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany and reproduced in the Auricle’s 8.1 ambisonic surround sound Gallery.

Listen to the unremarkable stasis of steady flow, moving aimlessly forward in always new sound layers by gradual compression and uncompression, speaking for nothing other than itself.

German composer, sonic artist and musicologist Clemens von Reusner studied percussion with Abbey Rader and Peter Giger, has been engaged in electronic music and soundscape composition since the 1970’s, and developed the pioneering graphical scoring application Kandinsky Music Painter.

http://www.cvr-net.de