If John Cage argued that all sound can be music, and if sound is but one form of energy among others, then what of energies and music?
In this lecture Douglas Kahn investigates how composers and artists have engaged the sounds of natural radio; the electromagnetic energies of the Earth first heard twenty years before Marconi. Kahn discusses the concept of energy music as it applies to contemporary music; including sonic arts, contemporary classical, and free jazz. This provocative lecture raises questions regarding the nature of performance, composition and musical practice.
Direct links are also formed between the nature of sounds and energies, and the health of our planet. The lecture will be followed by a performance by Peter Blamey that explores the transformation of electromagnetic energy into sound. To conclude Alister Spence will interview Dougals Kahn and Peter Blamey seeking to link this field of sonic exploration to conventional musical practices. There will be time for audience questions.
Speakers:
Douglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation, National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW Art & Design. He is an historian and theorist of media arts, sound and music in the arts, energy in the arts, and science in the arts from the late-19th Century to the present, with an emphasis on the traditions of the avant-garde, and experimentalism.
Peter Blamey is a Sydney-based artist and musician. His practice is accomplished with a minimum of means, exploring the interconnected themes of energies and residues: reimagining and recasting our everyday encounters with technologies and the physical world.
Interviewer: Dr Alister Spence, Lecturer at UNSW, School of Arts and Media. Composer and improviser.
Venue: Robert Webster Building (G14), Studio 334, UNSW,Sydney, Kensington
Soft soil between our toes and jagged rocks underfoot. Are they fossil fuel deposits ripe for exploitation or sacred Dreaming sites?
The work of Debra Porch (1954–2017) explores the potency of memory and its ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Using textiles, thread, hair and electroplated objects, Porch created visual mechanisms that reorientate our sense of the familiar and forge connections between the present and past.
Rachel O’Reilly is an artist-poet, critic, independent curator and researcher whose work explores relationships between art and situated cultural practice, media philosophy and feminist political economy.
UNSW Galleries is pleased to present The Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists exhibition from 9 August to 7 September 2019, celebrating the work of early career Australian artists.