BACKSTAGE MUSIC

Clarity ENGINE program

Climate Notes - Artists and Works

Climate Notes - Program Notes and Credits

Cathy Milliken RED GARDEN for two filmed performers at Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne. (violin, percussion, 2021)

A quiet but insistent ritual cry for the urgency of caring for our planet. Performers of installation and concert version: Louise Devenish and Anna McMichael. Made in response to "Is This How You Feel?" climate letters project by Joe Duggan Videographer: Lucian Fuhler Sound Recording Engineer: Hadyn Buxton and Cathy Milliken Filmed at: Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne Supported by: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Australia Council for the Arts, City of Melbourne Arts Grants, Monash University

Kate Moore - Bloodwood variations (violin solo)

Video materials: Yengo National Park Photo Journal. Sound Recording Engineer: Hadyn Buxton Video animation: Nick Roux Photos for Bloodwood Variations: Nina Frankova

Bree van Reyk How We Fell:  A performance film by Bree van Reyk (Performed on two ‘replica trees’ designed by Bree van Reyk, 2021)

Made in response to "Is This How You Feel?" climate letters project by Joe Duggan Composer, sound and video edit: Bree van Reyk Musicians: Louise Devenish, Anna McMichael Text fragments from letters by: Anna McMichael, Professor Gabi Heger, John Fasillo, Professor Lesley Hughes, Emeritus Professor Will Steffan, Dr Jeanie Mallela, Professor Katrin Meissner, Linden Ashcroft, Dr. Joanne S. Johnson, Dr. Lindsey Nicholson, Anna Harper Videographer: Chris Cody Sound Recording Engineer: Hadyn Buxton Filmed at: Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance, Monash University, July 2021

Kate Moore Infinity (porcelain sculptures, 2022) Video: Nick Roux

Damian Barbeler Pressed (violin, vibraphone, electronics, 2021) 

The bitter-sweet emotion of filing through these thousands upon thousands of celebrated botanical samples. I'm in love with them but they make me sad. Catalogues are delicious. The older specimens make history touchable. The blazing colours of living, unpressed examples can be found online. Did the scientists who collected these samples feel similar contradictory emotions? The fact of this botanical record reveals an intrepid, deliberate intent, over life-long time frames. The quiet painstaking work on tiny scales, creates a collective "scream" of a magnitude and significance that I find terrifying.  Images courtesy of the State Botanical Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Sound Recording Engineer: Hadyn Buxton Video, Music and Audio Mixing: Damian Barbeler

Kate Moore Memory Rings (violin, vibraphone and crotales, 2022) Video: Nick Roux

Immersion Room - Artists and Works

Walking Music Project - various collaborators:  Damian (co-Director), Barbeler, Tim Jetis (co-Director), James Crabb (classical accordion), Eric Avery (violin), Stephanie Farrands (viola), Sonya Lifschitz (piano), Grant Sambells (acoustic guitar), An ongoing project across multiple formats exploring the humanising experience of walking in the Australian bush, and the question of our place there.

Daniel Blinkhorn - Unequal forms 1 – 3 (violin with preparations, percussive instruments and objects, electronics, field recordings of biomes) Sound Recording Engineer: Hadyn Buxton and Daniel Blinkhorn Video: Karl Willebrant and Daniel Blinkhorn

Paper Planets - Barbeler/Watson We are still the children we used to be.

Alethic - Tim Gruchy Alethic is a live interactive performance of entirely original sound and vision. Gruchy plays an array of midi controllers but especially the unencumbered LEAP Motion interfaces that allow him to control sound and vision through hand movement and gesture. Twenty first century conducting. The music is a soundtrack of ambient dub and pysbient tracks combined with found vocals reflecting the philosophical theme. This vision is mostly mathematically generated combined with some real-time camera SFX The vision is scalable with version at 2k, 6k and 12k widths. Thus the work can be presented in a variety of modes.

AmphiSonic - Panos Couros. Electronic sound artist Panos Couros brings together the poetry and songs of First Nation artists, the knowledge of bio-scientists, the pulses and beats of electronic music, and the mating calls of frogs to create a large-scale immersive sound environment that challenges the audience to actively listen to the natural world around us. The technology-based three-dimensional sound artwork highlights the essential role of frogs in the environment and as indicators of its health. It draws attention to the ancient wisdoms of First Nations people alongside the data-driven discoveries of contemporary scientific research dedicated to understanding the current mass extinction events that our frog populations are experiencing in Australia, and the subsequent loss of biodiversity this is causing. Panos asks audiences to focus on the sensational wonder of the environmental world and listen to the music created by nature in the hope that by being present and attentive, we may reveal what is really happening around us and understand the life-giving story of our natural surroundings.

Installation Works

Liam Mulligan >Tac{Table~,.’
Highly experimental in nature, Liam Mulligan's " >Tac{Table~,.’ " is an audio-tactile experience that places the audience at a revolving, fabric-laden table. The work investigates how the brain combines and compares auditory and haptic cues, attempting to create a contrapuntal result. Through experiencing electronic art music while fingers traverse on wood, silk, canvas and sandpaper, expect sounds to 'feel' wrong and fabrics to 'sound' off, but gradually phase and shift with each other to create a multi-sensory soundscape.

Dahyo Lloyd and Emily Yali - Body in a Box
Body in a Box is an installation work featuring a dancer, a box made of perspex and steel, and electronics. The work explores themes of transhumanism, claustrophobia and unease.

Hirofumi Uchino - The Taste Of Poisons
In ‘The Taste of Poisons’, Hirofumi will create a meditative and ritualistic industrial soundscape with handmade instruments and effects. Included in his setup is seven suspended sheets of different metals including iron, brass, copper, aluminum, titanium, tungsten (one of the hardest metals), and indium (one of the softest). A vibration unit will be attached on one of the sheets to make the sheet as a speaker to produce the sound as a sound installation during the event.

Liz Jigalin - the city is an ear
Note from the artist: “the city is an ear” is a soup of many things I love: walking, beautiful noise, ears, maps, hidden notations in the city and pianos. Currently, I am in the process of mapping out and hiding 88 ears across Sydney. This network of 88 ears forms a listening instrument that I will be performing live for the first time at Clarity Engine.

Isabella Rahme -Essence
Isabella Rahme’s piece “Essence” takes a series of objects and creates physical barriers around them with materials like bubble wrap, preventing the audience from being able to interact with each object directly. However as the audience interacts with these external layers the true sounds of the objects emerge like ghosts, and so their “essence” is ultimately heard.

Lewis Mosley - _i saw horses_

i saw horses is a work for 4 vibrating guitars. In removing the human interaction with the instrument, the guitars themselves create a droning landscape that is at once unsettling and calming.