New Year Sounds
T668962843
Archive :: production:T668962843, concert:S50129602, venue:V168
Production details
BAC’s celebration of experimental music returns, featuring an international line-up of musicians, free improvisers and audio artists. New Year New Sounds is curated by Adam Bohman, a cult experimental musician who runs Bohman Brothers nights. Alongside these gigs, a series of sound art installations will be found in spaces around BAC, which audiences can experience for free. Felix’s Machines are a series of extraordinary mechanical instruments put together by the artist and musician Felix Thorn in his South London bedroom. When connected to a computer, Felix’s Machines translate Thorn’s compositions into mechanical actions performed by customised drums and piano parts and animated by solenoids, springs and motors. In this way, an electronic means of production is transposed into an acoustic output. Felix’s Machines developed from the artist’s desire to have his compositions played without a performer. As such Thorn looks to focus the listeners’ experience onto the visual representation of the music’s structure: combining sound, visual motion and flicker into an experience that stimulates and intensifies perception. The Singing Sock Puppets are a range of musical toys designed by Matthew Irvine Brown, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006. Opening and closing their mouths makes them sing up and down a musical scale, with the help of simple, embedded electronics. Tuning Up is a visual exploration of spatial acoustics by helium balloon and harmonica. A single sustained chord is released on a series of vertical trajectories throughout the stairwell, reverberating off the walls and Doppler-shifting its way past the audience, asking them to look at the sound and listen to the space.
