Site Responsive Sonic Art
This research is about performances of live electronic music which take place in unusual locations. I use un-usual to refer to buildings and spaces that have not been designated as concert venues, as well as outdoor urban and rural settings. These sites range from retired industrial structures, visually stimulating landscapes, architecture with unique acoustic properties, natural environments, or places of cultural or historical significance.
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Projects:
2015 - 2017 | Sounding Out Spaces: analogue [+ digital] photography | site-responsive performance
http://soundingoutspaces.tumblr.com/
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Embodied Learning
Projects:
2014 - 2015 | Sound, Electronics and Music: an evaluation of early embodied education
Sound, Electronics and Music was a large-scale project in which tutelage was provided on various topics related to sound and music technology to around nine hundred school children in Scotland in 2014 and 2015. Sixteen schools were involved, including two additional support needs schools. The project engaged several expert musicians and researchers to deliver the different areas of the course. A particular emphasis was placed on providing a form of music education that would engender creative practice that was available to all, regardless of both musical ability and background. The findings and outcomes of the project suggest that we should not be restricting the discussion of how to continue to educate future generations in the practices surrounding computer music to the university level. We may be failing to engage an age group that is growing readily familiar with the skills and vocabulary surrounding new technologies.
Enactive Interfaces
Live music making can be understood as an enactive process, whereby musical experiences are created through human action. This suggests that musical worlds coevolve with their agents through repeated sensorimotor interactions with the environment (where the music is being created), and at the same time cannot be separated from their sociocultural contexts. This research investigates this claim by exploring ways in which technology, physiology, and context are bound up within different musical scenarios including live electronic musical performance; and person-centred arts applications of NIMEs.
Improvising Cyborgs
The practice of improvisation is used as a site to explore the seams and boundaries of technology, social interaction, and collaborative musicking.
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Projects:
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2009 - 2020 | LLEAPP (Laboratory for Live Electronic Audio Performance Practice)
2014 - 2015 | fluxtrio - collaborative composition through iterative improvisation
Dr Lauren Hayes, Dr Xenia Pestova (Nottingham University) & Dr Franziska Schroeder (Queens University Belfast)
Sound and Touch
This research explores why making use of haptic interfaces—which offer physical feedback and resistance to the performer—may be viewed as an important approach in addressing the shortcomings of some the standard systems used to mediate the performer’s and audience’s engagement with various sorts of digital musical information.
Projects:
2017 | Towards an Aesthetics of Touch
In collaboration with Jessica Rajko for the performance of Me, My Quantified Self, and I.
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2016 - 2020 | HEAR-ME: A Multi-Sensory Investigation into Enhanced Music Perception of Cochlear Implant Users
Dr Lauren Hayes (PI) & Dr Xin Luo (PI)
Interdisciplinary Project Collaboration Grant | Herberger Research Council
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2012 - 2016 | Audio-Haptic Compositions for Ears and Body
Skin Music is a series of compositions which explore the relationships between sound and sensation. Skin Music uses a combination of vibrotactile feedback, by way of motors, which are choreographed to different areas of the body, in addition to tactile transducers (bass shakers) of varying frequency responses.
The two versions have been experienced by hundreds of participants during both intimate private gallery views, as well as at large-scale public events.