Thursday Club: noise=Noise: Mind Body Brain :: January 21, 2009; 6:30 – 9:00 pm :: Great Hall, Richard Hoggart Building, University of London, New Cross, South East London.

Mind Body Brain is an evening concert exploring noise (music) through research into new interfaces for musical expression and perceptions of noise. The evening will be split into two segments. In the first segment each artist will give a synopsis of their current work and research. The second segment will be a live concert. This event brings together artists from music, computing, design and psychology. Through the course of the evening you may hear ghost voices and mains electricity through Disinformation; a brain playing music through Mick Griersons’ brain computer interface, and strobe-ing lights and sounds with John Bowers’ infra-instruments. Curator: Ryan Jordan.

Through his ground-breaking Disinformation project (active since 1995),noise DJ and installation artist Joe Banks pioneered the use of electromagnetic (radio) noise from sources such as live mains electricity, lightning, industrial and IT hardware, laboratory equipment, trains, magnetic storms and the sun as the raw material of musical and fine-art publications, exhibits and events. Disinformation
has been the subject of ten UK solo exhibitions, experienced by over 100,000 people and described by The Guardian as some of the most beautiful installations around.

Robert Atwood has been experimenting with improvised performances on improvised instruments for several years, first as part of Toronto’s “Urban Refuse Group” and subsequently as a solo project in London, UK. He also has explored improvisational music with traditional instruments and effect-processed instruments with Toronto’s “Brain Harmonic”, and has used and developed sound feedback and sequencing software for performances with London’s “Openlab” collective, and live-coding feedback patches for Loss-Livecode. His broad theme of sound performances is the improvisational reaction to generated feedback, in electronic circuits or in software synthesis. In this performance he will use Feedback Machine #1, consisting of a discarded 8-inch woofer cone with a homebuilt amplifier rig and some pedal-effects. The feedback loop is completed by the performer’s hands which conduct sound directly from the speaker cone to a pickup microphone. The result of this feedback is further process led by a specially-developed sequencer program, which samples segments of the sound, sequences them into a loop, and also feeds the output of the loop back into the individual samples. Thus there are two feedback loops on different time scales which the performer will attempt to control, with only partial success, resulting in an unpredictable polyrhythmic performance.

Mick Grierson is an experimental artist specialising in real-time interactive audiovisual research, with specific focus on cognition and perception. He works in film, music, and software development, both inside and outside industry, designing, developing and producing new approaches to creating audiovisual experience. In addition to working in traditional roles in film and television, he has designed commercial audiovisual software for the entertainment industries, which has led to several high profile commissions, including title design and digital audiovisual installations for the hit TV show Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind. In January 2008, he collaborated with the Sonic Arts Network to create a freely available interactive audiovisual interface for use by the deaf and hard of hearing. In addition he is lead developer on the Mabuse Audiovisual Composition Software Environment. He is currently working on a three year fully funded AHRC project on audiovisual cognition at Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios.

slub is a live coding band with Dave Griffiths, Alex McLean and, occasionally, Adrian Ward. Grifiths writes programs to make noises, pictures and animations. He lives in London where he makes film effects software and computer games. McLean has been triggering distorted kick drum samples with Perl scripts for far too long. He is a PhD student of Arts and Computational Technology at Goldsmiths College. Griffiths and McLean are both members of the Openlab free software artists collective and the TOPLAP organisation for live algorithm promotion.

JOHN BOWERS & LIAM WELLS

Bowers and Wells will simultaneously perform GforGuitar (Wells) and GforGround (Bowers). The performances will be accompanied by computer generated sounds and images derived from multiple cross-modal feedback processes. All material will be tuned in relation to harmonics and sub-harmonics of the AC supply frequency 50 Hz, our fundamental, G.

John Bowers works with home brew electronics, self-made instruments and reconstructions of antique image and sound-making devices, alongside contemporary digital technology. He is concerned with making performance environments that combine sound, vision and human gesture at a fundamental physical level. Recent work includes projects to build a music synthesizer using 19th century techniques (The Victorian Synthesizer), explorations of random circuitry (Ohm-My-God), a miniaturisation of Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville’s Dreamachine (My Little Dreamachine), and a reconstruction of early television technology (This Nightlife Instrument). He was recently artist in residence at Fylkingen in Stockholm. He is co-founder of the Onoma Research label and also plays electric guitar in the fundamentalist noise rock band Tonesucker. John Bowers is part of the Interaction Research Studio, Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Liam Wells is a UK based artist working in a number of improvised practices, which explore repetition & irregularity in multiple layered non-linear audio/ visual works. Through a number of linked practices including drone-based noise compositions/ improvisations, installation, video-performances and networked/ net art, he explores textural detail and difference within immersive environments. He is a postgraduate student at theUEA’s Electronic Music Studio and is currently Course Leader of Norwich University College of the Arts’ (BA Hons) Film and Video. Previously he has been involved in the creation of networked improvisational environments through involvement with a variety of organisations,including the co-curating of various multi-site works with n0media (www.n0media.net) and has recently performed audiovisual works at DIT (Ireland), Fylkingen (Sweden), Norwich Gallery (UK) and City Gallery (Lithuania). Wells is also one third of neo-noise–prog outfit TRANSEPT who have recently been awarded an Arts Council England Escalator Grant for New Music.