Texts – Sonicobjects

Sonic Difference Stephens

A sound cause: Endangered Sounds Jasmin Stephens Dr Garth Paine’s highly conceptual installation, Endangered Sounds, raises the alarm concerning the implications of the increasing practice of trade marking and patenting sounds. His serious and meticulous enquiry urges vigilance should the air we breathe and through which sound travels become privatised.
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Potts RealTime

Helyer’s progress: fusing art & science John Potts The tape was in the recorder, and it was a long tape. I knew Nigel Helyer would have a lot to say, because even before winning the Helene Lempriere National Sculpture Award earlier this year, he had been busy. And since taking out that prize he’d been…
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SonicDifference Percival

Seeking resonance: Interview: Nigel Helyer: SonicDifference Bob Percival I had been looking forward to meeting Nigel Helyer; sculptor, sound artist and currently an Artist in Residence at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Geneva. Anyone whose reputation precedes them with such enthusiasm, respect and good humour must be special and, it has to be said, Dr…
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magnus-Opus

Magnus-Opus (Nigel Helyer, Jon Drummond. Australien) Phone users be warned. Each time you dial a number, you have performed a musical piece and may have infringed the international copyright of the composers.
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ISEA2004

ISEA 2004 Layers of Performance By by Stanislav Roudavski People play with “the algorithmically controlled quadraphonic soundscape and its visual manifestations” in Sonic Spaces, an installation by Shawn Pinchback. Photographs by Stanislav Roudavski. Aboard flight 18.45, London – Helsinki, people scan each other for the happy signs of genius. And no wonder. According to the…
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Crosstalk kahn

Architecture does sound Douglas Kahn The cross talk of the title no doubt refers to the way sounds from the different pieces ‘bleed’ (ouch!) into one another when placed in close proximity. Often, in exhibitions involving sound, ‘cross’ could apply to the antagonism of competing sounds, but here there is no anger, no claims staked,…
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Echigo Tsumari

Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2003, Japan The recent Documenta 11 and 50th Venice Biennale exhibitions spawned a plethora of critical articles intensifying debate round the phenomenon of globalism – on the one hand the global rise and rise of large-scale biennale/triennale exhibitions, on the other globalism as both curatorial theme and format of these exhibitions.
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mowson

Education feature: training the sound artist A thrilling sono-cranial re-wire Bruce Mowson Nigel Helyer (see interview), whose sound sculpture Meta-Diva won the 2002 Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, questioned whether there were any courses in Australia which allowed for the study of sound in proper depth, responded by asking “Is there anywhere that teaches [among…
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Some approaches to Sound and Listening.

My practice has a pluralistic approach to the sonic domain and embraces several strands of conceptual and technological development. These in turn are manifest in a variety of modes, which range from gallery based interactive works, to environmental public sound works to Research and Development programmes in spatially located immersive soundscapes. As an introduction this…
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Sonic Voyages

Imagine a child of the ‘jet-age’ living in an unobtrusive coastal village, mid-way between the dwelling of Blake, the artist, poet and visionary and that of his friend, the scientist and astronomer Halley. The child proceeds with eyes wide open to technics and ears tuned to poetics ……
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Electrical by Nature

Theoretical papers often quote Plato’s Cave – such a nice, primitive dawn of consciousness image, with its shadowy representations flickering sootily across the cave’s rear wall and the line of onlookers warming their backs by the fire! Strangely there is scant mention of the crackle of burning wood, or the sounds of those protagonists prancing…
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2 + 2 = A math primer for the hard of hearing.

2 + 2 =….. was delivered as part of the “SoundCulture96” conference to parallel the “Silent Forest” installation and “A Silent Forest” radio broadcast. As such the paper provides a brief overview of some of my general interests as a sound sculptor in a confluence of morphology, spatiality and technology. The text, which follows remains…
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Prometheus Bound; Art, Science, Creativity and the Imagination.

The small Sussex fishing village in which I spent my childhood contained two significant buildings, significant not for their formal qualities, they were both simple cottages, but because one had been the home of Halley, the astronomer and the other the home of William Blake the poet. Without being conscious of the fact, I grew…
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