TERRAINS FESTIVAL SOUND INSTALLATIONS

@ STAMPA GALLERY

STELARC    |     PHILIP BROPHY     |      JAMES HULLICK                             |     LINK TO FULL FESTIVAL PROGRAM

ABOUT THE SOUND INSTALLATIONS

STAMPA Gallery, 8-12 November

Spalenberg 2, 4051 Basel. T: 0041(0) 61 261 79 10

LINK TO STAMPA GALLERY (click here)

LINK TO FULL FESTIVAL PROGRAM (click here)

In collaboration with STAMPA Gallery,  JOLT will present the work of three Australian sound artists for the Terrains Festival. The three artists invited by JOLT are: Stelarc, Philip Brophy and James Hullick. Each of these artists is stylistically unique – that is their works are quite different to each other – and each artist has presented their installations internationally. For these reasons Stelarc, Brophy and Hullick demonstrate the high calibre and wide range of stylistic terrains covered in Australian sound installation practice. Stelarc’s work addresses relationships between body, science and art through apparatuses of technology. The man has a third ear implanted in his arm! Brophy recontextualises pop culture and cinematic audio and visual material in ways that offer social comment on mainstream culture. Hullick combines philosophical theories – such as Recursion theory – with surreal sonic gothic environments and machines. Below are descriptions and images of the works they will present for our festival. Biographies of the artists are given later in this document:

STELARC

In Melbourne Stelarc is represented by Scott Livesey Galleries. And yes, Stelarc has an ear implanted on his arm. The ear is not yet functional, but through a series of planned medical and electronic operations Stelarc will be bionically able to transmit audio with this ear. For the Terrains Gallery Exhibition we will be presenting several works by Stelarc, including:

THIRD HAND 

The hand was completed in 1980 in Yokohama. It was based on a prototype developed at Waseda University. It was constructed with the assistance of Imasen in Nagoya. It has been used in performances by the artist between 1980- 1998 in Japan, the USA, Europe and Australia. It has become the best- known and longest-used performance object for the artist. Originally it was designed as a semi- permanent attachment to the body, but because of skin irritation from electrode gel and the weight of the hand, support structure and the battery pack (approx. 2 kgms), it could not be worn continuously and thus it became a special performance device. The Third Hand has come to stand for a body of work that explored intimate interface of technology and prosthetic augmentation- not as a replacement but rather as an addition to the body. A prosthesis not as a sign of lack, but rather a symptom of excess. The Third Hand performances, with amplified body signals and sounds, have contributed to cyborg discourses on the body, included in more recent performances such as FRACTAL FLESH, PING BODY and PARASITE. See documentation of the performance postcards for a conceptual context.

PROSTHETIC HEAD

The aim was to construct an automated, animated and reasonably informed artificial head that speaks to the person who interrogates it. The PROSTHETIC HEAD project is a 3D avatar head, somewhat resembling the artist, that has real time lip-synching, speech synthesis and facial expressions. Head nods, head tilts and head turns as well as changing eye gaze contribute to the personality of the agent and the non-verbal cues it can provide. It is a conversational system which can be said to be only as intelligent as the person who is interrogating it. There is an attempt to make the Prosthetic Head more creative in its responses. It has embedded algorithms that enable it to generate novel poetry and singing each time it is asked.

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are about communicative behavior. It has an ultra-sound sensor system that alerts it of the user's presence, enabling it to initiate a conversation. With a vision system, The PROSTHETIC HEAD will also be able to detect the color of the user's clothing and be able to analyze the user's behaviour. This information would then be used by the PROSTHETIC HEAD to make its conversation more interactive and convincing.

LINK TO SCOTT LIVESEY GALLERIES

PHILIP BROPHY

Brophy is something of an audio visual pioneer in Australia, and was a part of the first international wave of artists working on pop culture quotation projects. In Australia Brophy is represented by Anna Schwartz Galleries. For JOLT Brophy will present works from his seminal Evaporated Music series, which consist largely of pop music videos where the video material of a music video has been left untouched and the sound of that video has been completely recontextualized. The works have a bizarre political nature partly arising from the extreme interpretation that Brophy has imposed on the original sonic materials of the videos he has chosen to adapt. As an installation project, Brophy’s often-hilarious Evaporated Music works are presented in 5.1 surround sound, and through surround technology audiences can experience the elegantly immersive nature of Brophy’s work.

EVAPORATED MUSIC (STILL FROM VIDEO)

LINK TO ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERIES

JAMES HULLICK

James Hullick is represented by MARS Gallery in Melbourne. Hullick has created a number of sound installations as a part of his exploration of the concept of recursion. In his doctoral research Hullick defined recursion as “any process that iterates with self-similarity.” One of the interesting aspects of his recursion installation projects has been his non-literal interpretation of the definition of recursion. At first glance his projects may not be obviously recursive – or repetitive – but on closer inspection the role of recursion becomes critical to the understanding of the work. In Switzerland, for the Terrains Festival Hullick will present:

THE GOTHOLIN

Midi controlled servo apparatus that recursively draw bows across four violins. The instrument can be manually controlled using midi slider controls or automated by computer through Max MSP programming. The object creates simplistic violin sounds that are intentionally redundant and clumsy. The simple back wards and forwards of the machine’s bows are deliberately recursive and create a compelling sound that is both ugly and aurally satisfying.

TERRATOMA

This is a new work that will be premiered in Switzerland at the Terrains Festival. This work refers to the biological phenomenon known as the teratomas, where the body recursively creates a tumour of teeth and hair in locations where these features do not normally grow. This work demonstrates recursion in mutation. In this installation audio speakers, surveillance cameras, wires and black hair are combined to create a giant new media tumour that is a sculptural entity. The work will be suspended from the ceiling and creep out across the space. Surveillance cameras will be used project images of audience members observing the work, as well as the other Stelarc and Brophy exhibitions in the space. This work functions as an excellent way of introducing people to the whole exhibition as they prepare to walk into the subsequent installations by Stelarc, Brophy and Hullick.

LINK TO MARS GALLERY