Sonic Granularity

The temporal essence of a sound may be thought of as a single grain. These essential, atomic grains may be combined, looped, and blurred together to craft new timbres and to drastically alter existing sounds. While much of the conceptual and technical thinking around sounds-as-grains focuses on purely virtual and digitally realised audio, there exists an emerging trend of real-world instruments and artworks that extend these concepts into the physical spaces shared by instrument and audience. This event features new live audio works by Jim Murphy, Bridget Johnson, Dugal McKinnon and Nathan Carter that respond to – and activate – one such instrument: Jim Murphy's Machine Song - Gesture Three, on display at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery.

Each of the three new works engages with the sculpture from different perspectives. Opening with sequence.process, Bridget Johnson and Jim Murphy collide deterministic mechanical sequences with the indeterminacy of Machine Song: Gesture Three. Following this, Dugal McKinnon next uses the ICO icosahedral loudspeaker array to probe and actuate the gallery space with samples of the sculpture, processed textures, and sonic gestures. Completing the evening’s trajectory from fully physical sounds to synthetic and abstracted ones, Nathan Carter concludes the concert with a performance utilising custom-built instruments to granularise and manipulate sonic elements in a computerised version of the microsounds explored throughout the prior works. From physical to digital, from actuated to abstract, Sonic Granularity asks the question of what sorts of sonic textures and gestures can emerge from simple, pointillistic sound-making events.

Free entry, all welcome, no booking required.

Dugal McKinnon is a sonic artist and Associate Professor at theNew Zealand School of Music | Te Kōkī, where he teaches sonic art and composition, and is Director of the Lilburn Studios for Electronic Music. Sounds seen and unseen, heard, remembered and auralised, rare or abundant, spoken, sung, played, transduced, reproduced, transformed, and synthesised, measured and musical, unruly and feral, corporeal, material, environmental. Audible forms such as these populate the collusions – between sound, music, language, technologies and people – from which McKinnon’s work emerges.

Bridget Johnson is a sound artist and researcher for Toi Rauwhārangi, Massey University. She creates immersive sound installations and performances that heighten the audience's experience with spatial audio. Her work focuses on exploring how sound can move through space and developing new interfaces and experiences that allow composers to explore this. Johnson received a PhD from Victoria University and is now the Head of School of Te Rewa o Puanga (School of Music and Screen Arts, Massey University). Her works have been shown in Aotearoa, Australia, Europe, Singapore, and the United States.

Nathan Carter (Alter Natural) is a Wellington-based musician and multi-media sonic artist. His music fuses a broad range of electronic, acoustic, and art music genres, taking inspiration from visual art and real-world subject matter with the aim to express beauty and philosophical sublimity through his creations. Carter's multi-media practice involves audio-visual programming (interactive art, audio visualisation, and digital synthesiser design) and screen-media scoring/audio. He has presented at national and international events, including Works for Loudspeakers, Ars Electronica Garden Aotearoa, Australasian Computer Music Conference, and most recently, prototyping new work at Doc Edge 2024 in collaboration with internationally acclaimed artist Laura Emel Yilmaz for her upcoming art installation, Metramorphosis. Nathan is a current master’s student of composition at New Zealand School of Music | Te Kōkī.

Image: Jim Murphy, Machine Song: Gesture 3 (detail), metal and electromechanical components, 2000 x 2000 x 100 mm.