Globus Hystericus of is a piece of audio-visual art that utilises music and video media in an equitable way. The principles of acousmatic music are extended to incorporate parallel ideas found in video art. It is the 6th piece in a series of collaborations between composer Tim Howle and the video artist Nick Cope of the University of Sunderland.

The first performance of Globus Hystericus was 23^rd and 24^th November, 2013 at ‘Seeing Sound’ a practice-led research symposium held at Bath Spa University.

Seeing Sound encompasses multimedia work which focuses on the relationship between sound and image. It also explores areas such as visual music, abstract cinema, experimental animation, audiovisual performance and installation practice through paper sessions, screenings, performances and installations.

Globus Hystericus (DVD – stereo sound. 7 mins.)
Music: Tim Howle, University of Kent
Video: Nick Cope, University of Sunderland

Further links to other works by Tim Howle and Nick Cope:
In Girum:  http://vimeo.com/18708106
Open Circuits: http://vimeo.com/57747704

School of Music and Fine Art Lecturer’s composition is selected as one of the 39 works shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards, set to take place in December at Goldsmiths’ Hall, London.

BASCA, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, is the professional association for music writers in the UK. The single voice for British music creators announced Kerry Andrew among the 39 works shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards to be presented across 13 categories and the winners will be unveiled at a ceremony at Goldsmiths’ Hall on Tuesday 3 December.

The Associate Lecturer at the School of Music and Fine Art for Music and Audio Arts has previously won British Composer Award in 2010 under the Making Music category for her work ‘Fall’ and was shortlisted in 2012 for ‘A Lock is a Gate’ in the Community or Educational category. Delighted to be once again shortlisted for her work ‘Screech’ in the Making Music Award category. Kerry Andrew’s work forms the last part of a three-movement flexible work for contemporary recorder quintet Consortium 5, Badluck Birds, which is inspired by regional lore of three different British birds. It was commissioned by the Handel House Museum and had its world premiere on the 11 October 2012 at the Handel House Museum performed by Consortium 5.

You can read more about the Award and listen to an extract of ‘Screech’ on the British Composer Award website.

The British Composer Awards are presented by BASCA and sponsored by PRS for Music. In association with BBC Radio 3 providing exclusive broadcast coverage of the Awards on Saturday 7th December.

Senior lecturer, Dr Paul Fretwell concludes his  five-year collaborative project with  Dr Ambrose Field. Their CD, ‘Northern Loop’ is now available.

Northern Loop is the final product of Paul Fretwell and Ambrose Field’s collaborative composition project, spanning five years of live performances at venues ranging from King’s Place in London, to churches in downtown New Orleans.

Field and Fretwell first started collaborating in 2004. ‘Jack Chorale’, their first piece together, is an electroacoustic work that plays with genre and expectation, bringing in regular beats, fragmented rhythms, spectral sound transformations, harmony and noise. This piece triggered a long period of exploration where they began to focus on the very small details within sounds.

Northern Loop plays out over a continuous 80 minutes, working tiny loops of audio material into a spectral tapestry where small details are brought to the fore, revealing different facets of the evolving sound textures. The work has seven movements, although these flow into one another. The component sounds were generated from studio recordings of source materials using techniques of time stretching, convolution and mutation. These processes typically result in long, continuously evolving sounds. The composers then extracted short clips from these longer files to create their loops, finding interesting timbres and melodic fragments from within the larger whole. This magnification of small spectral details forms the central technique of Northern Loop, which charts a journey from darkness to light over a carefully-planned harmonic structure.

Fretwell and Field’s describe their motivation: “We decided to pick a single structural constraint – one that is common to a variety of genres and well known – the loop. The loop, historically, has been a tool for innovation, particularly in its use by pioneering minimal composers as Steve Reich in the 1960s. The ubiquity of the loop today however is unquestionable, but we feel that its widespread use in popular culture is often unchallenged. We would like to rescue the loop from entertainment-level apps, musical “textural backgrounds” and “library background pads”, and provide, through use of that structure, a listening experience of subtlety and delicacy. The result is a kind of “self-similar”, thoroughly stripped-down minimal music, but importantly our type of structure is not algorithmically generated: this is intuitive music, assembled through aural judgment and collaborative discussion.”

Fretwell and Field’s CD Northern Loop can be heard and purchased on the Sargasso website.
Also available for download on iTunes.

Northern Loop Track List:

1. Dark Water​ ​14:41
2. ​Labyrinth​ ​06:48
3.​ ​​Plants and Pistons 05:00
4.​ ​​Tidal Life​ 14:39
5.​ ​​Expectation 09:47
6.​ ​​Renaissance Pulse 09:03
7.​ Glass Machine ​19:23

As part of his one week engagement with staff and students during Week 3, University of Kents’ ‘visiting expert’, Philip Auslander will be presenting ‘Sound and Vision: The Audio-Visual Economy of Musical Performance’ Research Seminar.

Auslander is Professor at the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Tech, Atlanta and internationally acclaimed for his writings on gender and theatricality in popular music as well as ‘liveness’ and performance in a mediatized culture. The talk is followed by a brief live music performance at the Galvanising Shop, School of Music and Fine Arts.

Christina Lagao and David Roesner will translate some iconic pop songs into a more intimate acoustic setting under the heading “Divas Unplugged”. This will act as an interlude to a drinks reception which will offer the opportunity for more dialogue and discussion.

Date:                     14-18 October (Week3)
Location:              Galvanising Shop, Chatham Historic Dockyard, Medway
Time:                     17.00-18.30