Ascension (8’50)
Fixed media and experimental guitar techniques, JrF contact microphones
	 	 	
Ascension uses the emotional qualities of sound to explore ethical and allegorical contrasts of caged and wild birds, drawing upon ancient mythologies that see birds as divine messengers mediating between life and death. The metallic clang of a domestic bird in it’s cage opens the piece, which gradually becomes more abstract, overlaying the cage audio with manipulated recordings of a barbed wire fence, then the ‘steel wires’ of an extended guitar. Recordings made in Glen Davies complete the vignette.

This piece was performed during Triangulate’s production of Whips and Tendrils over an 8-channel cubic surround setup with live guitar, as part of Campbelltown Arts Centre’s Sacred Bird Series and in conjunction with the New Music Network and the 2013 Sydney Sacred Music Festival.


Ascension

The call of the Eastern Whipbird (Psophodes olivaceus) is a prominent ‘soundmark’ in the rural areas of the east coast of Australia. It’s distinctive whipcrack call has its own inherent spatiality, as it travels through the air. Field recordings are intertwined with synthesised versions of the call, modeled on it’s unique spectral qualities, blurring the line between realism and abstraction.

This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre 2013.

Whips and Tendrils - Karin Senff And Sarah-Leith Izzard

Every weekend at the break of dawn a woman comes to Peter Depena Reserve in Dolls Point to feed the birds. She throws handful upon handful of birdseed until it covers the ground, drawing a large flock of corellas and a few opportune pigeons.
I recorded these sounds placing an Audio Technica BP4025 stereo microphone on the ground amongst the birds, who quickly grew accustomed to its presence.
The clacking of their beaks can be heard cracking open the seeds, alongside the sounds of wings flapping , cooing pigeons and a wide range of corella vocalisations. 
Located on the edge of Botany Bay near the Sydney airport, aeroplanes can be heard passing overhead in the backgound before the corellas become startled and the flock suddenly departs as one.


Corellas Feeding - Dolls Point (Field Recording)

XRF is a 7.1 surround sound electroacoustic composition based around recordings made from an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Focusing on the subatomic processes that occur during sample analysis, I have created a conceptual model of the sub-atomic interactions that take place during sample analysis, where the action of an electron splitting from its atom can be read as a vital fracture of the most fundamental bonds of existence. 

XRF has been presented in the 2013 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and the  Toronto New Adventures in Sound Art 'Deep Wireless' Festival 2013.

XRF (stereo version)

Silence | Karin Senff
5:16 – 8.1 surround
Fixed media
Silence combines fixed and moving perspective soundscapes to evoke conflicting tones of disconnecting impermanence and grinding repetition, symptomatic of urban isolation. Designed for 8.1 channel speaker playback, sections of the piece were recorded using a correlated octophonic microphone configuration, to capture a vivid sense of realism, then blended with processed XY stereophonic recordings, suggesting movement between outer and inner world views. 
