NULLA 0, a monolith is a sound art project developed through conversations with 9 participants on their English speaking voices who identify across non-binary, womxn and women (cis/trans), and were either born in London or moved to the city for a duration of time. 

The project is about agency- amplifying voices that are often othered while sharing narratives which have typically been omitted from our collective histories. Together, we challenge the word ‘neutral’ - a term regularly associated with whiteness, middle class and binary voices, casually employed to flatly describe the voices of AI personal assistants who maintain their coded interactions in a master/slave role play. 
Initially meant as a series of in-person group workshops, the pandemic changed the landscape of the project by shifting our discussions onto a digital platform. Here, we met as two strangers launching into an incredibly intimate and vulnerable subject - the voice. The rawness of these exchanges however, are full of laughter and openness, full of individuality and considered thought.

These 1:1 conversations focused on how the participants experienced their own voices intersecting with gender, race and class, while equally considering the disembodied voice as a sonic mask, one that rewrites the inner voice as an alternate persona in the mind of the one who hears it. Following the first exchange, we met once more, this time collectively and anonymously with just our voices to define us to questioned the notion of a ‘common voice’, and attempted to write a manifesto which could hold and celebrate our difference. 
As it evolved NULLA 0, a monolith became a rich collaborative oral archive which resulted in a publication - a record and artefact of our otherwise ephemeral assembly, accompanied by a sonic composition from our conversations, fusing narratives and highlighting ‘bad’ sounds in the audio such as pops, clicks, reverb, hiss and silence.

NULLA 0 A Monolith - LAUNCH MIX

Immersion is a collaboration between Selina Thompson, the People of Tower Hamlets and the Air they Breathe.

Over the course of one day, we will play four recorded ‘exhalations’, each in a different park at the North, South, East and West of Tower Hamlets.

The sound, built of a chorus of breath gathered across the borough, will be a moment of cleansing, taking a sound we’re surrounded by and tuning into its beauty at a time when breathing has never felt so loaded.

Each exhale will be accompanied by a choral performance that amplifies, strengthens and, honours the borough’s defiant history and pushes back against the confines of gentrification and climate catastrophe. 

It’s a moment to remember the sacredness of air, of living in a constant cycle of dependence, transformation and respiration with the planet and each other.

It’s a reminder for us to remember what it is to breathe.

4. Fuck It Up

3. Healing

2. Catharsis

1. Abundance

"PINK noise" is the first single release from Lola de la Mata's upcoming album around tinnitus: "Oceans on Azimuth", out May 8th 2024 + a 250 limited edition run colour vinyl. Pre-order now on Bandcamp

"PINK noise is a collaboration between myself and Lana Norris, resident musicologist at the Hudspeth Neuroscience Lab, NY. Our common interests were Maryanne Amacher and the inner ear…our diverging interests: opera, baroque music, prose for Lana. Improvisation, prepared violin, otoacoustic illusions for me. Our worlds and personalities truly collided in this performance style composition. I wanted to keep a raw quality to the piece, leaving space for the listener’s imagination to picture our duet in a domed architecture (hopefully a cochlea!). 

The text written by Lana is in fact a list of terminology overheard at the lab, taken from the language of statistics and auditory physocphysics - which, mirrors musical language but with alternate meanings. The piece intends to feel like vertigo induced play...3/4 of the way in, “Hopf” tingles the brain from the sudden hyper produced stereo realm, holding attention around the ears before descending back into reverberant improvisatory chaos.

It's an added bonus that the title references Tara Rodger's book on women within electronic music and sound "Pink noises"."

PINK noise

Oceans on Azimuth

Stereocilia

KOH - Klee - Uh (Remastered)

Observing bodies as they walked up and down corridors, I began to notice how people would hold their breath when passing by one another. The whole of their bodies would tense up and take a little while to release, and a while longer to recover the lost breath.
Wanting to capture the experience of moving through such shared spaces, the anxious struggle became the focus of the work.

Insufflate _suffocate - Sound art @ Engine Room exhibition

Friction - for Bufo Makmal dance company

Georgia Cooke - Alto Flute
Matt London - Baritone Saxophone
Rebecca Raimondi - Violin
Seth Bennett - Double Bass

MUTED - Ensemble Entropy

Commission by Debora Tutta

"The aim of F I N E . is to raise awareness about Anxiety and Depression by exploring the difficulties of understanding these illnesses and how the possibility of physically visualising them, through immersive 360 degrees technology, could have a positive impact on people's perceptions.

Below is the link to the video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Wn5VMr2E

to view the video as intended, you must switch the quality to 4K. The instructions of how to watch the film are in the description box on youtube.

F I N E . (VR collaboration with Debora Tutta)

Swell is a 5.1 installation which draws on my physical form, and the extreme transformations my abdomen undergoes following an allergic reaction.

Curious to hear how the changes in form would sound, I traced 5 curves ranging from normal, to the first signs of swelling, to my largest point. These form the score.

As my metamorphose takes place rapidly, all curves were taken the same day with flexible timing.

SWELL - sound installation 5.1

Ensemble entropy with Loré Lixenberg and Mark Sanders

MUTED - Ensemble Entropy + Loré Lixenberg & Mark Sanders @ Cafe OTO

Written for and Performed by Tre Voci Cello Ensemble at Brunel University.

Sway explores the proximity between two bodies, that of the performer and the cello. As one activates the other, they fall into a dance.
A play on domination- the two bodies shift with ease between the acting driving force and relinquishing control. Acting as choreographic indications for the performer’s body, the movement score takes chladni patterns from the cello range and repurposes them to open, lift and compress the torso. These lead to the activation of new vibrations propagating throughout the body of the cello, pushing through the F hole to merge with the already sounding waves released by the other activated wooden bodies.
The piece ends with the cello being released from the clutches of the dance and returned to its primary state. The performer changes plane, drawing away from the previously occupied space whipping the air, splicing through the weighted dense texture of sound.

https://www.loladelamata.com/sway-for-three-performers-preparing-to-stand/

Sway, For Three Performers Preparing to Stand - Tre Voci (excerpt)

Released 28th Feb 2020 on Nonclassical: https://nonclassical.bandcamp.com/track/the-embalmer

"The Embalmer"
Voice, Violin, Electric Organ and Electronics.

Following a consuming seven year diagnosis of a chronic condition, "The Embalmer" explores themes of retaining, seizing and emerging. 
With a monotone approach to disguising the instruments within each other and engaging with the dissonance and natural beating caused by the layering of the voice, the work seeks to convey a veiled presence resounding within a larger whole, fighting to awaken.

The title is given after the book on Berlinde de Bruykere’s fleshy wax sculptures of contorted bodies.

The Embalmer

‘THE GAZE’ @ IKLECTIK was the first time I collaborated with composer/cellist and Nonclassical artist Cecilia Bignall. We decided to rework my piece Sway, which seeks to reclaim the objectified female body in ‘Le violin d’Ingres’ treating the cello as a secondary body in the performance. Through text and movement notation based on chladni patterns, you will see and hear the cello’s drone evolve as Cecilia opens, lifts and compresses her torso. Originally for three cellos, the premiere saw Cecilia perform alongside her prerecorded improvisations.

SWAY - Cecilia Bignall - nonclassical @ IKLECTIK

'PINK noise' + 'Stereocilia' out now
pre-order debut album 'Oceans on Azimuth' on Bandcamp: limited edition LP /Digital

'KOH - Klee - uh' is out on SA recordings: https://sarecordings.com/release/299715-lola-de-la-mata-koh-klee-uh

interview with 15 Questions: https://15questions.net/interview/lola-de-mata-about-tinnitus-creative-spark/page-1/

'The Embalmer' + ['LAND] & OTHER HAZARDS' are released on @nonclassical

Feminist concept album'REMISE EN BOUCHE' : http://www.panyrosasdiscos.net/pyr245-lola-de-la-mata-remise-en-bouche/

Lola de la Mata

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