The multi-channel fixed-media composition Living Waves, was commissioned for the interdisciplinary Ruskin Rocks Project (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ruskinrocks/) led by Prof Bruce Yardley, School of Earth Sciences, University of Leeds. The project brought together musicians (including Dame Evelyn Glennie), artists and scientists to create two new 21st Century lithophones (the Brantwood Musical Stones, designed by Dr Kia Ng (University of Leeds) and Marcus de Mowbray (freelance musical instrument maker) to be housed at Brantwood, the former home of artist, naturalist and social commentator John Ruskin, now a museum situated in the Lake District. The two tuned percussion instruments have been created from ringing rock extracted from several Cumbrian Quarries. 

Living Waves has been inspired by the thoughts, writings and paintings of Ruskin. It is the sub-title he himself gave to Deucalion, his book on geology. It is also the name of a recent exhibition at Brantwood of some of his drawings and watercolours in which he explored the many repeated patterns which occur in nature. Mountains are viewed as fluid and dynamic forms, living waves created by the shifting of the earth’s crust. 

Ruskin himself describes the phenomenon of repeated forms in nature on differing scales: ‘For a stone, when it is examined, will be found and mountain in miniature. The fineness of Nature’s work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one...’ (Ruskin, Modern Painters IV, 1860, P.311). 

On a conceptual level, Ruskin identified with the medieval scholars’ concept of Musica Mundana, or ‘music of the spheres’. A celestial harmony. The three branches of the medieval concept of music were laid down by Boethius as Musica Mundana, Musica Humana (the internal music of the human body), and Musica Instrumentalis (sounds made by singers and instrumentalists). This sense of inter-connectedness pervades much of his work. 

Through the compositional process I have tried to mirror Ruskin’s visual explorations from a sonic perspective, using a range of transformational techniques to convey repeated patterns in different soundscapes at both the micro and macro level. In the context of this piece I have also interpreted the three medieval divisions of music interpreted as: sounds naturally occurring in nature; speech and the sound of manmade machinery; and instrumental sounds (in this case improvisations, on the new Brantwood Musical Stones, played by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie).

The Ruskin Rocks project was funded by Natural England through Defra's Aggregated Levy Sustainability Fund and was co-ordinated by Bobbie Millar. 

Living Waves

07.01.23 Marc

(binaural - headphones recommended) One windy night in Scarborough near the harbour. Lots of hiding shiftily behind lobster traps and all sorts. Sometimes terrifying. 

Very, Very Windy Seafront (binaural)

Sunshine rum

Full track available from electrocd.com
https://electrocd.com/en/album/5984/Nikos_Stavropoulos/Micro-lieux

Prix Destellos 2016 
1st Prize Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition

Attraction or affinity to place. The work is an attempt to construct a meaningful intimate aural space, where texture and spatially defined figures have a broader capacity for action due to their multichannel nature. The recordings of source materials form the beginning of an investigation into capturing and working with spatiality in micro space using bespoke hardware.

Image Photo: Giorgos Siniorakis.

Topophilia (Stereo Reduction Excerpt)

Platforms 3 and 4 [NB this is an unedited field recording]

An orchestral piece with singing fish and hydrophone recordings of me singing and playing metal instruments as heard underwater

Katherine Betteridge's Album

Turas

Programme Notes

Corporate media groups are among the most powerful organisations on the planet, framing and sculpting the information distributed across the globe. In Manufacturing Consent the 1994 publication by Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman, the authors demonstrate that collusion and innate bias as inevitable products of a corporatised news media. 

Adapting the literary work, Print + Press is inspired by these themes, and attempts to depict a varied and fragmented dataset, which is inevitably unified by its central objective. The composition is composed entirely from sounds derived from printing and copying equipment and in doing so encapsulates soundtypes directly related to the thesis.

Print + Press

Exploring combining my Onoleo and Golden Arcadia Pantheon Steel Halo's. 

Recorded on 7/31/19
David Blink - Pantheon Steel Halo: Onoleo & Golden Arcadia

2 Pan Shuffle (Pre-Deep Playa Wonderings 2019)

Outside

Eugene Feldman @eugene-fluteman — flute, vocals
Konstantin Negodaev @konstantin-negodaev — guitar
Nikolay Yakovlev @nikolay-yakovlev — bass
--------
Евгений Фельдман — флейта
Константин Негодаев — гитара
Николай Яковлев — бас

Break — Fluteman Trio

Rob Mackay is a composer, sound artist and performer. He gained a degree in Geology and Music at the University of Keele, studying composition there with Mike Vaughan, before going on to complete a Master’s and PhD with Andrew Lewis at the University of Wales, Bangor. Currently he is a Reader in Creative Music Technology at the University of Hull.

Recent projects have moved towards a cross-disciplinary approach, including theatre, audio/visual installation work, and human/computer interaction. Prizes and honours include: IMEB Bourges (1997 and 2001); EAR99 from Hungarian Radio (1999); Confluencias (2003); La Muse en Circuit (2004 and 2006). His work has received over 100 performances in 16 countries (including several performances on BBC Radio 3). Currently he is working with percussionist Evelyn Glennie on a composition project as part of Ruskin Rocks (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ruskinrocks/).

He has held composer residencies at Slovak Radio (Bratislava), La Muse en Circuit (Paris), and the Tyrone Guthre Arts Centre (Ireland).

He is an improvisor working across many genres, and for several years played with the improvisation ensemble 'Imp'. He has also enjoyed improvising with Rhodri Davies and Jez Riley French. He has played, written and produced in a number of bands and ensembles, including the Welsh Hip-Hop collective 'Tystion' with whom he collaborated alongside John Cale on the film ‘A Beautiful Mistake’, as well as recording two John Peel sessions on BBC Radio 1 and supporting PJ Harvey. More recently, he has done session work for Gowel Owen and Euros Childs as well as playing in the Welsh Afrofunk outfit 'Drymbago'.

6 CDs including his compositions are available. More information and pieces at: www.digital-music-archives.com and http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/dramamusicandscreen/ourstaff/musicstaff/robmackay.aspx

Living Waves

Robflute

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