Portraying the indifference of birds to their urban surrounds, the sounds of wild corellas eating seeds from a metallic bird feeder in the southern Sydney suburb of San Souci were captured using a JrF contact microphone.

This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network.

Feeder

The topology of the natural landscape can dramatically alter a bird’s effectiveness to be heard over long distances, and their ability to be singled out from the surrounding aural environment. This piece manipulates and exaggerates the resonant frequencies recorded in the cavernous valley of Lady Carrington Drive in the Royal National Park during a crisp winter’s dawn chorus.

This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network.

Lady Carrington Drive

The distinctive sound of bellbirds, or Bell Miners (Manorina melanophrys), is iconic along the eastern coast of Australia. Despite the nostalgia the sound inspires, Bell Miners have been implicated in the spread of dieback (when trees die from the top down). This piece juxtaposes nostalgia (represented by the piano) with organic and man made erosion (manipulated field recordings). Electro-magnetic fields, omnipresent even in the ‘natural environment’, have been recorded by a hand-crafted coil antenna, so their invisible presence is audible, seeping insidiously into the soundscape.

This is track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network.

Bells/Decay

Live electronic manipulation, JrF contact microphone, iPad, SM57

Seed examines the way in which many birds have become dependant on seemingly innocent human feeding practices. Bird seed is recorded using a contact microphone and digitally altered and enhanced to create un-natural soundscapes.


This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network.

Seed

Field recordings of many different bird species from all over New South Wales have been combined using concatonative synthesis to create new and unique bird call spectromorphologies.

This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network. 

Sunset

Ascension uses the emotional qualities of sound to explore bird-inspired spiritual, moral and allegorical themes. 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.

As the sun slips below the canyon walls, licking the landscape golden.
Lost remnants of brick architecture, homesteads, fireplaces jut from the grass, attached to nothing.
Further up the hill, scattered bovine horns and thighs, a longneck bottle bleached in the sun bone-dry.
Then reach the circle, a small clearing.
￼
Blackbirds call and swoop back and forth back and forth from branch to dead winter branch back and forth.
Mesmerised.

― Karin Senff


This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network. 

Ascension

Fixed media, live percussion, iPad and JrF hydrophone

An immersive soundscape created by, and celebrating, the abundant birdlife inhabiting Australia’s wetlands. Utilising stereo and hydrophone field recordings from Dunn’s Swamp, Sofala and the Wollemi National Park, a wetland environment is conjured. Live manipulated water and water bowls evoke the avian relationship to waterholes of all shapes and sizes for feeding, bathing, drinking and swimming.


This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network. 

Peppercorn Swamp

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 in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network. 

Whips & Tendrils

An evolving colony of birds is constructed from a single sound source – one recording of a bird’s ‘chirp’. Colony uses granular synthesis techniques to deconstruct and multiply the ‘chirp’, portraying the avian social behaviour of flocking and nesting in large groups.

This track was recorded live in 8.1 channels as part of the Whips & Tendrils concert at Campbelltown Performing Arts Centre in September 2013 in conjunction with the New Music Network. 

Colony

Triangulate is a collective of three emerging new media artists and composers, who work both individually and collaboratively to create experimental electro-acoustic works which explore the qualities of sound, interactivity and immersion.

Triangulate are:- Karin Senff, Andrew Bluff and Sarah-Leith Izzard.

KARIN SENFF
Graduating from the University of Technology Sydney with a Bachelor of Sound and Music Design in 2013, Karin has complemented her studies with twelve years experience as a production professional in the theatre and live sound industry and time writing and performing with Sydney metal band One Dead Madam.

Inspired by soundscape ecology, bioacoustics and spatial audio practices, her previous work has involved using correlated microphone techniques to create immersive multichannel surround sound electroacoustic compositions and sonifying three-dimensional boidal-flocking simulations to trace the beauty of naturally occurring patterns.

Karin also has a strong interest in interactive design, incorporating Max MSP, Arduino and electronic circuit design in a range of projects; creating a custom Midi controller, an autonomous art display using muscle wire (Nitinol), circuit bending to produce sound and light sensitive ‘insects’ and developing a sound-responsive ferrofluid installation controlled by electromagnets.

ANDREW BLUFF rollerchimp
Rollerchimp (aka Andrew Bluff) is an emerging new media artist with 15 years of software development experience in the creative media industries. Recently completing a Bachelor in Sound and Music Design, Andrew pushes the boundaries of creative and interactive technologies to explore new sonic territories and performance modalities. 

Including interactive theatre, mobile computing, concatenative synthesis and new music instrument design – his work simultaneously employs technology as a compositional tool, instrument and performer while examining the intersection between order and chaos.

Recent collaborations include developing interactive iPad apps for Chicks on Speed's latest exhibition/extravaganza at Artspace in Sydney, and providing hands on technical know-how for Stalker Theatre's performance 'Encoded'.

For more of Andrew's work check out his website (link above).

SARAH-LEITH IZZARD
After graduating from the Elam School of Fine Art at the University of Auckland in 1995, Sarah-Leith Izzard relocated to London where she worked in the creative industry for 8 years. Sarah-Leith is now based in Sydney, and has recently completed the Bachelor of Sound and Music Design at the University of Technology Sydney.

Her work explores composition, spatialization and interactivity in a way which both challenges and extends perceptions of ‘reality’. 


Triangulate-Collective