EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC AND SOUND ART IN OXFORD

10 – 20 March 2016

Launch event: 9 March 2016, 6pm

audiograft returns with its annual mix of new experimental music, sound art events and exhibitions. This year’s performance features extraordinary sound works, such as Gordon Monahan’s ‘Speaker Swinging’ and Austrian artist Billy Roisz. At the heart of the festival is a group exhibition at OVADA featuring Ray Lee’s new automated installation ‘Wondrous Machine’, Martin Nutt’s ‘Untitled’ and ‘Aeolus’ Cabinet’ by Mike Blow.

Ray Lee presents a new, automated installation version of his world touring and award winning ‘Siren’ performance. ‘Wondrous Machine’ is a spatial composition for an ensemble of rotating sound machines. Inspired by Purcell’s ‘Hail! Bright Cecilia’, a priest’s travelling harmonium sits at the centre of the work. Reconfigured into a control device for the installation, mechanical ‘fingers’ reach out and play the harmonium’s keyboard , setting in motion the individual elements of the elaborate machine. ‘Wondrous Machine’, like Siren, creates a dense wall of spinning tones and immerses the listener in its ‘sticky flux’.

Martin Nutt’s work takes the form of text and sometimes images. It often becomes compositions for listening. Occasionally it is performed. All of the work is informed by sonic phenomena, whether present or absent.

Mike Blow presents a cabinet containing winds collected from around the world. Each drawer, when opened, plays the sound of a famous wind such as the Mistral or Chinook. Visitors can listen to the wind sounds individually or create compositions by opening multiple drawers.

For a full programme of events visit: www.audiograft.co.uk 

OVADA is open Thursdays – Sundays, 12-6pm throughout the festival.

Admission free

audiograft is curated by the Sonic Art Research Unit (SARU) at Oxford Brookes University and co-promoted by OCM.