Olivia Block, Sarah Hennies, Sonic Luz

This is the first year that Oxford's annual audiograft festival of experimental music and sound art will be taking part of its bill on tour!

Olivia Block (USA)

October 26th, 1984

(found tapes, laptop, oscillators, breath, microphone)

45min

The piece opens with a man speaking to himself on a "found" micro cassette tape about his dying father. This voice is then accompanied and eventually blotted out by performed breath, white noise and found recordings from catastrophic weather events and eventually a flood of water. The combination of sounds reflects an overwhelming collective sense of human anxiety and grief about the destruction of the natural world and, the inevitable decay and obsolescence of Western (particularly American) culture.

oliviablock.net

Sarah Hennies (USA)

Gather & Release

(vibraphone + 2 channel audio)

54min

Gather & Release is the result of years worth of composer Sarah Hennies’ exploration of the vibraphone in synthesis with her experiences of identity, obsession, anxiety, tension, grief, and loss.

Over the course of an hour, Hennies entangles highly focused percussion playing with field recordings, sine waves, signifiers from her personal & family history (including a 20+ year old recording of her grandfather reciting poetry), and bilateral stimulation, a tool for anxiety release and a major component of EMDR therapy (a branch of psychotherapy that focuses on relieving the patient of disturbing memories as a treatment for psychopathology).

Gather & Release is personal, immediate, yet reserved. Coppice welcomes Sarah Hennies to Category of manifestation: with this challenging new work of reclaim.

sarah-hennies.com

Sonic Luz (AUT)

(Klaus Filip, Noid)

(optosonic sythesizer)

40min

The comeback of the optosonic synthesiser.

Live performance by noid and klaus filip bringing the technology of optosonic synthesizers into the era of DIY. Most traditional synthesisers put a strong emphasis on reproducibility and the stability of pitch. Therefor they need big and complex mechanisms usually realised inside a black box. For Sonic Luz the priority is a maximum of flexibility and the possibility for haptic interaction on all parts of tone production. By moving the lamps, the toneweels, the light sensors on the table, or changing the discs, the composition of the sounds is manipulated, quickly and intuitively. The machine has no interior that could possibly be hidden, everything is laid open for the audience and generates a performative aspect of great beauty.

filipino.klingt.org/sonic_luz