Berlin based sound artist and practitioner, focused in installation work and gallery performances. Generative compositions and performances are a common medium or her exhibitions, intersecting these techniques with other sound cultures as noise music. Ledesma’s work has an origin in Portland in the US, with organising both raves and underground gigs and sound exhibitions.

Her work revolves a lot through synthesis, from plug-ins to hardware. Ledesma has hosted multiple synth workshops, giving people access with complex equipment like modular synthesisers. The workshops later became a collective where different performances and events where taken place. Artist where invited for residency in their studio to explore the equipment and record performances. Artist such as Moor Mother performed in the events, the recognition of the collective made brands donate gear to their studio and later collaborate in workshops with that equipment. Her work in synth workshop lead her to work in a feminist synth library in LA, contributing in curation of events and documentation of female lead synth work.

AMQR is a software synthesiser created by Ledesma and fellow sound artist Ess Mattison. Ledesma used this tool to create her second release ‘Fringe’ , creating her own sound for her own composition. The synth objective is to blend between electric and the acoustic, being in the luminance of both timbral spectrums. The name AMQR is inspired in the new sensational phenomenon ASMR, the synth was created to mirror the affect of an ASMR experience. The success of AMQR led Ledesma to start producing new synths, in particular made in Max Msp, and sell them. She also uses this synths and plug-ins in her performances, with the purpose of testing the plug-ins and explore their limitations.

Above is a song of the Ledesma album ‘Fringe’, as mentioned before this album is weirdly hybrid between electronic and non electronic timbre. As a low quality digital picture, this album sounds possibly real but the tiny distortion of the electronic medium twist the expression of the composition. I admire the ability of Ledesma of creating her own sonic tool, modern music of sound art is widely connected to the sonic tools used in the composition, using unique tools create unique compositions making her composition extremely personal.

Pamela Z works varies across mediums, shifting from music composition to sound arts, and sometimes dealing with visual media and animation. Her compositions are commonly characterised by complex sampling and looping techniques, using Max Msp and sensors to build melodic material and then improvise with it. In the visiting practitioner lecture she explain that her instrument is a collaboration of voice with the computer, where she manipulate her voice with digital processes to create a specific aesthetic. Lately she has also used sensors and video input to manipulate her voice and music, for example she would wear sensors in her hands and then with expressive movements modulate the sound to mirror her movements.

As movement or dance is an important building block for her compositions, she has also shifted into doing live performance art. Collaborating with professional dancers as buto dancers and opera practitioners. Then she uses digital technology to join all the collaborators in an interactive media. The extensive use of loops make her compositions extremely minimalistic and trance inducing, she creates a continuing pulse that creates an attractive rhythm to the audience.

Pamela Z has also indulge into digital installations and sound sculptures. She used common items of life and modulated them with digital information. For example she had a baggage X-Ray machine, like the ones used in an airport, where visitor could put there own bags and items. But this X-ray machine was coded to show items that where not in the bag, specifically things prohibited in an airport, like guns and knifes. Creating a quite ironic and paradoxic piece. I also thought that the interactivity of the piece made a great relationship between visitor and piece.

Interviews are widely used in Pamela Z’s creative process. Before starting any new project, Pamela Z searches individuals to interview about relevant artistic themes or non related topics. She records these interviews and uses them for both inspiration and as a mouldable primary source for art pieces. Her piece Memory Trace (2012) uses a collage of multiple interviews she did to people about memory, and create a narrative connecting parallelism between the answers of the subjects of the interviews. I though this piece was both conceptually pleasing, due to the narrative of the piece and aesthetically pleasing, portraying voice in a very satisfying matter, developed by rhythm and repetition. Later in 2013 Pamela Z developed this idea of using interviews as sonic motifs, by composing a hybrid piece combining a string quartet and a collage of different interviews discussing the place of birth of the interview subjects. The mixture between interview and quartet music created a weirdly pleasing juxtaposition, where both interview and music had different objectives but joint together created an external effect.