Japanese sound artist and instrument designer, Makoto Oshiro explores different disciplines in his practice through technical exploration. Oshiro is currently based in Berlin and has worked in studios, labels and galleries of the city. His instruments are created with the combination of electronics and every day tools and junk. Managing to circuit bend objects and produce sound, but his work doesn’t focus just in the sonic aspect of the circuit bending but in the actual physical movement of the tool, playing with its character and trying to associate another meaning to such object.

Kachi Kachi – is a piece by Oshiro, released in Cafe Oto’s label Otoroku. The instrument of this piece was created by using Electro Magnetic Relay, that are basically switches turned on and off by a magnet connected to a coil, when current passes by the polarity of the magnet changes and the switch is turned on or off. The instrument is controlled by a 555 timer IC, that is more or less a square wave sending triggers to the switch. Oshiro consider these switches as acoustic oscillators, because the sound source is actually a small wooden pallet hitting the border of the component instead of the sound of the square wave. Furthermore Oshiro uses a Speed Xiao to send multiple digital and analogue triggers to the Kachi Kachi, this way syncing more than one apparatus and creating complex rhythms.

Mono-Poly (2017) – is a sound installation where Oshiro explores the concept of translation between media. Communicating frequency from technological apparatus such as cathode ray television and connecting it to a speaker to make the visual signal hearable. One of the previous experiments towards Mono-poly was Strings (2014) where Oshiro connects strings to a big sub-woofer and plays low frequency tones to make the string vibrate. The result of this is a mesmerising piece where the strings smoothly sync with the tone, creating a very hypnotic movement loop. Mono-poly consist of only two strings that are resonated by sub-woofer tone. What makes this latest exhibition special is that it uses 400W LED lights to modulate the vibration of the string. The light is programmed by Arduino to change its brightness and frequency, making the string fluctuate differently through out the installation.

Every instrument or device created by Oshiro eventually find its way to be used in a live performance. By combining his creations and improvising with them, Oshiro explores their sonic capabilities and creates narrative with them. From extremely complex rhythms created with the Kachi Kachi, to low powerful drones inspired from his installation work. His technical knowledge over his instrument grant him a mastery of control over them. Knowing to detail their sonic boundaries and capabilities, creating explosive composition overloaded with technicality. Some of Oshiro’s objectives in his improvisations are: Wide Dynamics, Inactive Reaction (trying to avoid the reaction with other performers) and Proficiency.

Fari Bradley and Hannah Kemp-Walsh are students and members of the CRiSAP research faculty, dedicated in sound studies and sound arts. Bradley’s currently studies the relationship of of drawing or sketching with sound and performance. Creating a set of performances that where sketched by an associate artist, with the purpose of visually mapping the sonic elements of the performances and outlook another perspective of the performance. Her inclusion of drawing and sketches in the performances led her to also experiment with visuals scores, including them in her most recent work. Bradley’s work is influenced through her background in classical musical notation, but as contemporary sound researchers and practitioners, she intends to drive her sketches and visual score far from the norms of classical notation.Her work has led her to perform and exhibit in academic institutions in the middle east and south east Asia. As she spent long periods of time in those countries, she found great inspiration in the physical structures she found her self in. Drawing sketches inspired in markets and architecture of Karachi, and then finding a way to translate it to sound.

In 2014 she created a piece/sound exhibition called ‘Variations for Rooms and Tone’ presented in Karachi, where she combined static drones with vocalist mirroring the frequencies in a room of a gallery. The performers where allowed to move through the room, creating different relationships between the tones and the drone, affected directly by the acoustic of the room. The visual aspect of the piece was of great importance to the composition, the audience in the gallery had to be static opposite from the performers but they had a clear sight of the movement of the performers. Bradley was interested in finding out if the fact that the audience could see the movement of the performers, affected the outcome or expression of the exhibition.

As visual media and literature are important factors in Bradley’s pieces, she has included phrases and quotes in the background of the exhibition. The words in the back helped the audience to connect tones with images and communicate desired messages. This messages mostly communicated feminist and social justice ideals. A recurring phrase in her work was ‘Women take back the noise’, a quite minimalistic and abstract quote that manages to stick with the audience, forcing them to seek their own interpretation.

Hannah Kemp-Walsh the other half of the visiting practitioner lecture, works with mediums such as radio and its relationship with listening techniques. Her PHD is practice based meaning that her work involves activity and events instead of the more scholar job of writing and archiving. With collectives such as Shortwave and Soundcamp, she has created festivals and workshops where she teaches listening and sound technology. These workshops have a lense in promoting feminist activity within this practices, trying to diversify this fields that are male dominated. One of her most recurring workshops is teaching people how to build DIY radios, and then with the tool find ways to create sonic art.

Her experience with workshops and collectives led her to create ‘The Right to Record’ a project dedicated to help marginated communities regarding physical disabilities, to find social justice through sound practice. The project focused in different legal processes that disabled people have to face to get government aid. This processes are full of corruption, finding multiple ways to avoid helping this communities in need. When individuals tried to apply for this grants, they where forced to conduct written interviews and test to categorise their level of disability. These interviews where corrupted by officials, writing false information on the official applications, preventing people to get the aid they need. ‘The Right to Record’ movement as its name suggest was allowing people to record these interviews to prevent corruption from happening, using sound as hard evidence. The project consisted of multiple zines and sound works that where directly projected to the corrupt organisations, this pieces had declarations from the victims of the corruption and their impact from it, mirror by sound and music to highlight the emotional expression.

The following is the link for the zine: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54fefbf2e4b034b7a7fd0a7f/t/61dc5726e6b18849f484eb84/1641830198635/PIP+ASSESSMENTS-2+%281%29.pdf

I found Kemp-Walsh approach for social justice quite inspiring. This is the first time I come across a sound practitioner using mediums such as zines too manifest a project and a social change. The structure of the project and the layout of the scene create a very strong arguments towards demonstrating government failure. Sound in this case is used to mirror the information of the zine, giving it a more emotive force. Even-though of this, the art aspect of the project does not dilute the truth and evidence of the situation. Making the project both aesthetically heavy and argumentatively accurate.

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.

Hannah Wallis is a performance and sound artist based in the Midlands. She is a founding director of the Dyad Creative group dedicated to the organisation and production of artistic endeavours, and the management behind it. Wallis is bilateral deaf, meaning she can only listen from her right ear. This has moulded Hannahs work, being in some cases a barrier toward sonic objects. In the visiting practitioner lecture, she explained how she has used different hearing aids across time and this has forced her to learn how to listen with each different hearing apparatus.

Currently she works as a curator for the Wysing Arts Centre, with a particular focus in helping people with hearing disabilities. Exploring cognitive ways to support deaf people through the art medium. In these workshops and exhibitions, Wallis has explored the concept of accessibility and the aesthetics revolving with it, specially revolving the management and administration of the practises where the medium relies.

The video above is one of the events the Dyad creative has done. Interconnection between mediums was one of the key elements of the event, this is used as great resource to make art accessible. For example if a sound installation is taking place, by combining it with a non sonic medium, impaired audiences can enjoy or address a piece through another medium.