CURATOR’S STATEMENT
COLIN BLACK

No matter where we live in the world, we all feel alone from time to time, some of us more than others, some of us to the point we can’t bear it anymore ... this collection of new works entitled Sonic Hugs is a reminder that we are not alone.

With this objective at hand, I invited nine of Australia’s most distinctive & esteemed artists to create original new works that express their interpretation of a “sonic hug.” At the time, I remember wondering, just how will these artists combine the ideas of “sonic” and “hug” into their new works? If we explore the word “hug” by itself, then we usually start to think of the following: hug … to anticipate a hug, to be hugged, to have been hugged, and that research has shown that a hug can reduce feelings of loneliness and the harmful physical effects of stress. A hug can also boost feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin, the antidepressant hormone that reduces feelings of loneliness, controls anxiety and elevates mood. Psychologically, a hug builds trust, boosts self-esteem, and creates a sense of safety, creating a pathway towards a deeper connection.

But this was not just a hug, but a Sonic Hug … then I also remembered a quote from an interview I did for my PhD with Andrew McLennan about his experiences as an ABC radio producer working with artists at The Listening Room program where he explained, “But artists don’t always do expected things …”[1] In this context, McLennan is discussing the potential awkwardness between the public media programming directives and the artist’s desire for creative, uncensored, boundless possibilities. While with the Sonic Hugs collection, there are differences (e.g. there is no overarching government programming directive other than the request to compose a sonic hug), artists both delivered works that met and challenged my expectations, all of which I found sonically highly stimulating and was touched by. What emerged from this diverse mix and treatments of the subject matter is a multi-faceted creative exploration of embrace, connectedness, and community.

If we listen deeper into these individual new works, in the order that they will be presented tonight, we can hear that with Colin Black’s Embosomed, we are exploring the light and shades of embrace, a reaching out for connection and fragility. With Cat Hope’s 7 Options (as performed by The Low Tone Orchestra), we are listening to how musicians empathise with each other during a live recording as they are “moving in and out of each other’s timbre,” in effect exploring varying degrees of sonic connections. Claire ‘Furchick’ Pannell’s Berjalan, amongst other things, reaches across cultural boundaries by using music as a type of universal language. Jim Denley’s Mixmaster Troposphere explores embracing the environment and place and is a sonic hug to the Aboriginal people (Wayilwan, Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri) who had previously gathered on the remote site in the Warrumbungle National Park where the work is recorded. Robert Sazdov’s “I Cried”Spasovden, electroacoustic compositional structure is based on “20-second sonic sections that aim to deliver 12 sonic hugs.” With David Chesworth’s Cohesion Calisthenics we are listening to the “personal experiences of embodied hugs and being in larger social gatherings, which we sometimes struggle to be part of.” In Eve Klein’s Mantra of Enfolding we imagine our first embrace and connection as a zygote in our mother’s womb. Stephen Adams brings us Close To Your Ears in which a single vocal gesture develops and is augmented with other elements to create intimacy, as Adams asks the question, “What is a sonic hug?” Finally, with Ros Bandt ‘s Sonic Hugs, we enter a personal autobiographical soundscape of tenderness that, as Bandt explains, “metamorphose into a new magical energy empowering love, kindness, sharing, community, co-operation and selflessness, a larger hug from nature and the cosmos.”

I now invite you all to open your ears to this new collection of works that affords vulnerability, speaks from different levels and dimensions and brings focus to the need for more interpersonal/social connectedness and cohesion.

-------------------------

[1] Andrew Mclennan, interviewed by Colin Black, Sydney, August 20, 2008.

SONIC HUGS
RUNNING ORDER

INTRODUCTIONS

Nick Shimmin, Stephen Adams (Live) and Colin Black (Pre-recorded)

PRESENTED WORKS

1. Colin Black – Embosomed

2. Cat Hope – 7 Options

Dr Claire Pannell, aka Furchick Pre-recorded video Introduction

3. Dr Claire Pannell, aka Furchick – Berjalan

Jim Denley Live Introduction

4. Jim Denley – Mixmaster Troposphere

Robert Sazdov Live Introduction

5. Robert Sazdov – “I Cried” Spasovden

6. David Chesworth -Cohesion Calisthenics

Eve Klein Pre-recorded Introduction

7. Eve Klein – Mantra of Enfolding

Stephen Adams Live Introduction

8. Stephen Adams – Close to your ears

9. Ros Bandt – Sonic Hugs

LIVE PANEL DISCUSSION AND AUDIENCE QUESTION / COMMENTS

Stephen Adams will be joined by Jim Denley, Robert Sazdov and guest panellist Claire Edwardes for a reflective conversation about the works and experiences of sonic connection.

ALBUM RELEASED FOR DOWNLOAD - 7:30 PM (AEST)

https://thissoniclife.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-hugs

Colin Black's Pre-Recorded Introduction

SONIC HUGS
PROGRAM NOTES

Program notes from artists in order of presentation

EMBOSOMED BY COLIN BLACK

Embosom | ɪmˈbʊz(ə)m, ɛmˈbʊz(ə)m |

verb [with object] literary

take or press (someone or something) to one's bosom; embrace:

• surround (something) protectively

With this work, musical composition and sounds combine to evoke both the sense of embrace, coming together and the emotional sense of surrounding someone or something (which can be environments, events or memories) protectively. While elements of this work contain what, at first, seems like a loss, an emergency or a fruitless longing for connection, these elements are, on closer inspection, embedded in an embosomed superstructure of connectedness.

7 OPTIONS BY CAT HOPE

Performed by The Low Tone Orchestra

This piece provides musicians with 7 different ‘ways’ to play low tones. The options are presented to each musician in different sequences and durations. The work explores the use of graphic notations as a way to encourage musicians to empathise with each other – ensemble playing shifts from being about coordination, tuning and being ‘in time’ to a more empathic and generous type of listening where moving in and out of each other’s timbre becomes the main focus of sonic collaboration. This focus means online collaboration becomes more rewarding, as latency becomes unimportant. In this recording, musicians are stationed in Perth and Melbourne, but play together. The work features a lament bass – reconfigured by Hz, rather than tempered pitch measurement, and in the very lowest ranges of human hearing.

The Low Tone Orchestra was in Melbourne: Cat Hope (sine tone generators and a.m. radio), Chloe Söbek(violone), Helen Svoboda (double bass), Aaron Wyatt (viola), Louise Devenish (piano), Jaslyn Robertson(synthesiser) and in Perth: Lindsay Vickery (bass clarinet) and Craig Pederson (trumpet). Recorded by Hadyn Buxton at the Digital Hub, Sir Zelman School of Music and Performance, Monash University.

BERJALAN BY DR CLAIRE PANNELL, AKA FURCHICK

My artistic practice primarily focuses on the genre of experimental music, incorporating field recordings and unconventional sound techniques. My work is deeply inspired by the rich cultural connections I have forged through extensive travels, particularly in Indonesia. I have found a common ground to bridge the language barrier and truly appreciate the universal language of music. Through my art, I strive to break boundaries and create a shared experience that transcends cultural differences. I prefer to travel not as a tourist, but as an active participant connecting with the local culture and people.

Through this form of artistic exploration, I strive to cross cultural boundaries through music as a universal language. My goal is to create a transformative and thought-provoking experience for all who engage with my work. For the Sonic Hugs project, I have selected a range of field recordings from Bali and Yogyakarta that I have collected over several visits. I seek to invoke the experience of walking from the urban to the rural, and then to the natural environment. This evokes memories of the people I met along the way, and the stories we shared.

MIXMASTER TROPOSPHERE BY JIM DENLEY

The originary layer of Mixmaster Troposphere was recorded 15th March 2023 with Burbie Springs, Warrumbungle National Park. That morning I played flute in a clearing where I had camped overnight, recording with two hard disc recorders, one 10 metres from where I played, the other some distance away (at the end of the audio you hear me walking towards the distant device to switch it off). The additional voiceover and bass flute part were subsequently recorded and mixed with these recordings at Kaloola Studio, Sydney.

Three Aboriginal language groups intersect at Warrumbungles. To the north-west Wayilwan is the language of Country. To the north-east, the traditional language is Gamilaraay and to the south is Wiradjuri Country. Warrumbungle is a Gamilaraay word meaning crooked mountains. People would have been meeting to play music in these extraordinarily crooked Mountains for a very long time. This work is a sonic hug to these peoples and this tradition. It's also a sonic hug, a social and cohesive co-creation, with place, Avian, and Insect musickin.

The text is:

Mixmaster Troposphere

no obstacle, energised by Sun they are Weather,

a weighty layer – fleshy catalyst of communion.

They makes independence impossible.

Air's thickness is more than anatomical cord. They constitutes soundings, audibility, corporeity.

Birthed; a litter of multiplicititlets,

Flies, Avians, fluting – buzzing, billowing – swarming as voicescape.

Catch of breath pneumatically powers syrinx, streams across Flute's hole; cutting Air.

From flesh, Sound flies upon the front edge of an advancing wave-crest of intense in-formational energies,

surrounding, ear drumming, impassioning...

Phrase Weather musicking.

“I CRIED” - SPASOVDEN BY ROBERT SAZDOV

Physically hugging and listening to music have a number of analogous health benefits. To support this, researchers have concluded that listening to music decreases cortisol levels, lowers blood pressure and reduces heartbeat, as well as boosts the production of the neurochemicals dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin (Dulie 2018; Nilsson 2009; Satimpoor et al. 2011; Menon & Levitin 2005). Similarly, hugging reduces cortisol levels which are associated with stress, and which also lead to feelings of happiness by releasing oxytocin. (Romney et al, 2023). The composition, ‘I cried’, builds on the concept that 12 hugs per day achieve real ‘psychological growth’ (Mooney 1995; Grewen et al 2023). Accordingly, the structure of ‘I cried’ is based on 20-second sonic sections that aim to deliver 12 ‘sonic hugs’ by incorporating repetition, predictable phrasing, familiar and ‘pleasant’ sounds. ‘I Cried’ endeavours to bring together these elements to contribute to positive impacts in increasing social cohesion.

COHESION CALISTHENICS BY DAVID CHESWORTH

I am interested in exploring the differences between personal experiences of embodied hugs and being in larger social gatherings, which we sometimes struggle to be part of. Activities that I attended and recorded, and which I feature here, include the local swimming pool, a barbecue, a kindergarten, interactions between politicians and journalists, kids playing, yoga breathing techniques, and, if you listen carefully, the haunting, breath-like sounds of an Australian Casuarina tree as its weeping foliage is caught in the wind.

MANTRA OF ENFOLDING BY EVE KLEIN

We begin as a zygote, a spec floating on an infinite uterine sea. Enfolded, we are nurtured entirely inside another. What develops is an intimate dance, where our growth, felt but hidden, is sustained in an uncertain space of our parent's imagination. We are a universe of possibilities, forming our first human relationships with our parent/s through surges of hormones, expansion, motion, and later, sound.

Mantra of Enfolding explores our first embrace as one of submergence. Hydrophones place us under the ocean, swimming with blue whales and schools of fish. Our parent/s seek us with sonography, soundwaves tracing our forming body, revealing our fluttering heartbeat inside grainy noise. Electronic beeps and metallic pulses of the medical environments monitoring pregnancy penetrate these moments. Meanwhile, the heartbeat of parent and child overlap, beating at different tempos, yet synchronised, body to body. From as early as sixteen weeks we begin to hear sound, firstly the beat, breath and gurgling of the body surrounding us. Later, our hearing sharpens to the external world: the voices of our parent/s reach us inside our ocean. When we are birthed into the world, we know them as belonging to us.

CLOSE TO YOUR EARS BY STEPHEN ADAMS

This work emerged from a single vocal gesture. An in-breath through the nose, held for a second or two, releasing with a brief aspiration into a humming tone that slides down through the mid-range of my voice and into stillness. It’s a gesture I habitually make as a way of releasing tension and re-settling myself. Something I’ve been doing for years without being fully conscious of it. That is, until the process of making this work.

The gesture revealed itself in an initial improvised vocal delivery I recorded of my written reflections on the ‘sonic hug’ metaphor.

As I listened to and worked over this vocal material, I found myself less and less interested in the text and more and more engaged by this vocal gesture, by the tactile-synaesthetic feeling of the grain of the breathing, and the gently exuberant sense of release of the falling tones. The mid to low-range tones and breathing seeming to vibrate against my ears and body with a sense of physical contact and envelopment, suggesting to me the warmth, sense of connection and deep acceptance offered by a good hug. The slow underlying rhythm of the gesture connecting to a slower, gentler metabolic state, when we let go of embodied vigilance and anxiety in the safety of another’s arms.

And so out of that opening exhalation and falling tone tumbled the music. An unfolding tactile sensory space of layers of humming tones and breaths and other converging and diverging sound materials. Field recordings of bowerbirds’ falling glissandi calls and of flowing water. The slowly pulsing momentum of a synthesizer’s burbling overtones and thrumming bass guitar chords. The up-close tactile expressive noise gestures of bubble wrap grazing the surface of a microphone, with tongue taps and flickering flute keys glancing across the surface.

A few palimpsest-like remnants of that original text, some sung, some spoken, appear and disappear within the humming, pulsing, resonating space, with some of the spoken word fragments triggering transitions between the work’s three phases. From emphasis on the space and exuberance of the falling, sliding tones and overtones of voice and bowerbirds, to supportive soothing vibrations of humming tones, water sounds and thrumming bass guitar, to the tactile intimacy of the close-up layering of bubble wrap and breathing sounds.

Stephen Adams, June 2024

SONIC HUGS BY ROS BANDT

In this work I have recorded recent touching and intimate sonic moments I have felt while the wars continue to rage around us mercilessly. Little by little they find their place in the world for us to share, in the air aeolian breezes, kayaking in the water of rivers, a caress, a shared glass of wine, stroking Minako’s cat, and being there when baby Lola wakes. The feelings of being part of something bigger and more public, surfaced at a local Brunswick women’s footy match and the weekly familiar Preston Market tai chi demo.

Together these sonic hugs metamorphose into a new magical energy empowering love kindness, sharing, community, co-operation and selflessness, a larger hug from nature and the cosmos. We humans so need to renegotiate how we treat eachother and the beautiful world we live in. We can do it. Sound is a barometer of all we do.

What is your favourite Sonic Hug?

My sonic hug original recordings

· Music boxes fragments (Edelweiss, La vie en rose)

· My baby granddaughter Lola waking from sleep

· Aeolian harp in my music room window

· Kayaking in a bush Dam at the Acoustic Sanctuary

· Environmental sound. Walking in the bush Magpies

· A glass of wine at The Heads, Barwon Heads

· Rain sticks used for getting babies to sleep by indigenous mothers.

· Aussie rules with a cup of tea in the lounge room

· Preston market public piano

Juno under the doona, Minako’s cat who lives next door

SONIC HUGS
THE ARTISTS

Biographical information in alphabetical order

STEPHEN ADAMS

Stephen Adams is a composer-improviser, media producer, voice and sound artist. He has created music for chamber ensembles, choirs and orchestras, rock bands, theatre (including a 65-minute acapella 'opera' for The Native Rose Music Theatre Co (1992), and an electro-acoustic score for The Opera Project’s 2004 ‘The Audience and Other Psychopaths’) as well as studio works for radio and other media. His music has been released on labels including ABC Classics, Hyperion, Tall Poppies, Wirripang, and Harrigans Lane Collective.

Stephen’s concert work Piano in a field of recordings was the selected Australian work at the 2022 ISCM World Music Days in Auckland. Afterwards for choir, radios and percussion soloist was a finalist in the 2015 Australian Art Music Awards.

Recent composer-performer projects include site-specific scores for Easter at The Piano Mill 2018 and 2019, writer-sound artist collaborative studio pieces and performances for Sydney City Libraries’ Sonic City and Late Night Library (2017, 2019, 2023) and the 2019 Newcastle Writers Festival, and diverse sound performance collaborations including Weizen Ho’s Performature-Performateur (Splinter Magic 2019,) and Post-radio Interview with flautist Naomi Johnson for The Music Box Project’s 2024 Cut Paste Play festival.

Stephen also has 19 years’ experience as an ABC producer specialising in contemporary classical and experimental music (2004-2023), including curator-producing of ABC Classic’s New Waves podcast (2007-2022) and ABC 90th birthday music archival radio series Classic 90 for 90 (2022), executive producing the ABC’s coverage and co-hosting of 2010 International Society of Contemporary Music World Music Days in Sydney and establishing and administering the first two years of ABC Classic’s new Composer Commissioning Fund (2021-23). He represented the ABC on the 2007 Prix Italia Music jury, and at the International Rostrum of Composers, (2014-2017).

[Photograph by Jen Craig, Courtesy of Stephen Adams]

ROS BANDT

Dr Ros Bandt SoundingSpaces is an internationally acclaimed sound artist pioneering new forms of sonic art, probing acoustic industrial chambers, exploring environmental acoustic sensings and soundings, devising site specific ritual performance in ancient world heritage sites, and composing and performing spatial, multi-media works. She has built sound playgrounds, sound sculptures from glass, aeolian harps and created audience interactive installations since 1977. She combines complex and electroacoustic multichannel soundfields with live performance, historical flutes, Tarhu, medieval psaltery, ancient greek lyre, amplified seaweed and seaurchins and found objects. She was the first woman in Australia to win the Don Banks Composers award and her work Mungo was entered for the Prix Italia by the ABC after sharing the sound art Australia Prize. She is published by Wergo, New Albion, EMI, Neuma Records USA, Daisart, Efficient Space, Move Records, Sonic Gallery and Hearing Places. Her commissions include Radio Beijing, Radio TRT, Radio Wakayama, Paris Autumn Festival, the Greek Animart festivals at Delphi and Hydra, Zeitgleich Austria, The Tube Munich, Studio of Akoustiche Kunst, WDR, Koln, Radio ORF Wein. Residencies include the radiophonic ABC residency in Sydney working in the anechoic chamber creating an installation Iso Nagecki simulating an underwater dive and a Double CD Isobue, Sea Whistle. In Indiana USA, she created Altars of Power and Desire, a cross faculty, collaborative interdisciplinary audience interactive 8 channel installation at Ball State University, receiving the Inaugural Benjamin Cohen Peace Prize for Innovation in the Arts.

In 2020 she was awarded the Richard Gill Award for distinguished services to Australian Music. In 2021-2022 she was recipient of the two-year fellowship for experimental and emerging music from the Australia Council. She is found between her off grid Acoustic Sanctuary, her North Fitzroy studio and Mediterranean sites. She is a prolific writer on innovative sound and founded the first searchable digital online gallery, The Australian Sound Design Project on her third ARC Grant.

www.rosbandt.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcfVr4j5SEQ

www.hearingplaces.com

[Photograph Courtesy of Ros Bandt]

COLIN BLACK

Colin Black is an internationally acclaimed composer/sound artist, having won the 2023 Prix Phonurgia Nova (Sound Art Audience Award), 2015 New York Festivals Awards (Sound Art category), 2003 Prix Italia Award and a finalist in the Prix Marulić Awards, Grand Prix Nova and the APRA Art Music Awards for his creative major works. As a result of this acclaim, Black has received multiple national and international commissions to create innovative works for broadcast and installation in Australia and Europe.

Black curator’s credits include international festivals/showcases of award-winning Australian acoustic art and radio art at London’s Resonance104.4fm, Kunstradio (ÖRF, Austria) and Toronto’s New Adventures In Sound Art. In 2013, he also curated the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sound Fix: Your Weekly Dose of Transmitted Audible Art series.

Black is a doctoral graduate of the University of Sydney, where he was a recipient of the University of Sydney Postgraduate Awards Scholarship, and has been a visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London and Northwestern University (USA). Black has been engaged as a casual academic lecturer at Western Sydney University, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), University of Ljubljana and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Germany). Currently, Dr. Black is an Adjunct Lecturer at Southern Cross University. For more information see www.colinblack.com.au

[Photograph by Ana Uvar, Courtesy of Colin Black]

DAVID CHESWORTH

David Chesworth is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer known for his experimental, and at times, minimalist music, as well as his creative soundscape design. David has worked in electronic music, contemporary ensembles and in experimental performance. His creative output often involves collaborations with other artists, especially with Sonia Leber, with whom he has created many acclaimed sound and video artworks, including Zaum Tractor, a two screen artwork filmed in Russia for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), and This Is Before We Disappear From View a sound installation commissioned by Sydney Biennale (2014).

Presentations of his compositions and installations include: MONA FOMA; Melbourne and Adelaide festivals; Ars Electronica, Austria; Paris Autumn
Festival; Edinburgh Festival; BAM's Next Wave Festival, New York; and Bang on a Can Marathon, New York.

David has composed experimental opera/performance works: three for Chamber Made Opera (Recital, Lacuna, and The Two Executioners); Cosmonaut for Melbourne Festival; and wrote and directed Richter/Meinhof-Opera, an interdisciplinary work performed at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and at Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Early in his career, David was the coordinator of the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, that was a seminal space for new and experimental music. He co-founded the influential experimental group Essendon Airport and the independent label Innocent Records. His early vinyl releases include Palimpsest with Essendon Airport and the albums 50 Synthesizer Greats and Layer on Layer.

[Photograph Courtesy of David Chesworth]

JIM DENLEY

There is an emphasis on eco-musicality, spontaneity, and co-creation with musickin (human and more-than-human) in his 'as-weather' playing. He sees no clear distinctions between his roles as instrumentalist, improviser, producer/recordist and composer.

Interested in what his music instinct might learn from language, from 1989 to 2003 he worked with the text/music group Machine for Making Sense, with Amanda Stewart, Stevie Wishart, Rik Rue and Chris Mann. Jim co-formed 180º with Amanda Stewart and Nick Ashwood to continue this intertwining of text, speech and music, releasing their first recording, Submental in 2019.

When in Sydney he’s deeply involved with Splinter; improvised orchestrating defined by its radical inclusivity. They have recorded for ABCTV and Radio and developed a number of procedural scores, some of which they performed at Tectonics Festival, Adelaide in 2016. Their second CD, a 3 CD box set recorded at Lake Mungo, MUNGO was released in 2016. In recent years much of their orchestrating has involved 'as weather' engagement with place.

Through Fire, Crevice and the Hidden Valley (Splitrec CD16) documents his deep engagement with the Budawang Mountains south of Sydney and his current major project is a new set of recordings there, and around Gadigal Country (Sydney Harbour) which is part of PhD research he is currently undertaking at the dept. of Art, Design and Architecture at UNSW. The first release in this series is In Weather Volume 1: The Hidden Valley (Splitrec LP 31), the second With Weather Volume 2: Gadigal Country (Splitrec LP 32) was released 2023, and As Weather Volume 3: Budawang Mountains (Splitrec 33), was released in April 2024.

[Photograph Courtesy of Jim Denley]

CAT HOPE

Cat Hope is an award winning Australian composer and performer who focuses on the extremes of sound – from extreme noise to barely audible delicacy. Her works have been performed worldwide by ensembles such as Yarn Wire (US), Hanatsu Miror (Fr), the BBC Scottish Symphony (UK), KNM (DE) and Norbotten Neo (Sweden). Recordings of her works are published internationally on labels such as Hat (Hut) Art, with her monograph CD Ephemeral Rivers winning the German Critics Prize in 2017. Her music has been discussed in books such as Score Writing (Thor Magnusson, 2019) and Hidden Alliances (Schimmana, 2019), as well as periodicals such as The Wire (UK), Revue & Corrigée (FR), Neu Zeitschrift Fur Musik Shaft (DE) and Gramophone (UK), who named her “one of Australia’s most exciting and individual creative voices.” She is a Professor at Monash University, Melbourne and a Fellow of the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study. https://cathope.com

[Photograph by Tom Trevatt, Courtesy of Cat Hope]

EVE KLEIN

Eve Klein’s compositions have been called vivid, revolutionary, inclusive, moving and must-see. Winner of the 2023 Art Music Award for Experimental Practice, Eve brings orchestral music into dialogue with immersive and interactive technologies for screen, art music and mass festival audiences. Eve's work has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of people globally at Salisbury Cathedral, Burning Man, New York University, VIVID Sydney, MONA, GOMA, Brisbane Festival, World Science Festival, the Arts Centre Melbourne and the State Library of Queensland.

Eve is Associate Professor of Music Technology, leading an interactive music and spatial audio research cluster at the University of Queensland. She creates artworks in collaboration with community groups, festivals, researchers, and NGOs to achieve community transformation goals. Recent projects have explored gendered and racial violence, climate change, disaster recovery and refugee rights. Eve's work, Vocal Womb, is an example of this practice, allowing the audience to explore the relationship between voice, identity and power by stepping into and directly manipulating the voice of another. The premier was called the "#1 coolest thing at MOFO 2018" (Timeout Melbourne) and "One of the must-see music/artworks of the 2018 festival... a deeply considered engagement with the history and traditions of opera" (The Conversation).

[Photograph Courtesy of Eve Klein]

DR CLAIRE PANNELL, AKA FURCHICK

Dr Claire Pannell, aka Furchick, focuses on field recordings, live improvisations and sound contraptions. She has a catalogue of music making dating back to 1987 and has contributed to the experimental communities in New York City, New Zealand, Indonesia and Australia. Claire runs Dog Park net label on Bandcamp featuring artists from across the world.

She has a catalogue dating back to 1987. In 2017 and 2023 she received a WAMI for best experimental musician in WA, and in 2015 was named as one of the best noise artists in the world in the Village Voice. Claire completed residencies at Symbiotica/UWA where she experimented with making sounds from plants, and at Motel Spatie/The Netherlands.

Claire has toured extensively including at Jogja Noise Bombing in Indonesia, USA, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, including Sound Summit in Newcastle, Audacious Festival in New Zealand, Noise Fests in USA and International Noise Conference. She has created sounds for installations (including the entrance of Mart Museum, Italy). She has composed for dance for Wingspan, WA Ballet, Tracksuit and Jukstapoz. She delivers music workshops including for West Australian Symphony Orchestra, WA Music, Scitech, Audacious Festival and was ambassador for Propel Youth Arts.

[Photograph by Jacqueline Campbell, Courtesy of Dr Claire Pannell, aka Furchick]

ROBERT SAZDOV

Robert Sazdov is a composer, music producer, and academic. His compositions and productions have received notable prizes and awards from various organizations and institutions, including: International Composition Competition Città di Udine, 'Pierre Schaeffer' Competition, Musica Nova Competition, Sonic Arts Awards, Bourges International Competition, Just Plain Folks Music Awards, and the Audio Engineering Society. His music has been released by Capstone Records, Vox Novus, Accademia Musicale Pescarese, Society for Electroacoustic Music, Australasian Computer Music Association, Sonic Arts Awards and SoundLab Channel. Sazdov has undertaken residencies at the Erich-Thienhaus-Institue, Detmold University (2012), The Sonic Lab, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen Mary University (2007), and at SPIRAL – University of Huddersfield (2023). Recently, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Applied Psychoacoustics Laboratory – University of Huddersfield (2023), Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics – Graz (2023), and The Sonic Lab, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen Mary University (2023). Sazdov's compositions have been performed at: Sydney Festival (2019), ICMC (2012; 2013), NIME (2009; 2010), ACMC (2017), International Conference on Spatial Audio - Erlangen (2014), New York City Electronic Music Festival - NYC (2014), MK-NL II Concert, STEIM - Amsterdam (2014), MK-NL II Concert, Konzerthaus Gaudeamus - Utrecht (2014), Pure Ambisonics - Graz (2015), and Insonic 2015, ZKM - Karlsruhe (2015). He was faculty member (2008 – 2013) and Director of the Spatial Audio Research Group at the Digital Media and Arts Research Centre (DMARC) - University of Limerick. He was also the co-founding member of the Film Academy, University of Goce Delchev - Shtip (2013), serving as the Film Academy's Associate Dean and was an Associate Professor of Sound and Music. Prior to taking on a position as Head of Music and Sound Design at UTS, he was a Scientific Researcher and Associate Professor in 3D Sound at the Fraunhofer Institute (IIS), International Auditory Laboratories – Erlangen, where he was also Project Coordinator of the European Commission 'Horizon 2020' funded ORPHEUS Project which investigated the production chain of object-based audio. He is currently Investigator for the Dolby funded research project ‘Immersive sound in game engines’ (2021-2024).

Associate Professor Robert Sazdov is Head of Music and Sound Design – University of Technology Sydney

[Photograph Courtesy of Robert Sazdov]

SONIC HUGS
SUPPORT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Colin Black and This Sonic Life wish to thank Stephen Adams for agreeing to present the launch of this collection of new works entitled Sonic Hugs at the People's Republic of Australasia’s Red House venue. Acknowledgements also for the enormous support received from Nick Shimmin and tech staff Matt McGuigan at the Red House for making the staging of this event possible.

Heartfelt credit and appreciation goes out to Cat Hope, Eve Klein, Jim Denley, Ros Bandt, David Chesworth, Stephen Adams, Robert Sazdov, Colin Black and Claire Pannell [Furchick] for their inspiring and creative contributions to the Sonic Hugs collection.

Acknowledgment also to The Low Tone Orchestra who performed Cat Hope’s 7 Options work. The Low Tone Orchestra members are: Cat Hope, Chloe Söbek, Helen Svoboda, Aaron Wyatt, Louise Devenish, Jaslyn Robertson, Lindsay Vickery and Craig Pederson. The sound engineer was Hadyn Buxton and The Low Tone Orchestra was recorded at the Digital Hub, Sir Zelman School of Music and Performance, Monash University.

Thanks also to Nuša Smolič for her kind permission to use her visual artwork (as it appears on the cover of these program notes) in association with the Sonic Hugs project.

This Sonic Life wishes to thank Creative Australia for supporting this project.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

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