I officially started writing about sonic art and experimental music in the early 2000s, although somehow it seemed like an activity that had always been waiting for the right confluence of circumstances. Despite lacking formal music-reading skills, I had undertaken a general music subject for my high school matriculation, which included an exam that required you to listen to a piece of music and then analyse it for a particular element: timbre, texture, rhythm, harmonic palette. I remember being particularly taken with the notion of timbre and the opportunities it posed for description. This experience of focused listening and writing seemed like a curiously pleasurable activity to be assessed on at the time. ¶ 1

Out in the real world, after several years of creative exploration as a performer and singer/songwriter, I found myself “skilling up” to become what was then called a desktop publisher, a more mundane version of a graphic designer. This development of computer skills led not only to a job at an arts magazine, RealTime, but also experiments in digital audio production that resulted in my move sideways into sound design for performance and theatre. At some point the magazine editors offered me the opportunity to write a few articles. While my background was in performance, my entanglement in the contemporary performance scene made the idea of writing about my friends and peers too awkward. But the magazine needed someone to check out this new experimental audio scene that was flourishing in artist-run galleries and warehouse spaces, and I was curious. As a sound designer for performance, I had been operating in isolation from this scene and so there was appropriate separation—at the beginning anyway—for what could be conceived of as “critical distance”, if I had been inclined to operate this way. ¶ 2

RealTime’s remit was to write from the experience of the work, with a phenomenological emphasis on the shifting relationships that emerge between artwork and audient/writer. When running writing workshops, Managing Editor Keith Gallasch would talk about the loop between the viewer and the artwork—how the viewer is changed by the artwork, and how the artwork (as something perceived) is subsequently changed by the viewer. “No rush to judgement” was a catch phrase of Keith’s, and in requesting corrections he would often ask “but what actually happened?”. ¶ 3

While not an academic journal, RealTime was well respected by the tertiary sector, because of its tendency towards “thick description” (Geertz, 1973), and because it was weighted towards the practitioner rather than the journalist or critic. Many of the writers were practicing artists or practicing artist-academics. In fact, the debate around practice-based research played out frequently in the magazine’s annual education features (see thesis chapter 4: “Ficto-criticism as Performative Research”). ¶ 4

So it is within this context that I began to write about experimental audio, and sonic art. Given RealTime’s editorial agenda it didn’t matter so much that I hadn’t been reading The Wire since birth, didn’t have a vast collection of mail-order tapes from obscure post-punk labels, or was well-read in the few sound theory texts that were circulating (although I was rapidly devouring this new information). In the meantime, I went to gigs and exhibitions and I listened. I listened and wrote. Most times I physically wrote, but sometimes I listened as though I were writing, listening to my verbal thoughts, transcribing my inner speech just for myself. And I came to the realisation that, for me, listening to sonic art, and the stream of chatter in my mind, were, and are inextricably entangled. ¶ 5

When the publication came to an end, I curated a series called "Writers Read RealTime", in which I invited a number of regular contributors to do a DIY recorded reading of one their favourite reviews. I also contributed one: I chose a very early piece in which I poetically find my way through a concert by the Machine for Making Sense. ¶ 6

Gallasch, K., & Baxter, V. (Eds.). (1994–2018). RealTime. Open City Inc. https://www.realtime.org.au

Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Towards an interpretive theory of culture. In C. Geertz (Ed.), The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books.

Priest, G. (2002). The improvising organism. RealTime, 48, April–May, 38. https://www.realtime.org.au/the-improvising-organism

Click to hear this text read by my synthesised voice.

2002. My first “live” audio performance. By now I was writing about audio art for RealTime, and people seemed relieved that someone was doing so and curious about where I was coming from. People knew me as that woman who sat in the corners of various dirty warehouses, on what ever makeshift seating was around—an old couch, a car seat, a milk crate—notebook in hand, scrawling indecipherable notes in the dark. ¶ 1

How to make the transition to being a practitioner in the scene? I didn’t quite know how people were doing this live audio laptop thing. The predominant feeling of the scene was improvisatory and ever changing. I was constrained by my technology that was optimised for accurate composition rather than ease of playing. But I had been an automatic writer since a teenage encounter with surrealism, and having survived performance improvisation, I decided that while I could not guarantee liveness in the sound making, I could perhaps tap into this nonstop stream of chatter that rose to the surface while listening. I would attempt to performatively ‘freewrite’ to my own music. I eased myself into this situation by first performing this idea at a spoken word/poetry event. Somehow it was easier to try this out on a totally unknown crowd. Then I braved the most open-minded of the many experimental music nights that were around at the time. ¶ 2

Mixing between an output from my laptop, and some home-burned CDRs of precomposed pieces, I responded with free written texts that I had the SimpleText voices of the computer speak. I wrote, sampled, repeated small phrases in a kind of glitchy semi-automatic collage. ¶ 3

I performed this three times. Quite soon afterwards I found ways to perform the sounds live, and so I let the free writing slip away. I was surprised to find that I had made a recording of this debut performance. I have recently turned this into a video, experimenting with the visual textuality and rhythms of the piece. ¶ 4

Postscript: In the two last years I have begun to explore this mode again. However, the one thing that always bothered me about this mode was the baggage that the SimpleText “computer voice” brings with it. Most notably it was used by Radiohead in their 1997 song “OK Computer”, and by many others since. Of course, it is an accessibility tool as well, and has consequently become even more familiar. What I really wanted was a text-to-speech version of myself. Finally, in 2021, this became possible through the Descript software (using the Lyerbird AI) and I now have a text-to speech version of myself. ¶ 5

Radiohead. (1997). OK Computer [Album]. Parlophone and Capitol Records.

Practice journal, March 2–3, 2019

Developing a new live performance piece/technique for upcoming gigs. Taking material from previous live sets that seem too crisp, clean, too defined as compositions, trying too hard to say something—too much figure. Sending all the material through to the returns that have a variety of filters and effects so that everything is parsed through this macro filter system. The sends are often close to feeding back, self-generating new sonic material. This creates a rope of noise, all the sounds unavoidably entwined to become a thick, new sound. ¶ 1

Macro shapes and contours…
Fill the space with internal shifts and changes.
Ever evolving, glimmering timbres. ¶ 2

Think of sound-images (as opposed to visual images—why should image be assumed to be visual?) hovering between figurative and feeling. A cross-modal look from the corner of the eye; listening with the edge of the ear… The sound-image emerging from multiple filaments entwining. The sound image holds sense, like a container. ¶ 3

When I identify a sound-image I search for a word or words for it. (1)“A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibers, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form.” (“Rope”, 2022). I research that word to see what other associations arise, what tangents branch off that may lead to a deepening of concepts—different shades and hues of words… Then these thought/concept/images feed back into the sonic feeling and figure of the work, governing ways that I am processing what I am making. ¶ 4

Live audio documentation of performance at Open Frequencies, May 2019. Video added in 2020. Video imagery is created by manipulating a micro-computerised tomography image of a braided polymer rope.

March 14, 2019

What is it to hear and make, make and hear—become all-responsive all-ears. Not just a passive receiver but a “feeder” of the sound. Feeding a fire, feeding a river. I choose what feeds in, yet I don’t always know the consequences. ¶ 5

Becoming part of the sound, growing with it—as though, as sound, I'm changing myself. The ability to change myself and my hearing, to continue to heighten my awareness. Listen to this—this bit here—hear this frequency. Can you hear that? ¶ 6

“A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibers, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form.” (“Rope”, 2022)

Rope. (2022, 4 May). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope

Video image source: SecretDisc. (2012). Micro-CT braided polymer rope 2D top view. CC BY-SA 3.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Micro-CT_Rope_HighRes_2D_Top_2050x2050.ogv

In 2019 I was commissioned by Performance Space, Sydney to create a performance for the annual LiveWorks Festival. For a few years I had had a nascent idea under the title A continuous self-vibrating region of intensities, which is a quote from Deleuze and Guattari’s seminal essay, “Rhizome” (1987, p. 22). It was from a fascination with this phrase that I was inspired to explore sound vibrations as they manifest in and through materials, specifically liquids or powders (known as cymatics), particularly those created by the acoustic and mediated voice. ¶ 1

The final result was a performance-installation created in collaboration with designer/artisan Thomas Burless. It was conceived as an environment comprising kinetic sculptural instruments that were activated either acoustically or mechanically (via amplification) by myself and two guest vocalists (Caroline Connors and Sonya Holowell). The performance premiered at Performance Space in October 2019. ¶ 2

I used this project as a vehicle to explore auto-ethnomethodological practice-journaling (Skains, 2018 - see theory analysis: chapter 4), exploring the language that assisted me in the development process. ¶ 3

Practice journal, May 25, 2019

What are we doing?
Manifesting the mechanics of things that have become so hidden with digital technology. A naive scientism…playful in its exploration of cause and effect… There are far more complicated and sophisticated ways to do things, but this is about breaking things down to basic elements and ideas, manifesting the invisible through materials and surfaces…(See module (iii): Surface Friction) ¶ 4

July 13, 2019

Playing with medium to small speakers wired serially.
Thinking through the spatialisation and separation of sounds, through the different sized speakers and materials, delineating the frequencies of sounds accordingly, overlapping to make the space a kind of sonic tangle. A drone and vocal tone that can be overlapped in any arrangement—recorded live as a small loop. Eventually I play the whole table. A composition of material spaces… ¶ 5

July 17, 2019

It’s interesting thinking through the sound design as a set of schematics—speakers, feeds, inputs and outputs—a “living” system… Holding a world in your head and trying to work out what set of systems will make the world function, come alive…a garden of audio objects…tangled leads; veins and vines; tubes and valves… ¶ 6

July 21, 2019

Did I write about the Institute for Non-Empirical Results? The desire to make things that are artistically inventive but not rigorously scientific. I think of the notion of art as defined by Noë (2006)—about reorganising perception. Science is about explaining perceptions. There is, of course, a crossover, because by explaining you might reorganise them, but the intentions are still slightly different. To reorganise [in the context of art] may generate more unexplained things… ¶ 7

Thinking about my the tweeter piece—small, pointillist. Pixelated voice, cut up into short bursts—little ice cubes of sound in each glass. ¶ 8

Aug 4, 2019

Using sidechaining to cut up the voice. Is there sidechain thinking?(1) Sidechaining is an audio processing technique where you route an audio track (or tracks) to an effect or filter so that the effect is essentially triggered by the audio when it reaches a set threshold. ¶ 9

…Maybe sidechain writing is in fact what I am doing with this research. Theory is always filtered through your own subjective reality: ping-pong delays—reiteration + reinterpretation; tight EQ’s, low- and hi-pass filters cutting out whole sections of ideas. Perhaps EQ-ing is setting the field, defining which frequencies we like, those we don’t… ¶ 10

I notice that in these journal excerpts I am cycling through aesthetic, technical and theoretical thinking. In particular, I am taken by the idea that my ficto-critical approach is a way of subjecting theory to effects, filters, and compositional structures. ¶ 11

I conclude this section, with a short excerpt of the “tweeter” piece that is described in process here—a six-channel composition played through 18 small speakers. As the speakers have visual ways of expressing their activation, they create a kinetic, audiovisual ecosystem, illustrating the multiple transfers of sound energy—acoustic to digital and back to analogue signal again. ¶ 12

(1) Sidechaining is an audio processing technique where you route an audio track (or tracks) to an effect or filter so that the effect is essentially triggered by the audio when it reaches a set threshold.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Noë, A. (2016). Strange tools: Art and human nature. Hill and Wang.

Skains, R. L. (2018). Creative practice as research: Discourse on methodology. Media Practice and Education, 19(1), 82–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2017.1362175