October 2024
Hi everyone,
If you’ve been following my activities across 2024 - documented in the posts April 2024 and July 2024 – you’ll note there’s been a lot of travel to date, both interstate and overseas. From this point on, there’s a lot more of the latter!
Ahead of my Arts South Australia travels, I spent sometime holidaying with Seann Miley Moore. Starting in Koh Samed for Seann’s dad’s 80th birthday, we then spent several days in Bangkok before exploring Chiang Mai (visiting a cooking school, downtown markets and elephant sanctuary) and Singapore, ahead of Seann’s final leg playing the Engineer in Miss Saigon at Marina Bay Sands. Check out the reels below to see some of the adventures…
Coming back to Adelaide for all of three days from August 19-22 (mainly to repack my bags with field recording gear), I then departed for the UK; first stop: Scotland.
Scotland is a place I’ve long wanted to visit, very much due to my paternal grandmother’s heritage (she was a tall, broad Scot born in Edinburgh), but also given Edinburgh’s renowned festival season, with Adelaide being a sister festival city sharing a lot of acts between them.
Hopping between several hostels (A&O just off CowGate, and St Christopher’s near Edinburgh Central Station), I caught up with a lot of familiar faces from Adelaide and Australia, particular Shay Leach, who was producing Yoz Mensch’s No Babies at the Sauna, an award winning show I’d seen in Adelaide, and now having a stellar Edingburgh Fringe season after lauded European dates. Amidst explorations of the city with Shay, we also caught various other shows, amongst them All the Fraudulent Horse Girls, featuring the inimitable drag artist and performer Cazeleon as an 11-year-old equine-obsessed girl. Further adventures along the historic streets, through various local archives and museums, by the Greyfriars Bobby statue, hiking up the infamous Arthur’s Seat (a extinct volcano overlooking the city), as well as exploring Edinburgh Castle and Calton Tower made for an enriching introduction to the city.
In Glasgow, I enjoyed a different side of Scotland, spending time in its beautiful parks and visiting Stirling Castle and the Church of the Holy Rude. These quieter moments allowed me to reflect on Scotland’s rich history and its role in shaping my own heritage – my grandmother’s proud connection to the clan Murray of Atholl (her maiden name one and the same) and the various Scottish keepsakes I grew up around in my early years alongside my grandfather’s Dutch trinkets.
A particularly special part of this trip was reconnecting with family in Prudhoe, west of Newcastle. I had the pleasure of spending time with my great-aunt (who I’d met when I was a toddler), her daughter Julie, Julie’s daughter Chloe, and Chloe’s young son, Kalani. These moments of family connection were deeply meaningful, grounding the trip in a personal sense of place and heritage.
At the beginning of September, I departed south for York, marking the beginning of my Arts South Australia Fellowship activities abroad.
A little bit of background: the title of my Fellowship was ‘Building a Higher Order Ambisonic Studio Practice’. I’ll go into a much more thorough explanation of ambisonics and my trip’s finding in a subsequent post, but in short, it’s a geometrically-based surround-sound format for creating immersive spatial audio environments, whether in speaker systems (with speakers directed the audience horizontally and vertically) or headphone delivery (in binaural format. Following my residency at Flinders’ University new ambisonic studio in 2023, I started looking at international settings that have thriving ambisonic scenes, and was recommended a number of places in the UK, amongst them the University of York.
With historical involvement in the development of ambisonics from the 1970s, the University of York continues to explore the technical and creative possibilities of ambisonics, with a current research project looking into the use of binaural-based higher-order ambisonics in virtual reality. For my own explorations as a visiting research scholar, much of my work was centered at the Arthur Sykes Rymer Studio (the Rymer for short), a fourth-order ambisonic studio in a raked-theatre seat setting.
Working alongside Technical Officer Ben Eyes, we prepared the studio for ambisonic use (running alongside the recent installation of Dolby Atmos software and speaker routing), and after which I spent much of my time reworking my piece sanctuary x mill (with Vanessa Tomlinson and Erik Griswold, developed during my April 2024 Harrigan’s Lane residency) from the base horizontal octophonic setup to a fully-enveloping experience.
Across the month, I was also able to spend time with various staff, including lecturer Matt Barnard (whose PhD on binaural composition is an amazing trove on information), Professor of Composition Martin Suckling, and Emeritus Professor Nicola LeFanu, who I had the wonderful to talk with about the legacy of her late partner, the Australian composer and field recordist David Lumsdaine. With students, I had the opportunity to present in several classes on campus and lead a soundwalk with Ben in York, exploring the diversity of the historic city’s urban soundscape.
A highlight was the presentation of sanctuary x mill at the UoY Contemporary Music Research Collective Seminar, with Trevor Wishart—an influential composer and sound artist—in attendance. Engaging with the cohort’s critique and commentary was very much rewarding and humbling, learning much from everyone’s rich insights into ambisonic technology and its creative applications.
Outside of the university, York’s historical and cultural richness was equally impactful. I stayed in Clifton with a wonderful host, Kyera and her daughter, Jess, whose home provided a warm base for exploration. I immersed myself in the city’s vibrant culture and history, visiting the Shambles Markets and the renowned Jorvik Viking Centre, which offered a fascinating insight into the region’s Norse heritage. The natural beauty of the city was equally captivating, spending time in the York Museum Gardens, and along the River Ouse, all of which brought moments of tranquility and inspiration.
York Minster left a deep impression, both in venturing to the top of the bell tower (some 250 steps) and during an Evensong service where the choir’s harmonies resonated magnificently within the cathedral’s acoustics. I also walked sections of York’s medieval city walls and visited Clifford Tower (the keep of York Castle), uncovering new perspectives on each outing. I also managed to catch up with friend Mark Horn, who I’d met when he was a music theatre student at Federation University in Ballarat (multiple Murray Bridge friends also studying there at the time), and now a manager at the York Theatre Royal, making for a delightful reunion at the local Bettys.
Beyond York, I ventured into the broader Yorkshire region.
A visit to Leeds with Ben Eyes led to a tour of the Ambisonic Studios at Leeds Beckett University, as well as encounters with various piano sculptures around the city centre, an installation by musical outfit S!nk and their Pianodrome (a purpose-built ampitheatre made of recycled piano frames and wood) as part of the Leeds International Piano Competition.
I’ve found that serendipity always strikes in unlikely spaces whilst travelling international, with this trip being no exception. Given my own interests in ruined pianos (with the likes of the Murray Bridge Piano Sanctuary and Channelling Dulcie’s Piano projects), I decided to return to Leeds for a concert at the Leeds City Museum. Attempting to put a face to a name found on the Pianodrome website, I approached a woman backstage to enquire, only to find out she was Maria Sappho, a fellow collaborator of dear exploratory piano friends Vanessa Tomlinson and Erik Griswold. After seeing incredible sets by both Maria and [NAME OF PERFORMER], I looked across to Maria during the second set of S!NK, and recognised the face of the man seated next to her. After the concert, I approached him, and asked as if struck by divine intervention, “Colin?” Learning he was Maria’s partner and working through where we might know each other from, we eventually realised that we’d had a one-on-one Zoom call the year prior (when Colin was considering coming to Australia for postgrad studies). Additionally, it turned out he was about to undertake a resident at New Adventures in Sound Art in South River, Ontario with my friends Darren Copeland and Nadene Thériault-Copeland, with whom I’d collaborated on with the Weathered Piano Exchange project and connected Vanessa and Erik via sanctuary x mill. Small world indeed!
A little further afield, I visited Marton cum Grafton one weekend for a field recording workshop with colleague Rob McKay – composer, field recordist, academic, and UKISC affiliate representative of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. As part of a open day for the project Mapping Marton Wood with NFP-organisation Chrysalis Arts Development, Rob presented a field recording workshop in Marton Wood, in which we walked a couple miles to the forest engaged in a soundwalk, and explored various field recording techniques and technologies onsite. Spending time in the forest was fascinating given its complex nature to the land around it (one of few woodlands in the area, and only about 100 years old given the historical clearing of forests for agricultural and industrial activities across the shire), with the extant species of oak and spruce providing habitat for many species of birds and insects (many of which Rob had recorded over his various visits).
Missing one of the few busses back to York on a Saturday, Chrysalis member and artist Jane Carlisle Bellerby offered to take me to the nearest train station, that of Knaresborough. Honestly a stunningly quaint station replete with suspended geranium pots and a platform-side bar, I decided to explore the village the next day, visiting the Knaresborough Castle ruins with views of the picturesque viaduct, and historic cobblestone streets. A subsequent weekend saw me visit nearby Harrogate, famous for its Victorian-era Turkish baths that I couldn’t help but indulge a visit.
Towards the end of my time in Yorkshire, I rented a car and drove eastward to the coast, first visiting Cayton Bay in blustery autumnal. A trip to Scarborough was underwhelming – the capitalist carnival of the South Bay was an immediate turnoff, and the dismal fish and chips in the North Bay – but nearby Whitby more than made up for it. I spent several hours at the haunting beauty of the Whitby Abbey, steeped in layers of Bronze Age Viking, medieval and Stokerian history (the site an inspiration for the novel Dracula). After briefly visiting the nearby St Mary’s Church (boasting an ancient graveyard) and Whitby Brewery (where I score a free pizza), I spent sometime at the Captain Cook Museum. The space, set in the former home of John Walker, under whom Cook apprenticed and lodged with, offered an overview of his training, world voyages, and the colonial legacies that followed from his travels, with a temporary exhibition focussed on Alaskan First Nations culture. Driving through the Yorkshire Moors in the late afternoon, I marveled through the descending fog at the rugged beauty of the landscape (even passing by the infamous Gothland train station featured in the first Harry Potter film), an apt setting for the end of a nourishing month.
From York, I travelled to Birmingham to continue my research and creative development in higher-order ambisonics. A centre for electroacoustic and acousmatic composition, the University of Birmingham houses the Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST), founded by Jonty Harrison in the late 1980s. The BEAST system, with 90 speakers at its largest setup, is internationally recognised as a destination for all things immersive audio, with an annual BEAST FEAST festival drawing composers and sound artists from around the world.
My time at BEAST, supported by BEAST co-directors Annie Mahtani and Scott Wilson, and technical officer Simon Smith, allowed me to deepen my understanding of higher-order ambisonics and engage with other immersive audio approaches based on local traditions and practice. BEAST’s focus on spatial diffusion practices, drawing on French multichannel techniques, offered a fascinating counterpoint to my own approaches. While their live mixing techniques prioritize real-time control, my practice leans towards automation and pre-rendered spatial processing. This dialogue of methods sparked valuable insights for my work, particularly around the element of ‘liveness’ and performativity as related to audience engagement.
Alongside hands-on work in BEAST’s state-of-the-art studios, I presented an acoustic ecology-focussed concert as part of the MiniBEAST series at The Dome, a stunning studio equipped with 24-32 speaker configurations supporting third-and fourth-order (high-level spatial resolution) Ambisonics.
Aeolian (2015-16), by Annie Mahtani
Chiroptera (2024), Nikki Sheth
Beneath the Forest Floor (1992), by Hildegard Westerkamp
Excerpt from Migration Patterns (2018), By Leah Barclay
II - from sanctuary x mill (2024), by Jesse Budel with Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson
I had the chance to experiment with high-end equipment such as the Eigenmic 64, an über expensive sixth-order ambisonic microphone.
Outside the university, I stayed at the Birmingham International Student House, connected with multiple postgraduate students hailing from around the world. Apparently, I was the first ever Australian staying there in their history, and so indulged in sharing aspects of Aussie culture with fellow BISH dwellers (the Tim Tam Slams went down a treat)!
In the wider city, I explored Birmingham’s industrial and cultural heritage. The historic canals provided a unique lens into its industrial past, while the Bullring shopping precinct, with nearby migrant and lower-socioeconomic communities in Digbeth, offered a snapshot of Birmingham’s cosmopolitan makeup and juxtaposition of wealth in the UK. Another day, I visited the famous Sarehole Mill, where a young JRR Tolkien spent many years of his childhood and derived a lot of inspiration for both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
I also ventured into the natural landscapes surrounding Birmingham. Again hiring a car for the day, I visited Chaddesley Woods National Nature Reserve, one a few remaining ancient woodlands in the West Midlands, and Wyre Forest, which boasted mix of old-growth and new-growth woods, illustrating the ecological transformation of the region post-industrialisation. The quiet autumn landscape, with fewer bird migrations than in summer, led to less productive field recordings, with my mics mostly picking up air traffic from a nearby air force base. This highlighted the regional and climatic variation in field recording environments and was a valuable learning experience, contrasting with what I might take for granted with Australian soundscape seasonal cycles.
Additionally, a brief day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon saw me visit the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Shakespeare’s Birth House, learning more about the Bard’s life around the district. A fascinating audio work in the house’s garden, It Ever Was by Dr Rosie Poebright, explored the perspectives of queer women and gender nonconformity in Shakespeare’s day, inspired by Shakespeare’s bequeathing of his clothes to his sister Joan.
Birmingham offered a blend of professional growth, fieldwork, and cultural exploration, marking the end of it a highly enriching part of my journey.
From the West Midlands, I made for London, where I stayed for a couple nights with Paul, a family friend. Being my first time in London, Paul made sure to show me around the various tourist sites, including Battersby Power Station (renovated into an impressive residential and shopping district), numerous cultural institutions situated on the south side of the Thames (culminating in the Tate Modern), St Paul’s Cathedral, Borough Markets, Westminster, Buckingham Palace, and Soho – quite the action packed day!
LONDON TEXTI cannot access or retrieve text from earlier on this webpage. My capabilities do not include browsing or viewing previous content on external sites. If you have specific text or information you would like to discuss, please share it here.
