Output details

Dirty Electronics - A selection of internationally significant commissions and works that demonstrate a coherent

research imperative articulated through practice. The portfolio contains audio recordings, video documentation, instrument designs and documentation, text and scores.

My research explores the boundaries between music, performance art, electronics, and graphic design and is transdisciplinary as well as having a socio-political dimension. These interests have enabled me to develop a distinctive research profile and aesthetic that I refer to as Dirty Electronics that focuses on shared experiences face-to-face, ritual, gesture, touch, and social interaction. A new piece for Dirty Electronics often begins with an idea for a sound generating device that can be built and played by more-or-less anyone and becomes a catalyst for composition. The new work is usually presented in the context of a live event and as a performance.

This holistic approach to music making has enabled an experimental practice to emerge. My research blurs the distinctions between instrument maker, performer and composer and highlights the necessity to discover and explore the musical potential of a newly created device or instrument from a naive position. Through my work I have put forward a more active participatory role of the audience/listener within a technological context and investigated new and original performance paradigms.

The resulting artefacts/instruments from this extended building process have taken on greater significance as works of art in their own right and an embodiment of a compositional idea. They have also become a form of documentation of a process or a new form of score. One particular innovation in my research has been to develop a crossover between printed circuit board, electronic instrument and copper etched artwork, some of which have become commercial products. By creating stand-alone sound objects as ‘composition’, I have contributed to the ongoing debate on music and its consumption and have sought innovative solutions to the dissemination of musical ideas. The research has had an impact across many disciplines within the broader area of the arts and in electronic engineering.