typhoon at artspace

21st & 22nd october
artspace, sydney

TYPHOON will be an extreme and diverse series of performances drawing on experimental musics from the areas of noise, rock, improv and digital musics. The event will be a beguiling clash of overtly physical performances—highly performative, although not necessarily body oriented works. By bringing together diverse and confronting performance practices it will become clear that performativity does not lie exclusively in the modernist myths that still underpin musical performance through the concepts of gesture and virtuosity.

The events will feature two musicians from Osaka–Jojo Hiroshige and Haco. Hiroshige is best known for his part in infamous performance noise band Hijokaidan and he is a key figure in the noise and outsider rock world of Japan, both as a guitarist and through his noise label Alchemy. Haco, a truly eclectic experimentalist, will perform her ‘Stereo Bugscope’ piece which uses two contact microphones to pick up and amplify the oscillating sounds from a computer’s internal electromagnets.

Numerous debates critically rage over the nature of performance in the 21st century. These debates are especially volatile in the area of new musics, contemporary computer mediated performance and electronic based musics. Typhoon will also include a forum featuring academics and performers from Brisbane, Melbourne and New Zealand.

Jojo Hiroshige> best known for his part in infamous performance noise band Hijokaidan, Hiroshige is a key figure in the noise & outsider rock world of Japan, both as a guitarist & through his noise label Alchemy. His band was notorious for mixing extreme volume & noise with performance art practices. Extreme noise is at the centre of Hiroshige’s practice framed by barked vocals & freeform feedback.

Haco> vocalist/lyricist-composer/multi-instrumentalist/sound-artist Haco has created numerous recordings both as producer & engineer. As a musician, Haco has also given performances throughout Japan & the world. With her unique sensibility, Haco has developed a practice based on principles of post-punk, electroacoustics, the avant-garde, improvisation, post-rock, environmental sound & technology.

Joyce Hinterding> produces & exhibits works that explore physical & virtual dynamics. Her explorations with acoustic & electrical phenomena have produced large sculptural antenna works & sound-producing installations. At the heart of her practice is the exploration of the seemingly invisible phenomena that pervade our daily existence: electricity, weather or electromagnetic fields.

Fast Mountain Die> focus on creating situations & documents that evoke hiccups in the mundane routines of everyday life. An undefined & unlimited palate & repertoire is taken on board to generate communicative responses.

Lovely Midget> (aka Rachel Shearer) creates music from sounds that have been digitally stripped & scrubbed down to their raw underlying textures. These are then painstakingly reconstructed into new audio environments. As an editor/designer Shearer strives to complement visuals with ‘real’ (at times surreal) aural environments.

Robin Fox> melds sound & vision at the point of signal pathway & current. The works were composed both for sound generation & a cathode ray oscilloscope in such a way that the electricity used to generate sound is also used to excite a single light photon across a phosphorous screen. The results of this one to one audio-visual relationship are often surprising yet make sense on some deeply synaesthetic level.

Gail Priest> was originally trained in the performing arts & over the last 3 years has begun to present her work at electro-improvisation events nationally. “Duet for Gertrude & Glass” brings together these aspects as the laptop-based sound score is augmented by subtle performative actions with sonic outcomes. It is a continuation of her investigations around a mode of embodied presence within sound-based performance & installations.

Stasis Duo> [Adam Sussmann + Matthew Earle]. One of the strongest & most unique collaborations to emerge from the Australian music scene in many years, Stasis Duo are at the centre of the emergence of a new & elusive musical language.

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