This site documents my art practice in connection with my music and essay writing. The genesis of a lot of the work you see here goes back to my time studying visual art at the University of Western Sydney. Sound was a big part of those studies. My approach to music is informed by the overlaps between sound art, experimental music, and mechanical motion. My studies have helped me to appreciate how the thinking that I do through writing can help my practice to develop. The connections between art, music and sound, and writing (in many different forms), is my field of practice and the space of my critical reflections.
The earliest works on this site are from my honours year (2002). Many of my previous shows are documented here however like a lot of artists my practice has always involved making far more work than I can exhibit. On this site I get to share some of that work with you.
Featured Video
Expanded Synthesis at Sydenham International, 2023
How can the synthesizer articulate a field of practice that exists between drawing, kinetic sculpture, and sound? This exhibition starts to answer that question with works that bring new material and physical dimensions to the oscillators and control voltages that are the basis of modular synthesis. The works are akin to modules that together produce an expanded synthesis in the space of the gallery. Featuring works by Vicky Browne, Paul Greedy, Joyce Hinterding, Sean O’Connell, and Laura Woodward alongside my work Atmospheric Modulations (feedback loop No. 1).
Featured Diagram
A Topography of Air, 2024
Pressure gradients form an ever-shifting topography of air, a topography patterned by the earth’s rotation on its axis and the Sun’s cyclic heating of air, land, and ocean. The pressure waves that are the consequence of the spinning earth and it’s proximity to the Sun are a tidal phenomenon with a 12 hour cycle. When the ‘noise’ of the weather is removed from the signal of cyclic heating, plotting the daily pressure fluctuations reveals a sine wave, with a maximum amplitude in the tropics, where more of the Sun’s energy reaches the surface of our planet.
Recent Posts
- A Topography of Air, 2024
Pressure gradients form an ever-shifting topography of air, a topography patterned by the earth’s rotation on its axis and the Sun’s cyclic heating of air, land, and ocean. The pressure waves that are the consequence of the spinning earth and it’s proximity to… - Blade Grass Barometer, 2024
A barometric pressure sensor weighs the atmosphere. A micro-controller and a digital to analogue converter (DAC) produce a variable voltage that corresponds to pressure changes. This control voltage (CV) is connected to a synthesizer and a servo motor. In the synthesizer barometric pressure,… - Atmospheric Modulations: Listening to the Air Through the Air (feedback)
It is 4:15pm on Thursday 25 January, 2024. I sit at my desk at my mother-in-law’s house in Comitán. Rain falls on a large tussock of grass behind me. I see it reflected in the screen of my laptop. It grows atop the…
Treatment (Fleming Street), 2022
This video documents my installation for the Cementa 22 festival in Kandos. This is the first installation for the synthesis project. It brings together kinetic and sound sculpture, light works, and synthesizers, and reflects on these materials in relation to the definitions of treatment at the beginning of this video. The space that I was working in has been largely unoccupied for a long time so the idea of treating a space is really came to the fore.
Selected Works
Expanded Synthesis – Biology and Synthesizers
When I first described my project with synthesizers, I gave it the title ‘Synthesis’. I now realise that was a placeholder. There was a word missing. ‘Expanded Synthesis’ has the benefit of being more descriptive, more philosophical, and more poetic.
Synthesis 2021 Recap
The series of videos on this page show developments during the first year of the synthesis project.
Grasping Light (2016-2017)
Grasping Light is a work in two parts; a laser on paper drawing and a video that documents how the drawing was made. On another level Grasping Light is an attempt to understand all of the materials involved in producing the work as a whole.
Drawing Synthesis, Object Synthesis, Spatial Synthesis (2021)
The synthesizer was invented in the 1960s and yet its paradigmatic place in our society and culture remains under-appreciated. This project involves creating drawing, sculpture and installation work that gives the viewer/listener an embodied understanding of the functioning of synthesizer modules.
Drawing with Ocean (2017-2018)
The idea behind this series is to create drawings by collaborating with energies in the form of sounds produced by the subject of the work (in this case the ocean).
Threshold (2016)
The work for this show was created by burning paper directly with a laser. The paper is attached to a motor that spins it at a variety of speeds. The laser tracks slowly across the spinning paper to create the spiral form.
Standing Wave (2015)
Installation shots from the exhibition Standing Wave, October 2015. These works have been produced using a custom built drawing machine and a 445nm laser.
In Perspective (2010)
In Perspective is conceived of as a technology for self-perception. The idea is that you might take any moment that you are experiencing, shrink it down and dangle it out in front of you so that you can see what it looks like from a distance.
Podcasts
A conversation about drawing with Joyce Hinterding
On 21 February 2019 I had the great pleasure of chatting with Joyce Hinterding for a couple of hours about her drawing work.
Art, autopoiesis, biology, consciousness and psychedelics: In conversation with Jason Tuckwell
This is a conversation that I had with my friend Jason Tuckwell about his work and our shared interests. The title of this post gives you some sense of the ground that we cover across the three parts of this conversation.
Film
Mental Places: a conversation with Gerald Murnane
I shot and edited this little doco on Gerald Murnane in the second half of 2014. Gerald Murnane is a writer who has a particularly idiosyncratic take on what fiction is and how to go about writing it.
Samuel Beckett’s What Where
A few years ago I shot and edited this version of What Where by Samuel Beckett. I’m writing this post now because the work has just been made available for free online viewing. What Where is very minimal and for that reason was exacting and quite involved from a technical point of view.