Masters & PhD students showcase, featuring performances and fixed media works by Charlotte Bickley, Rhobet Blackburn, Jordan Henderson, Stevie Jones and Bowen Wu

Jordan Henderson – Breathe

Rhobet Blackburn – Untitled

Stevie Jones – Transducers

Charlotte Bickley – Pool Party

Bowen Wu – Birds Market

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Programme notes:

Jordan Henderson – Breathe

Breathe is a semi-improvised work for voice and audio-visual media in which both performers, human and computer, attempt to understand how the other breathes. It is made with Supercollider and Unity. Each section of the work is defined by a data mapping that takes information the computer has and uses it to control some parameter, whether sonic or visual. These maps are interpolated across at a rate powered by the total number of breaths the performer has taken so far. Having studied in both the classical and sonic arts tradition, as an audience member Jordan has always felt sonic art’s performances lacking in comparison to instrumental music, when compared to the visceral immediacy of some early music. As an attempt to address this, inBreathe the visual element is taken down from its usual cinematic projection and placed onstage, as another performer. The hope is that the performers merge into an ensemble that the audience find themselves pulled into, where the sound is no longer the focus of attention, but a withdrawn sensory organ used to understand our bodies as we attempt to breathe together.

Bowen Wu – Birds Market

Birds Market is an audiovisual live performance piece that processes both image and sound captured from a bird which I domesticated as a pet in China. The initial idea came from my childhood: the bird market used to be my favourite haunt, and bird sounds remind me of that happy time.