Category Archives: Chrissie

Joel Stern/Sean Dockray/James Parker (Naarm, Australia) + Chrissie Butler/Gerard Crewdson/Daniel Beban



Date and Time
RĀTŪ (TUES) JUNE 30, 7PM
Joel Stern/Sean Dockray/James Parker (Naarm, Australia) + Chrissie Butler/Gerard Crewdson/Daniel Beban


Entry
$15 presales, $20 door ($10 unwaged)

Following their Machine Listening Offsite performance at Circuit on Monday 29th June , visiting artists from Naarm/Melbourne, Joel Stern, Sean Dockray and James Parker, will perform an improvised set for self built software and buchla synth at Pyramid Club.

Opening the gig, Joel Stern will collaborate in an improvised, found sound/found object set with locals Chrissie Butler (DSLB), Gerard Crewdson and Daniel Beban.



Joel Stern is an artist, curator, and researcher. His work explores sound and listening as cultural, political, and technical practices shaping contemporary life. He is a Research Fellow at RMIT’s School of Media and Communication, an Associate Investigator at ADM+S, and was Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture from 2013 to 2022.



James Parker is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School, who works across legal scholarship, art criticism, curation, and production. He is an Associate Investigator with ADM+S, a former ARC DECRA fellow, former visiting fellow at the Program for Science, Technology and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School for Government, and sits on the advisory board of Earshot, an NGO specialising in audio forensics.



Sean Dockray is an artist and writer whose work explores the politics of technology, with a particular emphasis on artificial intelligences and the algorithmic web. He is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Monash University, a founding director of the Los Angeles non-profit Telic Arts Exchange, and initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms, The Public School and AAAARG.ORG.

Machine Listening



$15 presales via UTR

$20 door sales ($10 unwaged)

Thanks to Creative NZ and Wellington City Council for supporting Pyramid Club’s programme.

TEXT LIFTED IN FULL FROM THE PYRAMID CLUB PAGE!!

Autumn 2025: Chrissie Butler – Audio Foundation Artist in Residence

I am just back from the Audio Foundation Autumn residency with 8 hours of ideas.

The residency was open in terms of output. No external pressure to “make a thing”, just a chance to nudge some ideas into the light. After a few days of pulling a random array of instruments out of cupboards and off shelves, I settled on working with 6 organs, a prepared piano, a glock, a selection of bowls and sound makers kindly lent by Chris O’Connor and two metal trolleys.

Jeff Henderson, AF director, generously mic’ed everything up, set me up with a recording session on Reaper, we set levels and he left me to it. It is rare that the gig room at AF is unscheduled for such a long period, but the clustering of stat holidays resulted in a gig void, some time off for the AF team and an empty room for me.

It was a new experience recording in a large space for days at a time alone. It took a while to drop into that mental space where the rest of the world fades and your focus narrows to only what you’re making. I value these times out of time so much.

I didn’t really have a plan. I knew I wanted to bring home a collection of tones and drones but beyond that I just played for hours, listened back, culled the dross and kept ideas I felt I could develop. Once I had a first cluster of ideas down from each instrument, I moved everything from AFs computer to my laptop and began overdubbing. This was a more familiar way of working, layering new sounds and ideas up in real time, playing along with myself.

When I’m working like this I often take and make videos. They help me see the sound as well as hear it. Below is an example.

Huge thanks to the Audio Foundation (especially Jeff and Sam) for the invitation and opportunity to spend 8 days researching and developing new work. Thanks for making me welcome and making it easy.

DSLB Driving Creek installation live

For the month of November in 2023, Kieran and I headed to the Coromandel to be Artists-in-Residence at Driving Creek Railway and Pottery. The fruit of those 4 weeks for me was the album Driving Creek, a multi-layered soundscape mapping dawn til dusk.

For the potters-in-residence, there is a provocation to leave a piece of work. As someone who works with sound, leaving an artefact took a bit more thinking. But now Driving Creek, the album, is “installed” in the Driving Creek, the location and community. A poster (see below) with a QR code takes listeners to the album. Tourists can listen whilst waiting for the train, residents and staff can listen whilst doing the dishes, laying rails, or throwing pots. Everyone can listen for free, and for a small fee, the album can be downloaded.

The poster has been up for a few days, and we can see from the stats that people are dipping in for a listen.

If you haven’t had a listen, we’d welcome your ears. The album has been warmly received, and I think it’s the best solo work I’ve made to date.

And here’s the poster with a photo of me recording the “Down Pour” track above, using all the discarded cups.

Many thanks to Kieran for the design of the poster, to Callum for the thumbs up and to Riccardo for herding cats and getting the posters up.

The Drawing Archive – a new skirted side-project

Screen shot of new website showing an image of Bill Wood and the details of the right hand menu bar.
Screenshot of Chrissie’s website, The Drawing Archive

NEW this week!!! We have launched a skirted side-project. The Drawing Archive is the new online home for Chrissie’s sketches in the dark at gigs, images from her work in inclusive design and snaps from her daily-ish 6-minute diary habit.

The Drawing Archive is also a home for a collation of drawing exercises by Chrissie’s fav image maker, Lynda Barry and odd muses on drawingness.

If you’re interested in receiving an image (like the one below) in your inbox, visit The Drawing Archive, subscribe and the gifts will arrive. Enjoy 🙂

Half-page Batman days, residency at Driving Creek Railway, Coromandel November 2023