He sits there, preparing breakfast in the sun. The wall of the house is the back of his chair; his seat is the asphalt. Snow White bread balances at a challenging mathematical angle. The strawberry jam is thick, gelatinous, as easy to smear as a jellyfish, or a liberated viscous organ; it is clotted and resistant to reduction. I can see his thumbnail through the tram window, long and ending as the blunt end of a butter knife might. Appropriate, as the thumb is his only utensil available for sandwich construction. The clot is distributed across the surface with an awkward dexterity. That shit is sticky. The knuckle looks arthritic, aged, impractical for the privileged evenness that correct spreading requires. It will do.
I am on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land, otherwise known as Melbourne. A taxi ride transported me across the city to where I’m to stay, a co-living hotel. It’s an interesting place, a multi-level complex that aims to create some sort of community atmosphere, hosting regular communal events and activities. I can’t make my mind up as to whether it’s a distasteful way to monetize the communal experience, or a thoughtful way to decrease alienation and disconnection for the people who are living semi-permanently in the complex anyway. Maybe it’s both.
Three days of rests, repairs, and admin. The Monday is a write-off after the overnight transit; I arrived in the city just after 7am. The next day is slightly more enlivened. That evening, I learn to ride the trams. A wonderful form of transport that warms up the sound world with bells, a hefty bass rumble, and a hushed track-clatter. I go to Bar Open.
People just meander from the path to the side of the tram; all traffic stops. I don’t see any wheeled vehicle cutting through on the inside; for a moment the road is pedestrian. Back home, people get apoplectic at the installing of bicycle lanes; I can only just imagine how beetrooted their complexion would become at such liberal movement on such precious roads.
The Make It Up Club is a local institution, running now into its 28th year, a weekly experimental music event held every Tuesday at Bar Open in Fitzroy. We’ve played here a couple of times, the last being 15 years ago, and unfortunately couldn’t make it work for this trip. But to not attend while here would be remiss, and it was truly worth the effort. Headlining is Kae Takahashi on solo bass, fully immersive, unrestrained, and bombastic, interwoven with a Butoh-styled stillness. Impressive.
More wonderful and unexpected was the reconnection with Cher Tan. Cher organised a show for us in Singapore 20 years ago, and here she was playing a noise set with Pete, an equally welcoming and interesting cat. There were other reconnections, people from across the years, whose paths we’d both crossed at some point in the past. It made the night quite special.
Cher was playing the next day at The Last Chance with their Gameboy/grindcore band ESP Mayhem. A mighty fierce and intense five-piece, three on keyboards, a monster of a drummer, and Cher on a microphone. Blistering. This was followed by another set from Kae, more compelling than the night before. If I were to choose between the two nights, then this one takes priority, it was just more of everything!
The day before I leave for the Wadawurrung Land / Geelong show, I hear that one of the other band’s members has received an injury, and are no longer able to play. Snatching success from the jaws of defeat, two acts step up and into the spot made available on the stage; the show goes on.
The journey is straightforward, as is the settling into that evening’s digs. The venue is a simple five-minute walk away and is Medusa Bar, a beautiful brick longhouse down the end of an alleyway. First up is The Grimwoods, delivering sophisticated pop tunes, a delightful combination of HoodooGurus meets Talking Heads. Next is KalaMaya, who traveled down, especially from Melbourne, to play. A duo of one producing electronic beats, textures, and one skilled drummer! A crackle of tension and release, it’s an improvised set that winds its way to completion. I follow, messing up the stage in the way that I do best. Sometimes, when you finish, you get a sense that what you aim for doesn’t really land. That was my feeling this evening. Yet these things aren’t worth talking about afterwards to the people who genuinely enjoyed what they saw. Brains lie (as in personal reflection), and it’s not my place to compare my notes with others. It is good enough to trust them.
Friday is big travel. I start at Geelong and end at muwinina Land / Hobart. It is this show that kicked off the entire tour. Earlier in the year, I fired off an introductory email to MONA, roughly saying, “This is what I do, maybe it might interest your gallery?” Several months later, I received an email with an invitation to play as part of their regular programme. MONA also run the festival DARK MOFO, and that is happening simultaneously.
I travel to MONA by ferry, a stunning way to start the day, and it’s my first chance to see the actual landscape of the city, as I arrived in the dark last night. Hills and houses are the scarf that wraps around the neck of this harbour. Arriving at the pier, I am directed into a long tunnel that takes me into the heart of the hill onto which the gallery is built. I’m early, so the gear goes into storage, and I have 90 minutes to explore.
There’s a lot to take in. It feels sprawling, and disorientation finds me quicker than I find my bearings – a room that contained ever-smaller rooms, a library with walls of blank white-paged books, a reflective pool of oil, more tunnels that thunder with drones, and a most magnificent space that hosts works by the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Truly breathtaking in scale, paintings bigger than buildings. It is the most satisfying display to take in as my viewing time runs out.
The stage is prepared, the plants have arrived, and I assemble the equipment in the container to present my offering to the audience on the lawn. The space though feels transient, a venue in between locations. I make a point to be as open as I can, lock eyes, and ensure contact. And people remain. I’m even able to coax folk into the spare space on the stage to dance as they feel appropriate, and they do. The whole time, the sky is heavy, spittle from the clouds hints at a downpour. I finish with perfect timing — two minutes later, the sky opens in full saturation. Post-show there’s no natural space to mingle with those that saw me play, but now on the ferry home a few people make the connection and we chat in the half light.
Next day, the first task is washing. I am travelling with very few options, and it’s important to remain on top of the basic domestics. During the arvo, I take a walk to explore the free exhibits on the DARK MOFO program scattered around the city. My favourite is Trunkman, by Xiyue Cici Zhang. A show that is the polar opposite of DARK MOFO and MONA’s Gothic, edgy aesthetic. Zhang’s work is bright, playful, speculative in vision, and considers a future somewhere different from the dystopia we’re constantly told to expect in stories. It is a vision of a future being, part human, part plant, part something quite unpredictable and unknowable. There is not a hint of cynicism in the show. This is the sort of art I want to head towards.
From a rolling window, the view goes all the way to the Moon. It is so full of itself, I watch it settle down for the day, encouraging the Sun up in the opposing direction. There’s horizons to the left and right, I feel as if I am wearing the space travelers as earrings. Terrestrial mist lifts as our rock turns towards the light. Night is replaced by long, shadowed fingers stretching out in awakeness.
This train is southbound to Newcastle, Australia.
———
One round of a week has passed, from Monday to Monday on the TRIO tour of the southern landmass. It’s taken this long to find this time to write.
It’s not uncommon, at the start of a major project, to have feelings that ricochet from exuberant enthusiasm to wobbly confidence. The greater the wait, the bigger the swing. So it’s fortunate then that my first show is on the first night after the first full day. Distraction redirects worry, focus is found, there’s work to do, and months of preparation and planning are now converted to action.
Show number one is at the Cave Inn Experimental music night, in downtown Brisbane. The Inn is a pizza & beer joint in what seems like a semi-industrial section of the cities CBD. I do not think many come here by accident. Arrival is intentional. It is a trans-welcoming space in an area of panel and paint shops.
The audience is hearty and attentive. I play first in a choice to bookend the evenings drummers at each end of the show. It’s a good first performance, cauterising any persisting doubts I may have entertained earlier. I have a freshly plucked mushroom from a roundabout in Tingalpa as a bandmate, and it certainly brought the magic. The second act is solo, leaving me with the impression of J-Pop-with-guitar-solos-by-The-Shaggs; the final act is a jazz-metal trio from Sydney, sax/gat/drums, they have made a massive road trip just for this night. They are robust, tight, and forthright. Tomorrow they make the return trip.
———
I have no idea what shape the city takes. This bus could simply be traveling the insides of the belly of a glowworm cave for all I know. The streetlights dispense tight conical brightness, and the blackest scarf of night sits upon the lamp poles’ shoulders. I see the inverse silhouette of houses, evidence of our arrival into habitation, floating rectangles of illuminated glass, and lace in this black and wet night. This is Lismore, the destination for this bus, and my show. It seems to be a city of water and thunder.
I am collected by Michael, and swiftly enfolded into the lovely creative community that circulates the venue/gallery Elevator ARI. People gather into chairs and cushions as the first act, Noise xhurxh, assembles. It’s an open invite band. A message is sent into the ether, or at least a chatroom, announcing a show – who then turns up is who turns up, that is the band for the night. There are a collection of acoustic and electronic instruments, and the boundary of stage/audience is broken when one of the performers shares his electronic machinery with this watching audience. The watcher becomes performer. The P.A funnels hums, glitches, effected voices, drums punctuate and rattle inside it all – it sounds perplexingly Australian.
Can we call Noise xhurxh a community project? I think so. But something like this is made more possible by having regular, welcoming, and dependable access to a space – that space is Elevator ARI. The venue/gallery has been functioning for a number of years now. It was drowned in a massive deluge several years ago but has been reactivated with funding, enabling the installation of measures to enhance its flood resilience as protection into the future. Surely, this provides security and stability of space for the community who utilise it. I hope it is unlikely, with that sort of civic investment, that the doors are going to shut any time soon, at least by political administrative means, places like this are essential.
After the show I camp out in a studio/shed, I have a short sleep. I am introduced to a digesting, and wild, carpet python living, currently, in the overhead beams of the shed. I’m told it’s safe. I don’t think I’m worried, I’ve just never spent a night with one. I later discover that the main impediment to sleep is a crowd of hungry mosquito, but eventually it must become too cold and they disperse. I sleep four hours and then catch a the early Thursday morning shuttle-bus back to Brisbane.
I’m transported away, the city still holding tight the cloak of invisibility, this time it’s a tangled shawl of fog, cloud, and dawn.
— — —
Photo by Ben Shannon
I return to the city to present an ‘Introduction to vegetable.machine.animal’ to PhD. students at the Queensland Conservatory mid-afternoon. I follow on after a fascinating presentation from Sami performer, Hilda Landsman. At times, concepts from my work mingle alongside ideas she discussed, yet at other moments in the discussion, I point out that I think my work is aimed more at ‘western’ cultural perspectives – in that I mean that there are many examples of Indigenous cultures who have expressions of human life inextricably intertwined with the non-human. I reflect on my personal cultural background – that concept has been a void.
On the bus ride to Lismore, I was contacted by Leighton, who at very short notice offered me a spot to perform at an event he was hosting the next day. It was confirmed Thursday mid-morning. So, with that new addition in mind, I uber across the Story Bridge to the Institute of Modern Art, the longest running private art dealer gallery in Australia. It is an evening of quirky Pop, of which I qualify my engagement as being POPulated by microbes. I am given freshly collected mushrooms and toadstools from people who saw me play on Tuesday. These become my bandmates for the night. But they are initially cantankerous and withholding of voltage. It is an awkward beginning, but midway through the voltage picks up, and the set tumbles along swimmingly.
— — —
Fridays show is as far from the shiny dealer gallery as you could get. It’s a squatted gig organised by ATOPOS, underneath the M7 offramp on the main motorway to Ipswich. I would never have found it without assistance. Before any equipment arrives, the site is checked to see if it is the home for any rough-sleepers, it looks like it has been in the past but not tonight. Drums, speakers, and everything else is lugged across grassy flood banks, avoiding the boggy slush hiding under the grass. Just before darkness descends, the generator arrives, and all equipment flashes into life. Sounds are checked as 16-wheelers thunder overhead. The first act is deep under the bridge. In the almost pitch black, the only visible light is the reflection caught from the surface of a mini-lake of surface flooding. It adds nothing to where we crouch. An electrical device makes a cymbal sing continuously, a violin is played quietly, almost imperceptible at times, and moving through the darkness is a voice singing something like a lullaby in Czech. There were maybe 30 of us trolls under the bridge for the performance. I’m second, playing my fifth show for this week (I also played the Saturday, back home, before I left). The night has truely fallen, all I can see are attentive silhouettes, I have a bromeliad for a bandmate and it is interestingly active even though the sun has long gone – many photosynthesising plants go ‘quiet’ after dark – bedtime, I guess. Third is an electronic set, heavy and repetitive irregular loops, the performer crouches gargoyle-like, hunched in intensity, belching a hefty bottom end from the gapping maws of speakers. Finally, a duo of improvised clarinet and electronic and irregular tabla play, a groove is suggestively hidden in the pattern recognition of the mind. People have found it and are swaying away.
I watch planes pass over, flying foxes settle in tree tops, and I feel the weariness of the first week settle in satisfaction.
The show packs up, and we do the cross-country run with gear back to vehicles, then back to home.
Thanks to: Ben Shannon, Boddhi, Yvette of ATOPOS, Queensland Conservatory, Leighton and Sandra, Institute of Modern Art, William, Michael, Swerve, Shaun and Harriet
With thanks to CNZ for the funds to make this possible
Electrical Minzu 35, by vegetable.machine.animal [vma] : a site-specific recording project, undertaken during October/November 2025, while on residence in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan.
Between the laneways off Minzu, Xinyi, Jinhua, and Chenggong Road is Ting Shuo Hear Say, a space that has sound at the centre of its purpose. For two months vma and DSLB called this residency home and a base for musical exploration, connection, and touring.
In these narrow thoroughfares that weave between the main roads, green-space is rare. Yet people install potted greenery to soften the concrete and marble, and wild-seeded plant-life thrives in the gaps and cracks. At these potted assemblies, and in close proximity to wheels of scooters and feet, vma would connect the leaves of Eternity Plants, ferns, and other flora to the modular synth via sensors. These sensors detect invisible voltage, bio-signals, inside the plants, signals that flow into the circuitry of the synth, converting the imperceptible electrical fluctuations into sound.
The environmental sounds audible to human perception are also, simultaneously, recorded. Conversations, dogs, vehicles, silence, jet fighters, and echo. The sonic interpretation of the internal world of plants, and the sound world of these laneways are then bound together, capturing moments of multiple lives lived in real time, seemingly seperate yet intimately connected.
This project takes place in public spaces: a cafe frontage, outside a Community University Project, in the carpark of Ting Shuo, and at the entrance to a local electrical repair shop. People were curious, asking questions, and were interested to listen to and interact with the process during the recording sessions. These electronic sounds, interpretations of the invisible aliveness of plants, offered an unexpected shift in perspective. Via the ears, this small part of the world just got a little bigger.
Only one recording contains overdubs. Early on in the process additional percussion was added, and then mostly removed as it added very little. There are also pre-recorded sounds stored in a sampler on the synth that were gathered during the residency; the strings of a Guzheng, the percussive sounds of tables and water containers, the plasma arc of Hsinchu artist Kai-Yu Lin’s Somatic Plasma Resonator – these sounds are all triggered by plant voltage.
Electrical Minzu 35 is released on digital, and physical [CD], format. It is available for purchase via Bandcamp and Subvert, and at shows.
Thanks: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Nigel Brown, and Esme, at Ting Shuo Hear Say. Te Kōkī/ New Zealand School of Music for use of studio. Creative NZ for funding. Kai-Yu Lin for the sounds from the Somatic Plasma Resonator. William at Cafe Bar, Fangi Yi Liu, Chen En He, OOOnie, and Cia Himiân Lí in Tainan. Also: Lars of Colour Domes, Immanuel Dannenbring, DJ Rex Chen & Buddha Tiger Dog, Reuben Zahl, Chang Deng-Yao. Made Mantle Hood at the TNNUA, Tainan National University of the Arts. The local 7/11, and thanks always to Chrissie xxx!
We leave early in the morning. We came Hualien to play a show at a cute cafe called Night Cruising, at an event called 電路萬段 Electric Road. We met wonderful people and felt welcomed by their enthusiasm.
From the train window, evidence is still visible from Typhoon Ragasa’s recent visit: A super-typhoon that slammed into the Taiwanese east coast, Hualien County, only weeks ago, in September.
There are tears on the hills from slips, some of the scars are massive. Roads built on the side of river banks are broken at right angles, as the force of the wash undermined any idea of structural integrity. There’s also human-made assemblages of rocks, boulders, and concrete structures waiting in place to be used to repair some of the damage. There’s also spontaneous hillsides of elephant-sized stones washed down from torrents, thrown violently as if weightless to the might of water.
The riverbeds are occupied by machinery. Diggers and graders assemble to remove and distribute the debris. They look like tiny toys in these causeways of dry braided rivers. But Typhoon Fung-Wong is on the way, and it will blow the dry away.
The news yesterday says the super-typhoon has just left the Philippines, with nearly one million forced to evacuate, and a shit-tonne of damage left in its wake. It is the 25th typhoon in 2025 to impact the Philippines.
Typhoon Fung-Wong in the Phillipines
Hualien County is on high alert from incoming Fung-Wong. Less than two months ago, Typhoon Ragasa smashed the region, bringing death, injury, and destruction. Entire neighbourhoods were submerged after barrier lakes, naturally formed obstructions (think dam) in the mountains, breeched, sending water, mud, and rock at all that lay in its path.
Ragasa in Hualien, September 2025
We met a teacher/artist in Fenglin in a super-friendly coffee shop. She tells us how her school was devastated by Ragasa. Classrooms clogged by mud, resources ruined and destroyed in the aftermath. The clean-up is ongoing, and nothing is normal. Classes haven’t resumed, but the teacher returns to work to continue with the clean-up. She also shows us some of her artwork, illustrations for a book she is writing to help children manage and express the intense emotions they may be feeling. Her attention to care is evident. And finally, more personally, she shows us a video on her phone, a clip she filmed after they had evacuated upstairs, of the torrential floodwaters surging down the streets past her family home six weeks ago. She points out cars, appliances, and other items that float past in the deluge.
“Don’t Rain Anymore” Shizaodai– thank you for letting us share your art
We also hear the repeatable story of civic mobilisation and mutual support post-disaster. Ordinary people who voluntarily head into damaged zones to help out with cleaning, repairing, and bringing essential skills and compassion for others. Ordinary empathy is an incredible resource, worth more than all the gold and riches.
Video of Ragasa impact in Southern China
This will be my first experience of a typhoon, but here, it is an ongoing and seasonal experience for Taiwan. That said it is now without question that the frequency and intensity of these storms is increasing. The meteorological projection, for this part of the world, is that the ongoing warming ocean will continue to exacerbate the extremity of the storms. And you can’t move an island.
I live on an immovable island at a safe-ish distance for most of these sub-tropical events – for the moment. But change has arrived whether we like it or not. The impacts are with us. Back home in Aotearoa, the recent fires of Tongariro are still smouldering. And the evidence says the fires are more frequent, as are droughts, the winds, and rains. To top this off, we have a government who are acting like a bunch of slap-headed fuckwits in relation to any policy responsibility towards the mitigation from the impacts of a locally, and globally, changing climate. The islands are fixed in place, the change comes to us.
Later: I’m about to press publish. The typhoon arrives in about 9 hours. Friendly folk we have met over the last few weeks are telling us to be careful. But when we look around the laneways it all seems quite relaxed. There almost nothing I can see that indicates that people are especially worried. The only precaution I spot is that a local joss paper shop has cover his merchandise with a single tarp, and then fixed it to the ground with plastic rope and a brick. But best I don’t get deceived, the locals are experts at living with these storms. We will see what the morning brings.
It’s been a fair while since I hit the road. And with that said, I’m really excited for the coming months of shows around the length and breadth of this motu. I still think live is such an essential way to experience music. Information is conveyed in the moment that can never be captured to record. There’s a bunch of place I’ve never played and it’s a real privilege to get back out into the provinces.
Immense thanks at the outset to all those that have helped out with practical efforts and encouragements.
Massive thanks to the wonderful artist Fergus Nm who is the creator of this brilliant image on the poster. [By his stuff]
I have a nice swag of merch with me, the new album, the book SOUNDBITTEN, and a bunch of other skirted releases.
July Thursday 17 – House Party, Patea – with Jack Tamakehu & Unknown Rockstar Friday 18 – Last Place, Kirikiriroa/Hamilton – with Moon Hotene and Halcyon Birds Saturday 19 – Instore – Flying Out Records, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, 2pm Saturday 19 – Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland – v.m.a with Taekyung Seo, O/PUS and Oksen Ox Thursday 24 – Common Room, Heretaunga /Hastings – with Invisible Plain Friday 25 – Snails, Te Papa-i-Oea./Palmerston North – with Powers, S.D.W. Saturday 26 – Porridge Watson, Whanganui – with XRVR & ROC///OPT/ Sunday 27 – Common Ground Presents, Pae Tū Mōkai/Featherston – with indigogue browne Thursday 31 – Brayshaw Park Chapel, Te Waiharakeke/Blenheim – with Twin Rudders
August Friday 1 – Space Academy, Ōtautahi/Christchurch – with Cuticles, and Haunts Wednesday 6 – Te Atamira, Tāhuna/Queenstown – solo Friday 8 – The Crown, Ōtepoti/Dunedin – with HōHā, Sewage and Murgatroyd Saturday 9 – Threes and Sevens Records, Waihōpai/Invercargill – with Murgatroyd and Hattford
The followin,g texts formed the body of the – held at the GUEST exhibition on Saturday 14 July, 2025.
I was thrille d to be able to facilitate this conversation. It had actualu ly been something I’d been wanting to do for some time, to hold a public discussion regarding ongvuzBoing interspeciesness at the intersection of my creative practice, as well as from an anthropological, and scientific ecological perspective. It felt like we were all ta lking about something very similar, but from widely differing perspectives.
Immense thanks to Julie and Eli for letting me share their texts here. kieran
Kieran Monaghan The moment this journey really began for me was when I read the 2012 article “A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals” by Scott Gilbert, Jan Sapp, and Alfred Tauber. The piece, published in the Quarterly Review of Biology, proposed that the human body isn’t a singular entity, but a collective—more like a city. For example, bacteria. Elsewhere, certain bacterial groups may enhance our immunity, sterilze my immune system of all these organisms, my immunity fails, and my demise quickly follows. These organisms don’t just livqe in us; they’re part of us,. inversely, we are part of them. The idea that “I” need them—that identity and health are inherently co-created—shifted my thinking.
Working as a nurse at the time, this concept of interconnected health echoed strongly with the holistic approach integral to the Primary Health Care facility I was employed with. It validated the view that personal, local, cultural, and environmental factors interact constantly with wellbeing and illness. The implications extended beyond healthcare—it challenged the individualistic framing of the self, so prevalent in capitalist thinking. People are not just as individuals, but beings shaped by a web of interactions and relationships.
At the same time, my main creative outlet was performing as a drummer and vocalist in the duo *mr sterile Assembly*. While I had these nerdy fascinations with biology and interconnected systems, I had no idea how to merge that with my art. The worlds felt separate.
By 2021, my life was shifting, certain events had disrupted any assumptions I held about my future. I found time to dig deeper into the idea of blurred boundaries between human and non-human lives. Thinkers like Donna Haraway, Karen Bakker, and Timothy Morton expanded these ideas for me. Haraway’s 2016 book Staying with the Troubleparticularly stood out, merging technology, anthropology, science, and art. She introduced the concept of *Worlding*—a process of collaboratively making the world with others, emphasizing interdependence and co-creation. It resonated. It felt like a conceptual framework for how to live, think, and maybe even make music. It’s a bit like living with a gut-biome.
By total accident, I stumbled across an album called Worlding by Eryk Salvaggio, who named it after Haraway’s idea. Salvaggio created the album using a modular synthesizer and mushrooms. Salvaggio referenced research suggesting that mushrooms communicate through voltage spikes—an underground electrical language with repeatable patterns. He directed these signals into a synthesizer, letting fungi “speak” through sound. “Sound is just what happened afterward,” he said.
Though I’d never really liked electronic music, this felt different. It felt organic, alive. I needed to understand how it worked.
Learning modular synthesis was a steep climb. It required new instruments, technologies, vocabularies, and expectations. Luckily, Te Whanganui-a-Tara has a vibrant experimental music scene. I was able to learn from others who had already gone down weird and wonderful paths in sound.
A pivotal piece of gear for me was the SCION, a biofeedback module developed by a small Scottish company. SCION converts voltage from living organisms—plants, fungi, even humans—into signals that interact with modular synths. While biofeedback in music isn’t entirely new, it’s mostly remained in academic or niche circles. A lot of what I found online was either too esoteric or framed as novelty—hippies playing flutes “with” plants or biosignals shoehorned into club tracks.
Nothing felt like a true dialogue between human and non-human sound-makers.
That’s what I was looking for: something mutual. “Mutual” might not be the right word, but it gestures at a goal—making music with living non-human things, not just about them. I wanted the plants or fungi to be participants. Their voltage rides on sound waves, and I respond in real time. The results are unpredictable, never the same twice. It’s collaborative, co-created, greater-than-human music.
I’m not claiming to give plants or fungi a “voice,” or to interpret what they’re trying to say. I’m not qualified to comment on their intelligence, either—others are doing that work. What I am doing is creating conditions where non-human life can appear in a shared sonic space, almost like a participation, where both of us—human and other-than-human— shape the music.
Three main reasons keep me coming back to this project.
First, I think of this as Anti-Dystopian music. It’s not naive or utopian. It acknowledges damage, but refuses to give in to doom. It’s music that suggests other futures—futures that aren’t built solely through human frameworks. It’s deeply responsive, unpredictable, and impossible to replicate. Unlike AI-generated sound, it requires aliveness. It’s not designed to mimic or replicate, but to explore what happens when humans and non-humans literally play together. It’s art that needs life to exist.
Second is the Climate Crisis. Listening is a powerful act. People on the margins often say their first demand is to be heard. Listening leads to empathy, which can lead to action. Many still see the “environment” as something external to humans. This project invites listeners to hear the presence of other lifeforms—not metaphorically, but materially. I hope that it may spark curiosity, and curiosity is a gateway to connection and care.
Finally, it lets me bring my science-nerd side into being. To me this is music that demystifies without becoming boring, holds uncertainty as a strength, and fosters wonder. I want to show that experimental sound can be demonstrable, legible, and meaningful without being obscure or elitist. I want to make art that destabilizes the charlatan, the doomsayer, and the gatekeeper—and opens space for exploration, connection, and growth.
–
Eli Elinoff
Listen, the forest. Ourselves
Shh….Listen.
What do you hear?
Wait. That’s not the right question.
Who do you hear?
A strange, perhaps profound question. Can a mushroom be a who? Does a forest have a subjectivity? Maybe that isn’t the right question either.
What might these strange vibrations mean? Might our capacity to hear the sounds produced by these always already vibrating, vibrant subjects rearrange our relationship to them? Can it?
These are the questions that Kieran’s project—particularly its efforts to listen and collaborate with non-human others—provokes for me. Questions I am keen to raise, bat around, and then leave for us to think about together today.
I am an anthropologist—an anthropologist of the urban environment, an anthropologist of politics, an anthropologist of citizenship and dwelling, an anthropologist engaged with something called the anthropocene and particularly the historical convergences of natural, cultural, and political forces that it generates and that are actively being generated by this planetary phase.
Lately, as I seek to develop something I am calling a speculative earth history of concrete in Thailand, I have been thinking of all kinds of subjects, human and non-human that occupy the margins of urban ecologies and urban ecologies that occupy the margins of other areas: Mangrove propules reaching for distant sediments, mudskippers hopping across tidal flats, trees poking through urban sidewalks and disrupting aerial electrical lines, monitor lizards traveling through underground pipes, small particles—pollution, viruses, and tear gas— traveling in and out of our lungs (see Elinoff 2024, for one example).
Across these distinct domains, I am not only interested in human forms of life but our constant exchange with these non-human others, often despite our quite strenuous efforts to assert our distinctness from them and their ecological contexts. Attention to these processes’ connection and disconnection and their specific qualities, I think, suggests something about our capacities or incapacity for co-existence with our planet and with each other. These are urgent questions.
Kieran’s work Guest is compelling to me because it not only amplifies the vibrations of non- humans to alert us to their presence, but because it actually engages with them in a partial collaboration through music. In this way, the work enacts a kind of generous cycle of acknowledgement that offers us an opportunity to think about what it means to live on a planet with non-human others in their (and our) most fulsome vibrant and vibratory selves.
1
These are questions that undergird my own work but increasingly pre-occupy me personally in this moment of ecological transformation and related startling political violence.
To clarify what I mean by this, indulge me in a deviation for a minute to think with the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn (2013; 2022), whose landmark engagement with forests as thinking worlds in the Ecuadorian Amazon suggests that when we break from our sense that humans are the only beings that use signs, we might be forced to raise new questions about what the world is, what our ethical disposition towards it might be, and what politics such an ethics might inspire.
Without getting too far in the weeds (so to speak), Kohn argues (2013: 33-35), alongside his primarily Runa Indigenous collaborators, that if we accept that all kinds of beings are capable of engaging in the kinds of symbolic work that we typically reduce to language— particularly the capacity of non-humans to index, which is a specific sign making process based on the logical referential connection between specific symbolic markers and various things in the world (smoke indexes/points to fire)—then we can begin to reconstruct our intellectual apparatus so as to be capacious enough to begin to grasp at an understanding of forests as filled with webs of communication that bind together a range of actors in relations that exceed human comprehension.
A monkey, Kohn tells us, may respond to the sound of a snapping branch because they feel it give way under foot or because they perceive it to represent a coming predator. We do not know the specificity of their interpretation, but we can ascertain that the sound has a meaning (it is being interpreted) and thus, represents what Kohn calls a “living sign” (2013: 33). Signs like these, call together a range of interpreters using a host of methods to interpret all of which might be interpreted by humans but not entirely so. For Kohn (and the semiotician Charles Sanders Pierce), the capacity to generate and interpret meaningfulness in the world is the very basis for the composition of selves (2013: 29, 33).
There is a deliberate ambiguity or even agnosticism about what consciousness means in this expansive vision of the nature of what a self is or might be. That ambiguity is there by design. We cannot know these others and what ontologically is for them. The gap is too deep. But we can, Kohn suggests, give way to the idea that the world (a word, which, incidentally, his Runa interlocutors refer to as forest) is extraordinarily semiotically rich with meaning and meaning making in this expanded sense. It is rich with selves interacting in a collaborative and collective mesh. There is so more to this argument, but my time is short, so I’ll skip to the questions it raises.
The first sets of questions I have raised are ontological. Who is that you hear right now when we stop and listen? Who is that? What is their capacity to vibrate meaningfully in ways that we do not, cannot, understand? What might such vibrations mean or, rather, how might they mean something to others? What is a self and do non-humans have one. Rather than asking what these strange vibrations mean linguistically, we might rephrase this question, what world do these vibrations portend if we listen carefully to them?
A second set of questions that might follow from that first set of questions are ethical— What does it mean to live among others who think, even if such thought is profoundly different than human thought? Kohn (2022) suggests that forests think in ways that are emergent, distributed, imagistic, and general. Leafy mantids (leaf bugs), for example, index (point to) leafiness because non-human others have the capacity to understand what “leafiness” in its collective ontological sense means. Accepting the proposition of a thinking forest as a distributed total whole rich with meaning both irrespective of humans but also inclusive of humans, might ultimately force us to reconfigure ourselves and in so doing our relation with the world. This process of self-refashioning prompted by the idea of a living forest is, for Kohn (and others) the basis of ethical life. Who are we to be and how are we to act in relation with a living forest of selves? What kinds of refashioning might these vibrations inspire in us? What have they inspired for you Kieren as you work with them?
Finally, there is a politics here as well. The political theorist Jacques Rancière (1999) suggests that the political is, first and foremost, composed via an aesthetic schism between that which is noise and that which is language. The suggestion is that the composition of what we understand to be legitimate politics relegates certain kinds of claims as unintelligible because they are not interpreted as meaningful sound. This has all kinds of implications—particularly related to how the demarcation of others as non-humans as distinct species is essential to their violent exclusion. What then does it mean to listen to these sounds as more than noise?
Stop. Listen again.
Kieran’s work—its elaborate prosthetics of listening and collaborating—awakens us to the depth of this set of questions. It suggests that acknowledging the world’s vibrancy might also give way to an acknowledgment of our own, generating a compulsion to collaborate with it in such a way as to better grasp the world’s autonomous, multiform capacity for self- making. Its capacity to hold our ethical attention as we remake ourselves with it and, perhaps, our ability to act politically together to protect it and ourselves.
Tēna koutou katoa Ngā mihi o te ahi ahi He Ahorangi Tūhono O te Kura Mātauranga Koiora O Te Herenga Waka
Ko Julie Deslippe taku ingoa
Kia ora My name is Julie Deslippe I’m an Associate Professor of Plant Ecology At Victoria Univeristy of Wellington I’m really grateful to be here with you all to enjoy Kieran’s art and to be included in today’s discussion. And I “tutoko” Eli’s comments, particulary his framing Kieran’s mahi as an opportunity expand our perceptions of non-human “living signs”.
Kieran’s compelling work is an invitation to engage with familar plants and fungi in a new way. It invites us to stop and listen -not just see or touch– these normally quiet and stationary beings: who are just doing their “thing”. But more than that, it invites us to think about how we might directly engage with plants and fungi in new ways creating new shared experiences.
Listening and responding to plants and fungi.
I’m a plant ecologist. A scientist who studies life – and how plants live in community – Together – and with others.
Plants and fungi are living beings, with identity, behaviour, even agency. From my perspective, the question of whether a fungus is an “it” or a “who” reveals only the anthropocentrism of the questioner – it suggests that humans get to decide who is a who and who isn’t.
Plants and fungi don’t care what we thing they are. So rather than passing judgement on beings that are so unlike ourselves, I would urge us to simply pay careful attention to what IS. I promise that if you study plants and fungi – watching, touching, smelling, tasting and even listening to how they behave – your experience and understanding of life will expand far beyond anthopocentric labels.
Plants and fungi are facinating creatures. They act and do things far beyond our wildest imaginations.
Evolution on islands has bestowed Aotearoa with a wealth of unique biodiversity. We are kaitaiki of more than 8500 indigenous plant species, a number that more than doubles when you include the introduced plants that now call te motu home.
Our species awe and inspire…
Take pua o te reinga, our native wood rose, a plant that has totally lost the ability to produce chlorophyll and can’t photosynthesise. It gains carbon by parasitising the roots of broadleaved hardwood trees like kapuka (broadleaf) and whauwhaupaku (five finger). These vigorous hosts shuttle copious sugars to pua o te reinga which it uses to make rich and odorous nectar that includes the mammalian pheromone Squalene.
Squalene is irresistible to Pekapeka, our short-eared bat, who cover themselves in wood rose pollen before moving on to their next sugary midnight snack, serving to pollinate pua o te reinga as they feast.
Or take Harore our edible native honey mushroom, which lives as a root parasite and decomposer on our giant beech and podocarp trees. In their latter days its mushrooms grow up to be as dull and plain as dry leaves, but they spend nights in their youth glowing psychedelic green -as if enjoying the forest disco- No one knows why they perform the complex and energetically expensive chemical reactions to break down luciferin and release light through bioluminescence. Perhaps if you listen carefully, they may tell you.
While many of us suffer from acute ‘plant blindness’ and by this I mean “Oh wow! look at the elephant!” In reality, plants and fungi profoundly affect our ecologies: shaping our landscapes, culture -even our economies.
A prominent example of this is the development of plantation forestry in Aotearoa.
Today 1.7 million hectares of land, nearly a third of all forest cover in the country, is used for plantation forestry. Of this, more than 90% is radiata pine. Native to California, radiata pine was planted as seed in Aotearoa from the 1850ies. However these early plantings often failed, or produced bushy trees with open canopies and multiple stems, suitable for shelter belts, but poor-quality timber.
Prior to the first world war, as our native forests were felled and burned on vast scales to make way for pastoral agriculture, fears of wood shortages began to shape public policy.
Research to improve tree performance was needed to fuel the forestry planting boom – And by the 1920s this involved the import of seedlings grown in Californian top soil –
Radiata pine is obligately mycorrhizal. This means that in order complete its life cycle from seed burst to the formation of fertile cones; its must form an intimate root symbiosis with soil fungi. Mycorrhizas are partnerships based on the exchange of resources. The plant provides sugar that it makes in photosynthesis to the fungus in exchange for growth-limiting soil nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus.
Pine forms mycorrhizas with a range of fungal species which were present in those imported Californian soils– many of which will be familiar to those of you who walk the Town Belt.
Of course, in their native range, pines and the mycorrhizal fungi co-evolved in a complex web of life.
And some of those species have also been introduced into Aotearoa’s forests.
It turns out that red deer LOVE mycorrhizal mushrooms and have no trouble at all travelling vast distances through pine plantations, into tussock grasslands and native forests, where they deposit the unharmed fungal spores in a tidy little package of fertiliser.
This facilitation of one invasive plant, not by another, but by a network of alien interacting species, is what has fuelled the degradation of more than 1.8 million hectares of farmland by wilding pine.
With a price tag of over $140 million dollars to control in the past decade alone.
We also know that once they get into native forests, some of these introduced mushrooms displace native mycorrhizal fungi on our native beech trees, creating a potential threat for to native biodiversity.
So while many of us are unaware of how plants and fungi have transformed our biodiversity and landscapes over time. There is no doubt that these normally quiet and stationary beings profoundly affect our economy, culture and identities.
Plants and fungi are not good or bad, selfish or altruistic, socialist or capitalist. They have evolved over million of years, in their facinating diversity, to interact in the complex web of life that we are all part of. Let us take the time to hear their music.
GUEST has grown into a beast, a beautiful, shimmering monster-body of work that is a full culmination of the 2024 residency.
GUEST has become an album, excerpts from collaborative recording sessions October-December 2024, edited and mixed into 13 tracks, to be released on LP, CD and digital. The album launch is May 30 at Pyramid Club. Performing alongside vegetable.machine.animal with be album guest musicians Chrissie Butler, indigogue brown, Kedron Parker, Timothy Morel, Gemma S Thompson and David Long.
GUEST the exhibition opens at Toi Pōneke on Friday May 30, 5.30pm. There will be a short vegetable.machine.animal performance, but mostly it’ll be a celebration. The exhibition will be centred around hound interspecies sound installation. Alongside this will be images painted during this process, Leadlight window, and the launch of the book SOUNDBITTEN, personal sound stories capturing earworms, aural observations, accidental hearings and imaginary backing tracks.
There are four weekend event during the performance, three concerts and a panel talk. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to perform again individually with DSLB, Ruby Solly and Andrew Faleatua. The talk, called A Guest among the Guest, facilitated by K Monaghan, Assoc. Prof. Dr Julie Deslippe [Victoria University School of Biological Sciences] and Dr Eli Elinoff [Victoria University School of Social and Cultural Studies].
And then we go on tour!!! All date below but will continue to be updated as more events finalised.
Many thanks to Te Kōkī – New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University, and Toi Pōneke for the ongoing support in completions of this project, Audio Foundation Records, Pyramid Club and to all there others who have helped out along the way!
PRESS RELEASE
What would it sound like if we could interact musically with plants and fungi—if humans stopped to listen and respond? vegetable.machine.animal is an interspecies improvisational trio exploring this question through a hybrid sonic language of biosignals, modular synthesis, and live drums.
Led by drummer Kieran Monaghan, the project transforms living data from plants and fungi into voltage, translated into sound via modular synthesizer. Monaghan responds in real time, creating a feedback loop between human, organism, and machine.Their debut album, GUEST, was recorded during the 2024 Sonic Artist Residency (Creative New Zealand / NZSM / Toi Pōneke) and emerged through open-ended, intuitive sessions.
A diverse group of collaborators was invited to join the process, including Kedron Parker, Nico Buhne, Bill Wood, Ruby Solly, Indigique Brown, David Long, Andrew Faleatua, Andy Wright, Gemma Thompson, Timothy Morel, Mo H. Zareei, Tae Kyung Seo, Issac Smith, and Chrissie Butler.Rather than guiding the music, contributors were invited to follow it—adding their voices to a living, shifting ecology of sound. The result is an album that is rhythmic, irregular, immersive, and alive.GUEST is co-released by Audio Foundation Records (Tāmaki Makaurau) and skirted Records(Te Whanganui-a-Tara).
Kieran Monaghan is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, writer, recording artist and sound engineer based in Te Whanganui-A-Tara. He is a prolific creative and organiser, with an irrepressible DIY ethic, known for his experimental and innovative approach to performance and sound making.
ALBUM RELEASE TOUR
May Friday 30 – ALBUM LAUNCH – Pyramid Club – with Chrissie Butler, indigogue brown, Kedron Parker, Timothy Morel, Gemma S Thompson and David Long – TICKETS
July Thursday 17 – The Blue House, Patea Friday 18 – Last Place, Kirikiriroa/Hamilton – with Moon Hotene and Halcyon Birds Saturday 19 – Instore – Flying Out Records, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, 2pm Saturday 19 – Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland – v.m.a with Taekyung Sea, O/PUS and Oxsen Ox Thursday 24 – Common Room, Heretaunga /Hastings – with Invisible Plain Friday 25 – Snails, Te Papa-i-Oea./Palmerston North – with Powers, Saturday 26 – Porridge Watson, Whanganui – with XRVR & ROC///OPT/ Sunday 27 – Common Ground Presents, Pae Tū Mōkai/Featherston – with indigogue brown Thursday 31 – Brayshaw Park Chapel, Te Waiharakeke/Blenheim – with Twin Rudders August Friday 1 – Space Academy, Ōtautahi/Christchurch – with Cuticles and Haunts Sunday 3 – Union Chapel, Ōhinehou/Lyttleton – Tropical Hot Dog Night! – with Greg Larking, Beth Hilton, Taipua Adams, Gemma Syme, Nic Woollaston, Rory Dalley, Dave Imlay Wednesday 6 – Te Atamira, Tāhuna/Queenstown – solo Friday 8 – Live to air on Radio One Friday 8 – The Crown, Ōtepoti/Dunedin – with HōHā, Sewage and Murgatroyd Saturday 9 – Threes and Sevens Records, Waihōpai/Invercargill – with Murgatroyd and Hattford
Where we reflect back on the 12 weeks of residency, review whats been done, offer thanks, and review objectives, and round it off with some plum porn
All Hands Make Light – One word removed to change the phrase completely Taken from the band of the same name
I reside, now, post-residency. Is the past tense of Residency, Residensed???
What an opportunity it has been, to have twelve weeks funded, supported, and committed, to the exploration and development of this project. A dedicated time to explore ideas, sounds, and thoughts, to make new connections and networks, to further hone technical skills in recording processes, editing and mixing, image-making, and presentation. To play fast and slow, to play solo, to collaborate, to demonstrate, and discuss this flight of fancy of mine.
When I applied for this residency I provided some goals and examples of evidence of work, that I would develop during this time. Gathering recordings was one of these outputs. And since late September, when the position started, these recordings grew into a substantial two-fold project.
Firstly, I made numerous solo recordings, exploring various ideas like suspended guitar, plant-driven percussive mechanisms, and the good old-fashioned banging away on my trusty drum kit. It has been great to have extended time to experiment. I’m yet to start editing, but I hold an excited anticipation of what will be discovered.
Secondly I held weekly recording sessions for collaborations. This was an opportunity to invite some very inspired performers (Chrissie Butler, Gemma Thompson,Bill Wood, Andy Wright, Tim Morrell, Sophia Frudd, Baxter Grey, Ruby Solly, David Long, Andrew Faleatua, Issac Smith, Kedron Parker and Nico Buhne) who I felt would enjoy playing plant and fungal electronic sounds. Each session was dramatically different from the next and collaborators worked with a wide range of instrumentation including electric guitar, drums, percussion of all sorts, trumpet, cello, electronics, taonga puoro, violin, fagufagu, drums, electric piano, and voice. I also got to collaborate with Mo Zareei who worked with live-mixed bio-signals from VMA, in his own studio setting. I feel lucky to have had the time to interact and play with these extraordinarily talented musicians and sound makers and I look forward to listening back to these session in early 2025.
Another continuous aspect of the residency has been image-making. This visual component helps me anchor learnings from readings in a way I can easily reference. They help me to hold multiple ideas and points of view in eyesight simultaneously. I will include the images in the exhibition at Toi Pōneke in June. Twelve of the images have just taken a little excursion to Queenstown, where they have been included in the Use Your Words exhibition at Te Atamira Gallery, which is pretty cool.
A set of images now on display at the Use Your Words exhibition at Te Atamira in Queenstown. Photographer: David Oakley
The last component of this residency and a commitment from the outset has been documenting this residency. I proposed to write online weekly to express thoughts and ideas that were of interest at the time. Although I have blogged in this way many times in the past, one joyful evolution was the inclusion of soundbites, which have concluded each post in a section called Soundbitten. These soundbites started as a whim in the second week and grew quickly into 55 miniature stories that circulate around a key sound source or reference. Over the weeks, I became more conscious of needing to listen to notice the sound stories in the present, alongside trawling memory for meaningful sound memories from the past. The compilation of writings has now been complied with the page ARCHIVE: 2024 Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence. The text is currently being arranged into a limited edition print version, available on the opening night of the exhibition in June 2025. I hope it has been something that you have enjoyed.
So here I am newly residenced and it is interesting to reflect on what I expected to do and what I actually did. I suggested I would explore the idea of “a sonic practice for the Anthropocene”. I wanted to explore and develop a sonic practice that:
● places the ‘human’ not at the centre, but as an active ‘collaborator’ in a trio of non-human/tech/human.
● insists the voice of the ‘Other’ is amplified and essential to the voice of the ‘Whole’.
On reflection, I think I have achieved what I set out to do, but the journey is continuous. Decentering the ‘human’ from the centre of the performance and investigating the ideas of a horizontal, interactive, and interspecies framework has been a shared experience. Collaborators frequently stated that it was both novel, and musically exciting, to listen to and respond to ‘other’ in the room. And from my perspective, though I was facilitating these meetings, I did not feel that the spotlight was mine.
As this project continues to develop, I realise the more I become reliant, dependent, on the ‘Other’. There is no way to make this happen without ‘them’. It’s less about ME and more about THIS. Publicly, we are becoming inseparable.
In these crisis times, many would argue that we were never separate, and that reestablishing a re-connectivity to the natural world is essential for any version of future viability. It is not my intention to sound grandiose, but I hope this project is a contribution towards that future-focused mindset. A future that welcomes both diversity and uniqueness, makes space where the needs of the individual are respected but do not trump, dominate, or compromise the needs of the myriad cohabiting communities.
Soundbitten:
These days, I only ever see you at the supermarket. In other times, it was at gigs. I’d just brought an ice cream for moko, you were bus-waiting with hubby. Always, we hug. You tell me “ I’ve been reading your writing”. Recount back to me the stories I wrote. Those little bits of sound, experiences that could have been yours. I listen back. Bitten, it’s life after the bite.
Margaret Sparrow, song bird, vasectomy queen. I’m on a slab, voluntarily. Shaved, prepared, anesthetized with local. It’s simple; revel, snip, seal. Twice. She works, cautery device in hand, singing with her sidekick, to work songs of Gilbert and Sullivan emanating from a tape deck on the shelf, “I am the very model of a modern…”… Hello mr sterile!
These hills were quiet when we arrived. Denuded of green by farming and fire. Then it was gorse, blackberry, weed. Once upon a time, here would hear the heat, the sound of ‘progress’, the colonialist act of razing. But if abandoned, the wilds return. Hushed at first. Now, the dawn valley’s boisterous with chatter, choir, clarion call, chimed bell, clacked gong.
From a distance, a whisper this way comes. Hush turns to hiss. Like the persistent sound of approaching train, but not. It falls, dancing. One thing meets another thing, times multiple. The raindrops play the leaves like drums, the percussion of wet onto leaf litter. Then the downpour hits the roof, a curtain, a wall, a wave of water, tap-dancing.
How does the plum sound? Do branches hear pollinators in blossom? Do flowers sigh in post-coital germination? The bees gleeful buzz when dusted in pollen? Who hears petals fall? Or the nutrients, fluids, directed to the swelling buddings? Does the Sun sing lewd songs to make the fruit blush? It’s unknown, but I know how the light tastes. Hear my delight as juices burst free.
Thank you to the following: ●To the collaborators who came along, shared their skills, talents, and willingness to play with this project ●The staff of the New Zealand School of Music who supported my explorations and requests ●All the staff at WCC Tōi Pōneke Arts Centre for making me feel welcome and sharing lunch time banter ●CreativeNZ for the funding ●To all those people who stopped by and shared their curiosity ●To the other art workers in residence at Tōi Pōneke ●Thank you to you for reading this far! ●And the most massivist! Thanks! always, always, always to Chrissie for everything!!
Where we discuss mixed-up time, documenting, school, and other such things on the way to words.
I arrive at the penultimate point in the residency. In my head, there is one more week. Truth be told, though, I’m wrong. The contractual end date is the 15th. Incorrectly, I think it ends just before xmas. Fortuitously, Toi Pōneke offers me ongoing use of the space until the 3rd of February. I am saved from my error becoming awkwardly public. That said, the psychology of this time must end as contracted, as the next phase of work needs to begin. This entails the distilling, editing, mixing, and compiling of audio and other works for the June 2025 exhibition.
Audio recordings are only one documentation of this time. These words are another. It’s a purposeful decision to also record this time, this way, as a textural account of a sound experience. The motivation for this is based on personal frustrations. My frustration is that writing seems to be something I am only capable of doing while on tour, in another country, in a place I may not return to, recounting experiences of encounters with people I may never meet again. It is a conscious act to find the barriers I hold in regards to writing, and breach them.
It surprises me when I think of my academic past, that this pen-to-paper process has become enjoyable. When I was at school, I barely made it to the end of the fifth form (year 11). Prior to exit, there was an escalation of trouble, detention, and conflict. Walking away from school, the idea that I might experience joy from the written word or learning seemed unimaginable.
However, the hunger for learning is resilient. My school experience did not quash it. As it turned out, I was ravenous, and lyrics were the literary form that fed me. I would read, learn by heart, sing along, and take learning from the words people put to music. I would be disappointed if an album did not have lyric sheets inside, along with accompanying art and/or photos. Maybe I thought it showed a lack of care for the listeners’ engagement, or whoever this band was was not serious enough in their intention and practice. Seems adolescent now, but it was really important at the time. And to be honest, I still appreciate and pay attention to that effort when I see it.
Fast forward some years. When I was lyric writing for the band, mr sterile Assembly, there was often a lot of reading involved. A story would be identified that held some contemporary relevance. I would look for key reference material such as text, books, articles, other songs, and footage and then digest. Some songs took years to complete, others less time. This process was really enjoyable, and I grew to appreciate the additional learning around a topic. Unsurprisingly, that process still remains relevant to the way I approach making work now.
The current project of vegetable.machine.animal continues to follow this process. There is no lyrical content at this point in time, but who knows how that will develop. However despite the no-focus on lyrics, I continue to read broadly in relation to the ideas behind this project. What fascinates me is the think-shifting writing that is being published in both hard and popular sciences and the arts. There are many incredible discoveries being reported in these texts, awe inspiring ideas that make the world bigger, and provide evidence to dismantle some of the worst aspects of the Enlightenment Individual. That model of individuality that places certain humans higher than others, that elevates Humans out of nature, and that redefines almost everything as Resources available to take, consume, and exploit.
Some of the amazing examples of current findings:
Coral reefs have sonic soundscapes. Experiments are underway on coral reef repair after bleaching from warming waters and increasing acidity. Underwater speakers play the sounds of a healthy reef beside the damaged ones. The ‘healthy’ sounds invite familiar varieties of life to return and repopulate the habitat.
Orca has different audible dialects of clicks, whistles, and pulsed calls between pods and clans. Some sounds/signals have been identified as continuous across decades, while other sounds evolve. The young learn from these patterns from the older.
Somewhere in deep time, our evolutionary ancestors were a water dwelling species. As such, we evolved without the nervous receptors to detect the feel of water that surrounded us. We still do not have these receptors. All we can feel is the fluctuating temperature and the fluid motion. We can’t feel the real wet.
Words take on a life of their own. And all those words I’ve been reading have infiltrated my sonic explorations. Tiny ambiguous phrases began to be collected. On a single day in November 2023, I had a single thought to pass the time while I was between recordings. This resulted in a single doodle, I added some colour , and that doodle just has not stopped.
I enjoy art practices built on multi-disciplinary approaches, representations of ideas that can not be contained into a single medium. My word posters have become integral parts of the sound work. The sound work is integral to the posters, different information delivered from differing mediums, but all from the same reasons.
What amuses me also is that this is the third time image-making has become a focused activity. The first show I had was in the Invercargill museum in 1991 with all the angst of adolescence on display. The second time, somewhere in the mid 90’s in Wellington, and those images were dark. 30 years later, me and mark-marking reconnect. Less desperate, more joyous, and nothing but an exuberant whimsy.
It’s not blood in ears, so I sit here in silence, try to locate the fluid flow. Water sounds like water. It can also sound expensive. Yesterday, we heard the pop of the cylinder element, and now showers are cold. But this is not that. It’s the bruit of fluid in motion, the leaking valve of the outside tap, to the artery of garden hose. The Hydro-Phlebotomist makes a house call.
Can you hear me sleep? I know I can not. But sometimes the noise I make wakes us. Conversations with my unhinged side, the dream-Me, a metaphoric I. I hear you sleep, read the depths by the sound of the breath. There is that first unconscious pursed-lipped exhalation, more out than in. It’s fragile, easily disturbed. Deep down, it’s much more quiet.
Driller Killer on the back patch of a cut-off denim, covered in studs. Skin receives Vit D through holes at knees. Wear the emblems of Crust, signs of D-Beat, evidence of Grindcore. At home in a pub, front row, a tumble of mosh pit. Here in daylight, on the front row at graduation, with flowers in hand, lipsyncing as the house band plays summer grooves.
Earmuffs blur the whining sander, coarse grit abrasive to the crud of ages. Pitch fluctuates, friction vs gnarled terrain. Scars in lumber from the bite of steel, piercing, render tree to plank. Before wood-fall, the sound of axe, saw, chainsaw, the graze of teeth of industry. And before Before, the upward creak of timber mobility, the birdsong, the raindrop, the seedpod.
Dali’s boring, but Hugo Ball rules. 1916, Europe, Karawane says it all! ‘Jolifanto bambla ô falli bambla, grossiga m’pfa habla horem… & …ü üü ü…’. 106 years later, Snakes in a Fijian café, reciting the poem into a handheld sound collector, and the curious ears of the overhearers, attach, and send. I nest the file with the other .wavs. We are Hugo’s future. We sing Ba-Umf!
Where we discuss the dilemma of formats for music, why formats are nice, AI Slop, and why it’s good that AI will never be able to lick an envelope
I love making music, but then what do I do with it?
There is a repetitious frequency among me, my friends, and other small-time music makers. It’s the cyclic dilemma of what to do with a collection of sounds that feels deserving of the title, Album.
What format to make? Tape? CD? Vinyl in a million colours? T-shirts? Or a shit-tonne of other paraphernalia to add congestion to the world? And how common is it to hear of homes that have no equipment to play any physical format on other than a bluetooth speaker? Very common.
A table of pretty collected things
Once that’s been navigated and an idea has been committed to physically, you end up with something called Product. The question is “Then what”? Into shops, though some may not take the format you’ve made, and chasing up sales can still be extraordinarily cumbersome and archaic? Or online selling in the expandingly gargantuan sphere of the web? Online can be great, and it’s a wonderful surprise to have people in Alaska buy your stuff, but the postal costs to almost everywhere in the world from Aotearoa are truly crippling! Then how about touring to promote the recording? It’s still probably the best way to sell albums and merchandise, but not if you factor in flights to anywhere in the world, and the limitations of carrying bulky items (if touring on a tight budget) with all the other essentials of a touring band, such as equipment and clothes. And once in a new location there is the predilection that different regions have different tastes for different formats – some want cassettes, elsewhere t-shirts, others ask for vinyl, others laugh at CDs – who has a CD player? It is impossible to satisfy all tastes and fashions.
Another distribution outlet is online. There are streaming services for the absolute convenience of the listener and next to zero for the musician. Or the artist-focused platforms like Bandcamp and Bandwagon, which are trying to ensure more funds going to the makers of music.
Vinyl holds pole position, the gold-standard evidence that somehow you have ‘made it’ as a successful musician. It is, of course, a myth. It was a fantastic dream when I was young, to aim for an album on vinyl. But it seems like a problematic proposition that seems difficult to justify for the sake of ego. New records these days can cost upwards of $100 in some cases. The average price these days seems to be $50. But if what you’re buying is a lot cheaper than that, you need to know that someone else is weathering the cost, striving to break even, let alone make a little extra to put towards the next project.
Then, there is the often under-discussed conversation about the environmental impacts of a large non-recyclable format made from fossil fuels. Great for culture, crap for climate.
But all that said, I still like things. I love the expression of confidence and commitment people display when whatever is used to protect the format becomes a work of art in itself. I adore a beautifully conceived and created artifact. Great design can contribute additional information beyond the recorded sound.
Some stuff we’ve made, available on our bandcamp page
Recently, I’ve been playing with the idea that the making of a material item, as opposed to only online, is like throwing an idea into the future. If, in the lifespan of this item, it finds its way into general circulation, it becomes immediately unknowable who may stumble across it at some future time. It’s a microscopic idea, but it feels like a meaningful consideration to think in the forward-tense. It’s a tiny contemplation, but I have been the appreciative beneficiary of such small discoveries and so perhaps others might, years from now, also enjoy the efforts of my labour.
One other less considered idea is how these nearly obsolete formats sit alongside technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI)? These days it’s a challenge to differentiate between AI and human-made text/images. AI audio programs are sophisticated enough to fool the listener. A tune can be generated by providing instruction on genre, feel, vocal choice, lyric, and letting AI do the rest. These tools will only get more sophisticated. As the processing capability becomes exponentially more powerful, so too does the increase in the deluge of content such as AI Slop “…badly managed or improperly deployed AI systems, that deliver, unwanted, poor quality, inaccurate, and simply ‘spammy’ content”. This is now the junk of our everyday lives.
AI Slop!! NOT real life [lifted from the internet of course]
But no matter how advanced AI may become, it will never be able to lick an envelope. Maybe this is an area where physical formats are useful, islands of the handmade against the algorithm of the AI. The committing of sound to physical form requires more steps beyond that instant generator of music. Instant music that can be immediately uploaded to streaming services, swamping the stream with a perpetual deluge. Committing sound to form demands that the ephemeral must interact with the material. It makes a physical and revisitable part of the world. And anyways, it’s hard to flood the world with handmade.
I have no clear idea of what is the best course of action. Actually, I think there is no clear answer. But I remain committed to the idea of making artefacts in the hope that there are others who enjoy our paraphernalia. I enjoy the process of folding, cutting, and gluing. I love the act of making. AI algorithms are brilliant in the application of science, weather forecasting, and other such domains, but not in areas such as culture and information. Perhaps the act of making a ‘thing’ becomes a small defiance against the invisible coding and bias built into these systems.
Soundbitten:
Who heard the tree fall? The bend, strain, snap, and the crack of it. Unlikely anyone during the midnight howl. Nests ejected from limbs, the dismembered wings of leaves, trees twisting from the earth to the eaves. Ferocious, roaring, the gale shouts at every single dislodgeable and launchable thing. With its ear to the ground, the limb finds no silence.
Cocooned. Prepare for later, a T.V dinner for eye eyes. But there’s no victory lap after the hunt. An assailant attacks the predator. Movement is frantic around the bounty. I am deaf to the duel. Spiders ‘hear’ with their legs. A foot on each web strand, deciphering vibrations into meaning, eight lines of communication at a time. Battle breaks the web, and lunch is lost.
Fresh batteries in walkman, listen and play. This was how I learned to play the drums. I thought what I heard had all been played at once. All that technical prowess delivered in real time by extraordinary musicians. Who knew about multi-tracking, layering up, and moving equipment around. On that one particular track, Stewart Copland played only the hi-hats, not the kit!
Hallucinogens render me incompetent to play songs despite the urging of band mates. All tethers to reality lost. But shows must go on. I grab bits of metal and other sharp objects collected to make industrial sounds. Projectiles produce great sounds crash-landing, heads duck in very real danger. John sits on me for my safety, from myself, and from others.
The cancer’s back, it’s a weird relief she says, she no longer has to wait its return. Now tho, it’s a mission to finish the album, her one document. Songs she’d written, words she’d wrote. The last time we met, there was not much of her left. The exhaustion near total, almost unable to do the last track, energy for one take only, and no space for mistake. I still hear to her sing.
The set up of Sophia Fudd on a collaborative recording
skirted Records 