Category Archives: Residencies

A tour is toured!

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The last week of the Tainan residency is coming to an end. We’ve started the packing and wrapping up of projects, ideas, and connections.

It’s been a time of many things. One such thing has been the wonderful opportunity to be based in a single location, a home-base if you will, where we can settle to concentrate on projects, as well as use it as a launchpad to tour from. A place that we can travel away from for shows over weekends and then return to familiarity to rest, reset and regather.

It’s a privilege to travel to play shows. It asks a lot from locals to spend precious time and energy on the committed organising and hosting events. We always aim to make it worth their while. Sometimes we were able to jump on an already existing show, and other-times a show was initiated in response to our interest in an area. To all those people (Lars, Fang Yi, Immanuel, Rex Chen, Reuben, Deng Yao) we offer up our thanks and gratitude.

The moving around has also provided a snapshot opportunity to witness what is happening with experimental music in Taiwan. It seems healthy and burgeoning scene. There are stable venues (as stable as a venue can be) that offer space for regular performances, there’s people on the ground with ongoing energy to organise, people with musical curiosity to draw upon to perform, and people who hold the important role of ‘appreciative audience’.

From the early stages of our organising, it quickly becomes apparent that Taiwan is well-networked. Various people freely shared information on who we should make contact with in other centres, and often the crossover of names and emails was frequent. People across the cities and regions seemed to have a current handle on who was organising elsewhere, interconnection is a healthy sign of an active and vibrant community.

Cafe Jiang Shan Yi Gai Suo in Hsinchu

We had the chance to play a range of venues: livehouses like Revolver in Taipei, cafe’s like Night Cruising in Hualien, Catmeoworm in Taichung, Jiang Shan Yi Gai Suo in Hsinchu, and gallery spaces like Fotoaura and Ting Shuo Hear Say in Tainan. 

And it’s been a real treat to see, and hear, the many acts that we shared shows with. The follow list here is order of performance – check them out:
Kina:suttsu x E-Da (Japan), Colour Domes 彩色穹頂 , Your Futagono Tamashi & 林子寧 Lin Tzu-Ning, Christoven (Singapore) & Pablo Liebhaber (Germany), Fang Yi Liu & Cia Himâin Li, Jonáš Gruska (Slovenia), Stefan Voglsinger (Austria), Nick Tsai, Lai Shi Chao & Xiao Liu, DJ Rex Chen, Jun-Yang Li, Alexis Baskind (France/Germany), Reuban Zahl, Tanehiko Sekijima & Kentaro Tamura (Japan), Chang Deng-Yao, Kaiyu Lin, Huang Ching Yi, Franki Wals, and Zihning Tai 戴孜嬣.

Included in our tour schedule was our end of residency show at Ting Shuo. We spoke about our history of music making, through mr sterile Assembly to the current projects. Chrissie facilitated a drawing workshop, based on a practice by US illustrator Lynda Barry. Check out Chrissie’s drawings at Picture This, she’s beautifully captured to paper some of our most memorable moments. To wrap up the evening, DSLB/vma presented a joint performance to the good people of Tainan. Thank you Ting Shuo for hosting us!

In our last week, we met up with musicians Fangi Yi Liu, Chen En He, Ooonie, and Nigel at Ting Shuo for an afternoon of improvised goodness. A full afternoon of sound-making with new friends, audibly solidifying the beautiful connections we’ve made over the last seven weeks.

And finally, Kieran had an opportunity to present vegetable.machine.animal at TNNUA, the Tainan National University of the Arts. Over two hours Kieran discussed, demonstrated, and performed v.m.a to students from ethnomusicology and music departments. Alice, from Ting Shuo, brilliantly supported with interpreting skills. The performance became very cosy as the students got closer and enveloped the stage. It felt like a mutually lively and interactive conversation spanning from mycelium, punk rock, Mad Max, Bruno Latour, and tips for students wanting to explore musical improvisation.

Many thanks and gratitude to everyone we’ve met over theist two months. You all made us feel so welcome, you freely offered suggestions of things to do or places to eat, you stopped and wanted to chat, and you took interest in the projects and sounds that we brought to Taiwan. Our experience would have been so much less for not having had met you. Till the next time.
And finally, our immense thanks to Alice, Nigel(and Esme) of Ting Shuo Hear Say for enabling this trip to become a possibility. It will certainly be one that remains in our memories with great fondness.
Gratitude galore!!!
xxx

Managing being Fixed

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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.

Naive Skies

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I’ve never seen them. But most mornings. I wake hearing them tear silence from the sky, heaven torn apart by winged chariots dragging wheelless trailers of thunder. Or, when I’m walking, the invisible echos roll down the shiny tiled walls of narrow alleyways, lanes of lives, livelihoods, and plants.

I’ve tried to write about this several times before, three or four times at least, but it felt naive, trite, an observation of a sheltered tourist into the everyday reality of somewhere else. I discard those attempts with distain, and with the decision to wait till some other item of interest appears.

But then I hear jets, I imagine purpose, sabre-rattling, preparedness training, a deterrence-dance or defensive manoeuvres. I come from quiet skies, where fighter jets are rarely seen, and the dominant use of the overhead is for commerce and passengers. These are the naive skies of home.

Yet, the story of the jet never leaves. I cannot shake its’ company. It returns again and again, a persistent interjection that I feel compelled to consider more.

I’m told that these war machines may be in the hands of pilots in training. But we’re not certain. There is a larger airbase northward that interacts on the geopolitical frontlines over the Taiwan Strait, the identity-crisis of contested waters, are they ‘internal’ to China or international? It is a geopolitics that I am painfully aware of being under-informed about.

In a conversation last weekend, we were told about the inconsistency between the local geopolitical realities’ vs the repetitious ‘Western’ media cycle. The sabre-rattle of print, the pundit and the podcast that gets rolled out with clockwork precision to meet some other agenda elsewhere. Not of the people down here in the laneways.

There is half a bottle of water sitting on top of the fridge in the kitchen, a captured millpond of drinking water. The sound-waves of the jets reaches into the insides of the container, we see the sound of the jet ripple the fluids surface. Like a tiny earthquake, but from above. Or not. Later I question this idea, maybe I’m just connecting dots to a story that doesn’t exist. Did I just rock the vessel by closing the fridge door moments ago?

Pattern recognition is when the brain imagines a line between two dots. The line doesn’t exist, but we believe it to be true. This act of recognition is evolutionalily useful in finding familiarity, but not fact. Bias will launch the brain in to all manner of inaccuracies and batshit cul-de-sac’s, media will have us believe all sorts of distractions via approximate associations. My naivety feels exposed. It’s good to spot it in action. The best response is to, first, be quiet and then learn.

My thinking turns to others’ airspaces. Recent scrolling presented videos of the celebration of silence as the Israeli governments, eventually fraudulent, ‘ceasefire’ came into effect. Palestinian skies minus the jets and drones, monstrous machines designed for one task, to deliver earthquake munitions with heartbreak precision. For a moment, the skies of Gaza are silent, songs rise from the earth. Weeks before, videos from within the apocalypse zone, video clips of teachers teaching students to sing in tune with drones. I can not truly comprehend such coexistent bravery and horror.

We recently played a show in a cafe in Taichung. On the walls hang an exhibition of posters of invitation and resistance from Palestine, organised by local DIY, punk, and communities of solidarity. 

Published 1901

The oldest image, from 1901, is a romantic invitation to Cook’s Nile & Palestine Tours. Depicted is a lone human, on top of a dressed camel, beside a river, looking towards the setting sun. On the surface of still water are sail boats and a steamship of leisure. Across the water is a building to house hundreds in restorative comfort. Perhaps the skies are quiet except for dusks birds. An invitation to tourists and visitors alike. As the posters in the exhibition move toward our current time, the imagery becomes more desperate, painful, deadly. Posters are a silent format. But in this point in time, as in many previous, they aim to tear apart the silence, sending, like soundwaves, out into the future, connecting action to meaning.

Free the skies for all!

1985
Circa 1985
1983

SOUNZ and pictures

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During the NZSM/Toi Pōneke arts residency, 2024, I was introduced to SOUNZ– the Centre for New Zealand Music. To be honest, I knew about SOUNZ in the peripheral cul-de-sacs of my brain but I thought it was mostly for classical music. And it is, but it is also much more.

It says about itself that it “…champions and promotes the sounds and music of Aotearoa, New Zealand.” It contains a huge collection of music score and such, but I was totally unaware that it has a substantial audio/visual component.

SOUNZ offered to come and video a number of performance associated with the vegetable.machine.animal Guest album launch, as well as a couple of the performances attached to the accompanying exhibition being held at Toi Pōneke. For free! With multiple cameras! and they would do the grunt of editing etc! Quite an amazing offer. My tasks were to perform well, and be responsible for recording the audio – this is quite likely a barrier for many but less insurmountable these days as digital recording devices get smaller, easier to use, and more available.

The video work was completed by Chris Wilson, a production team of team of one. Amazingly easy to work with, and very considerate in the way he set multiple cameras around the stage in ways that did not seem invasive or impinge on the ability to perform. A terrific experience.

I wish again to offer many thanks to the other musicians who took part in these performances: Kedron Parker, Gemma, S. Thompson, David Long, Chrissie Butler, Timothy Morel, Sophia Frudd, Andrew Faleatua (unfortunately not filmed but an audio recording was collected) and Ruby Solly. They are all incredible music makers in their own rights and are worthy of your aural attention.

Thank you to Pyramid Club and Toi Pōneke for the venues.

And, once again, one final thanks to SOUNZ for producing this beautiful documentation, I am very grateful.

DSLB – vegetable.machine.animal residency and tour

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We are hours away from hoping onboard a metal bird to wing our way to the island of Taiwan.

We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to spend two months in Tainan, a southern city in Taiwan, in residence at Ting Shuo Hear Say. We have a bunch of projects to explore and experiment with, and we look forwards to sharing these with you in time as they revel themselves to us.

And for added excitement there’s a bunch of show in the middle of the stay. The 7th is tentative, perhaps we go to Hualien, but they have just been impacted by the typhoon. We shall wait and see. The shows will be a combination of playing together as a duo, as solos, or in collaborations with local musicians.

GUEST Album Release, Exhibition and Tour

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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

June
Friday 6 – Exhibition Opening , Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, Pōneke/Wellington – 5.30pm
Saturday 7 – Performance – vegetable.machine.animal and DSLB, Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, 1 – 1.45pm, free entry
Saturday 14 – Panel Talk – Guest among the Guests – A discussion exploring the intersection of creativity, biological sciences, and anthropological perspectives: Facilitated by Kieran Monaghan, Dr Julie Deslippe, Dr Eli Elinoff – 1pm – free entry
Saturday 21 – Performance – vegetable.machine.animal and Ruby Solly – Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, 1 – 1.45pm, free entry
Saturday 28 – Performance – vegetable.machine.animal and Andrew Faleatua – Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, 1 – 1.45pm, free entry

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

Autumn 2025: Chrissie Butler – Audio Foundation Artist in Residence

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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

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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.

Cheers Ears!

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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!!