Category Archives: vegetable.machine.animal

The Strength of Rivers

Life in the little room, on the edge of a city, edge of an island, edge of the Pacific, and on the edge of the big world, has been good this week. Settling-time is past, and my stride is underway. Pieces of music seem to find themselves somewhere near completion. My energies and disposition have found their rhythm in this residency. I treat it like work. I spend the full day working till home time. I have a meal break in the middle of the day for lunch with the staff, when able, like all good unionists.

In the studio paintings are strewn on the table in various stages of dress, notebooks open for spontaneous scratching, piles gather in disheveled messes from previous efforts of image or sound making, sentinels of stands hold cymbals and microphones, others lean against the walls, books on the table open and inviting, there is a rotting Taupata log from home with dried-up fungi, and the Peace Lily is still making its way to flower.

One book of interest this week is the Collected Poems of John Berger. A good friend introduced me to Berger several years ago. He gave me ‘Hold Everything Dear’, a small book containing some of Berger’s essays on his connection with Palestine, among other topics. The book arrived as a beacon in a personal dark time. And what a rope-ladder Berger has been for me since. By now I have read much of his work. Berger’s ability to strike a light in the bleakest of stories was a story I needed, and still need, to hear.

And in the grass of this rain
flowers
which grew with the strength of rivers
–o the pockets of the ferryman
packed with the letters
silences and promised. numbers
of those who left!
which grew with the strength of rivers
into estuaries.

An excerpt from the poem Twentieth Century Storm is one such example from Berger. Like all good poetry, the more I read it, the more I read into it. A reminder that whatever ‘today’ may throw our way, the ‘tomorrow’ is waiting and open. The estuary is not a ‘Me’ moment. It is an ‘Ours’ event.

An ink drawing of John Berger, drawn by Maggi Hambling. The lines are very loose, barely scratched onto the paper, there are only a few heavy black lines. But in the lightness of this drawing Bergers intensity stares out at the viewer. — *Portrait of John Berger, drawn by Maggi Hambling*

Between Me and Ours

A question has bounced around my head since winning this residency. I have been appreciative of the enthusiasm and support given by friends on gaining this privilege. Yet there’s been several times when people have stated, well-meaningly and with the warmest intent, that it is something I “deserve”, that it seems right to have it bestowed upon me in light of what has gone before.

I really struggle with this idea, of ‘deserving’. I cannot help but think that the opposite of this is that there must be a battalion of ‘others’ that do not deserve it. I know this to be grossly inaccurate. I can rattle off a long list of extraordinary creative people from all walks who would make great use of such opportunities, benefiting both themselves and the communities they work within. I also think it accentuates the cruel myth that those who work hard get their due rewards. Next time you’re in a hospital, ask a cleaner about all the rewards they have gathered for their hard work. Privilege is not evidence of hard work.

False humility is also unattractive. I would be lying to say I am not making the most of this privilege/opportunity. All I can say is that what I think We All Do Deserve is safety from each other, from despots in power playing politics, from ideologies which lift up only themselves while targeting ‘others’, a place to live, a meal to eat, a person to love, a chance to play. We deserve the chance to be curious and explore, the opportunity to be wrong and learn, to dream and escape, to be trusted and responsible. You can add your own suggestion to my incomplete list.

It’s not strange to feel that the Political networks of the current day are doing their best to push one into states of disappear. But the political actors are not a ‘We’, it’s most often a He, acting like Dams would on a river, to obstruct, block, and bottleneck. So where ever you put your energy, whatever your cause for better might be, think of yourself and your crew, your people, your mob and your kin as something in flow towards, to be part of something that grows “… with the strength of rivers into estuaries.”

(Here is something uplifting, an incredible story of water, persistence, and restoration).

–

I finish the week with two vegetable.machine.animal shows.

The first is the celebratory afterparty of Wellington Zinefest. An impressively wonderful event with multiple spaces considered and made available so people can access the party in whatever way they find comfortable and welcoming. I play in the main foyer of Trade’s Hall.

The entrance to this beautiful space became infamous in 1981. A suitcase packed with explosives was left at the entrance. It seems likely the intended targets were some of the Union organizations within. However it was the cleaner Ernie Abbott who picked up the suitcase and died in the explosion. The perpetrators were never found.

The second was a fundraiser for the Neil Roberts Memorial Day. Neil Roberts was a punk anarchist who died when the explosives he was carrying detonated at the entrance of the Wanganui Computer as the target, on 18 November 1982. Located in the city of Whanganui, the computer was the NZ government’s first database of accessible information on citizens, used by police and other surveillance services. His act is seen as a protest against the government’s growing surveillance mechanisms.

The fundraising show was held at a newish Wellington venue, Underworld, which seems to be comfortable with bands of a noisier and heavier disposition. It was an evening of assertive music in multiple styles, and me and the houseplant.

Picture of kieran on drums, taken from his left side. The venue is the foyer of the Wellington Trades Hall. There is beautiful light on stage, he is leaning back, looking up, maybe eyes closed, as both hands seem to be heading to the snare drum together. — *Trades Hall, photo Chrissie Butler*

SOUNDBITES

1. The cat on the pillow talks, ‘Feed Me’. I drag the window behind me open and hope she jumps out , just like she does every other morning [or is she pushed?]. The dawn chorus calls into our room, the trees are close, sound-laden with feathered fruits. The doppler of another sound moves slowly through this song. It is a six am flight to somewhere awake.

2. I’m listening to ‘No Title As Of 13 February 2024, 28340 Dead’, the newest album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The band lock this piece of their art as a statement on the carnage against the Palestinian civilian population. It confounds me that this music can seem both futile and essential. Music holding hopes and sorrows together, a bit like Berger’s words.

3. My ears are still asleep. THAT sound upstages somnolence. I am immediately aware of the risk of being breakfast. ThE steady buzz cuts through the blur of early morning. I pull my anxious head undercover. Steady? Mosquito’s can be many things, but steady is not one of them. I hear the buzz again, I listen, realising it’s the whine of the machine grinding coffee beans.

4. I’m holding my phone to the downspout. As if I know where the pipes ears are, and I’m helping it take a call. The rain has only stopped falling outside. Inside, drops descend from the gutter two stories up to percuss at this elbow junction on the way to the drain. This wet military tattoo, the rhythm of rain, is what stopped me in my tracks.

The phone is resting on the pipe of the guttering that goes to the drain. The view is looking up towards the roof, the sky is grey and the rain has just stopped. — Looking up the Downpipe

5. Pull wire till straight. I underestimate the breaking point and fall one step backwards as the pliers and metal separate with sound. Repeat three times, calibrating the effort downwards. I notice a sine wave trapped in shape. I guess the resonance is transferred down the wire, the wave becomes visible when the vibration stops at the jaws of the vice.

Picture of vice with wire in the jaws. The wire is being pull tight, but it snaps in my hands, sending a wave down the length of wire producing a sine wave pattern .

Neil Robert’s Day – Pōneke Fundraiser

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FROM FACEBOOK:

Nau mai! Haere mai!

Neil Robert’s Day is just around the corner, and it’s pretty big this year. We’re putting on two fundraiser shows – this one here in Pōneke and one in Whanganui.
Come see FOUR sweeeet bands and one alright DJ!
Doors at 9pm
Displeasure
Retaliator
Side Eye
vegetable.machine.animal
DJ Suave

NO stink cunts policy will be strictly enforced.

–

Neil Roberts was a punk anarchist who died in an act of explosive defiance, with the Wanganui Computer as the target, on 18 November 1982. Located in the city of Whanganui, the computer was the NZ government’s first digital database of accessible information on citizens, used by police and other surveillance services. His act is seen as a protest against the government’s growing surveillance mechanisms.

Film maker Russel Campbell has written about the events of the act and on some documentation that took place afterward.

May The Shifting Ground Hold Me Up

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Be Quiet.Don't Be Quiet.
Taken from a doco on the work and life of artist Ai Weiwei — Be Quiet. Don’t Be Quiet. A response from a doco on Ai Weiwei

Week three starts on a Saturday. I have been asked to be one of three ‘adjudicators’ for the annual Lilburn Trust NZSM Composers Competition. An adjudicator is a fancy word for judge. I’m to provide insight in determining the pieces of music to receive the annual awards! There are 14 compositions in total, from an array of various university music departments, from classical composition to electronics using AI, from jazz to somber to pop. The selections have been pre-selected from students at differing stages of their study.

We are given the scores to the music to read during the performance. I am unable to do this. It’s a skill I’ve never learned, but I am able to listen attentively. The things I rate are:

the aliveness of a performance
the interactions between performers
the things the performance does to me – what does it evoke?
those things that take me by surprise
those things that don’t
the before’s and after’s of the performance
the self-responsibility and consideration of stage management-or lack-there-of
and
does the performance match the text/hype of the program

I realise my years of gigging and touring have taught me a great lot of skills that may not be so obvious from the academic tradition. Things that I realise are not so considered here. And I am sure there will be many things I am missing precisely because I have one set of experiential skills instead of an other, more formal, set. The other judges all look at the quality of the script, how the performance adheres to the composition, and how the composition follows certain musical conventions that I am 100% ignorant of.

After hearing the 14, we three have a rapid and robust deliberation deciding on where the awards will go. Happily, a diverse range of performances are selected, acknowledging technical ability, compositional quality, consideration of stage and space, performance bravery, and adventurousness of the composer. But all the performers and composers are deserving of acknowledging and commendation. My final encouragement would be to keep pushing the boat out!!

There is additional newness for me this week. I have a rehearsal space available now every Tuesday, at Toi Pōneke. These are now my main recording days. They also come with a specific focus on collaboration. I invite Chrissie’s project DSLB in, I am safe in her tolerance as I may need to troubleshoot unexpected technical hiccups. The main challenge is to ensure that the right technical equipment is on hand to enable the best recording … it seems to be sufficient. To support this, I have access to some nice microphones from the NZSM. It all works perfectly and after a full day of intense playing, we collect two and a half hours of recorded material.

Near the end of the day, we are both become aware of the fatigue from exertion and concentration. I encourage ‘one more piece’. A lot of sound-ground has been covered. The instruments have been put through the routine of the first familiar and then unfamiliar explorations into sound territories. We both feel a bit spent. But we do it, one more lap around the racetrack. Finishing up, and listening back, what we have hauled in is a lush, atmospheric, angular piece of wonderfulness. it’s going to be exciting to share this work soon.

One of the proposed outcomes of this residency is the making of a V.M.A album. I’ve already done a fair bit of loose, improvised, and searching noodling playing to settle in. This week a framework has started to appear, a framework from which I can hang ideas for the next 9 weeks and beyond.

Almost all of the albums I have been part of in the past have been made during tight times squeezed in and around the rest of ongoing-life. Having slow time to mull on ideas, to consider structure and dynamics, and to explore with dedicated intention is a new and unfamiliar space; luxurious and wonderful.

This time also presents a confronting opportunity. It says ‘here is the time, what do you want to say?’. Brevity and seriousness can flatten playfulness and curiosity. Playfulness and curiosity can distract from the serious act of completion. Somewhere in between there is a middle ground, a place that teeters, a foot-in-both-camps space, and a pivot point that never settles into complacent stillness. It is a sweet spot of creative precariousness and I feel confident that for a time on Tuesday, we were visiting that place.

May this shifting ground hold me up.

SOUNDBITES:

The melody is guiding my eyes. I become aware, during the performance, that with each change in the music, so too my gaze alters. I’m look upward as the saxophone goes into the higher register. The higher the note, the higher the view. My vision takes in the floor as the lower notes are blown. It’s as if my eyes alone are dancing. The observation of observing my eyes from the inside.
We wake before the shake. It’s a gut sound, a frequency outside, the house, and our hearing. It is registered in the third-ear of the diaphragm. Guitars bounce on the walls, and the resonance of strings wakes as Richter waves roll through the house. We’re waiting for the next one, with deep and attentive listening in impending silence.
A cafe house-stereo is playing a grandiose metronome. The three on my right are talking, and I’m inadvertently listening in. I think the words are familiar, but doubt suggests that it’s not my tongue they are speaking in. A dialectical similarity, maybe? Maybe from somewhere else? Is it my hearing loss at fault? Or the terrible acoustics?[but excellent for privacy] Maybe it just their enunciation? Maybe it’s none of my business.
As the crow flies, we are as close as 9100kms apart, but you ask, ‘Can you hear the busy street?’ You say next to the alleyway of your home is one of the cities main transport arteries. Also, you say, beneath the path in front of your home, is one of the old cities canals. ‘Can we hear it?’ I can hear my belly rumble for dinner, while, perhaps, yours is sleeping just after lunch. This time next year, we will be Here. Then we shall hear.
The flue of the fireplace is becoming a home for a bird. Claws, like a record players’ stylus, resonating on the circular stainless steel. Each morning, during coffee, we hear its movement. When we move, it stops. Perhaps the chimney acts as a two-way telephone, like old tin cans and string. Or an early-warning stethoscope into our room, alerting the blackbird of downstairs-action. It’s a precarious position to bring kin into the world. We will now be avoiding fires while DJ Blackbird scratches around up top.

Contaminated by Humanness

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There are sensors connected to a plant at one end. At the other of the sensors is a plug inserted into a box that is a mess of cables and flashing lights. Speakers play sounds corresponding to interactions with the plant. Someone else is listening. I’m waving my arms around, fishing for words, trying to reel in some shape of comprehension.

I cannot think of a single instance, while demonstrating this project, that I experienced indifference. Typically, people’s fascination towards this budding idea that there is a perceivable, inter-actable, response from a species who hasn’t even been afforded the notion of agency, let alone complex life, in any form.

It’s exciting when people become intrigued. They want to ask questions. I can almost see cognition kicking in, lights going on. I do not mean this in a way that could be construed as patronising, quite the opposite, a curious and inquisitive human is a wonderful thing.

The sound comes from the speakers. They ask, “Is this what the plant sounds like?”. No must be the answer. Anything else would be a lie.

It’s an understandable question, when stepping towards the unimaginable. The imagination projects onto this non-human entity a humanness: “Maybe in some near-sci-fi way we will be able to ‘communicate’ with plants? Maybe it will be like a First Contact moment from an alien-encounter story?” I explain that what we are hearing is the result of the plants voltage only, it’s internal electricity, a biological signal which is measured between two sensor points. BUT, I emphasise, this is no less remarkable. We can interact and hear how the change of electrical signal changes the sounds coming from the machine. These are examples of signs of life, small recognitions that this entity, this plant, is detecting changes in the environment. And in response, changes in biosignals become audible. Caution is needed here, intention and meaning can not be interpreted from this moment anymore than a clinician is able to ascertain something about your personality from an ECG. It is impossible.

Online, I’ve seen examples of people making music with plants, presenting something that looks like a spiritual connection, a musical synergy. Most of the time, I think it’s an illusionary moment that is fraught with moral garbage. I would argue that such fantasy is unnecessary. We can be amazed at the astounding complexity of life without the bullshit.

Image of the cover of the book The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger.

Zoë Schlanger’s book ‘The Light Eaters’ (2024) is an exploration of the recent science on plant intelligence, plant communication and plant memory. Ideas that had once been decried and ridiculed are now undergoing a rethink in light of new research and repeatable experiments. “Contaminated by Humanness” is an idea from Schlanger’s book. This idea of Humanness is a polite way to announce Anthropocentrism. Anthropos is Greek for Human. Anthropocentrism is the placing of the human experience and perspective central to all. For example, for things to be understood, hold value and meaning, they must be translatable into a position relevant to the Human. Failing to ‘See’ other positions, other Others, as of value, meaning, and importance has brought ‘Humans’ of modernity to the worst versions of ourselves. Schlanger’s suggests that there are many more perspectives of the world that may remain truly unimaginable, yet remain alongside us, permanently in co-existence.

In this project I describe the sound-making devices of the synth as akin to Google Translate. It enables us to perceive, attempt to comprehend, and engage with the signal of the lifeiness of non-human others. In this awareness-making moment perhaps perspective might shift. What’s been seen cannot be unseen, so too what has been heard can not be unheard. I think it’s important to not corral these sounds into a classical framework of what music is. I want the unexpected musicality to hold its own space. And then we can decide to simply participate without overlaying some limited conceptual idea such as music definitions. We can start by learning to have bigger ears.

Writing this makes me think of an early, and very formative, event. I can pinpoint the moment my ears expanded.

Sometime in the late 80’s I hitchhiked to Christchurch. One day I was walking in the square in the city centre. I had just brought a cassette called 2X4, a collection of live recordings from a German industrial group, Einstürzende Neubauten. I had read about them in fanzines but had never heard them. Invercargill was a long way from Berlin. Until today.

My ancient copy of 2x4 by the German industrial band Einstûrzende Neubauten. I thought it no longer played due to too much beer spoiled on it, but tonight, the spools rolled fine... still as noisy as ever

Walking through the Square, Cathedral to the Left, the pub Warners ahead, my ears were confounded and lost by these raw, unfamiliar sounds on my cassette Walkman. What I heard gave me NO reference to help me understand the sound. Percussive machinery, confronting angular rhythms, and Bargelds’ high-pitched vocalisations felt indigestible. Even though it was both fascinating and disconcerting I had to stop listening for a moment, just to catch my breath.

Removing the headphones the perplexity remained as I felt like I was STILL listening to the band.

All around the Square was the sound of construction sites, building projects in various forms of ascent. Skeletal towers full of labourers beating frames into shape. Concrete-mixers, angle grinders, hammers, saws, power tools and brute force all at work. I heard it all.

I also heard, I realised, what I needed in order to listen to the cassette. The builders had no pretense on being musicians, but the musicians used the tools of construction and destruction to create songs and entertainment. Tools containing specific utility, identity, became challenging in the hands of another. Not so much bending it out of shape, but into a newer shape. A shape that encompassed both this world of construction and also that world of creative exploration. The building world became contaminated by a musicness.

Many of these building never survived the earthquakes 30 years later. But I still hear ‘music’ where it isn’t.

Ice water in a Warming World

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First ideas are warm water. Comfortable and mediocre. Acceptable in filling a void, ok in start-making, and welcoming if tentative in water-testing. But the breathlessness of a leap into cold water has greater urgency, it’s magnificently immediate.

However, finding a constant pace in that extremity is a challenge. The thrill of the goosebump will come. I can afford myself this warm time, keeping the pending destination of a bracing uncertain front and centre. An aim is to not get swamped in predictable comfort.

It’s a rare gift to have a committed, and funded, length of time available to explore sound-making. There’s a shadow of apprehension, a flavor of imposter-syndrome, a snivel of a sense that I will make minimal more than mediocrity. I remind myself that the brain is a liar, deceitful, it fears failing. But this brain’s gravity also tends towards risk-taking and experimentation. To make something from nothing, to draw out a silhouette that pokes at the psychology of pattern recognition. To make ice water in a warming world.

This chill of being creatively lost is where I’m aiming; to be lost in thought, from habit, in someplace unfamiliar and pregnant with discovery. And I have three months to do this. I am to make recordings, to develop a show for June 2025, and to continue to discover the voice of this project. In order to do this, I’m given space at Toi Pōneke Arts Centre as part of the 2024 Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence position I hold till the end of 2024. I have a generous west facing room, a wall of windows, and three to hang pictures. A desk for drawing and a desk for musical gear. The building contains scattered occupants who I occasionally meet as they take rest from their own creative endeavours.

The only plant I have at present is a Peace Lily, recently repotted. It is the sole active non-human participant in sound-making so far, displaying a dynamic voltage that interacts inside the sound modules of the synth. The first recordings are encouraging. It was given to us over 15 years ago from the real estate agent who sold us our home. I noticed this morning that, in the entire time we [me and the lily] have lived together, it is about to flower for the first time

Toi Pōneke is located at the edge of the CBD. Theres two more blocks till Webb Street, with a Bypass that intersects. Toi Pōneke came into existence, at least in my memory, as a trade off between the Wellington City Council and the significant Anti-Bypass protest movement in the early 2000’s. For nearly 40 years people had opposed the mass destruction of a vibrant corner of the city which housed many artists, musicians, and oddballs. The protests took the form of squats, lock-ons, community gardens, fund-raising gigs, festival, publications and more. Many were arrested, some were hurt. It was from these community organisings that events like the Cuba Street Carnival evolved. I was involved in number of ways back then, and I opposed the council’s trade off of an Arts Centre Vs Community. But as it’s said in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, ‘You’ve got to build bypasses’. The length of road happened. It cost millions, saving only a multiple of seconds on the journey from the motorway to the airport.

So here I sit. Ruminating on this part of my past. Hoping these digestions are nutritious and enabling for whatever comes next. I have learned a lot in developing the vegetable.machine.animal project, and one such notion is the idea of ongoingness in contested, damaged, and troubled areas. Sounds a bit like everywhere these days. The dead weight of cynicism does not free us from the challenges ahead. It offers no resistance or option against a Powers sense of immobility. New stories are necessary, new directions are essential, new actions for these times. And I hope in my own small way, through this project, to contribute in this new mode, towards always something better, bracing, and uncertain.

The artists are in residence

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Kieran sitting in new studio at Toi Pōneke

Today is a milestone. Kieran begins 3 months as the Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence 2024. You can guarantee that this funded watershed will result in a proliferation of work in sound, in music, and in painting and will foster a clutch of unexpected collaborations with makers in a myriad of disciplines.

The knock-on of Kieran’s relocation to Toi Pōneke, is I get to stretch into an empty house for 3 months. So I feel I have scored the inaugural Happy Valley/skirted Records Sonic Artist-in-Residence 2024. Who knows what this gift of time and space will generate?

We both aim is to keep you posted as we would if we were on tour. Subscribe if you’d like to follow along.

No Evidence of the Future [exhibition of images]

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Exhibition of images opening:
Pyramid Club, 272 Taranaki Street, Pōneke, Wellington
Rāpare (Thurs) 8TH August 5:30PM,
koha entry

The future sits on the edge of Now, and in the blink of an eye slides to a place called the Past. It is ever-present, ambiguous, haunted by terrifying possibilities and incredible potentialities.

These pictures, by Kieran Monaghan of vegetable.machine.animal, mr sterile Assembly, and skirted Records, are an unintentional outcome from a residency at Driving Creek Railway in the Coromandel, 2023. In between recording, sound-searching and experimentation, tiny vague words, missing punctuation and clarity of meaning, intentionally mis-readable, and multi-interpretable, appeared. Three or four word phrases that, sometimes, reference the connection species have to the world, and that includes us, and other times don’t.

And somewhere in the simple act of scratching a phrase onto paper, abstractions appear and offer place for unexpected color, unintended form and unplanned results.

Source: Original Post

bioSignals: Interview

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I recently had the pleasure to be interviewed by Dr Maggie Buxton of Awhiworld and bioSignals.

Awhiworld: a “…transdiciplinary project [that] brings together artists, scientists, makers, hackers, and more to tackle complex issues and generate alternative realities.”

bioSignals, a part of the Awhiworld research, is an “…international collaboration between Awhiworld, the Phillipines and the UK. …bioSignals collects, processes, and transmits signals from local plant life growing at each site, embodying a shared vision of connecting isolated entities, fostering resiliance, and addressing climate change and biodiversity loss challenges.”

2024 Sonic Artist in Residence Announcement

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Toi Pōneke Arts Centre and Victoria University’s New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī (NZSM) are delighted to announce Kieran Monaghan as the 2024 Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence.

Kieran Monaghan (he/him) is predominantly, and persistently, a drummer and percussionist of found sounds. He calls Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington home. His first crude musical steps were in the late 1980s, playing drums in southern punk rock bands. Heading north in the 1990s opened new musical domains such as theatre with Red Mole, and its little sister Roadworks, and the diverse arrangements of free jazz that tumbled from venues such as The Space. While continuing to play assertive music, alongside developing confidence in improvisational arenas, necessity also dictated that income be made by playing multiple pub circuits in working bands.

His project, vegetable.machine.animal (VMA), is the newest iteration of ongoing musical expression. It explores the intersections between spontaneous playing, electronic music, and science-informed inter-species collaboration.

He co-runs the skirted Records label with domestic and performative partner Chrissie Butler. Together they were the core of the outsider punk group mr sterile Assembly, and Nick Bollinger named them as one of the ten great rhythm sections of New Zealand. Monaghan has toured internationally many times with the Assembly, and more recently with VMA. He has a long catalogue of solo, band, and collaborative recordings. He is a semi-regular DJ on RadioActive.FM. He remains happily hitched, and is a father to three daughters and one mokopuna.

The Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence 2024 is a three-month position that runs from 23 September to 15 December 2024. During this time, Kieran will develop a body of innovative and substantial work in the domain of sound art. His work will include a new album, performances and an installation of vegetable.machine.animal. He will become an employee of Victoria University of Wellington for the duration of the residency and may use NZSM facilities and recording equipment over that period. In addition, he will be provided with studio space at Toi Pōneke and his residency will culminate in a 4-week exhibition in June 2025 at Toi Pōneke Gallery.

Text verbatim from Toi Pōneke website

Mundane Utopia

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I’m waiting now at the airport to return home after an intense week in Auckland. The focus of this intensity is the installing, and then opening, of the sound installation Mundane Utopia at the Audio Foundation. The Audio Foundation is an essential centre for boundary-pushing sounds explorations located in the middle of the Auckland CBD, and holds a massive role in ongoing adventurous sound making within Aotearoa, but also holds a substantial archive of what has come before. I had the opportunity to spend a week in residence there last year and this exhibition is the follow on from that.

I have never really been involved in the gallery installation process, so learning was required on the fly, but we had days to work on it as the install evolved through various arrangements. The final layout feels organic and coherent, and remarkably simple for the amount of effort required. The opening was well attended with a lot of playful interest in the sound project.

The following day was a full performance at the Whammy Backroom. The lineup was U R A Tooth, representing the home team, two drummers duelling like collapsing stars, unrelenting and explosive, plus bass and saxophone for any portion of the eardrum left unbruised. Then my turn for the first post-Java show. A nice touch at the end of my set was a gentle game of ‘have-the-audience-kick-the snare-and-ride-around-the-dance-floor’ while I let the the synth sound disappear. Very homely. And Hōhā, from Ōtepoti/Dunedin, on third to round out the sonically dense evening. Drums, guitar and dual vocals, improvised song-forms, with the last piece being only drums and processed vocals. Superb.

On Saturday afternoon, I had the chance to present Office Ambiance back in the Audio Foundation. A seminar session hosted be MEL (the Musical Electronic Library located at AF), which gave me the chance to talk a bit about the process, thinking, and science behind my project. Some wonderful discussion followed, interesting questions, reflections, and similarities with others’ own creative projects.

And finally, on Saturday evening, I hosted a screening of the independent film Jogja Noise Bombing with a bit of Q&A at the end. I offered some thoughts on my recent opportunity to perform at JNB, as well as answer questions that curious minds wanted to ask.

Many thanks to the Audio Foundation and crew, Jeff, Sam, Tash, and all the others, for their support in making this series of events possible…couldn’t have done it without you all.