A Beginner's Guide To Sound Design
Description
This three-hour masterclass is your entry point into understanding how sound and movement work together. Whether you come from a contemporary music or movement background, this session will offer stories, practical tips, and honest advice from artists who know the craft inside and out.
Sound artist Robin Fox, composer Megan Alice Clune, and MusicACT's Sia Ahmad join Alison Plevey and Sara Black from Australian Dance Party to pull back the curtain on their creative processes - exploring composition, collaboration, and the art of designing sound for dance, theatre, and gallery installation. If you've ever wondered how to bring sound to a physical space or a moving body, this is where to start.
Artists
Robin Fox
Robin Fox is an Australian composer whose musical works have won national and international acclaim for over two and a half decades. A first class honours graduate of the radical LaTrobe University Music Department he went on to complete a PhD in electroacoustic composition at Monash university with a focus on contingency and space as structural aspects of sound Composition. With an enduring interest in human audition and the impossibility of ‘real’ or ‘literal’ communication, Fox’s work has been at the forefront of creating open and abstract works that invite listeners to construct meaning themselves. Winning early recognition from the Paris Rostrum of Composers for his groundbreaking work on music for the bionic ear Fox has gone on to compose musical scores for over 30 contemporary dance works a number of which continue to tour the globe to many of the world’s most prestigious stages.
Megan Alice Clune
Megan Alice Clune is a musician, artist and composer based on Gadigal and Wangal lands (Sydney, Australia). Her work explores the dynamic relationships between music, technology, the body and temporality through composition, performance and installation. Described as ‘visionary ambient’ (Rockerilla), ‘breathtakingly intimate’ (Bandcamp Daily) and 'a pristine exercise in precise simplicity' (Boomkat), Megan’s music portrays an emotional depth through a minimal sonic palette, delicately balancing textures that are at once rich and sparse. Originally trained as a classical clarinettist, Megan’s interest in conceptualism and the avant-garde led her to a pioneering practice that draws from unusual combinations of techniques and processes. Her unique style of contemporary minimalism has also made Megan a sought-after collaborator. She creates music for a wide range of artforms, frequently working with leading Australian film-makers, visual artists and choreographers.
Alison Plevey
Alison Plevey is an award-winning dance and physical theatre artist, and choreographer based in Canberra. She graduated from WAAPA with a first-class honours degree, BA – Dance, in 2009. Her 12 year professional career to date spans across youth dance practice, teaching and dance education, solo dance and theatre work, film, arts advocacy, producing and artistic directing. Through her work she communicates contemporary issues using a choreographic language, often collaborating with non-artists and harnessing the stories embedded in ordinary and extraordinary environments. As Founder and Director of Australian Dance Party (2016) she crafts dance experiences that live in and draw from place to evoke deeper sensorial responses to affect connection and change in our community.
Sara Black
Sara Black has worked as a choreographer, performer, teacher, and collaborator in Australia and internationally over the past 16 years. As a choreographer she has worked in theatre and commercial events whilst developing her own contemporary choreographic practice, most recently premiering her new dance works Double Beat and Value for money. She has worked as a choreographer or associate for organisations such as Iceland Dance company, Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir Theatre, National Theatre of Parramatta, Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, NIDA, GUTS dance, QL2, Flipside and Sydney Dance company pre professional year. As a dancer and collaborator, she has worked with companies such as Chunky Move, Punchdrunk, Lucy Guering Inc, The Australian Ballet, Dancenorth, Not yet it’s Difficult, Rogue Dance Collective, Protein Dance and Stephanie Lake dance company along with many Australian and international independent artists. In 2008 Sara was awarded a Helpmann Award for best performer in a dance/physical theatre piece and has since been nominated for two Green Room awards in the same category.
Sia Ahmad
Sia Ahmad offers a rich and extensive background in Australian music, creating idiosyncratic sounds over the last 20 years. Using guitar, voice and electronics, she works both as singer/composer and improviser when performing solo work as Shoeb Ahmad, in collaboration with artists such as Gwenno and Liars, as one half of the duo Spartak and formerly of Tangents. Many of these projects also feature her talent as a producer and engineer, with a unique sensibility to sonic space coming to the fore. Combining both acoustic and electronic approaches to music-making, Sia has released a diverse range of original solo music while also collaborating with numerous directors and choreographers to provide sound design and soundtrack material for live theatre and dance works. Parallel to this work, she continues to explore installation pieces and composition for chamber settings, taking inspiration from 20th Century avant-classical works, Indian raga form and minimalist electronic music.
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity