12TH

PRESENTED BY

Program notes SPACE / PLI 2015 Decibel Ensemble and Johannes S. Sistermanns Friday 15 May 2015 PS Arts Space, Fremantle

Space/Pli 2015 Decibel Ensemble and Johannes S. Sistermanns Program Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery The Talking Board [2011] for instruments and electronics Johannes S. Sistermanns NEW YORK sur_ [Fold 2/ Version Fremantle 2015] Glad wrap, Voice, Electroacoustics, Accordion, Tape, Piezo, Transducer Australian Premiere Johannes S. Sistermanns SPACE / PLI, 2015 World Premiere Johannes S. Sistermanns Residency, Exhibition and Performances are presented by PS Arts Space and Tura New Music and supported by Kunststiftung NRW Düsseldorf / Germany

About the Program Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery: The Talking Board [2011] The work utilises a graphical score-collage of twenty images collected by Hope and Vickery and assembled using the surrealist 'exquisite corpse' technique in which each artist can only see the end, or fragment of, the previous artist's contribution. The performers realise the work by interpreting the components of the score that are framed by a “planchet”, a circle, colour coded to correspond to each instrument, that also moves freely around the score. The graphical score is also continuously repositioned during the performance, moving smoothly in the vertical and horizontal dimensions and also jumping to particular new positions. The movement of the score and the behaviours of the planchets define the formal structure of the work. Importantly, since the score employs asemic graphical notation, the players are left to interpret the symbols how they will. The result of this circumstance is that, in a live performance, players tend to move towards a consensus in terms of means of interpretation, creating a gradual transformation towards greater parametrical unity of texture in each new notational environment presented by the computer. Therefore, the structural outcome of any particular instantiation of the work is extremely indeterminate, relying as it does upon indeterminate trajectories both of the score and the planchets, as well as each performer’s interpretations of and group interactions to the graphical images. The term “Talking Board” is a generic name for the Ouija board, a game invented by Hasbro Ltd that rapidly grew in the early 20th century into a favoured medium for supposedly contacting the dead. In our version the only “ghosts” are (hopefully) in the machine. Johannes S. Sistermanns: NEW YORK sur_ [Fold 2/ Version Fremantle 2015] AxIOm / thinking is form / space leads to sound / space through sound / sound-far, interior extended / sound field / picture face / decay, go far away / stretched / where to go? / cling wrap rushes visible / scotch tape plays keyboard / seeing / hearing /

Johannes Sistermanns: SPACE / PLI, 2015 for Decibel Decibel Ensemble: Cat Hope, Stuart James, Tristen Parr, Lindsay Vickery, Aaron Wyatt, Louise Devenish. Space can be folded!? Sound can be folded!? Sound folds air, continually. Variety, diversity, spacefold, fullness, un, room tone. Getting beyond the 'one' perspective. Tearing open perspectively, uncoupling. In uncoupling space arises. And then, unpredictable . . . “Folding – unfolding does not simply mean tensing-relaxing, contracting-expanding, but wrapping-unwrapping, winding back –winding forward. The organism is defined by its abilities to fold its own components into infinity and to unfold them.(…) The simplest thing would be to say that unfolding is multiplying, growing and folding is decreasing, reducing ‘return into the Depths of a World’ [G.W. Leibniz, German philosopher anno 1687] ”. [The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque, Gilles Deleuze [Translation Tom Conley], The Athlone Press London 1993, p. 95] This commissioned composition is realised with the Decibel ScorePlayer is an ipad application that enables network-synchronised scrolling of proportional colour music scores on multiple tablet computers. Commissioned by Decibel with support from the Government of Western Australia through the Department for Culture and the Arts. About the composers Johannes S. Sistermanns stages his composition as Media/Electroacoustic, Performances, SoundPlastic, Radioart, Music Theatre and Urban Environment. 1976-84 he studied at the Musikhochschule Köln New Music Theatre with Mauricio Kagel, Piano and Rhythmik. 1989 Doctorate in Musicology [PhD]. Since 1983 touring, living, teaching, performing, exhibiting, stipes and residencies in Paris, Tokio/Kyoto, New York, India, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Europe and Australia. International Festivals: 1995 Knitting Factory New York, Melbourne Festival 1997, Adelaide Festival 2000, EXPO 2010 World Exhibition Hannover, 1996/1999/2005 Donaueschingen Musiktage, 2004/06/12 Darmstädter Summer Course for New Music, 2006 Shanghai 1. Electroacoustic Music

Festival, 2013 ICMC/11th THNMF Perth, MOFO Hobart 2015, Karl-Sczuka-Prize (support grant winner) German SWR Radio and the ‚German Soundart Award 2008’. 1997 Live Satellite-Performance Melbourne-Frankfurt-Melbourne in collaboration with Ros Bandt [ABC Radio Sydney live broadcasting in The Listening Room]. FOREVER NOW competition [Aphids, Melbourne] selected artist for the GOLDEN RECORD, sent into the orbit 2015 with the electroacoustic composition, Abund dance. Cat Hope is a composer, sound artist and musician based in Western Australia. Cat’s composition and performance practices engage elements of low frequency sound, drone, noise, graphic notation and improvisation. She often makes use of electronics and unusual or invented instruments in her works that have been performed at festivals internationally and broadcast on Australian, German, Italian, French and Austrian radio. She has been a songwriter with some 6 albums to her credit, playing in pop bands in Germany, Italy and Australia in the 1990s. In 2013 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study digital graphic music notations internationally as well undertake residencies at the Visby International Composers Centre, Sweden, Civitella, Italy and the Peggy Glanville Hicks House in Sydney in 2014. Lindsay Vickery is an active as a composer and performer across Europe, the USA and Asia. He is also a highly regarded performer on reed instruments and electronics, touring as a soloist and with ensembles in many parts of the world. He was a founding member of Alea New Music Ensemble (1987-92), Magnetic Pig (1992-), GRIT (2001-), US-based multimedia group SQUINT (2002-) and most recently HEDKIKR (2002-). He has been a visiting artist at STEIM (NLD), HarvestWorks (NY), the MATA festival (NY), CEMI (U of Northern Texas), University of Illinois, Kyoto Seika University, San Diego State University, Audio Art Festival (Krakow), the DC International Dance and Improv Festival and RPI (Troy). He is also known for his composition and performance with interactive electronics – particularly the MIBURI wireless MIDI Jump suit, and more recently, with graphic scores. He Lectures in music at WAAPA, ECU. Decibel is devoted to the realisation of music where acoustic and electronic instruments are represented and encourage the creation of new works for electro acoustic performance, the arrangement of electronic works for live performance, the performance of seminal international works and the representation of Australian and Western Australian artists, established and emerging. decibelnewmusic.com