Sunday 12 April 2026, 7.30pm
Another excellent line-up from Infant Tree, featuring Seoul-based computer-musician, improviser, and writer Ryu Hankil, Paris-based musician and visual artist Shakeeb Abu Hamdan, drummer, sound artist and researcher Michael Speers, and Absurd Cosmos Late Nite - aka Mark Groves.
Ryu Hankil is a computer musician, improviser, and writer based in Seoul.
Ryu Hankil has long explored the possibility of generating another kind of music through non-musical objects. His questions and practice regarding how an object's inherent vibrations can constitute a musical context led him to realize that the speculative power of sonic thinking creates fiction in diverse ways.
To put this understanding into practice, he actively utilizes the feedback between physical modeling synthesis and sonic thinking writing.
He has now shifted his primary focus from non-musical objects to the speculative power of sonic thinking, exploring how sonic thinking can generate different music, function as a new cognitive system, and fundamentally and comprehensively reconfigure today's reality.
Shakeeb Abu Hamdan is a musician and visual artist based in Paris. He performs with an unorthodox setup of drums, bells and cymbals which he augments and amplifies with surface transducers, microphones, pitch and rhythmic modulation effects and modified megaphones. His performances are structured but leave space for generative accidents and improvisation in response to the instabilities of feedback manipulation and the unpredictable interactions built into his instrumental system.
He has recently shown work and performed at Beirut Art Centre, Real No Real Festival (Madrid), GMEA (Albi), Fylkingen (Stockholm), Les Instants Chavirés (Paris) and Cafe OTO (London).
Michael Speers (b.1992) is a drummer, sound artist and researcher from County Down, Ireland.
Currently a PhD student at SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music, Belfast.
His practice incorporates percussion, feedback, digital synthesis and environmental sound in the creation of improvised performances, site-specific sound installations and electroacoustic compositions.
He has performed internationally in venues such as: Café OTO; LOM; Les Instants Chavirés; Les Ateliers Claus; Morphine Raum; SARC Sonic Lab; National Concert Hall (Dublin) and at Sonic Acts Festival.
Recordings published by Anòmia, C.A.N.V.A.S., Party Perfect!, Wasted Capital Since 2013, Takuroku, Krim Kram and Feedback Moves.
Absurd Cosmos Late Nite is one of many aliases occupied by Mark Groves. Others past and present include Absoluten Calfeutrail, Arum Lilies, Resident Pissant, Von Einem, and even ‘Mark Groves’. Projects shared with others currently include Voice Imitator and Red Wine and Sugar. He also runs a little label called Index Clean. Mark lives in Melbourne, Australia, and enjoys playing with his voice and tape among other embarrassing pursuits. A good friend described Absurd Cosmos Late Nite as “a strange trip to somewhere in Australia most of us have experience with, yet (if you’re lucky) only in dreams we barely understand. Or perhaps our inner dialogue, set to an uneasy meter, critiquing and discussing, over and again. In summary (perhaps): “Imagine Scott Walker fired by Macquarie Group.”
