A night of tactile and mechanical electronics with three solo performances by Stephen Cornford, Graham Dunning, and John Macedo.

STEPHEN CORNFORD

Stephen Cornford (1979, London) is an installation artist and improvising musician who works by reconfiguring and reimagining consumer audio electronics. Stephen is currently a Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University where he co-curates the Audiograft Festival. He initially studied sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art before completing an MA at Dartington College of Arts. He has established ongoing collaborations with Samuel Rodgers - with whom he runs the Consumer Waste label - Ben Gwilliam and Patrick Farmer. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Rumpsti Pumsti (Berlin), Lydgalleriet (Bergen) & Campbell Works (London). Stephen’s work has been included in Sound Art Klang als Medium der Kunst at ZKM Centre for Media & Art and Urban Sounds at the Haus der Elektronische Künste in Basel amongst other group shows. His audio works have been published by Senufo Editions, Accidie Records, 3LEAVES , Cathnor and Another Timbre.

Stephen's current performance setup uses a blank mastering lacquer - the empty disc onto which a new record is cut before pressing it to vinyl, amplifying and resonating this spinning aluminium platter to produce a strictly limited palette of surface noise and feedback. Beginning from an object which epitomises musical silence, the lacquer is explored by 3 separate styli for its imperfections, vibrated in search of its resonances and eventually its surface distressed and corroded chemically and by the same needles that amplify it.




GRAHAM DUNNING

"Situationist Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio built machines to make abstract expressionist paintings on long rolls of canvas. My ongoing project, Music By The Metre, is an audio homage to Pinot-Gallizio: music making machines that fill spools of tape with abstract music. Lee Scratch Perry described dub as "the ghost in me coming out." By performing a live dub on a music making contraption I will release the ghost in the machine.

Vinyl dissonance for lost memories: a live rhythmical collage made of squeezed record crackle, analogue synthesizer, dubplates of field recordings, dusty shellac records and clumsily triggered drumsynth. Mechanical techno, ghost in the machine music." - Graham Dunning




JOHN MACEDO

John Macedo is a sound artist from London. He has incorporated everything from acoustic instruments and environmental sound to analogue and computer synthesis, into compositions, live performances and sound installations. He has a pluralistic approach that focuses on movement, subtle detail, and capturing and generating unrepeatable/unpredictable sound events.

He will be debuting his Intimate Sound System, a mini multi-channel sound system, which is made up of 8 mini-speakers in combination with the standard stereo sound system. The Intimate Sound System aims for a more physical, spatial, and acoustic approach to electronic music.