Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia Gail Priest is a Sydney-based sound artist. Her practice involves
sound design/composition
for performance, installation
and live laptop-based exploratory music. She is
also a curator, writer and commentator on sound
and media
arts.
Artist Statement:
I seek to have a multi-faceted practice in which sound is the key material of communication and investigation. The outcomes of this may take the form of solo laptop improvisation, live audiovisual collaborations, soundscores for performance and dance, gallery installations, curation of exhibitions and concert events, and critical writing on sound and related media arts.
Threading through my practice is an active engagement with the audience/listener to bring about an immersive experience. I have explored this through multispeaker saturated soundscapes for large audiences as well as intimate exchanges for the solo viewer—despite the scale there is always a performative essence.
The voice also forms a lynchpin of my works. While it is sometimes unrecognisable, subjected to multiple manipulations, more frequently the extended voice, derived from improvisation, is arriving in the foreground of works exploring the raw and mediated, the visceral and the mechanistic.
Sound
Gail has been performing live laptop-based exploratory music since 2002 at national events such as impermanent.audio, the now NOW festival, superdelux@artspace (Sydney Biennale 2010), disorientation, if you like improvised music we like you, 1/4 inch, Liquid Architecture (2003/ 2006) and electrofringe (2005/2007).
In August/September 2008 she was in residence at Tokyo Wonder Site (in collaboration with Artspace, Sydney) where she created 28 Songs for a City: Tokyo which is available as limited edition double CD-R.
In 2007 she co-produced (with Sam James) Immersion: Electrical Empathy, an audiovisual intensive residency and installation/performance featuring Gail and Sam, Jason Sweeney, Cicada, Scott Morrison, Peter Newman and Ai Yamamoto, at Performance Space, CarriageWorks. She also curated and performed in Circadian Rhythms, with Tarab and Jim Denley at Artspace.
Commissions include:
• radiophonic work fo ABC Radio's Orpheus Project (2007)
• site-specific multi-channel sound
performance for Elizabeth Bay House (2006)
• radiophonic work fo ABC Radio's Figures in the Soundscape (2006)
• co-composition of a series of works with Continuum
Sax for computer/electronics and
saxophone quartet which premiered at the Conservatorium of Music (2005)
• ABC
Radio's In Night Air Audioteque live broadcast (2005)
• new work for Typhoon - a festival of national and international sound performance at Artspace curated by caleb.k (2 005)
• work for headphones fo h.phone—curated by caleb.k (2003)
• track for Melatonin,
a double CD and installation by Lawrence English presented at Next
Wave 2004 in Melbourne and MAAP04 in Singapore.
In 2001/2 she was awarded a 3 month residency with ABC Radio Performance and Features to produce Music Theatre for Radio resulting in Poems to Sing Angelic to and An Accidental Guide to Sydney 2002 which have since been aired on The Listening Room.
On her own label Metalbitch Recordings she has released, imaginary conversations in reverberant rooms (CD - 2006), 28 Songs for a City: Tokyo (2CD - 2008), and Fear of Stranglers (EP-CDR, 2010). Presentiments from the Spider Garden (CD) was released through Endgame Records in 2010.
Sound for Performance
Originally trained as a performer (with a BA in Performance-Theatre from the University of Western Sydney), a large part of her audio work is as a sound designer for performance.
Some recent works
include:
• Martin del Amo's It's a Jungle Out there (2009/10), Campbelltown Arts Centre, Performance Space, Sydney, Dancehouse, Melbourne, PICA, Perth
• Version 1.0's This Kind of Ruckus (2009/10 - Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne), Deeply Offensive and Uttery Untrue (2007/09) and Wages of Spin (2005/6) - Performance Space
• Karen Therese's The Riot Act (2009), Campbelltown Arts Centre (co-design with James Brown)
• Deborah Pollard's Blue Prints (2007) - Performance Space
• Martin del Amo's solo dance works Never Been This Far Away from Home (2007), Under
Attack (2005) which toured the UK in Feb 2006 including Arnolfini's Inbetween Time Festival, and Unsealed (2004) - Performance Space
• Constellations
(2005/2006/2007), Song of Ghosts (2004), Forked Tongues (2001) and Replicant Hotel (2000) and Altered States (2003) for Pact.
Sound for Installation
In January-March 2009 Gail was in residence at Artspace, Sydney working on the multi-channel sound installation with video, Urban Runes, exhibited as part of Between Site & Space at Artspace in March.
In August/September 2008 she was in residence at Tokyo Wonder Site (in collaboration with Artspace, Sydney) where she create 28 Songs for a City: Tokyo which was exhibted as part of Diorama of a City, at Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, and is also available as limited edition double CD-R.
She also collaborated on a creative development with UK sound artists Alex Bradley and Charlie Poulet on WhitePlane 2 at the Engine Room (Bridgwater UK), a surround sound installation originally commissioned for In Between Time at Arnolfini Bristol (2004).
In 2003 she was awarded a Research and Development grant by the New Media Fund to learn surround sound mastering and to develop an installation/performance work called Sonic Salon.
Earlier work includes collaborations with Caitlin Newton-Broad creating two performance/installation works: Dead Girls' Party (Performance Space, 1997) based on William Burroughs' unfortunate aim; and White Collar Project (2000) a site-specfic multimedia performance event looking at the city and its monsters, that took place on a rooftop in Sydney's CBD.
Sound for Video
Gail has composed the soundscores for video works by Samuel James including VIivaria (2009/10/11), Anamorphic Archive (2008), Simulated Rapture (2007) exhibited at the CarriageWorks, Midnight Dancer (2006) exhibited during the Sydney Festival 2008, and Post-Romantic which was included in several international dance film festivals. (See video page)
Gail has also created multichannel modular sound tracks for several works by Alex Kershaw including One of Several Centres (2008/2010) Performance Space, Sydney and Fremantle Artspace, Perth,The Phi Ta Khon Project (2009), Grant Pirrie Gallery Sydney, Lake Without Water (2006) Artspace, Sydney.
In 2009 she also composed soundscores for photographer Heidrun Löhr's installation - Projections, at the Drill Hall, and her video work with Nikki Heywood, Recapturing the Vertical.
In 2007 she also co-composed (with Vic McEwan) the soundscore for Quietly Collapsed, created by Rosie Dennis with Sam James, a dance film commision for ABC TV and Channel 4 UK.
Curation & Publication
Gail was a guest programmer for the Superdeluxe@ Artspace club created for the 17th Biennale of Sydney 2010 (see documentation). In 2007 she co-produced (with Sam James) Immersion: Electrical Empathy, an audiovisual intensive residency and installation/performance featuring Gail and Sam, Jason Sweeney, Cicada, Scott Morrison, Peter Newman and Ai Yamamoto, at Performance Space, CarriageWorks. For Artspace she also curated Circadian Rhythms, a concert featuring Tarab, Jim Denley and Gail Priest looking at the sonic biorhythms of the city.
In 2006 Gail curated What Survives: sonic residues in breathing buildings, an exhibition of sound sculpture and installation at Performance Space, and unNnatural Selection - the first new media art exhibition for the Manning Regional Gallery in regional NSW. In 2005 she produced and curated a series of live audiovisual events called e)scapes.
Throughout 2003 & 2004 Gail was co-director of Electrofringe - a national new media arts festival in Newcastle NSW. In 2004 she curated the Sound component of dLux media arts' d>art festival which was exhibited at the Sydney Opera House and also co-curated a screening program, AlternaTerraZones, for Transmediale. She was co-curator with Michaela Coventry of Hold On…(2002) and Sounds Like...? (2003) a program of sound works played exclusively on the hold music of Performance Space.
She has taught at the University of Western Sydney in the Theatre Making and Performance course and is also the associate editor, graphic and web designer, and writer for the national contemporary arts magazine RealTime.
Most recently she edited and wrote chapters for Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia published by UNSW Press/The Australia Council in 2009.