…the serious lady and the queen bee bump heads in the night…
This was a dance work by Nikki Fay Baxter which I scored in early 2008. The sound included tunes as well as soundscapes evocative of a hive derived from samples of sounds of Nikki and I manipulating an antique book on beekeeping.
Staged at Kick Gallery Northcote.
this event at Contemporary Dance Australia
This was a project I worked on in the first half of 2009 with fellow students from the VCA, including people from the Music, Film & TV and Art schools. The brief for the project was as follows:
To investigate the idea of automation in art/music/performance practice, ways to do this could include…
Look back with a historical perspective to the futurists, investigate their ideas.
Investigate one’s own practice for examples of automation, look for opportunities for automation in one’s own practice.
Design and build machines that make Art and/or music. Manipulate an artist or performer to create works. Is who makes the art as important or more important than the art itself?
Automate yourself out of existence – design/build a machine that replicates your creative process exactly.
Make yourself into an automaton – make art using a strict pre-defined set of rules/principles, outside which you cannot stray.
We began to explore these pathways in a number of discussions and practical creative exercises which culminated in an exhibition/installation in the VCA Art School building. Evidently from the brief there’s a lot of scope for continued work and a lot more could be done in this area than we could cover in a part-time project over one semester. A project I’ll be coming back to in the future…
see the online documentation of this project at Collaborative Commons
This is a parody of the second breakdance battle scene from the film ‘Breakin’.
Look out for me on the wheels of steel, my only acting credit to date.
A couple fractically prepare a meal for someone they’re trying to impress. Concept/written by David Stroud, Rebecca Robinson, Camille Robinson and David Rusanow, Directed by David Rusanow. The score to this film won Best Soundtrack at the 2007 15/15 Film Festival, and it’s the first example of the beat driven end of my experiments with musique concrete. Filled to the brim with every sound I could find in my kitchen and every implement and appliance therein.
Set in a decaying totalitarian bureaucracy two isolated workers briefly make contact. Written and directed by David Rusanow, score by Camille Robinson. Features my own modest talents on the piano and Nick Carver on double bass.
Jimmy’s sick of his parents fighting and decides to take matters into his own hands. Written & Directed by David Rusanow
Southbank Brass Ensemble
Melbourne International Festival of Brass
October 2, 12:00pm – 1:00pm
South Melbourne Town Hall
Last Friday the Southbank Brass Ensemble again performed my piece ‘Burning Water’ this time as part of the Melbourne International Festival of Brass, and they again did a great job. Thanks to Russell Davis for conducting and for including it on the program, and thanks to the players of the ensemble for all their hard work, and thanks to the festival organisers.
A quick bit of background on this event: earlier this year the Institute of Italian Culture and the VCAM school of Music held a series of workshops hosted by Carlo Forlivesi as part of the composition competition “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space”, for which all the participants selected a poem by an Italian poet from a list provided, and composed a work inspired by the text. The intention of the competition was to celebrate the Italian language, as well as mark the centenary of the founding of the Italian Futurist movement. Following the workshops three finalists were selected from the participants, Chiaki Kato, Mike Solomon and myself, and the ensemble Quiver prepared the work s for performance at the final culmination of the process: today’s concert at Iwaki Auditorium.
This afternoon Quiver (Aviva Endean, Jessica Fotinos, Rebecca Lane, Luke Paulding, Matthias Schack-Arnott) delivered a pretty amazing performance premiering Kato’s “Alti Alati”, Solomon’s “granini di luce beccuciati da uccelli di silenzio” and my piece “5 Epigrams”. A special mention should also go to Flavia Coassin and Tindaro Di Luca for their recitations of the poetry, and of course thanks to the main organisers Dr Stefano Fossati and Dr Donna Coleman. The concert was recorded by the ABC and hopefully I’ll soon have some audio to put on here, at least an excerpt. I believe I also saw someone there videoing the event, and hopefully I can get hold of a copy as audio only wouldn’t really do the piece justice, there being a lot of visual performance elements.
As for my piece itself I’m glad I had such dedicated performers working on it, digging into the text of the poem and my research on the Futurist movement took me out on a limb with a few of the ideas I threw in there and being the excellent performers they are Quiver made it work. What follows is the text from the preamble that Dr Coleman read out before the piece.
“This piece picks out what I found to be the most vivid phrases in each
section of Ventroni’s text, and responds to and illustrates them
aurally and peformatively. These at times confronting images and the
abstract mode of their combination formed the foundation of this
piece, upon which I composed my own poem in sound.
At a fundamental level inspiration was also taken from the rhythms of
Ventroni’s language in the original and in translation, and from the
very idea of translation itself, which as an English speaker was
unavoidable in dealing with the text and which became very important
to me in making this work.”
Dictaphone recording of the premiere of ‘Burning Water’ by the Southbank Brass Ensemble at BMW Edge. Conducted by Russell Davis.
Camille Robinson 