Biographical entry
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Australian Sound Design Project
Biographical entry
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Atherton, Michael |
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| Academic, Artist, Composer, Curator and Improviser |
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Michael has spent many years researching, playing, sometimes modifying, even commissioning, a plethora of musical instruments. He has developed a deep appreciation of Asia-Pacific and Australian instruments. He can work in all genres of screen composition, in cross-cultural exploration, in the theatre and with dance. He enjoys improvisation and collaborative work. As well as developing and providing leadership for diverse projects, Michael has produced Sonic Circuses in western Sydney These are curated music and sound events using multiple spaces for interactive participation from peripatetic audiences. An important development period was between 1988-1992 when Michael began to explore and play acoustic spaces, exciting the air in lift wells, fire escapes, empty buildings and tunnels. This led to an extended recording project in the anechoic, echoic and plane wave chambers of the National Acoustics Laboratories. Spatiality is an abiding interest and continues through CD collaborations with Jim Franklin and Indigenous didjeridu artists, including Alan Dargin, Matthew Doyle and Mark Atkins. Work in the field of clinical music therapy has resulted in sound projects. In 2002 Michael teamed up music therapist Alan Lem, a specialist in guided imagery, to design, produce and record a functional CD program for clinical use. Michael also created sound installations for Australian Museum exhibitions as diverse as Ancient Egypt (1998) and Biodiversity (1999), and continues to experiment with the realization of musical fragments using instruments of ancient Greece made by luthier, Harry Vatiliotis. A current major project is called SynC, collaboration with Garth Paine, investigating contemporary approaches to musical composition and performance, focusing on experimental ensemble work for acoustic instruments and live electronics, including the processing of live acoustic input, cross-synthesis and synthesis artifacts. As composition/performance collaboration, Sync seeks to contextualise ancient and modern musical languages within a single form. It does so by utilising ancient and contemporary acoustic musical instruments (e.g. oud, hurdy-gurdy, gongs, marimba, and percussion) as the sonic foundation for complex live electronic processes, which generate a vast array of timbral environments, responsive to the acoustic input, but simultaneously independent. This exploration seeks to re-contextualise the acoustic instruments, whilst also grounding the live electronic sounds within a rich musical heritage. This musical practice engages with discourse around notions of composition and performance, particularly, how these can be defined as potentials rather than as fixed inscriptions, and how within a computer music/software based environment, the notions of instrument, composition and performance become blurred and possibly take on new meaning. | |
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Published by The University of Melbourne Comments, questions, corrections and additions: i.mott@unimelb.edu.au Prepared by: Acknowledgements Updated: 18 January 2007 http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/web/biogs/P000620b.htm |
