EVENT SERIES: All Hail the New Reductionism! John Bowers, Tim Shaw, Ben Freeth et al

Over the last week, researchers from Culture Lab, Newcastle University, DMU and Tongji University (Shanghai) have devoted themselves to a program of quick and dirty thinking, making and performing guided by an aesthetic that seeks to reduce electronic music technology to the rawest elements of sound creation and manipulation. One knob to rule them all!

“We problematise the relationship between the analogue and the digital, ideas of control and expressivity, virtuosity and artlessness. We explore alternative senses of instrument and interface, the places of musical potentiality of/on/in the gendered/animal/mineral/incapacitated body, and the neglected materiality of our simplest electronic musical tools.”

The concert will consist of a series of performances based on ideas investigated in the exchange and devices made collectively, in short order, extending an improvisational principle into making and thinking. Cheap as chips and fresh as a daisy. Work by John Bowers, Tim Shaw, Ben Freeth, Will Edmondes, Lee Ray, John Richards, Jim Frize, Samantha Topley, Steve Jones, Neal Spowage, Amit Patel and Marinos Giannoukakis.

Neal Spowage Fashion Film Prize + Recent Presentation at Haptic Narratives, Greenwich University

A radiophonic composition by postgraduate student Neal Spowage titled Dis-comforting has been used as a soundtrack for a fashion video short of the same name by Ania Sadkowska.

This video has just won the first prize POLIMODA & ASVOFF Video Contest For IFFTI2015 (International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institute) annual conference in Florence, Italy which is organised by the international fashion institute, Polimoda: MOMENTING THE MEMENTO.

The film explores older men's experience of fashion and clothing. The result to-date includes a set of themes capturing the richness of the male ageing phenomenon in relation to fashion and clothing, their writer interpretation and corresponding fashion artefacts and films.

Additionally, Neal recently presented his video New Track of Unknown Terra II to Haptic Narratives - Textural Exploration in Film at Greenwich University, UK, on 21st May 2015. This series of events focused on exploring and engaging with haptic sensations through tactile cues on film and the environments associated with moving images. It is organised by TiMaDi (Time, Materiality and the Digital Research Group).

Recent News: Neal Spowage – Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space Shortlist & Crafting Anatomies Exhibition

Postgraduate student Neal Spowage has had two of his recent collaborations with Danai Pappa shortlisted for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in June 2015. The works are Cold Papaya for speaker bra and wireless shovel, and Frozen Venus for six plunger phones. 

They are being considered for the DISK performances in the Spacelab section of the performing arts festival that explores the themes of shared space, interpreting music, weather and politics.

Additionally, Neal has recently collaborated with Ania Sadkowska, a postgraduate researcher from Nottingham Trent University, to produce a soundtrack for her fashion work that is constructed from her research interviews. It was on a continuous loop, accompanying Ania's garments, at the Crafting Anatomies exhibition in the Bonnington Gallery at NTU between 7th January to 14th February 2015.

Crafting Anatomies placed the human body at the centre of a multi-disciplinary dialogue; exploring how this entity has been interpreted, crafted and re-imagined in historical, contemporary and future contexts.

For more information about Neal, please visit his website: http://www.nealspowage.com