This is rather late notice, but those of you near a radio or an internet stream on Tuesday night, May 14, 2013 at 8pm, can tune into radio station 3MBS-FM 103.5, or on the web at www.3mbs.org.au, where I'll be the guest of Tony Thomas on his Contemporary Visions radio program. We'll be playing a variety of pieces for both acoustic and electronic instruments, older pieces (from the 1980s) and work from the past couple of years. It should be a fun show, so tune in and enjoy!
This is a bit late, but between March 28 and April 12, 2013, my work Gravel was part of an exhibition of graphic music in Australia called Drawn from Sound. It was curated by Cat Hope at the Spectrum Project Space at Edith Cowan University in Mt Lawley, WA. For those of you who missed the show, the website is still up (and will continue to be so), it contains a wealth of information, and is a delight. Just go to drawnfromsound.com and you can read all about the show, and watch a series of videos from performances and presentations at the show. Still want more? There's a 30 minute mp3 of an audiotour of the show at the website. And more? The CATALOGUE is available for $20, also on the website. So even if you didn't experience the show in the flesh, you can still do some virtual attending in the wonderful world of cyberspace.
On March 25, 2013, at public radio station 3MBS in Melbourne, and at Pauline Oliveros's house in Kingston, New York, we did an intercontinental radio linkup improvisation to celebrate Pauline's 80th birth year - now swiftly merging into her 81st! The project was originated by Vineta Lagzdina, and we worked for a number of months to work out the best technology, venue and way to do this. Radio 3MBS producer Penny Manwaring was very enthusiastic about the project, Pauline suggested Google Hangout as the linkup software (which worked wonderfully) and after a few technical rehearsals, and some virtuoso technical figuring out by 3MBS technical director Cameron Paine and engineer Terry McDermott, the setup was finally worked out. Pauline and Vineta performed on voice, percussion and wind instruments, I performed on electronics, including the John Cage Prepared Piano Android/iOS app. After the performance, Pauline, Vineta and I did an interview where we discussed improvisation and technological linkups in general. I am currently in the process of transcribing that interview, but for now, here are two photographs and the mp3 of the improv itself.
The crew at 3MBS, March 25. L to R top: Warren Burt, Penny Manwaring, producer, Vineta Lagzdina, Terry McDermott, engineer. L bottom, Vineta Lagzdina in the recording studio. R bottom, Warren Burt in the control room. Photos by 3MBS.
Catherine Schieve, Pauline Oliveros and Warren Burt at the Ricketts Point Tea Room, Beaumaris, in 2007 when Pauline visited here. Photo by Ione.
If you like the improv, you can download it here. I hope you enjoy listening to this improvisation as much as we enjoyed playing in it. If you like the improv, you can download it here. And I'm delighted to say that with Google Hangout, there finally is a way for people to intercontinentally improvise in a way that is technologically easy, has low (ish) latency, and is a lot of fun. Hopefully, we'll be doing a lot more of this in the future. Thanks so much to Pauline, Vineta, Penny, Terry, Cameron and everyone else who helped with this project. Enjoy!
My piece "Samples II: Ravel Homage - That Which is Neither a Deconstruction nor an Appropriation, Neither Bricollage nor Post-Modern" (1987) is on display as part of
Mix Tape 1980s
Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style
which is on at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square from 11 Apr – 01 Sep 2013.
While mostly a show of visual works, there are four iPads attached to the walls of the exhibition, each with a playlist faceplate (that looks like a blown-up, hand-written cassette label) and a pair of headphones attached to them. Each iPad has a different playlist on it, chosen by a different person. My piece is on the iPad in the right-hand room of the exhibit, on the right-hand wall, about half-way into the room. The playlist was chosen by Peter Tyndall, to whom I give many thanks for including me. Also on his playlist is "Artificial Languages" (1981) a collaboration between Chris Mann and myself, which was performed by the Astra Choir, John McCaughey directing. The show is well worth seeing - for me, at any rate, there was a lot of nostalgia in seeing works I'd seen many years ago. And especially worth seeing, from a new music historical point of view, is a large wall-full of posters, record jackets and other objects from the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre and Innocent Records, designed by Philip Brophy. So if you're in Melbourne in the Federation Square area, drop in.
Here are some photos from a performance I gave as part of La Mama Poetica, on March 18. The performance was organized by Sjaak de Jong, and featured Jaap Blonk, Santo Cassati, jeltje, Sjaak, Mark Lewis, and Peter Fraser as well as myself. A good time was had by all. I was performing on an iPhone (not visible in these pix), an iPad, and voice. My performing material consisted of letters on alphabet beads I drew at random from a small box. I sang/intoned these letters, and also entered them into the iDevices for use in the program abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, running on both. The captions of the photos (taken by Catherine Schieve) are the phonemes I was performing at the time, according to Catherine.
Sunday, May 12, 2013 at 11:31AM 
