Koputai Sound School
This is a short video amalgamation based on my 20 minute performance from the opening night of the Koputai Sound Schhool (KSS). KSS was a series of tutored workshops focusing on sound over the space of two weekends in February 2023. I taught a class on creating homemade contact microphones that can connect to you phone. This performance was presented as a work-in-progress as I conceived this work to develop into a gallery based installation. It is based on my family’s journey from the Shetland Islands to Karamea. The steel plates play a beach from the Shetland Islands and a beach from the West Coast of NZ, while I also perform a composition utilising those sounds and others from both places. The composition finishes up with a recording taken from the damp and tree filled cemetery where my great grandfather was buried in Karamea.
This video depicts an encore performance I held for 2 friends who could not make it to the actual opening night and it gave me a chance to have a decent go at recording the work in the room, not from the desk. Live performance that has a formal element to the work like this, and one where it is also sonic and spatialised is hard to capture on the dark and audience filled night. How many times have I got to the end of my performance, or DJ set, and realised I forgot to hit record? Every time!