Kathy Hinde is an interdisciplinary artist who creates installations, performances and site specific experiences aiming to nurture a deeper and more embodied connection to the more-than-human world. Composed of hand-made objects, electronics and a blend of digital and analogue systems, her work represents a cross between kinetic sound sculptures and newly invented musical instruments. She creates pieces in response to specific locations and frequently works in collaboration with other practitioners and scientists and often actively involves the audience in the creative process.
Kathy has toured work across Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Colombia, Australia and New Zealand. Awards include an Ivor Novello Award, an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica, a British Composer Award, an ORAM award and a Scottish Award for New Music. Kathy received an Honorary Doctorate in music from Bath Spa University and is a member of Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (BEEF).
Website: kathyhinde.co.uk
Instagram: @kathyhinde
Kathy will be performing Twittering Machines
Twittering Machines begins with a study of the nightingale, a bird that sings at night, and of the disrupted environmental cycles that may threaten its future. Sonically and thematically, Twittering Machines is no pastorale. In it, John Keats’ poem Ode to a Nightingale, translated into morse code, taps out a shifting rhythm; perhaps a persistent distress call. Attempts to manipulate the blips and beeps to simulate birdsong renders the morse code indecipherable, and Keats’ poem slowly disintegrating into a swirl of non-verbal chirps and noises. As the composition evolves, elements are drawn from music boxes, bird imitation toys, singing bowls, gongs, synth, field recordings, as well as the voices of distinguished British ornithologist Peter Holden MBE and Bavarian bird imitator Helmut Wolfertstetter, cut onto dubplate. These multiple sound sources are sampled and manipulated live using a turntable, electronics and bespoke software, constellating in shifting, dreamlike patterns.
Twittering Machines won an Ivor Novello Award in 2020 and was released on limited edition Vinyl with screen prints in 2024 by Bristol Label TBC Editions.
