Tuesday 14 December 2021, 8pm
“Three placeholders sitting in a room between empty spaces.” This is how the ensemble [ _ _ _ ] describes itself. It was founded in 2020 by the artists Li Song, Shuoxin Tan and Jia Liu, to compose music for the network. Li Song is a musician and software developer based in London. He composes music for computers and acoustic instruments. Shuoxin Tan was born in Beijing and works as a composer and sound artist in Cologne. She researches algorithmic acoustics, sound ontology and Lacanian topology. Jia Liu is a composer and computer music performer. She lives in Karlsruhe and is currently working on algorithmic music and composition for autonomous systems.
The three members share the same interest in algorithmic acoustics and composition, SuperCollider and live coding. Can algorithms be collaborative? What happens when the Borromean knot is applied to network structures for collaborative algorithmic composition?
With their latest project, they start to approach concrete sounds with abstract electronic sounds based on their network algorithmic music system. The project was supported by Musikfonds (Neustart Kultur, Germany).
Ecka Mordecai is a British artist based in London. Situated between sonic, performative and olfactory disciplines, her work is driven by sensation: entwining cello, horsehair harp, voice, eggflute, scent and improvisation into time-based objects expressive of emotional complexity.
Both intimate and exacting, this body-driven practice defies formal constraints, undoing the limits of genre and allowing for works such as Aequill Sound, a line of niche perfumes inspired by elements of the East London soundscape, or Promise & Illusion (Otoroku, 2022), the album in which Ecka explores myriad internal states using the compositional device of a creaking door hinge (or charniére).
Performing since 2010, Ecka has appeared alongside the likes of David Toop, Malvern Brume, Thurston Moore, Keeley Forsyth, Ilan Volkov, Ex-Easter Island Head, Greta Buitkute, Dave Birchall and Kate Armitage. She has played at Cafe OTO, BBC Glasgow, Islington Mill and inside a Berlin wasserturm, amongst others.
She has projects with Revox tape performer Valerio Tricoli in the duo Mordecoli (The Addiction, Hedione 2022), and in the trio Circæa with Andrew Chalk and Tom James Scott (The Bridge of Dreams, Faraway Press, 2019).
Malvern Brume is Rory Salter, a musician and sound artist living in London, Born in Banbury. Malvern Brume has released albums with Alter, TakuRoku, Infant Tree and Kashual Plastik. The music is formed through experimentations with electronic instruments, field recordings, amplified objects and voice; motivated by a relationship to changing and chaotic environments, objects and scores made from walking.
