Wednesday 8 May
6 - 7:30pm
The Gallery
Free
Sound Artist in Residence - Ben Leonard
Join sound artist BJ Leo (Ben Leonard) and NZSM associate professor Dugal McKinnon as they demonstrate the Iko icosahedral speaker and discuss working with spatialisation and 3d audio, along with Ben's work on spectral fission. Ben Leonard was the 2023 Sound Artist in Residence. He will be showing his audio installation 'Breathwork' in the gallery, which was developed while he was on residency at Toi Pōneke Arts Centre.
Artists Biographies
BJ Leo (Ben Leonard) is a sonic artist, musician and composer based in Te Whanganui ā Tara (Wellington). He is a recent graduate of the sonic arts programme at the NZSM, where he focused on ambisonic and spectral techniques. His residency will focus on research into ‘spectral fusion/fission’ and processing of sounds related to the movement of air.
Under his BJ Leo moniker, Ben has released works on labels Project Mooncircle (DE) and Strange Behaviour (NZ). He has two new works due for release in 2023, including ambisonic works and a full album. Ben has played live throughout New Zealand, including recently at Club 121 and Pyramid Club.
During his studies at the NZSM, Ben focused on developing new techniques in spectral fission within the ambisonic environment. This involved the use of the scripts and plugins using the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) to decompose and recompose sounds based on their spectral qualities. These spectral ‘streams’ can then be combined and separated in the three dimensional sound field. This work resulted in a suite of ambisonic pieces composed for 16 channel periphonic loudspeaker array.
Ben was awarded the 2022 Susan Rhind Award and exhibited one of these multi[1]channel works at the Adam Art Gallery alongside other NZSM staff and students. He also had works exhibited at the Australasia Computer Music Conference 2022 and gave an artist talk on his recent work.
Dr Dugal McKinnon is the Deputy Director of the New Zealand School of Music and Co-Director of the Lilburn Studios for Electronic Music. He is a composer and sound artist whose output encompasses electronic, acoustic and text media, and often intersects these. In 2018 he co-organised the Aotearoa Audio Arts festival, a platform for the presentation and promotion of sound and audiovisual arts in New Zealand. He was 2014 composer-in-residence at the Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik (Graz, Austria), and was also a composer-in-residence at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie [Centre for Art and Media Technology] (Karlsruhe, Germany) in 2010. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham (UK) and teaches sonic art, composition, and sound studies at the NZSM.
Breathwork
27 April - 17 May
Hā-kina, hā-puta.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Dive into the world of Breathwork, an immersive audio exhibition by BJ Leo.
