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Steve Elkins

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Australia

Part of several trips documenting fringe musical cultures across Australia from February to June 2009, including aborigine choirs, a chainsaw orchestra, a singing dog, a man who makes music from barbed wire fences in conflict zones around the world with a violin bow, a homeless man who makes music with his fingers, DJ Smallcock (who screams into amplified glass and attacks vinyl records with amplified samurai swords), a woman who makes music from DOT Matrix printers, Col-E-Flower's music from homemade vegetable instruments (including his carrot bagpipes and celery-sweet potato trombone), drummers making music with roadkill in Tasmania, a woman turning the world's bridges into musical instruments then creating a global symphony of them singing in unison, and countless others.

For more on the journey: https://www.steveelkins.net/Writings/Aural-Maps

For more on working with fence musician Jon Rose: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/On-Music/Jon-Rose/
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  • Central Australia

    Central Australia

  • Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor Making Music On Fences In The Strezlecki Desert

    Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor Making Music On Fences In The Strezlecki Desert

    More info here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Jon-Rose/

  • Blue Mountains

    Blue Mountains

  • Uluru

    Uluru

    Central Australia

  • Alice Springs

    Alice Springs

  • Kronos Quartet Learning To Play Fences As Musical Instruments

    Kronos Quartet Learning To Play Fences As Musical Instruments

    Sydney More info here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Jon-Rose/ And here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Kronos-Quartet/

  • Dr. Garth Paine has been placing bio-sensors on dancers to make music directly from their body movements. When we met in Sydney (2009), he was testing his GPS system that made music from all aspects of a bicycle's movement, including direction and speed, as it travels around the city.

    Dr. Garth Paine has been placing bio-sensors on dancers to make music directly from their body movements. When we met in Sydney (2009), he was testing his GPS system that made music from all aspects of a bicycle's movement, including direction and speed, as it travels around the city.

  • Robin Fox has been using lasers and cathode ray oscillators to make the underlying geometry of music visible to listeners as they hear it. Even a single sine tone is revealed to be an abstraction from an immense number of events...the material reality of sound appears as a massive complexity that always transcends human perception...a heightened awareness of the infinitely complex and 'vibratory nature of matter.' Like Benoit Mandelbrot, Fox exposes the infinite complexity of any seemingly simple object or phenomenon. He offers us a synaesthetic variant of the 'optical unconscious' Walter Benjamin saw...

    Robin Fox has been using lasers and cathode ray oscillators to make the underlying geometry of music visible to listeners as they hear it. Even a single sine tone is revealed to be an abstraction from an immense number of events...the material reality of sound appears as a massive complexity that always transcends human perception...a heightened awareness of the infinitely complex and 'vibratory nature of matter.' Like Benoit Mandelbrot, Fox exposes the infinite complexity of any seemingly simple object or phenomenon. He offers us a synaesthetic variant of the 'optical unconscious' Walter Benjamin saw...

  • Brian Eno lighting up Kronos Quartet's premiere of a string quartet for barbed wire fences at the Sydney Opera House. More info here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Jon-Rose/ And here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Kronos-Quartet/

    Brian Eno lighting up Kronos Quartet's premiere of a string quartet for barbed wire fences at the Sydney Opera House. More info here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Jon-Rose/ And here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Kronos-Quartet/

  • Cyprian-Australian Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, had a cell-cultivated third ear implanted into his arm, and has allowed his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet.

    Cyprian-Australian Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, had a cell-cultivated third ear implanted into his arm, and has allowed his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet.

  • Viola-cycle (Sydney)

    Viola-cycle (Sydney)

    Part of a chamber orchestra of bicycle powered musical instruments created by Jon Rose. More info here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Jon-Rose/

  • Rod Cooper building musical instruments in Melbourne, including a full-size sailboat in which every part (well over a hundred) is to be bowed or plucked.

    Rod Cooper building musical instruments in Melbourne, including a full-size sailboat in which every part (well over a hundred) is to be bowed or plucked.

  • Robin Fox built a giant theremin in Melbourne to be played by people passing by on the street.

    Robin Fox built a giant theremin in Melbourne to be played by people passing by on the street.

  • Lucas Abela screams into amplified glass. Early feats saw him stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bounding on electro acoustic trampolines, drag racing the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hosptalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and becoming Otomo Yoshihides' favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; 'Consummation' (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

    Lucas Abela screams into amplified glass. Early feats saw him stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bounding on electro acoustic trampolines, drag racing the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hosptalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and becoming Otomo Yoshihides' favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; 'Consummation' (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

  • Lucas Abela screams into amplified glass. Early feats saw him stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bounding on electro acoustic trampolines, drag racing the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hosptalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and becoming Otomo Yoshihides' favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; 'Consummation' (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

    Lucas Abela screams into amplified glass. Early feats saw him stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bounding on electro acoustic trampolines, drag racing the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hosptalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and becoming Otomo Yoshihides' favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; 'Consummation' (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

  • Lucas Abela screams into amplified glass. Early feats saw him stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bounding on electro acoustic trampolines, drag racing the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hosptalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and becoming Otomo Yoshihides' favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; 'Consummation' (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

    Lucas Abela screams into amplified glass. Early feats saw him stabbing vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bounding on electro acoustic trampolines, drag racing the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, performing deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hosptalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, and becoming Otomo Yoshihides' favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; 'Consummation' (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

  • Roseina Boston, an Aboriginal Gumbayungirr elder born under a lantana bush in Nambucca Heads, making music with her gum leaf.

    Roseina Boston, an Aboriginal Gumbayungirr elder born under a lantana bush in Nambucca Heads, making music with her gum leaf.

  • The Ntaria choir right in the center of Australia, near the intersection of the Caterpillar Dreaming and the Honey Ant Dreaming. These crisscrossing "songlines" are sonic maps in which they sing all of the surrounding landscape into existence. This music reflects the intersection of their songlines with the Lutherans who established missions in this remote part of Australia in the 19th century. So this particular music (and the Western Arrernte language it's sung in) cannot be heard in any other part of the world.

    The Ntaria choir right in the center of Australia, near the intersection of the Caterpillar Dreaming and the Honey Ant Dreaming. These crisscrossing "songlines" are sonic maps in which they sing all of the surrounding landscape into existence. This music reflects the intersection of their songlines with the Lutherans who established missions in this remote part of Australia in the 19th century. So this particular music (and the Western Arrernte language it's sung in) cannot be heard in any other part of the world.

  • Ross Bolleter's Ruined Piano Sanctuary in Western Australia, where Ross has collected pianos from all over the country which have been trashed by the climate after being imported on the backs of camels in the 19th century. He has scattered them around several acres of wilderness where they crumble out their final days to the tune of gravity and the odd cyclone coming in off the Indian Ocean, performing outdoor concerts on each one in various states of entropy, resulting in a unique way to hear what nature thinks about Western music traditions.

    Ross Bolleter's Ruined Piano Sanctuary in Western Australia, where Ross has collected pianos from all over the country which have been trashed by the climate after being imported on the backs of camels in the 19th century. He has scattered them around several acres of wilderness where they crumble out their final days to the tune of gravity and the odd cyclone coming in off the Indian Ocean, performing outdoor concerts on each one in various states of entropy, resulting in a unique way to hear what nature thinks about Western music traditions.

  • Jon Rose with his Double-Viola-Cycle

    Jon Rose with his Double-Viola-Cycle

  • Marie Mart

    Marie Mart

  • Soloist in the West Australian Chainsaw Orchestra.

    Soloist in the West Australian Chainsaw Orchestra.

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    Marie Mart
    Soloist in the West Australian Chainsaw Orchestra.