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Tilting Winds Debut at Cementa Festival Tonight

Tonight my new work debuts for Cementa Festival, the online component tiltingwinds.online is live now. The performance is a creative inquiry into how people perceive wind turbines, part of an ongoing research project using sound, images, video and text to explore sensed experiences of energy transition. Thanks to Kandos for sharing your experiences!

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New Performance for “Material Sound at Home

Myself and other artists from the Material Sound project at Black Mountain College Museum shared some new work online for “Material Sound at Home” presented by the Black Mountain College Museum. Follow this link to see the work at - http://www.blackmountaincollege.org/material-sound-at-home/

Still image from: Knitting Experiments, 2020. Wire, butchers glove, electronics, prepared knitting needles, video card, video copy station.Note: Video contains flashing images.

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Solid Light: Josef Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski Pia van Gelder: Psychic Synth II / Apparition Apparatus 2 April – 14 July 2019

Josef Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski, The Planet, 1966 plastic collage and synthetic polymer paint on plywood 122.0 × 122.0 cm

Pia van Gelder, Psychic Synth II, 2019 Electronics, video, sound, electroencephalography

I am pleased to announce an exhibition of my work along side an incredible collection of the work of Stanislaus Ostoja Kotkowski. A rare opportunity to see a survey of his work, including a very rare early theremin! Born in Poland, Josef Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski (1922-1994) moved to Australia in 1949 and became pivotal in development of Australian experimental and new media art. Pioneering the use of electronics, he made innovations in computer and laser technology, including kinetics and sound, which he applied to visual art, music and theatre.Solid Light will be accompanied by an interactive installation by Sydney-based multimedia artist Pia van Gelder. Her Psychic Synth II uses electroencephalograph headsets with video and sound synthesisers to create a feedback loop between the human brain and technology, translating the participant’s alpha waves into colourful abstract projections and sounds. I will be showing a new work Psychic Synth II which explores electroencephalography with analogue video and audio synthesis. Stay tuned for documentation. If you’re in Melbourne, or surrounds, come along to the show. It opens on  Psychic Synth II / Apparition Apparatus McClelland Sculpture Gallery 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin, Victoria, 3910, Australia https://www.mcclellandgallery.com

2 April – 14 July 2019 Opening Sunday 7th April, 3pm

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“Bodies and Energy, Circuits and Sound: Rethinking and Listening to Leon Ernest Eeman’s Relaxation Circuit with a Bio-synthesizer”in Journal of Sonic Studies

I wrote a paper about a work I made in 2015 called "Relaxation Circuit" an appropriation of a curious circuit from the history of electrotherapy invented by Leon Ernest Eeman, with the edition of a bio-synthesiser. It can be found in the current issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies here: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/459050/459051

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Material Sound opens tonight Exhibition dates: Friday 9 February - Sunday 29 April MAMA, Murray Art Museum Albury 546 Dean Street, Albury Curated by Caleb Kelly, Material Sound features newly commissioned work by artists Vicky Browne, Pia van Gelder, Caitlin Franzmann, Peter Blamey, Ross Manning, and Eric Demetriou. Opening with a festival of live performances Program available here: http://www.mamalbury.com.au/see-and-do/Programs-and-events/events-@-mama/material-sound-opening-weekend-programme

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Performance at Black Mountain College Museum

Wednesday, December 13, 7pm 69 Broadway, Asheville, NC

Australia-based scholars and artists Caleb Kelly, Pia van Gelder and Peter Blamey will make a rare North American appearance at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center to discuss and perform works that examine the relationship between sound and visual art within the space of the gallery. Kelly will speak about his book Gallery Sound (Bloomsbury 2017) and van Gelder and Blamey will both perform. Asheville’s own Pete Speer from Make Noise will also join them.

more: link

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Coming Up “EX MACHINA” at CCAS Canberra

Recumbent Circuit (2016) will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at Canberra Contemporary Art Space

Curated by Alexander Boynes Opening 15th September, 2017 6-9 15 Sep 2017 - 11 Nov 2017

In an age that increasingly exists online and in virtual spaces, Ex Machina invites viewers to consider the role of the physical machine as artwork, only truly experienced in the flesh. Ex Machina explores contemporary Australian kinetic artwork, and how machines are not only a tool, but artworks in their own right.

Featuring works by Nicci Haynes, Brian McNamara, Stelarc, Pia van Gelder and Arthur Wicks

More information

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Sounding the Future Closing Soon

Sounding the Future until 22nd September UTS Gallery curated by Gail Priest, with Gail Priest, George Poonkhin Khut, Pia van Gelder & Tom Smith, Peter Blamey

The show:

Sounding the Future is an exhibition curated by Gail Priest that speculates about what art in the future will sound like. The exhibition will present sonic “possibles and potentials” ranging from almost-here transhuman mediations, to far-future post-anthropocene aftermaths, with some apocalyptic contingencies in between. We always speak of “visions of the future,” but what if we were to let the auditory realm lead our imaginings? Does the dialogue about futurity take on new dimensions when considered through a different sense ratio? These dreams of future soundings, inflected by our present day, also offer reflections on how we listen now. The artists will develop new work that considers the impacts of new technologies, degrading environmental conditions and the prospect of a post-human world.

More Info on UTS Show Exhibition Catalogue Sounding the Future Project Website

The work:

IRON STAR, by Pia van Gelder and Tom Smith

Pythagoreans proposed that the movement of the orbiting sun, moon and planets around the earth produced sound. This ‘music of the spheres’ prefigured ongoing discourse around sound and space. Some Pythagoreans reasoned that this celestial chord wasn��t heard playing in the background because we had learnt to filter out. Whereas Aristotle was confident that if the planets did hum, our world would shatter due to the immense scale of their corresponding vibrations. Aristotle’s hypothetical is an early iteration of circular debates around the (im)possibility of non-anthropocentric perception—debates that continue to take up space in contemporary philosophy.

Iron Star reframes these questions by thinking through the possibility of an iron future. In the distant future, approximately 10 to the power of 1500 years from now, it is theorised that all matter will converge to its most stable nuclear form, iron—the last element a star produces before it goes supernova. In this future, when earth is no longer, the galaxy will be filled with giant stars of iron, transformed through a process of cold fusion. The temperature will be unfathomably cold. Lingering stellar energy, leftover heat from the stars’ earlier plasma form, will result in enormous fluctuating electromagnetic fields. No human can accurately conceive of this iron universe. By this time our bodies will have long since disappeared. There will be no sound. There will be no light.

Iron Star projects into the furthest possible reaches of the future, and upon failing to imagine it, returns to the symbolic universe in which iron is but one of countless signifiers. Iron Star depicts the final state of the universe as a set of processes that will end humanity—while concurrently, iron’s use value and symbolic efficacy is shown proliferating into an array of human centric objects, derivatives and metaphors. Within Iron Star, as in the universe more generally, iron exists ambivalently as language, material, object, symbol, and future—but also as the immanent cancellation of all these strata of reality.

Photographs by David Lawrey, courtesy UTS Arts

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A conversation with Emily Cormack: Ocula

Stella Rosa McDonald interviewed Emily Cormack, the curator of Primavera 2016: https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/emily-cormack/ Some interesting words about the connections between works and the story of the show.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s on till the 4th of December at the MCA. https://www.mca.com.au/exhibition/primavera-2016/

Pia van Gelder, Recumbent Circuit, 2016, installation view, Primavera 2016: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2016. Electronics, speakers, wood, image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Jacquie Manning.

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Lights On Later: Tomorrow Night

Tomorrow (Thursday 3rd November) at 5:30pm, I will be doing a tour of the Primavera show and talk about my work, followed by a hands on biosynth jam at the Museum of Contemporary Art. 

More details here: https://www.mca.com.au/events/lights-later-primavera-artists/

Photo by Lucy Parakhina

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PRIMAVERA ARTBAR TONIGHT at the MCA

Emily Parsons Lord, Danae Vanenza and myself have curated the monthly event Artbar at the MCA, on tonight from 7pm. We have taken over 4 levels of the MCA with performances, installations, workshops and spectacles that interrogate intangibilities and sensual phenomena outside of the visual. 

(image: Inner West Sound System)

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Around the Outside at Firstdraft, Sunday 7th August

ATO # 3: PRACTICE IS RESEARCH Sunday August 3 | 12 - 4pm Come and join us for a beer and snag as the third instalment of Around the Outside 2016 explores practice as research. The day will feature: a performance/demonstration by Pia Van Gelder, Marian Tubbs and Astrid Lorange in conversation, and the presentation of new text/video/performance work by Clare Powell (created as part of the Firstdraft Writers Residency). Part reading room, part film club, and part open dialogue, around the outside is dedicated to fostering informal, non-institutional learning and creative criticality. These events are hosted at the gallery and vary in content, such as performance, lectures and screenings and we also offer a barbecue and refreshments.

The artist Paul Chan writes that “art is form in the spirit of a question.” This instalment of Around the Outside will explore the relationship between practice and research in contemporary art, and will feature screenings, performances, talks, another edition of our ATO reader to sink your teeth into on the day (or take home with you to tackle in your own time), and as always, a BBQ for lunch-time.

Facebook Event

Firstdraft

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PRIMAVERA 2016

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) unveils the eight artists included in Primavera 2016: Young Australian Artists, guest curated by Emily Cormack.

The artists featured in the 25th edition of Primavera are Steven Cybulka (SA), Pia van Gelder (NSW), Biljana Jancic (NSW), Ruth McConchie (QLD), Adelle Mills (VIC), Mira Oosterweghel (VIC), Emily Parsons-Lord (NSW) and Danae Valenza (VIC). Each artist is creating new work for the exhibition.

In 1992, Primavera was initiated by Dr Edward Jackson AM and Mrs Cynthia Jackson AM and their family in memory of their daughter and sister Belinda. Since then, it has showcased the works of artists and curators, many of whom have gone on to exhibit nationally and internationally.

MCA Director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE said: ‘Primavera, an exhibition devoted to promoting artists in the early stages of their career has been a continuous feature of the MCA’s program since it opened 25 years ago. We are delighted that it continues to be such an important exhibition for artists, giving them a platform to share their voice, their art, and to introduce new ideas to our ever-increasing audience.’

Opening to the public on 29 September, Primavera 2016 explores ideas of transmission, highlighting the ways that art can physically connect with the viewer and how an artwork’s meaning can be generated by this encounter. The exhibition draws on recent theories about embodied cognition – which posits that the creation of knowledge might first begin in the body, rather than in the brain.

Picture - left to right: Pia van Gelder, Steven Cybulka, Danae Valenza, Mira Oosterwheghel, Ruth McConchie, MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, Biljana Jancic, Adelle Mills, Curator Emily Cormack and Emily Parsons-Lord, image courtesy and © Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, photograph: Anna Kučera

More information here

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Senyawa & The Instrument Builder’s Project + BOOK, at the Tote

Thursday, May 19 at 8 PM - 12 AM The Tote Hotel 67-71 Johnston St, Collingwood, Victoria, Australia 3066 tix $15 or $40 with the book (limited edition print of 400 copies)

Performances by

Senyawa (Yogyakarta, Indonesia) Pia Van Gelder (Sydney) Peter Blamey (Sydney) Dylan Martorell (Melbourne) Dale Gorfinkel (Melbourne)

DJ Slowmix U-tube

Instrument Builders Project book launch http://theinstrumentbuildersproject.com/

Join us for the launch party celebrating the long awaited publication of the Instrument Builders Project book: 'Hits from the Gong.

Years in the making, this printed monster of an edition comes in a specially designed cardboard box and features eye popping full colour images and descriptions of all the work that took place accross three editions of the IPB in Yokgyakarta, Indonesia and Melbourne, Australaia in 2013 and 2014. There's essays and conversations by Helen Hughes, Antariksa, Wok The Rock, Serena Bentley and Edwina Brennan and curators Kristi Monfries and Joel Stern. The publication 'Hits From the Gong' was designed lovingly by Natasha Tontey and printed in Jakarta, Indonesia. 192 pages + 24 page booklet, 230 x 300 mm softcover, fullcolour, edition of 400, 2015

The IBP book launch is presented in collaboration with Asialink Arts.

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Today: Tested on Humans for Melbourne Knowledge Week

I will be speaking in a panel discussion on the quantified self at ACMI tonight as a part of Monash University sensiLab’s Tested on Humans exhibit for Melbourne Knowledge Week. The exhibit is open from 10-5 today and the panel will be from 6pm with Suneel Jethani (academic and lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne), Rachel Kalmar (California-based data consultant, formerly data scientist at Misfit wearables and famous for wearing large numbers of sensors), Jon McCormack (sensiLab director and Monash University academic).

Image:  Hive Mind, 2016, Mike Yeates,, Elliott Wilson, Matt Butler

Link to event - http://sensilab.monash.edu/events/tested-on-humans-melbourne-knowledge-week/

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un Magazine Launch

I have contributed a piece for the next issue of un Magazine, which is launching at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, on Tuesday the 26th April, 2016 at 6pm. Join contributors Dr Andrea Eckersley, Tristen Harwood, Emily Castle, along with ACCA curator, Annika Kristensen, in discussion with the editors.   Issue 10.1 reflects on recent philosophical and artistic investigations into the productive forces of the material world and the potential of objects.

The piece I have contributed: Theoretical Waveform Instrument for Earth Generation, is based on a body of research into the history of electrotherapy and energetics, specifically radionics. Some radionics practices propose to treat people, other animals and eco-systems using radio frequencies, which can be transmitted remotely. This piece is a “paper radionics” instrument which is tuned to transmit frequencies to activate and fertilise a garden in a remote location. One half of the two page spread has also been selected for the front cover pictured below.

Other contributors for this issue include Michael Ascroft, Deborah Birch, Jessie Bullivant, Deirdre Cannon, Emily Castle, Sophia Dacy-Cole, Saskia Doherty, Jeremy Eaton, Andrea Eckersley, Kelly Fliedner, Lucy Forsberg, Richard Frater, Chris Griffiths, Tristen Harwood, Taloi Havini, Helen Hughes, Glenn Iseger-Pilkington, Susan Jacobs, Lana Lopesi, Scott McCulloch, Tom Melick, Tahjee Moar, Ella Mudie, Julian Murphy and Matthew Taft, Melody Paloma, Anatol Pitt, Dylan Rainforth, Vincent Silk, Natalie Thomas, Pia van Gelder,  Manon van Kouswijk, Isadora Vaughan, Mashara Wachjudy, Chloé Wolifson and Tessa Zettel.

More info

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EARS HAVE EARS LIVE BROADCAST, Q&A WITH MARCUS WHALE

Date: 31 March 2016 Time: 9:00pm Location: FBi Radio, 44-54 Botany Rd, Alexandria                                                

Ears Have Ears Live​​ is a new series of free experimental music performances and conversations, hosted at FBi and broadcast live on 94.5fm during Ears Have Ears.

The first instalment features Sydney electronic producer Marcus Whale ​(Collarbones, Scissorlock, Black Vanilla) performing live. Whale is due to release Inland Sea, his debut album under his own name, in June 2016. Known for disfiguring popular forms of dance and pop, Whale will be bringing his unique approach to electronic music in the form of an experimental soundtrack, made exclusively for Ears Have Ears Live.!

I’ve been asked to facilitate a Q&A to conclude the event, which will be part of the broadcast. I’m looking forward to asking Marcus about where his amazing music comes from.

You can RSVP for this FREE event here

You can also listen to the show as it is broadcast live on FBi 94.5FM or fbiradio.com between 9-10 pm, Thursday 31st March.