thembisoddell

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Decibel nominated for the ‘Award for Excellence in Experimental Music’ for their concert program After Julia, which involved works composed by Michaela Davies, Andrée Greenwell, Cat Hope, Laura Jane Lowther, Cathy Milliken, Kate Moore, Gail Priest and Thembi Soddell.

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Curated by Anabelle Lacroix.

Artists: Fanni Futterkneckt, Annabelle Kingston, Thembi Soddell and Brie Trennery.

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Performance at the Avantwhatever Festival 2016 alongside Martin Kay, Half High and Gabi Losoncy

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Sound as Consequence symposium held at the Australian Centre for Contempoary Art in Melbourne, April 2016. Featured mini keynote lectures by Julian Day and Joel Stern, performances by Eric Demetriou with Herbet Jercher and Thembi Soddell, and a panel discussion with Julian Day, Eric Demetriou, Camilla Hannan, Thembi Soddell and Danae Valenza.

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Recording of a panel discussion at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, as part of the ‘Sound as Consequence’ symposium run by Julian Day. Artists involved: Julian Day, Eric Demetriou, Camilla Hannan, Thembi Soddell and Danae Valenza.

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I have a new website. thembisoddell.com

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“Since the turn of the century ROOM40 has operated out of Brisbane, Australia publishing more than 150 editions from artists all over the globe. The label celebrates its 15th anniversary with a series of events worldwide including Openframe Stockholm — three days of radical listening at Fylkingen and Audiorama.

This concert presents a new work specially commissioned for OPENFRAME Stockholm by Australian composer Thembi Soddell.”

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“Computers are meant to be the compelling tool of our age, and Thembi Soddell should then be a high priestess of the digital realm. She uses a more determined method than Chris, storing and recomposing pre-recorded samples on hard discs as sequences to be played and manipulated live. You know the sounds aren't synthesised, but they're hard to pin down.

Her new solo work The Absence of Inclination (see: Soundcloud) continues her interest in imbuing meaning to ambiguity, starting with multiple voices whispering, overtaken by a shocking wall of noise which gives way to a high pitch sine-tone. All this could be read as sound-as-materiality, but somehow you know she's aiming at surrealism - the sound stands for an experience of mental states.

With the first wave of laptopers in the mid 1990s, naysayers felt laptops were a betrayal. Clearly that was overreaction - great music has come out of using computers in the last 20 years and Thembi shows just how personal laptop music can be. Was the worry that we would end up as musical brains in vats, all concepts with no functioning bodies?

Thembi isn't engaged in athleticism like Kim Myhr or Mike Majkowski, but the anxiety overlooked the fact that performing music is about listening/sounding/listening/sounding. The system is always more than a human at a laptop with a mouse - amplification is present and perceiving amplified sound you have pre-inscribed or not, is a complex physical act.

Thembi diffuses off-stage, oriented amongst the audience where she has a better chance of hearing the PA in full glory. She's clearly not as gesturally demonstrative as Jon Rose or Chris Abrahams, she may not change her sequence of sounds substantially, but I'm sure her presence in performance is not gratuitous - there's plenty still to do, and she pushes PAs to dynamics extremes we've rarely heard before. Importantly, like Chris, there's authenticity to her material - nothing preset about her sources.”

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"Thembi Soddell’s Your Sickness is Felt in my Body is inspired by studies published in 1995 on the physical and psychiatric effects of sexism on the female body. A scratchy ‘ill wind’ blows through flute and clarinet bores. Tonalities begin to widen between instruments; interventions from electronica prompt clarinet protests and squeals. A wire brush scrapes and irritates the bass drum; when assertive white mallets begin to strike, we finally see an overt source of pressure that builds and builds. A crescendo peak falls back into a thin, tight, scraping. What caused this neurotic interlude? Who was responsible? It is perhaps in Soddell’s piece that the power of the ‘invisible forces’ of sexism—what Gillard calls “the small things that all add up”—is given strongest illustration."

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Curated by Gail Priest Presented at Rencontres Bandits-Mages Bourges, France Friday November 14, 9pm http://bandits-mages.com/

Listening Visions is a screening and listening program highlighting the work of innovative Australian sound and media artists. Interspersed between short audiovisual works are pure aural experiences, allowing the audience to contemplate the powerful effect vision has on hearing while also appreciating sound as a non-retinal medium.

All the works occupy the space of the abstract (inorganic) rather than figurative (natural). The video works are chosen for their tight interlinking of sound and image, preferencing concrete data conversions over associative visual interpretations. The sound pieces share connections in their use of often harsh, texture-driven impulses that accumulate to create non-figurative though no less dramatic sonic environments. The intention is to loosen the grip of figurative images on the immersive listening experience.

Anthea Caddy & Thembi Soddell A Shut in Place, 2012, audio (8:23) From the album Host (Room40). Using a combination of sampled and performed cello, A Shut In Place creates a dynamic interplay between physical reality, sensory perception and psychological interpretation by examining the threshold between real and constructed space. Anthea Caddy (cello) and Thembi Soddell (sampler) are Melbourne-based artists. Together they rigorously shape aural representations of physical environments to express psychological experience. Host is their second collaborative release (the first is Iland, 2006, Cajid). They have also been commissioned for a number of multichannel concert presentations and gallery installations and have toured (together and separately) nationally and internationally. http://www.antheacaddy.com http://cajid.com/thembi/discography.html

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"After Julia was devised by Cat Hope (Artistic Director of Decibel, composer, current composer in residence at the Peggy Glanville-Hicks house) and took place at the Eugene Goosens Hall, ABC Centre Sydney last Saturday evening 8 November 2014 from 7:30pm. The event was inspired by the tenure of Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, and how her leadership inadvertently exposed gender discrimination in parliament, leading to highlighting of gender discrimination throughout the country. Seven composers were commissioned to respond to this premise."

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""Your Sickness is Felt in my Body" by Thembi Soddell drew from studies of sexism and psychology - in particular a quote from an article - Landrine et al., (1995), "Physical and Psychiatric Correlates of Gender Discrimination". It essentially said that mental illness within women is amplified and potentially caused by gender discrimination. A very powerful quote. The piece began with a very tense electronic backdrop, artistically capturing the beginning of a maligned mental state. This clear tension was built upon with Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery’s masterfully controlled development of a sound world constructed of airy sounds, clicks and hints of notes. The foreboding electronic waves weighed heavily on the audience, and set the form of the work. The third and final large wave gave an appropriate development to the work, particularly with piano and drum, encapsulating the heightening of neurosis or anxiety.

The ensemble worked well with this piece, it was very well suited to Decibel, it seemed, as their capacity to follow an improvisation guided by graphic score is impeccable - as it is their speciality.”

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Guest curator for the electroacoustic section of the National Gallery of Victoria’s ‘Melbourne Now - Now Hear This’ program dedicated to Melbourne’s sound culture.

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Sound Full: Sound in Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Art is an exhibition that draws together sixteen artists working in Australia and New Zealand who produce contemporary art in which sound is a material component of their practice.

To celebrate the opening, there will be exclusive live performances from guest artists:

David Haines and Kusum Normoyle (Sydney)

David Haines practice utilises video, sound, sculpture, photography and painting. His work has been shown in many major contemporary and experimental art spaces around the world.

Kusum Normoyle is a musician focusing on the screaming voice, noise, and site video interventions. Normoyle’s performative incursions are brief, extreme and physical.

Thembi Soddell (Melbourne) is a sound artist and electroacoustic composer. Her compositions exploit the dynamic extremes, toying with the listener’s sense of expectation by generating anticipatory suspense.

Droszkhi (Auckland) pulls into its sphere layer upon spectral layer of electronics, custom synths, percussion & other mixed-media to produce a psychedelic sound world of mind-expanding elliptical loops, discombobulated techno-rhythms, electric pulses, and cosmic drones.

Rex and Dan (Wellington)

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An new exhibition in Wellington is using sound in art to create a unique experience.

Sound Full makes the news in Wellington