View Source: colloquium / Gordon Monahan

!Sound Art and Sound Installations
A presentation of several of Gordon's projects produced over the last 25 years in the field of Sound Art and Sound Installation, including videos documenting the work and discussion of the theoretical and technical aspects of various pieces.

!Bio
Gordon Monahan's works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance.

Monahan began performing in public as a member of various rock bands in Ottawa, Canada (1968-73). Since 1978, he has performed and exhibited at numerous performance spaces, galleries, and festivals. Early in his career, he specialized as a pianist, performing John Cage's _Etudes Australes,_ premiering pieces by James Tenney and Udo Kasemets, and composing extended works for acoustic piano (_Piano Mechanics,_ 1981) and amplified prepared piano (_This Piano Thing,_ 1989).  The renowned composer John Cage once said, "At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before."

Beginning in the late 1970's, he created sound works using elements of natural forces and the environment, eventually constructing long string installations activated by wind (_Long Aeolian Piano,_ 1984-88), by water vortices (_Aquaeolian Whirlpool,_ 1990) and by indoor air draughts (_Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather,_ 1996). His work for electronic tone generators and human speaker swingers (_Speaker Swinging,_ 1982), is a hybrid of science, music, and performance art, where use of electronic oscillators to construct the Doppler Effect contrasts with issues central to performance art such as physical struggle and 'implied threat'. Viewing the loudspeaker as a discrete instrument for generating or 'representing' music, Monahan has constructed a loudspeaker catapult (_A Magnet That Speaks Also Attracts,_ 1986) and a series of 'imitation' loudspeaker installations (_Music From Nowhere,_ 1989). During the 1990's he developed an ensemble of multi-functional computer-controlled sound-machines which undergo various transformations as performance and installation environments. He created an interactive mechanical sound installation for the Sony Center in Berlin (2000), and has recently developed new installations using computer-controlled water drops falling upon amplified objects (_When it Rains,_ 2000/2002). His new work, _Theremin in the Rain,_ will premiere at the Hamburger Bahnhof, the National Gallery for Contemporary Art in Berlin, in 2005.

Monahan's interest in 'hi- and low-tech' and 'high and low culture' led him to collaborate with Laura Kikauka and Bastiaan Maris in establishing _The Glowing Pickle_ (Berlin, 1993-95), an electronic surplus store using 20 tons of discarded East German scientific equipment, parodying both communist and capitalist cultures. He also collaborated with Laura Kikauka to produce the infamous Berlin underground club _Schmalzwald_ (1996-2000). He is electric organist with the lounge band _Fuzzy Love,_ who released their first CD _Pagan Schmalz and Other Sacrifices_ in 2000. _Fuzzy Love_ has performed at such venues as  _Haus der Kulturen der Welt,_ Berlin, _Festival of Vision,_ Hong Kong, and the 2001 Venice _Biennale._

Gordon Monahan won First Prize at the 1984 _CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers,_ as well as commissions from the Vancouver New Music Society; CBC Radio; Dade County Art in Public Places, Miami; The Kitchen, New York; the DAAD Inventionen Festival, Berlin, the Donaueschingen Musiktage and the Sony Center, Berlin. His controversial commission for the Dade County ~MetroRail transit system was banned during the 1988 New Music America festival in Miami. That same year, Monahan was chosen as CBC Radio's entry to the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Monahan has been Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990),  the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1991), D.A.A.D., Berlin (1992-93), the Western Front, Vancouver (1999), Podewil, Berlin (2002) and a fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts (1991).
<br>
<br>
[http://www.gordonmonahan.com]
View Source: colloquium / Gordon Monahan

Page Details

Page Actions

Back Links

UserId:
Password: