Recurrences

2023 

Sound Sculpture

2 sound pieces, plinth, vessel, underwater speaker, 4-channel sound system and water. 

Variable durations & dimensions

Conceived for the 1st edition of the Biennale de Son in Valais Switzerland. The piece was created for exhibition at la Centrale, a recently defunct hydro power station in Sion Switzerland.

Recurrences returns the original source of energy from the Grande Dixence dam to La Centrale via intimate recordings made around and within the dam itself. This energetic material is relocated back into the dormant hydro plant as a memory or ghost, emerging from a still vessel of water surrounded by the distant sounds of its now empty house.

 

 

---

Making Conversation 

2023 

Electro-acoustic composition with accompanying drawings.

Variable diffusions, materials and dimensions.

Commissioned for exhibition in the la Scala space at Tabakalera, Donostia / San Sebastian ES, July – October 2023. Presented as a vertical 8-channel diffusion with galleries.

Making Conversation was inspired by nocturnal listening sessions that took place while visiting Bali, Indonesia in 2018 and 2019. During my listening and recording sessions I observed the complex interplay of sounds interacting around me between amphibians, lizards and insect communications, domestic animals (roosters, dogs), man-made sounds (airplanes, vehicles, passing conversations and evening activities) and other sounds that I couldn’t recognize or place. This sound environment was incredibly dense and complex. I have created a piece that is inspired by the patterns, shapes, movement, tones and textures that I observed. Not by using the actual field recordings that I made, but through reinterpreting this sonic landscape to create pieces for diverse instrumentation, electronics, voices, objects and sounds. Memory also plays a critical role in this process. The field-recordings can only portray so much of the lived experience, but they act as a doorway to recollections, memories, sensations and more that played a critical role in guiding my compositional process.

The accompanying drawings were created during automatic drawing sessions. Allowing my hands to move and react instinctively through subconscious direction while listening to the Bali recordings and the developing sound composition. The drawings and the sound composition were created in tandem, relating back and forth to each other in a continuous process. Rather than act as a graphic ‘score’ the visual works are companions to the sound piece, illustrating parts of the intuitive process that assisted the development of the final work.

---

Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr… (pt.1)

2021 

Sound piece

Trio for two large similar paper things and one 5-pin bowling ball.

An interpretation of composer Beth Anderson’s score Valid For Life, from the publication Womens Work, a magazine first edited and self-published in 1975 by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood. 

Comissioned by Issue Project Room for their With Womens Work series.

Online premiere, February 2021.

“Gazing over Beth Anderson’s wonderful graphic score of the letter R in various typefaces and sizes had me hearing the sound of rolling r’s in my head. In Anderson’s original score she asks the players to perform rolls (with a velvet beater) on classic instruments – piano/harp and membranophones. I took a different approach, in part out of necessity due to the limitations of the current situation – an extended lock-down in Berlin, with no studio and inhabiting a small 1-room flat that I share with my partner, but more particularly by looking at it from a conceptual angle and applying my usual methods of working with non-typical instruments. I adhered to the score’s call for the piece to be a trio. From there the work was born out of the evocative nature of her playful page of R’s – tongue twirling rrrrrr’s, rolling vibrations, rumbles and quiet purrrrs…

My 2014 piece titled ‘keeping the ball rolling’ is meant to be metaphorically rolling in perpetuity and recently it has felt stiflingly paused with the events of this very challenging past year. While pondering Anderson’s score, an auspicious feeling struck me that set this piece back in motion. The feeling (and sounds) of movement and momentum conjured by this meeting feels somehow reassuring at this moment in time.“

This piece was released in 2024 on the solo album ‘Making Conversation‘ on Black Truffle Records. 

image below of Beth Anderson’s original score, Valid For Life

PRESS: 

Art in America – “KEEPING SCORE: “WITH WOMENS WORK” AT ISSUE PROJECT ROOM”, April 21, 2021 by Lauren Rosati: “With Womens Work” began on February 3 with a composition by Berlin-based sound artist crys cole responding to Beth Anderson’s Valid for Life, a graphic score featuring the letter R in varying typefaces and font sizes. Anderson’s instructions call for the gentle amplification of a “long, soft, full, round roll” performed on a trio of stringed instruments and drums. cole’s answer, Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr. . . (pt.1), abandons conventional musical means, creating a more quotidian soundtrack out of heavy balls, coins, and rolls of transparent paper flung across the artist’s studio floor. Set into motion by an unseen hand, these objects create muted but unmistakable tonal qualities, producing a haptic acknowledgement of the cascading trill evoked by Anderson’s score.

---

Piling Pelion Upon Ossa 

2017

Site-specific sculpture w/ 4-channel sound diffusion.

Repurposed bricks from GES-2, audio recording and 4 mono speakers.

66 min 26 sec

Created on site at GES-2 for the Geometry of Now exhibition / festival in Moscow, Russia. Curated by Mark Fell (UK) and presented by V-A-C Foundation. Exhibited February 20 – 27 2017.

This piece is a process-based site work utilizing repurposed bricks from the demolition of the interior of the main GES-2 space (previously an immense power station). The bricks were collected and methodically piled to construct a towering mountain sculpture in one of the small rooms of the building. This process was recorded from several vantage points within the space (and within the sculpture) to capture specific and complex textures and resonances that occurred through the process.The resulting recordings were developed and mixed to create a multi-channel composition. For the exhibition the audio played in the space through a surrounding quadrophonic system, showcasing the sonic artefact as the counterpart to the Hurculean brick sculpture in the center of the room. The title hints at the idiom related to a Greek myth, in which giants attempted to pile two mountains, Pelion and Ossa, on top of each other to reach the heavens and destroy the Olympian gods – an arduous undertaking that was ultimately futile. 

Further documentation with audio excerpt:

---

Keeping the ball rolling

Ongoing performance series, 2014 – present

Presented as a live performance &/or a multi-channel installation

This piece was conceived in 2014 and will continue to be performed with no intended conclusion. A play on the idiom of keeping momentum going, this work represents a self-motivating mantra and a playful take on the literal act of keeping a ball in motion.

---

38,208 km (the distance required to make this work)

2014

5-channel surround sound piece

14 min 22 sec

Created between Brussels (BE) at Q-02, Winnipeg (CA) and Melbourne (AU).

Presented as part of the Lautsprecher sound program, curated by Peter Simon, at the Klangkunst im Museum Ostwall in Dortmund Germany, through March 2014.

---

filling a space with salt (in two parts)

2013

site-specific sound sculpture

two heating shafts (2ft x 2ft x 3ft), 375 kg of salt, audio recording, mono speaker

108 min

Created on site at the South London Gallery for At the Moment of Being Heard, group exhibition curated by Simon Parris (London, UK). Exhibited June 28 – September 8, 2013.

This piece was created by slowly filling one of the under floor ventilation shafts (no longer in use) with 375 kg of two sizes of rock salt. A large scaffolding was used to slowly filter the grains of salt into the shaft from about 5ft above the floor. The sound of the falling salt was captured by an array of microphones; contact microphones on a metal plate at the base of the shaft (slowly buried under the salt), a boundary microphone on the iron grate covering the shaft, and two shotgun microphones capturing the falling salt from different heights and perspectives. The action took a total of 108 minutes, leaving a beautiful small pyramid of salt emerging from the grate at the far left corner of the gallery.

The audio files were then mixed to create the final sound work, which was presented as a mono piece projected through one speaker placed at the base of the shaft on the far right corner of the gallery. These two parts sat beside each other in the gallery, intrinsically connected and in a sense, reflecting one another.

The audio is extremely tactile and percussive, though ambiguous and subtle in a way that could have the listener interpret it as falling rain or white noise when not focusing directly on it. The sound changes dramatically from beginning to end, reflecting the changing acoustics and space within the cavern of the shaft and the soft sound of salt falling on salt as the shaft is filled.

photo by Andy Keate, courtesy of South London Gallery

Re-imaginations of this piece:

• 18-channel diffusion at Lush Spectra (2017) in Sheffield UK, curated by Mark Fell.
• Solo listener version (mono mix) for The Sound of Distance (2021) at the HKW in Berlin DE, curated by Jan St Werner.

---

Tracings, Spanien19c, Aarhus, Denmark

2013

site-specific 4-channel sound installation

large sheets of paper, 4-channel speaker array, audio piece

30 min, 24 sec

This piece was generated by tracing the raw and empty gallery space of Spanien19c with various sizes and types of paper and my body / gestures. The action of tracing the perimeter of the space was repeated over and over, using different approaches with the materials in order to illuminate the material identity of the space as well as the acoustic nature of the room in relation to the individual character of the different papers. The piece serves to draw the space acoustically through this process, generating a unique and compelling composition singular to this space.

Created on site at Spanien19c for the SPOR Festival for Contemporary Music & Sound Art in Arhus, Denmark. Exhibited from May 9 – June 2, 2013.

---

unraveling

2013

sound piece for headphones

6 min, 25 sec

Created for presentation at Galerie Díra in Prague, April 16 – May 6, 2013.

Also presented at:

CAC Bukovje in Landskrona, Sweden from December 14, 2013 – January 5, 2014.

Soundwaves series, Neuenational Galerie Berlin DE, July + December 2024

slideshow of presentation at Galerie Díra with sound excerpt. Photos by Martin Blazicek.

---

Tracings

2012

site-specific 8-channel sound installation

38 minutes

Created and presented at RAW Gallery of Architecture & Design, Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada.

Tracings was created to explore the aural landscape of a space, in this case the very unrefined and diverse materiality of the RAW Gallery. Tracing the perimeter of the space repetitively with a small selection of implements – including my hands & body, sandpaper, a metal hanger, cymbal and iron rod – brought out the distinct textures of the gallery walls & floor as well as defined the dimension and character of the space through the acoustic responses within it’s architecture. This action was captured through 8 condenser microphones and mirrored back into the gallery through an 8-channel speaker system. The sounds traced my exact movements, leaving a ghost of my actions and a sonic drawing of the space.

Photos in slideshow by Travis Cole, Robert Szkolnicki, Jacqueline Young and crys cole.

---

sweeper                                                       

2009

audio-video piece (for installation)

16:58 min.

sweeper is a meditation on the banal chore of sweeping. the soundtrack, captured by a contact microphone woven into the bristles of the broom, distorts and amplifies the artist’s gestures exagerating and altering our perception of this common and ordinary activity.

presented at:

•  aceartinc. Bringing Home the Bacon group exhibition – Winnipeg, MB, 2009.

•  Centre A, Strawberry Jam group exhibition – Vancouver, BC, 2010.

•  Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Volume: Hear Here group exhibition – Toronto, ON, 2013.
•  Bangkok Arts & Culture Centre, DRIFT Project #1 – Bangkok, TH, 2014 

---

Record Covers: series of 1 – 33.3 (rpm)

2003, Collaboration with Travis Cole (née Obrigavitch)

modified vinyl records & CD jewel cases

Object series produced for ||| cover without a record |||  – squint press (CAN)