"Max Eastley is an internationally recognised artist who combines kinetic sculpture and sound into a unique art form. His sculptures exist on the border between the natural environment and human intervention and use the driving forces of electricity, wind, water and ice. He has exhibited both interior and exterior works internationally. His work is represented in the permanent collection of the Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Since 2003 Max has been an artist with the Cape Farewell Climate Change Project (http://www.capefarewell.com), for whom he has created a number of installations, compositions and performances. From 2010 to 2013 he was an Arts and Humanities Research Council Senior Researcher at Oxford Brookes University, investigating Aeolian phenomena through artistic practice and historical research. He is also currently one of the artists involved in a project, Audible Forces, touring festivals in the UK, using the wind as an energy source.

Max's largest solo exhibition in 2013 was at the Water Tower (Wasserturm) in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin: a cavernous, labyrinthine space inside which he installed ten acoustic sculptures. On the roof of the building he erected 8 Aeolian harps and their live sound was projected into the interior of the building to mix with the acoustic sounds inside. In 2014 he had a solo exhibition at the Teatroinscatola in Rome and took a residency in Bonn as the City Sound Artist, during which he created an Aeolian Installation at the Botanical Gardens.

He is well known as a musician and has played many solo concerts and also played with numerous other musicians such as David Toop, Evan Parker, Steve Beresford, Alex Kolkowski, Rhodri Davies and John Butcher."

-Max Eastley Website (http://www.maxeastley.co.uk/about-max/)
11/29/2024

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"Fergus Kelly is a sound artist and improvising musician based in Dublin. He has been in numerous shows around Ireland, and has shown in Canada, America, Germany, Finland, Holland and England. He has done soundtracks for film and theatre and received many Arts Council awards. He is a founder member of The Dublin Phonographers Union for the promotion of field recordings in a live context.

Sound has been a constant element in his work, and has been used in a variety of contexts: tape/slide, performance, installation, soundworks for tape, CD, radio, and public spaces. His work was performed by The Manhattan Marimba Quartet in The Kitchen, New York, in 1991. Radio broadcasts include A.A.R.T., Dublin, 1994 and 1998, Hearing Is Believing, Liverpool, 1995, Horizontal Radio, Alberta 1995, Radio Gagarin, Hamburg, 1996, Resonance, London 1998, and Drift:Resonant Cities, Edinburgh, 2004.

Other highlights include showing in the European Workshop Ruhrgebeit in Recklinghausen, Germany in 1990 and 1991, and the Audio Visual Experimental Festival, in Arnhem, Holland in 1993 and 1995, participating in The Tuning Of The World conference in Banff, Canada in 1993, and performing in Six Weeks Of Sound and In The Eye OF The Ear II, both in Chicago in 1996. In 1997 and 1999 he performed in Dublin and Cork with UK sound sculptor Max Eastley.

He also showed in The Digital Hub's Captured in Dublin in 2006 and performed in a duo with David Lacey in the Tulca performance festival in Galway in 2006, and in Volume 4 in Dublin in 2007. In 2007 he was selected joint winner with Ian McDonnell for electro-acoustic composition in Crash Ensemble's Free State concert in Dublin. In 2009 he performed in London with Max Eastley and Mark Wastell.

He showed in Futuresonic in Manchester, also in 2007. In 2011 a soundwork was featured at the Alchemy Film Festival, in Hawick, Scottish Borders. A soundwork featured in Nowhere Island Radio, UK, and A Quiet Position, curated by Jez Riley French, as part of a broadcast during the AV Festival in London, in 2012.

Breathing Room, a sound/light installation was presented in The Goethe Institute in Dublin in 2012. A soundwork was featured in The Hilltown New Music Festival, Westmeath, in 2012. New soundworks were featured in Mayfest in London, Free State 7, Kilkenny Arts Festival and (H)ear Festival 3, Heerlen, Holland in 2013. He performed solo in Berlin in 2013, as part of the Functional Sounds conference.

In 2014, his soundwork, Concrete Sonorities was featured in the Urban Soundscape And Critical Citizenship conference in Limerick. It also featured in Invisible Places/Sounding Cities in Portugal in 2014, and in Radio Cona broadcast project, Ljubljiana, Slovenia in 2015, and Radiophrenia, UK, in 2015. A new piece, Tethered, was selected by Darren Copeland from New Adventures In Sound Art via a residency in University of Limerick, to be developed for performance on UL's SpADE surround sound system, and also for performance in Toronto later in 2015. This piece was also featured in Listen | Compose | Perform, an event in Dublin in 2016, curated by composer Karen Power.

Repetitive Strain Industries (Fergus Kelly, David Lacey & Jurgen Simpson) performed in Perspective 2000 in Belfast, and in the Infusion and Fix festivals in Limerick and Belfast in 2000. They also performed at Scoip 2001 in Tralee, and in Summer, in Dublin, in 2001.

Soundworks on CD include: GBH (1993), which appears on Random Access Soundworks, Pressure (1994), appears on Audio Artists Radio Transmissions. He appears in collaboration with Garrett Phelan and Carol McKeon on Soundworks III (1998). A solo CD, Invisible City (1999) was published by Project Press, as part of Project's Off Site series.

Recording under the name Reptitive Strain Industries, his work has been featured on compilations released through Charnel Music in San Francisco, Meeuw Muzak in Maastricht, and Staalplaat in Amsterdam. The album Nets In The Trawl was released by ND in Texas.

In 2005 he established a CDR label and website, Room Temperature, as an outlet for his solo and collaborative work, producing the CDs Unmoor (2005), Material Evidence (2006), Bevel (2006) (with David Lacey), A Host Of Particulars (2007), Strange Weather (2007) and Leaching The Pith (2008), Swarf (2009), Fugitive Pitch (2009) Long Range (2010), Unnatural Actuality (2014) and Quiet Forage (with David Lacey) (2015).

The album, A Congregation Of Vapours, was released to critical acclaim in 2012 on Dublin label Farpoint Recordings.

Two new albums were released in 2016: Neural Atlas (Stolen Mirror CD) and Shot To Shreds (Farpoint tape release).

The album Local Knowledge (Unfathomless CD) was released to critical acclaim in 2017."

-Room Temperature (https://www.roomtemperature.org/p/biography.html)
11/29/2024

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"Mark Wastell Born 1968; cello.

Much of Mark Wastell's relationship with his chosen instrument is concentrated on the tactile, textural and sonic possibilities of both violoncello and bow. He is increasingly interested in working with extreme elements drawn from frequency, timbre and pitch.

His early activity was consciously and subconsciously influenced by a variety of improvising musicians including John Stevens, Barry Guy, Phil Durrant and John Russell. Subsequent exposure to contemporary composers lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of the works written for strings by Feldman, Cage, Nono, Lachenmann and Sciarrino. The use of live electronics and music concrete by Tudor, Parmegiani, Xenakis and others was another important early influence.

Wastell's current instrumental material primarily focuses on using abstract principles of space and texture - encompassing elements of new London silence, pro-instrument minimalism, new complexity and electro-acoustics. Because of the very nature of his chosen instrument, he tends to favour 'chamber' style ensembles and is a member of a number of regular groups:

• Chris Burn's Ensemble, with John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, John Russell, Matt Hutchinson

• Derek Bailey's Company - with, for example, Will Gaines, Simon H. Fell and Rhodri Davies

• Evan Parker's String Project, with Peter Cusack, Hugh Davies, Rhodri Davies, Phil Durrant, John Edwards, Kaffe Matthews, Marcio Mattos, John Russell

• Assumed possibilities, with Chris Burn, Rhodri Davies and Phil Durrant

• The Sealed Knot, with Burkhard Beins and Rhodri Davies

• Necessaire with Alessandro Bosetti, Ignaz Schick and Burkhard Beins

• IST with Simon Fell and Rhodri Davies

• Quatuor Accorde with Tony Wren, Phil Durrant and Charlotte Hug

• Broken Concort, a duo with Rhodri Davies

Mark Wastell has also performed with many other leading musicians including John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Peter Kowald, Hugh Davies, Roger Turner, Veryan Weston, Lol Coxhill, Mark Sanders, Axel Dorner, Hans Koch, Phil Minton, Max Eastley and Steve Beresford.

As a soloist he has played at the Micro-classical Festival (London 1996), LMC Festival (London 2000) and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2000). He has travelled extensively with various groups, performing on tour and at festivals in the USA, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Greece. Other work includes the launch in 1996 of his own record label, Confront Recordings. Wastell is also joint co-ordinator of the concert venue All Angels, together with Rhodri Davies."

-European Free Improv (EFI) (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/mwastell.html)
11/29/2024

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