December Guests

Three international guests are visiting us this month. We bring you a short presentation of each. Email us if you want to meet up with one of them for a talk or interview.

12.05 to 12.08: Bethan Kellough will be working in Sirius as part of a residency at USF in Bergen, supported by BEK, Lydgalleriet, Ekko and Notam.

Bethan Kellough (formerly Bethan Parkes) is a sound artist and composer. Her work spans across ambisonic composition, field recording, sound design and multichannel sound installation practices, drawing a focus on sonic spatial experience. Her works are designed to open out spaces with sound, exploring spatial aesthetics and the interactions between sonically and visually articulated spaces. The immersive sound-worlds she creates inhabit the boundaries between music and sound design, weaving together instrumental materials, sound design and ambisonic field recordings. Kellough Have a PhD in sound art from the University of Glasgow. This autumn the Ep “Aven” was out on Touch. Her work has been exhibited and performed at renowned locations internationally – and in Bergen during Borealis 2015 and recently as part of the Ekko Festival.

12/9 – 12/16: Méryll Ampe is coming to Notam and our studios as a part of her visit to Vandaler forening and the Winter Solstice-festival.
Méryll Ampe is a French sound and visual artist based in Paris. She holds a sculptural education (wood carving) form École Boulle, Paris. Also she had an education musical (cello and drum). Later graduated at the Art Academy of Paris-Cergy where she developed a visual and sonic approach while in parallel following composition assisted by computer with Octavio Lopez at the Conservatory Georges Bizet (Paris). She also had the opportunity to assist Robin Meier (Paris) and Manuel Rocha Irturbide (Mexico City), among others.
She has worked with various media and contexts such as sculptures, sound installations, performances; has composed for films (Fernando Vilchez, Sophie Laly, Elsa Brès); as well as collaborating with choreographers (“In Vivo Electro” at the Manifeste festival at IRCAM with Christian Rizzo and “CARE” with Mélanie Perrier). She has also performed in several places: YGREC, Glassbox, Bruit Blanc (fr), E-Fest (Tunisia), Les Instants Chavirés (fr), Le Non Jazz (fr), H-ear (Holland), le Mac/Val, Palais de Tokyo (fr) et les Centre Pompidou-Paris et Metz (fr), Fondation Louis Vuitton (fr). Her tracks have been published on the labels Tsuku Boschi Records (Paris), Audition Records, (Mexico), Musica Dispersa Radio (London).

Méryll questions the materiality of sounds, from their birth to their consequential states. It is through physical processes that they are re-transcribed in order to make them visible and tangible.
With plaster, wood or paper, the imprints of the rhythmic effects from drum and sound vibrations are embodied and seem motionless. Through her approach, Méryll Ampe aims to confront the public with her own reflection on the materiality of sound. As sound and visual artist, she develops artworks through field recordings, electronic. She establishes links between her musical practice and her visual practice, using techniques directly linked to sculpture: to cut in the mass, to model, to chisel by using digital tools of sound processing and analogic tools, allowing to generate echo, tensions, breaks and punctuations. By this research, this prehension, she composes orchestrated and spatial tones. She invests places for which she composes soundtracks in situ.
When it comes to her performance practice, Méryll conceives improvisation as a notion of “plan-sequence”, revealing the immersive composition of space.

17/12 – 21/12: Pierre Alexandre Tremblay from the University of Huddersfield is going to work in Sirius with his own research. Homepage: http://www.pierrealexandretremblay.com/

Pierre Alexandre is a teacher of composition and improvisation at the Universitetet i Huddersfield in England since 2005, and is their head of the electronic music studios. He studied composition under Michel Tétreault, Marc Deschênes and Jonty Harrison, bass guitar with Jean-Guy Larin, Sylvain Bolduc and Michel Donato, analyzis with Michel Longtin and Stéphane Roy, studio technique with Francis Dhomont, Robert Normandeau and Jean Piché. He plays bass, laptop, electroacoustic music, improvises, produces, lectures and is a studio musician. He is a member of ars circa musicæ, de type inconnu,, Splice and the London-based collective Loop. He has released music on Empreintes DIGITALes and Ora.

Picture on front: “Julereia” – Nils Bergslien 1922