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latest schemes archive

august/september 2024

I've been slowly, achingly writing a script for a radio broadcast for my dear friend J's radio show, Neighboring Sounds. The broadcast is about semiotic squares, vessels, carrying things, and is fairly nebulous. I'm also working on an EP with Owen Kurtz of Ministry of Phonic Services, which is tentatively titled "Sweet Lips". It's a collaboration between the two of us that is being completed in a flurry, but with deep excitment and attention to detail. It's proving to be a deeply rewarding project already. It's a mediation on pop music, the ways songs bob through the public conciousness, are collaged and re-interpreted and re-used. More on this soon enough!

june 2024:

I collaborated with Gabrielle Tyrie to make a sound piece for an upcoming dual-channel video installation. It will be a part of a larger group show by a local collective the meaningful movement's 3rd annual "gathering". I played the pump organ, no-input mixer, and sang. trying to communicate among two people in a realm that neither are well-versed in (music, sound) proved challening in moments, but it was overall extremely satisfying. and a practice in listening and interpreting the desires or visions of my collaborators, and Gabrielle makes it easy to enjoy the act of creating with someone else.

april/may 2024:

morphology, a collective founded by a dear friend and peer Andrew Donnelly, had its first meeting this month. the five of us will collaboratively make work around the theme "inter-dimensionality". I've been thinking about this in terms of metaphorical, watery, dimensional boundaries - not strict to dimension as its defined. thinking a lot about the blending of unseen things: frequencies, molecules, and the ways that they are recycled and repurposed...moving between different thresholds. these thoughts are still becoming cogent, they're very amorphous right now.

ecotone continued the slow process of recording our album. it has been a sweet slowness. now, more than two years after our first ever show, a sort of crystallization has come over our playing together, instead of a feeling of uncertainty or desire for "success" from our improvizations, it simply feels like the doors are open for anything. anything is good, and there's a real trust built between the three of us. the eventual album as finished product hardly occupies my mind anymore, the satisfaction comes from gathering together to make sounds. I hope I can eventually feel this peaceful in my independent artistic endeavours, as I have trouble also looking to the end instead of savouring the process.

march 2024:

ecotone played Audiopollination, Guelph at the beginning of march 2024. we all agreed this was one of our favourite live sets we've ever played, so much energy between the three of us. it came after a great day of wandering around the town together, and we spent a really productive time make sounds with the environment next to a creek. we've begun recording for an album that will be released on Ministry of Phonic Services. Ben Mike and Owen Kurtz are producing.

Wildnerness Adventure Ride came out with an album titled "Public Statements on the Privitization of Ontario Place". this group includes two performers, Owen Kurtz and %%30%30, who are integral to the experimental music scene in Toronto right now. I collaborated with Gabrielle Tyrie on the album cover:

I spent some time alone with the no input mixer, which became quite productive once I allowed the mixer to make sound on it's own and accompanied it on pump organ. immediately after I shot a video to pair with the piece. under it I wrote:

"communication takes two willing parties. no oomph or umm, just listen and watch. one small particle has something to tell you.

today they met for the first time, and it felt so obvious once it began. the pump organ requires input through the stomping of my legs, a movement that reminded me of hiking. thinking here about the parallels to our bodily organs, rhythmic blood pumping. the no input mixer (as the name suggests) requires no input, it produces sound without my help. its sound changes due to my suggestions (via knobs), or by some unknowable ghost inside. it ends up feeling more like a companion than an instrument, with a fluttering heart of its own."

this was a practice in turning on a camera and trusting my own instincts. I've been thinking lately about how durational performance or documented settings for art making pushes me to make immediate and quick decisions. improvisation has transformed into a new kind of tool for me recently, forcing me to move beyond a paralysis I can encounter in art making.

and finally, I revisited ceramics for the first time in nearly 4 years with the help of local ceramicist Shakeel Rehemtulla we spent about 3 hours talking and reintroducing me to hand building and wheel throwing techniques. this prompted me to realize a few goals that I've been desiring in my art practice, and some ambitions to work towards are doing me good.