Jem Finer is an artist, composer and musician with a background in mathematics and computer science, dating back to the ICL 1900 mainframe computers of the early 1970s. An enduring fascination with deep time and space, self-organising systems and long-durational processes has been the impetus behind much of his work including his Artangel commission, Longplayer, a thousand-year-long musical composition playing since the last moments of 1999, Cosmolog, a two-year-long artists residency in the astrophysics department of Oxford University and the 2005 PRSF New Music Award winner, Score For a Hole In the Ground, a permanent, self-sustaining musical installation in a forest in Kent, which relies only on gravity and the elements to be audible. Recent work focuses on these interests and includes Kung Fu Pinball, a pinball machine modified to auto-compose music, Slowplayer, a 3 r.p.m. sound system and Spiegelei, a 360-degree spherical camera obscura. Supercomputer, a new work in Cambridge, finds Finer’s “post-digital” thinking having come full circle in the form of a sculptural machine of a computational process, indebted as much to Jean Tinguely’s Métamatics as to John Conway’s Game of Life.
Douglas Benford, composer and sound artist, has been involved in various audio genres since the late 1980s, performing at institutions in the UK (Bristol’s Arnolfini, London’s Science Museum, Tate Modern, The Roundhouse, ICA and Glasgow’s CCA), festivals worldwide (Mutek, Synch, Transmediale) and has had installation work in numerous UK galleries (London, Swansea, Stroud and Essex). After numerous electronica releases in his ‘si-cut.db’ guise, in the past few years he has focused on acoustic improvisation and installations, using field recordings, classical instruments, vocals and children’s toys. His collaborators include Blanca Regina, poet Tamar Yoseloff, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Steve Beresford, sculptor Rob Olins, as well as – in the past – pop group Saint Etienne, Jem Finer (The Pogues), Momus, Rod Thomas (Bright Light Bright Light), Scanner, Stephan Mathieu and DJ Andrew Weatherall. He is also co-curator with Iris Garrelfs since 1996, of Sprawl audio events in London.
Sue Lynch plays tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet and also composes. She currently runs The Horse Music Club in South London, with Adam Bohman and Hutch Demouilpied. She studied Fine Art at Coventry College Of Art. In the 1980’s she toured with The Happy End Big Band. As well as performing with Eddie Prevost, Jennifer Allum, Hutch Demouilpied, Richard Sanderson, and Sharon Gal, she plays with Hogcallin’ (with John Edwards, Steve Noble, Adrian Northover), ‘The Remote Viewers’ (with John Edwards, Mark Sanders, Caroline Kraabel, Adrian Northover and David Petts) and Helen McDonald’s ‘Future Groove’.
John Bisset received training on the piano, but from eleven preferred the guitar, on which he was left to his own devices. As a teenager in Manchester he made compositions and structures for improvisation, wrote and sang songs with new wave bands, and produced visual art. He has continued to work in these areas: composing for large ensembles (London Electric Guitar Orchestra, London Improvisers Orchestra); improvising freely with the likes of Kaffe Matthews, Rhodri Davies, Burkhard Beins and Alex Ward; and playing songs and tunes with guitar-led groups (Pocket, Country Dad). His visual sensibilities being present in performance and scoring, and most recently in the short films of Twothirteen TV. In 1991 he founded the 2:13 Club, which presents concerts and festivals of new and improvised music. The 2:13 has sister clubs in Berlin (Burkhard Beins) and Athens (Nikos Veliotis) and has a continued, if sporadic, activity, and a score of issues on the label 2:13 Music/. Many of his activities have been confined to his kitchen (Twothirteen TV, The World in my Kitchen, The Wall). Since 2009 he has produced weekly short YouTube films with Ivor Kallin – as Twothirteen TV.
Apology: Please note Ute Kangiesser is now unable to perform.
Doors 3:30 | music 4pm | entry £5 donations
