Welcome to Contemporary Creative Practices: Experimental Technologies Friday March 13th 6pm, Ian Hanger Recital Hall, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University 1) “Quadrumvibrate” by John R Ferguson (QCGU) and Andrew R Brown (QCAD) This performance is a duet that unfolds as a dynamic interaction between two performers and the generative systems they activate, forming a quartet of human and machine actors. The work explores sonic and rhythmic textures built from algorithmically generated and modulated rhythmic sequences, realised through layered, synthesised percussion. Each performer plays a Beat Machine, a custom electronic musical instrument housed in a wooden enclosure featuring a concentric, circular user interface. The instrument generates a deliberately lo-fi oriented sound palette and offers a range of rhythm generation algorithms, including Euclidean, polymetric, polyrhythmic, geometric, and probabilistic approaches. Rather than presenting fixed material, the performers actively shape in real-time through direct intervention, triggering, modifying, and regenerating patterns/sounds as performance unfolds. 2) “Glitchlrus” by Tara Pattenden AKA Phantom Chips (QCGU PhD candidate) Glitchlrus is a live improvisation for a wearable instrument, forming part of ongoing PhD research into malleable instrument design for performance. The instrument is a custom-built costume controller, constructed around a Daisy Seed microcontroller and worn directly on the body during performance. The central instrument is a sampler with three tentacles that activate recording, change loop position, speed, and length. The performer's vocal utterances are shaped through touch, with skin contact affecting signal processing in real time. Body contact with the sensors is deliberately unreliable, meaning small shifts in posture, pressure, or movement can change or disrupt the signal. This instability is integral to the work: the instrument's misbehaviour introduces an aleatoric element that provides new directions for musical responses. Glitchlrus treats glitch and digital artefact as its primary sonic material, emphasising noise, stutters, and distortions that emerge when probing sampling technology. Alongside the wearable instrument, the performer uses additional instruments to create rhythms, improvising freely with their playback across the performance.
3) “Electronic Audiovisual Performance” by Mohammad Shakir (QCGU PhD candidate) Mohammad Shakir presents a live electronic audiovisual set pairing Ableton Live with a custom-built video synthesiser developed as part of his research. The synthesiser, built on Raspberry Pi using GLSL shader programming, forms the core of his investigation into how open-source, affordable tools can democratise audiovisual performance, offering a viable alternative to expensive commercial platforms. Tonight's performance demonstrates the expressive possibilities of real-time live visuals, with sound and image responding to one another in a live, generative environment accessible to any emerging artist.