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Media Release

Innovative music performances attract critical acclaim

20 October 2006

The latest edition of RealTime Magazine features three highly-favourable reviews of recent performances by Professor Julian Knowles (Head, School of Music and Drama) in collaboration with vocalist/electronic music artist Donna Hewitt.

A well-established composer/performer in the electronic music and media arts fields, Julian Knowles has recently been exploring the musical language of intelligent dance music, 'post-digital' music and VJ culture in contemporary composition contexts. Knowles employs two laptop computers to control audio and video elements in performance, along with digitally processed guitar. Recently he has been working in a performance duo with vocalist/electronic music artist Donna Hewitt, who uses a custom-built sensor-based microphone stand, the 'e-mic', which was developed with the support of an Australia Council Music Board grant. The e-mic allows the performer to manipulate their voice in real time by capturing their physical gestures via an array of sensing devices including pressure sensors, distance sensors, tilt sensors, ribbon sensors and a joystick microphone mount. The data captured from the physical gestures of is then sent to a computer, running audio-processing software, which is used to transform the live audio signal from the microphone. The intention is for the duo to have the outward appearance of a conventional guitarist and singer (ie 'a band'), but that extensive digital sensing and real-time processing technologies transform the sounds and physical gestures of the performers into new digital music. The gestural language of popular music is deliberately subverted and taken into a new context.

Julian Knowles and Donna Hewitt were invited to play the closing night of prestigious Sydney new music series impermanent audio as well as being chosen as feature artists for this year's Liquid Architecture national festival of sound arts, which took place at the Brisbane Powerhouse, The Performance Space Sydney, and ArtsHouse Melbourne. These performances attracted highly favourable critical responses and three different reviews have been published in the latest edition of RealTime Magazine http://www.realtimearts.net/

Impermanent Audio Review

'Fast, Furious, Fleeting...', impermanent audio, PELT Gallery, Sydney
Gail Priest, RealTime Magazine
"Fittingly the final set of the evening and of impermanent.audio was by Julian Knowles with Donna Hewitt. As well as being an inspiring artist, Knowles is a key motivator behind much of Sydney’s sound culture. Working away at the intersection between pop and experimental audio tonight he begins ambiently, building to deep satisfying beats which teasingly slip away. He combines his sounds into multiple layers, rich and complex but never overcrowded. Part way through the set Donna Hewitt joins in on her e-mic—an intereactive microphone stand interface that allows her to process vocals live. Here the pop influence rises closer to the surface as Hewitt’s velvety voice pines and purrs, fractured, delayed and panned by strokes, caresses and sways of the stand"
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Liquid Architecture 7 reviews

'Confined and Released', ArtsHouse, Melbourne
Chris Reid, RealTime Magazine
"Donna Hewitt (voice/effects) and Julian Knowles (electric guitar/laptop) open with a crooning, jazz-influenced, darkly romantic work. Hewitt stands at a microphone engineered to produce sound through movement, swaying and swirling it to generate effects, an ironic move given the pop iconicity of the (male) performer with mike stand. Knowles also sways his guitar to create feedback, even scraping the neck across the computer in a post-Townsend gesture. As the sound whines, sings and sighs in complex layers with multiple rhythms, Hewitt’s morphed voice emerges into dreamy awareness. The aesthetic here is in the electronic orchestration of musical and non-musical fragments into a seductive song"
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'Sounds improbable, sounds remarkable', Brisbane Powerhouse
Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela, RealTime Magazine
"Julian Knowles and Donna Hewitt have developed their own highly elaborate aesthetic processes, and they swing the night back towards smooth sophistication and intricacy. Knowles lays the foundation with some blissful electronic drone work whilst Hewitt manipulates her patented microphone-stand-midi-controller-device, coaxing out a series of ethereal vocalisations"
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Upcoming performance ICMC, USA

Next up, Julian Knowles and Donna Hewitt will take their critically acclaimed performance duo to the USA, where they have been selected by an international music jury to perform at the 2006 International Computer Music Conference to be held from November 6-11 in New Orleans.