Artist in Residence Program

Artists selected for 2005:

School of Journalism and Creative Writing...

Julia Leigh (5th - 16th September)

At the University of Sydney Julia Leigh studied Arts/Law and edited both the student newspaper Honi Soit and the literary journal Hermes. Her novel The Hunter was published to acclaim and has been translated into six languages. In Australia Julia was named co-winner of the 2000 Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year and won the Kathleen Mitchell Award. She was shortlisted for a raft of prizes including the NSW Premier's Award, the Queensland Premier's Fiction Prize, The Age Book of the Year, and the Dobbie Award. In the UK she won a Betty Trask Award, an Authors Foundation Award and was shortlisted for the John Lwellellyn Rhys Prize. In the USA she was nominated for the US National Book Critics Circle Award and the novel was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. In France she is the laureate of the 2001 Prix de L'Astrolabe and was a finalist for The Meilleur Livre Etranger, Best Foreign Book Prize. Julia was an inaugural participant in the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative and has received grants from the Australia Council and the Marten Bequest.

School of Music and Drama...

Anne Norman B.Mus., Dip.Ed., MA (ethnomusicology)
(26th April - 5th May)

Anne is a composer and performer of shakuhachi, and designer of the electro-acoustic sound installation, the Bell Garden. Originally trained in Western Art music (majoring in flute performance) at the Conservatorium, Univ. of Melbourne, (where her request to do an honours thesis on Musique Concrete was rejected as she was not a composition major), Anne subsequently traveled and learned many styles of indigenous music in countries through SE Asia. Anne took up the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) in Japan in 1986 under Nakamura Shindo and later studied under Tajima Tadashi. In 1990 she received a grant from the Japanese Government to study shakuhachi with Living National Treasure - Yamaguchi Goro at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Shakuhachi is now Anne's primary performance medium.

Anne performs contemporary Australian music and collaborative fusions in ensemble with a variety of other artists. She has performed in major arts festivals in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Europe. In Japan, Anne has performed in numerous concerts including recitals of her own compositions for Japanese instruments. In 2004, Anne was commissioned by the International Shakuhachi Research Centre in Japan, under the patronage of Living National Treasure Yokoyama Katsuya, to compose a sextet for shakuhachi. "Life" was premiered in Bisei, Japan in August 2004.

In 2003, Anne received a 'Sounding Out' grant from the Australia Council as seeding money to begin construction on two bell structures using her collection of power pole caps * . One was an acoustic performance structure, and the other is the Bell Garden - an electro-acoustic installation using a mix of retro- and cutting edge technology. Forming a collaboration with Smart Controller designer Angelo Fraietta in 2004, the Bell Garden is nearing completion for promotion to International Arts Festivals and Galleries for both cross-artform collaborative performance, and as an interactive public art installation.

Anne also performs in the duo Questing Spirit (with harpsichordist Peter Hagen), which has performed for Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in Sydney in 2002 and at the International Shakuhachi Festival in New York in 2004. Anne has written, directed and performed music for theatre, directing theatrical collaborations between butoh dance artists, musicians and sound and lighting designers, receiving major arts funding from the Australia Council and other arts bodies.   Anne is also a member of the ensemble Jouissance, which places the music of Hildegard and other early Latin & Byzantine chant in a contemporary framework. Jouissance has performed in Festivals in Australia, Norway & Estonia, and has been invited to perform again in Europe in 2006. Anne was commissioned in 2001 to compose for the MIDI driven Federation Bells installation in Birrarung Marr Park in Melbourne.

Anne has solo and collaborative performances in Japan and America in 2005, and has been commissioned to compose a new piece for the Hiroshima Shakuhachi Association. Anne regularly performs with Toshinori Sakamoto (taiko), giving concerts and workshops nationwide, introducing Australian school children to the drums and flutes of Japan. Anne also dabbles in instrument construction using found objects and is a sculptor of works made from wood.  

View website >
http://annenorman.com/

* Since 1996, Anne has been collecting galvanised iron caps from the top of old electricity poles from various power company depots. These galvanised iron caps were made by the SEC (State Electricity Company of Victoria) to fit electricity poles made from tree trunks of varying diameters. Their function was to protect the poles from the weather and for mounting insulators above the poles. These iron caps make marvelous microtonal bells and have been performed numerous times by Anne and her colleagues in Victoria and Japan and have been recorded and broadcast by the ABC. In Anne's collection of PP caps, the diameters range from 18cm to 32cm with a pitch range of nearly two octaves from approx 130 Hz to 440 Hz.

Anne will be the Guest Speaker at the Postgraduate and Staff Research Monthly Discussion Seminar Titled: Practising Sound: Technologies of Composition and Performance on 27th April at 12.30pm in Building 25 Room 128.

Dr Ros Bandt (19th September - 30th September)

Practice Sounding Spaces
Ros Bandt is a cross disciplinary sound artist who sounds sites in sensitive ways using a variety of audio, and spatial media including sound sculptures, historical musical instruments, implanted canvases, photography, painting and ephemeral design elements. Sound is the vortex of her reading of site but the choice of materials and methodology comes as an archaeology from the site itself, dependent on the physiology and the people using it. Since 1977 she has installed over 35 sites, including the Salt mine in Hall, near Innsbruch, Aeolian harps in the desert at Lake Mungo desert, industrial cylinders such as water tanks, wheat silos, carparks and smoke stacks, historic stables, limestone quarries, parks, concerthalls, galleries and cyberspace. She has invented several musical instruments and sound sculptures as well as building Australia's first two storey playground in 1981 in a public park. Her works are walk through spatial polyphony begun in 1987 when she designed the SSIIPP system, an audience interactive 8 channel playback system, through to the globally linked performance of a Global Garden for Percy, with 127 channels of computerised sound.

Ros Bandt Scholar, Composer, Interdisciplinary Sound Artist and Researcher
Biography Summary
Dr Ros Bandt is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, composer, researcher and scholar. Since 1977 she has pioneered interactive sound installations, sound sculptures, created sound playgrounds, spatial music systems and some 40 sound installations worldwide. She has curated many sound performances, exhibitions and events. Her original works are recorded on New Albion Records USA, Move Records , Melbourne and EMI/ABC, and Wergo Germany. In 1990 she won the Don Banks composers Award, being the first woman to do so. Other awards include the inaugural Benjamin Cohen peace prize in the USA and the Sound Art Australia Prize also funded by the ABC and the Goethe Institute. She has been commissioned by the Paris Autumn festival, the Studio of Acoustic Art, WDR, Cologne, Transit and ORF Vienna and been one of the Six exquisites in the International sound art festival in The USA. She collaborates with many interdisciplinary artists and has been a founding member of 3 ensembles. La Romanesca early music ensemble, the cross- cultural Back to Back Zithers and the improvisatory LIME. She is a prolific writer on sound and her new book, Sound Sculpture: Intersections in Sound and Sculpture in Australian Artworks has just been published by Fine Arts Press. She is honorary senior research fellow at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne, steering a large analytical study of sound design practice in Australia through her nation-wide initiative, The Australian Sound Design Project data- base and web site, funded on a large ARC grant. She has a PhD in contemporary musicology from Monash University on Repetitive Music.
http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au

Sean O'Riordan (5th - 9th September with follow up seminars on 26th September, 10th & 17th October)

Originaly from London Sean O'Riordan trained and worked as a journalist before retraining as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff , Wales (1982 - 85). He worked as an actor in the UK mostly in touring theatre until 1991.

In Sydney he acted, performed stand-up comedy and stared directing plays and then began teaching for NIDA Open Program in 1995. In 1996 he began teaching and directing for the Actors College of Theatre and Telelvision and became supervisor of the full time and part time Certificate 111 in Theatre Performance and Practice in 2001.

With his company BARESTAGE   he has written, directed, produced and acted in: Aliens R Human 2 (1996), Housemates (1997), Shakespeares Detective (1998-1999 with Sydney Theatre Company Education Unit), MR TV (2000) and MIXD DRINX (2002 and remounted 2003). He also wrote and directed Holiday in the Sun (2003). This show was subsequently performed at the New York Fringe Festival in 2004.

For the SHORT AND SWEET short play festival he has presented three pieces BARMAN'S SPEECH (2003),

SPYRING (2004) AND KISS OF THE ALIEN (2005).

Other cridits include film: The Man Who Sued God, The Illustrated Family Doctor. TV: All Saints. Short Film And Puppy Dog's Tails (voted winner Tropfest Best of the Rest 2003)

School of Art and Design...

Aaron Seeto (14th - 23rd March)

Creative Arts Honours graduate Aaron Seeto has returned to the Faculty to share his knowledge during a two week residency. Investigating interactions between Australia and Asia, his current work focuses on migration history and 19th century photography.

Aaron won the University Medal in 2000 and the photographic section of the National Tertiary Art Prize in 2003. Until last year he was curator of Sydney's Gallery 4A, Asia-Australia Arts Centre. In 2003 he was also awarded an Australia Council grant for emerging artists. He has exhibited internationally at the Christchurch Biennial.

While in residence Aaron will be lecturing on Thinking and Creating Asia and Australia.

Andrew Polaine (22nd March and 16th - 25th May)

Andrew Polaine has been working at the forefront of interactive art and design in England and Australia. He has been involved with Antirom, English award winning interactive multimedia collective funded under a New Collaborations grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain. He was a founder of the interactive unit of Animal Logic, a Sydney based international post-production company renown for film titles and effects for Matrix and Moulin Rouge. He is currently a senior lecturer in interactive media at COFA, UNSW.
Andrew will be the Guest Speaker at the Postgraduate and Staff Research Monthly Discussion Seminar Titled: The Role of Play: Interactivity in Practice on 25th May 2005 at 12.30pm in Building 25 Room 128.

Dr Anthony Cahalan (23rd March to 6th April)

Dr Anthony Cahalan has broad-ranging national and international
experience in graphic design, marketing, public relations and design
education. He is currently Deputy Head of the School of Design and
Architecture and Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the
University of Canberra. He is the country delegate for Australia of
Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI), has been state
president and national councillor of the Australian Graphic Design
Association (AGDA) and is a regular presenter at national and
international conferences on design. Dr Cahalan studied visual
communication at Sydney College of the Arts, has a Master of Design
from the University of Technology Sydney and a PhD from Curtin
University of Technology in Perth. His doctoral thesis on the late
twentieth century proliferation of typefaces is one of the first in
Australia and is currently being developed for publishing as a book.

Alain Viguier (1st - 12th August)

Alain Viguier is an artist and a writer working in France and teaching at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Art de Limoges-Aubusson. He has lived several years in Australia over different periods of time and has worked and exhibited here. Landscape has been a recurring theme in his work since the early 1980s.
During his stay at the Faculty, Alain will be working on the landscape of central Australia. The project is at a crossing between book art, conceptual art, architecture and mapping, it will be using materials and information from different sources such as Aboriginal painting, historical documentation, scientific mapping and geophysics. The work in the studio will be made by selecting first hand documentation and by the poetic use of documentation in drawing,
photocopy and collage.