Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein. Nietzsche, Beyond good and Evil 1886 In the words of the ancient Chinese proverb, May you live in interesting times! — and it would appear that we do — a time in which centuries of accumulative environmental degradation forms a […]
Read More →The Sound of Place; Environmental Artworks at Bundanon.
This essay by Nigel Helyer and John Potts listens to the sound of place: of Bundanon, a three thousand acre property in the Shoalhaven river valley in rural NSW, Australia. Bundanon is today an artists’ colony and education centre, following the gift to the Australian people in 1993 of the entire property—including homestead, artist studio […]
Read More →Co-Composition and De-Composition Biological agency as a compositional tool.
This paper examines a series of creative sound-works which combine human and biological agents to re-mix, create and re-invent musical scores. The central concept is to consider Genes, Memes and Musical notation as parallel mnemonic structures that function as instructions for the fleshing-out of life across temporal barriers. GeneMusiK and associated works Under the IceCap […]
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EcoLocated: Art Science and the Environment.
A recent interview between John Potts and Nigel Helyer, download the PDF from Material Thinking EcoLocated; Art, Science and the Environment.
Read More →McMahon Interview
Listening in Melissa McMahon bugs Nigel Helyer.
Nigel Helyer is an English-born, Sydney-based sound artist, lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, and co-founder of SoundCulture, a Pan-Pacfific organisation focusing on sound art. Helyer’s work is of an essentially composite, or in his words “pluridisciplinary”, character, in the sense that not only does any given piece incorporate a range of media, but many are part of a series of “events” (one or several?) including other pieces, other artists, other countries, radio broadcasts, internet links, CD’s, and CD-Roms.
Leaven_Goldberg
Trouble in Paradise: Swelter – An Artists’ Project for the Palm House, Royal Botanic Gardens
May 1999 – January 2000, Sydney
by Michael Goldberg
Includes review of the Leaven project
Read More →Nigel Helyer’s Silent Forest by Doug Kahn
This essay is a version of the exhibition catalogue for Silent Forest shown at the San Francisco Art Institute as part of SoundCulture96.
As a recent transplant to Australia, I welcomed the opportunity to write about this work, to introduce it to the city where I have spent much of my adult life. In framing my comments about Silent Forest, it was important to keep in mind what might be involved for an American audience in viewing this work by an Australian about Vietnam in the United States. It is true that San Francisco is not part of the U.S., but just the same….
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