Magnus-Opus (Nigel Helyer, Jon Drummond. Australien)

Phone users be warned. Each time you dial a number, you have performed a musical piece and may have infringed the international copyright of the composers.

Seeking resonance: Interview: Nigel Helyer: SonicDifference

Bob Percival

I had been looking forward to meeting Nigel Helyer; sculptor, sound artist and currently an Artist in Residence at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Geneva. Anyone whose reputation precedes them with such enthusiasm, respect and good humour must be special and, it has to be said, Dr Sonique is a great a.k.a.

Nigel has enthusiastically agreed to an interview and we meet over coffee in an appropriately noisy café in inner city Perth. Nigel is the curator of Sonic-Difference: Re-sounding the world, one of five exhibitions that make up BEAP 04. In the interview I was keen to explore his thoughts on the current developments in sound art as well as his curatorial thinking in his selection of works for the exhibition.

Helyer’s progress: fusing art & science

John Potts

The tape was in the recorder, and it was a long tape. I knew Nigel Helyer would have a lot to say, because even before winning the Helene Lempriere National Sculpture Award earlier this year, he had been busy. And since taking out that prize he’d been overseas, interstate, here and there, on the move, working on projects, collaborations, schemes and dreams. So I came equipped with my trusty mini tape recorder. 

A sound cause: Endangered Sounds

Jasmin Stephens

Dr Garth Paine’s highly conceptual installation, Endangered Sounds, raises the alarm concerning the implications of the increasing practice of trade marking and patenting sounds. His serious and meticulous enquiry urges vigilance should the air we breathe and through which sound travels become privatised.

A deep vibration: A small migration

Lizzie Muller
Standing in Shawn Decker’s sound installation A small migration is like being inside an exploded piano, or more precisely it is like standing inside the moment of explosion. The component parts of the work are suspended around me as though frozen in time. Still, yet full of potential movement; they generate a physical sense of imminence. At either end of the gallery large wooden frames support scaffolding bars rigged by chains from the ceiling. Piano wires are stretched across the gallery between the frames. At one end small striker motors are positioned alongside each wire; the installation responds to a series of computer-generated algorithms which trigger the motors that strike the wires.