Early days: – The small Sussex fishing village in which I spent my childhood contained two significant buildings, significant not for their formal qualities, they were both simple cottages, but because one had been the home William Blake the poet, whist the other, Comet Cottage was named for the astronomer Halley. Without being conscious of the fact, I grew up in a cosmos in which the arts and science were intertwined, it has marked my endeavours ever since. Nigel Helyer a.k.a. Dr Sonique is an independent Anglo-Australian sculptor and sound artist with an international reputation for his large scale sound-sculpture installations, environmental sculpture works, museum interactives and new media projects. His practice is strongly inter-disciplinary, linking a broad platform of creative practice with scientific research and development in both academic and industrial contexts. His activities include; the development of the Sonic Landscapes”virtual audio reality system in collaboration with Lake Technology (now Dolby Australia) and the ongoing AudioNomad research project in location sensitive Environmental Audio at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales. Nigel is an honorary faculty member in Architectural Acoustics at the University of Sydney, a Professorial Visiting Fellow at the school of Computer Science and Engineering at NSW University and is the current ABC Radiophonic Fellow. He has recently held positions as Visiting Professor at Stanford University, Artist in Residence at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland and the Marine Mammal Research Laboratory at the National University of Singapore. He maintains…
