Gradient
Olivia Davies and Callum G'Froerer
In this elaborate system of double-bell trumpet improvisations, live photography, and digital software design, Gradient asks us to reflect on compulsive modern behaviours and the ways we digitally represent ourselves and our experiences.
Callum G’Froerer, one of Australia’s leading contemporary instrumentalists, improvises in hour-long cycles, slowly making his way around the cavernous space. Using software developed by renowned media designer Nick Roux, G’Froerer’s trumpet playing controls large-scale video projections, blending and mixing layers of a photo library created in real time by award-winning composer and photographer Olivia Davies. Samples of G’Froerer’s performance are played back – warped, chopped, stretched – providing an ever-changing soundscape.
Gradient is the noise of multiple arguments – minimalism versus hoarding, attention versus boredom, sound versus light, humans versus machines, and acoustics versus architecture. This durational work spans six hours, where audiences are welcome to drop in and out of the performance or stay and let their attentions wander across the hypnotic sounds and sights of this incredible and immersive work.
Olivia Davies
Composer and Photographer
Olivia Davies is a composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music spanning multiple genres includingclassical minimalism, experimental and ambient. Her body of work ranges from orchestral concert music to electro-acoustic installations and site-specific collaborations. Davies' work explores ideas of space, stasis and flow, resulting in texturally-driven, nuanced and contemplative work.
Callum G'Froerer
Performer and Director
Callum G’Froerer is a double-bell trumpet specialist active in the realms of contemporary electro-acoustic repertoire (commissions include Liza Lim, Anthony Pateras, Cat Hope, Ann Cleare, James Rushford), improvisation, and durational experimental performance.
Nick Roux
AV Design
Nick Roux is a Melbourne-based freelance programmer working in theatre and experimental audio-visual collaborations. His comprehensive experience as a composer and system designer for live performance includes working with Antony Hamilton Projects, Lucy Guerin Inc, Chunky Move, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Nicola Gunn, and Speak Percussion.
Josh Pether
Dramaturge
Joshua Pether is of Kalkadoon heritage and lives and works on Noongar country in Western Australia. He is an experimental performance artist, ritual practitioner and choreographer of movement, temporary ritual and imagined realities. His practice is influenced by his two cultural histories- indigeneity and disability and the hybridization of the two with particular interest in the aesthetics of the disabled body and also that of the colonized body. His work is durational and allows the body to undergo and manifest energetic transformations that oscillate between the world of now and the hereafter.
Gradient has been made possible through the support of the APRA/AMCOS Art Music Fund, The Minderoo Artist Fund 2020 and by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Gradient was presented by Tura as part of Perth Festival 2023.
Tura acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and create. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. With solidarity and friendship we say thank you.
