Mini Oramics

Saturday 3 February, 3.00 – 4.30pm

Writer Frances Morgan talks with artists Tom Richards, James Bulley and Sarah Angliss about optical sound and its framing in history, considering the work of Daphne Oram and Giorgio Griffa alongside their modernist peers including Wassily Kandinsky, Edgard Varèse and the Bauhaus movement.

Sarah Angliss is a composer and robotic artist. A prolific live performer, particularly known for her theremin playing, Angliss also builds musical automata to work with her on stage. She also composes for theatre. Her recent score for Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (directed by Richard Jones) was heard at the Old Vic, London, and Park Avenue Armory, New York. She’s currently composing Giant, an electroacoustic chamber opera exploring the life of Charles Byrne. Her solo album Ealing Feeder was released in 2017.

James Bulley is an artist, composer and curator whose practice explores place-specific installation, locative sound and sound sculpture. He has exhibited and performed at the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican, the Natural History Museum, Mykolas Žilinskas Gallery and La Gaîté Lyrique. His work has been featured by the BBC, ITV, the Quietus, the Daily Telegraph, Nature and the Guardian.

Tom Richards is an artist, musician, DJ, and instrument designer based in London UK. Richards has built his own idiosyncratic modular electronic music system, with which he creates slowly evolving and heavily textured polyrhythmic improvisations. He has performed and exhibited widely in the UK, as well as internationally in the US, Germany, Peru, Singapore, Japan and Sweden.

Saturday 24 February, 3.00 – 4.00pm

Tom Richards, James Bulley, Shiva Feshareki and Sarah Angliss will perform live graphic scores developed over their month long project using Mini Oramics, a drawn-sound synthesiser originally designed circa 1976 by Daphne Oram (1925–2003). Oram was one of the pioneers of electronic music in Britain and one of the founding members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Richards developed this previously unfinished synthesiser through his PhD research into Oram and her Oramics machines. For this project, Richards invited Bulley, Feshareki and Angliss to work with him to create the visual scores developed for this event.

Sarah Angliss is a composer and robotic artist. A prolific live performer, particularly known for her theremin playing, Angliss also builds musical automata to work with her on stage. She also composes for theatre. Her recent score for Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (directed by Richard Jones) was heard at the Old Vic, London, and Park Avenue Armory, New York. She’s currently composing Giant, an electroacoustic chamber opera exploring the life of Charles Byrne. Her solo album Ealing Feeder was released in 2017.

James Bulley is an artist, composer and curator whose practice explores place-specific installation, locative sound and sound sculpture. He has exhibited and performed at the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican, the Natural History Museum, Mykolas Žilinskas Gallery and La Gaîté Lyrique. His work has been featured by the BBC, ITV, the Quietus, the Daily Telegraph, Nature and the Guardian.

Shiva Feshareki is an experimental classical composer, radio presenter and turntablist of British Iranian heritage. Her work explores the sound of electricity through a wide range of practices and collaborative processes incorporating classical methodology. She was awarded the 2017 Award for Innovation at the British Composer Awards for her groundbreaking approaches.

Tom Richards is an artist, musician, DJ, and instrument designer based in London UK. Richards has built his own idiosyncratic modular electronic music system, with which he creates slowly evolving and heavily textured polyrhythmic improvisations. He has performed and exhibited widely in the UK, as well as internationally in the US, Germany, Peru, Singapore, Japan and Sweden.