My name is Lloyd Barrett
Aside from being a PHD Candidate and Lecturer at QUT in Brisbane, Australia i’m an audio-visualist composer and performer working with mostly ambient electronic and exploratory sound and vision since the late 90s. Aside from gigs and art installations I have provided sound for theatrical and modern dance performances presented at places like Metro Arts, the Judith Wright Centre and the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre in Woolloongong. Presenting my Mise En Scene project at Electrofringe in 2006, I explained that my concern was to break from the legacy of the Proscenium gaze, where the audience is focused on performer(s) as sound-source(s).
Liquid Architecture 2007 - photos courtesy of Shannon O'Neill
An invite to present at Sydney’s Carriageworks for Liquid Architecture in 2007 resulted in a prepared/live audiovisual work entitled “Answers Come In Dreams”: a 20minute performance/short film that adopted a populist approach to abstract audio-visual material devised to engage a jaded audience. The audio was subsequently remixed and broadcast on ABC Radio National who have supported a number of my efforts over the years via live and prepared broadcasts and interviews.
Electrofringe 2007 "LightSpores" - photos by Paul Forbes-Mitchell
My Masters project involved research in electronic music, musique concréte and acoustic ecology with a view to defining an abstract syntax for composition and live performance. The result was “Sound Creatures”: a virtual ecology that defined and diffused sound objects in an electroacoustic format. This system further iterated into the “Habitat” and “Lightspores” versions, which established a variable template for acousmatic improvisation. This system has been discussed and demonstrated in solo and duo format (with Paul Forbes-Mitchell) over the last 3 years at several art/music festivals in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne including Liquid Architecture, Electrofringe, Bowerbird and Audiopollen.
My current PhD research is looking into the approaches taken by different audio-visual performers. My goal is to define a taxonomy of AV performance that is an extension of musical practice (more specifically electro-acoustic composition and performance) and demonstrates this taxonomy through a series of AV performances studies.
This blog has been documenting my growth as a researcher, sound-artist and audio-visualist since 2009.
My audio-visual works are here:
Vimeo, YouTube, SKON tumblr, 3y35 project
My audio works are here:
Alias Frequencies, Bandcamp, Archive.org
Thanks must go to Shannon O’Neill of Alias Frequencies and Jennifer Teo of Plum Industries for hosting my site.
