Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia

Adrian Clement

Sydney, NSW

Sonic preoccupations: Handmade and experimental instruments, improvisation, field recordings, theatricality and performance in music, juxtapositions between analogue/digital sounds and traditional/new or experimental media

Artist Statement: Adrian Clement is a musician, sound and new media artist based in Sydney, Australia. For his HSC, which he completed in 2007, Adrian wrote a play titled White on White for Extension 2 English, achieving a mark of 49/50. The play, discovered later on to be in the vein of Dadaists such as Kurt Schwitters, explored the possibility of using language in temporal, cyclic/and or aleatoric ways; moving beyond the strongly-dominating “story-telling” mode of theatre and moving into experimental territories. These explorations led to six formal sound-art projects that were realised in 2008 as part of Adrian’s first completed year of his Bachelor of Fine Arts course, for which he majored in Sculpture, Performance and Installation at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts averaging High-Distinction. These pieces focused on things such as experiments with live video-feeds, hand-made instruments, spontaneity, improvisation, theatricality and “wall-of-sound” sonic realms. Currently, Adrian is involved in doing live scores for silent films at the Chauvel Cinema's cinematheque (curated by Brett Garten), including films such as Le Brasier Ardent (1923) and Fantômas (1916).

Website: www.adrian-clement.com

Contact: adrian[at]adrian-clement.com (replace [at] with @)

MP3/Video Sample Title: Dimensions
Dimensions is a sound art piece performed at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts in November 2008, containing as part of the work a modification of a Glenn Branca harmonic guitar developed and made by Adrian Clement. Features Alex Robinson and Jimmy Wynen.