on project Mixed Currents
The ‘Mixed Currents’ research project presents to me an exciting opportunity to collaboratively investigate beauty, liveness, and performance practice. The violin, an instrument that over four centuries has evolved as a cultural symbol, in its performance practice, and as a physical item of beauty, contrasts substantially to the contemporary technologies of digital video and loudspeaker amplification, allowing for a fervent site to experiment with relationships between live performers and their prerecorded virtual selves, the acoustic live violin’s projection and its technological expansion, and shifting conceptions of beauty between past and contemporary times.
The collaborative nature of this project further allows for the direct development of ideas with researches at the forefront of their practices and fields, opportunely raising questions and proposing solutions relevant to artistic knowledge’s current state. Through the research and development process we further seek to contribute to and reflect on modern modes of artistic production, proposing via an open, discussion-encouraging rehearsal model a decentralized creative practice.
about Colin
Colin Frank (CAN/UK) experiments with sound, electronics, theatre, and percussive instruments. In attempting to blur delineations between composer, performer, improviser, and technician his practice perpetually mutates: narrowly focusing then sprawling chaotically. His art investigates excess, pushing the body to physical extremes, barely controllable instruments, and rich, raw noises.
He has most notably performed in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Berlin’s CTM festival (DE), the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (DE), Electric Springs (UK), SoundThought (UK), PAS Quebec Days (CAD), and the Oorsprong curators series (NL). His specialism performing live-electronic concert music has brought him to present in the Birmingham Electro-Acoustic Sound Theatre (UK) and the Huddersfield Immersive Sound System (UK). He has performed within theatre troupe Gods Entertainment (AT), improvised with the Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble (NL), and is a core member of the Drift Ensemble (UK). His instrumental and acousmatic compositions have been presented by TAK Ensemble (US), The Red Note Ensemble (UK), Lights Out Listening Group (UK), and Framework Radio (online).
He studied performance and composition at McGill University, sound at the Institute of Sonology (NL), composition at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (DE) and SoundSCAPE (IT), and performance at Nief-Norf Summer Festival (US) and SICPP (US). He is currently studying contemporary performance practice through a research PhD at The University of Huddersfield (UK). He enjoys teaching improvisation, and loves cycling, camping, traveling, and good home cooking.