Musicians: Roger Dean (keyboards, sound manipulation), Greg White (sound manipulation, sound projection). Sandy Evans (saxophones), Elliott Dalgleish (saxophones)

Pre-recorded voices: Jenny Vuletic and Hazel Smith

Live Music; Dead Bodies is a sound technodrama: it interweaves spoken text, technologically manipulated speech, and live improvised instrumental music with a ‘comprovisational’ score by Roger Dean. The text by Hazel Smith is composed of a collage of narrative fragments, poetry and prose. It moves between several different times and spaces, some specific, some ambiguous, some real, some unreal. Playing on the implications of the title, Live Music; Dead Bodies interweaves ideas and questions about live and recorded performance, the relationship of sound to the body, and music’s capacity to create social change.

Live Music; Dead Bodies



[run time: 17:18 | if audio player does not appear, click direct link below]

» direct link [mp3]

» download vocal text of Live Music; Dead Bodies [pdf]

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» Hazel Smith is a research professor in the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. She is author of The Writing Experiment: strategies for innovative creative writing (Allen and Unwin, 2005) and Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: difference, homosexuality, topography (Liverpool University Press, 2000). She is co-author of Improvisation, Hypermedia And The Arts Since 1945 (Harwood Academic, 1997) and co-editor with Roger Dean of Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). She is also co-editor with Roger Dean of soundsRite, a journal of new media writing and sound, based at the University of Western Sydney. In addition, Hazel is a poet, performer and new media artist, and has published three volumes of poetry, three CDs of performance work and numerous multimedia works. Her latest volume of creative work, with accompanying CD Rom, is The Erotics of Geography: poetry, performance texts, new media works (Tinfish Press, Kaneohe, Hawaii, 2008). She is a member of austraLYSIS, the sound and intermedia arts group, and has performed her work extensively in US, Europe, UK and Australasia. She also had a previous career as a professional violinist. [website]

» Roger Dean is a composer/improviser, and since 2007 a research professor in music cognition and computation at the MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney. He founded and directs the ensemble austraLYSIS, which has performed in 30 countries. His creative work is on 30 commercial audio CDs and he has released many digital intermedia pieces. The creative work revolves around keyboard improvisation, and computer music composition, though he also writes instrumental music and performs ensemble jazz with the austraLYSIS Electroband and in other contexts. Improvisation and computer-interaction merge in his MultiPiano Event, a solo performance exploiting live piano, real-time audio processing, generative physical synthesis piano, and electroacoustic sound. His 400 substantive research publications include seven humanities books. Previously he was CEO of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, researching in biochemistry, and then Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra. [online biography]