Past Events – Project DIVFUSE

Silence on Tour : Sebastiane Hegarty

Exhibition + Performance + Talk

Session One : 19 October 2024 Saturday 3pm

Session Two : 19 October Saturday 4:30pm

Session Three : 19 October Saturday 6pm

£6 | 8 places per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Silence on Loan (2019) is an artists’ book published (ISBN: 978-15272-3880-0) in the form of a 10” singled-sided vinyl dub-plate. Cut with a silent groove, this un-recorded silence is held in the Artists’ Book Collection at Winchester School of Art Library and (as required by the Legal Deposit Libraries Act, 2003) the six Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries. The ‘book’ is shelved without the protection of dustcover or sleeve, leaving silence vulnerable to the dust and damage done. Once a year it is taken from the shelf, placed on a turntable, and performed to an audience of listening and non-listening library users. The performance is documented in mono on audiocassette; a recording that is kept unheard only to be rewound and recorded over at next year’s performance.

*Silence on Loan:* Audiocassette documentation of annual performance at WSA Library January 2022

Classified as ‘Reference only’, Silence on Loan is held behind the electromagnetic barcodes of library security. However, in 2023, permission was given to sign silence out for the purposes of performance or exhibition, enabling a tour of galleries, libraries, conferences, and garden fetes.

“The first gigs of Silence on Tour, included the Unfolding Practice conference at LCF/UAL and Saying Nothing to Say, a Wittgenstein inspired symposium in the Philosophy Department of Warwick University. I am delighted to announce that Project DIVFUSE will be the next gig in this [occcasional] world tour.

Catastrophone : Lia Mice

Exhibition & Performance :

Session One : 5 October 2024 Saturday 4pm [FULL]

Session Two : 5 October Saturday 6pm [One place left]

Session Three : 6 October Sunday 4pm [Three places left]

Session Four : 6 October Sunday 6pm

£8 | 8 places per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Lia Mice and the Catastrophone, Photo by Liz Godoy

Why are digital musical instruments so often created using unsustainable materials?

Why are there no commercially available digital instruments that are larger than the performer’s body?

Catastrophone is a new large physically performed synthesizer made of recycled cardboard and paper — specifically collaged images of cats, hence the name!

At two metres wide and tall, Catastrophone looms over the performer, offering large performance surfaces for full-body interaction. Mice’s intricate hand-cut and glued nature-themed paper collages that adorn each performance panel evoke a call-to-action for instrument makers to consider the environmental impact of materials, while the instrument’s sheer size encourages musicians to bring their entire bodies to live electronic music performance.

Within the intimate setting of Project DIVFUSE, Lia Mice’s first solo exhibition show Catastrophone features scheduled performances of the instrument by Lia Mice followed by a short artist talk, Q&A, and an opportunity for the audience to try the instrument themselves. The newest iteration of Catastrophone will be displayed alongside a collection of collage panels previously installed in the instrument when it was shown and performed at the Science Museum, Cafe OTO and IKLECTIK.

Sightlines and light-maps : Setlist 4 zine launch

Exhibition :

6 September 2024 Friday 5pm – 7pm

7 & 8 September Saturday & Sunday 2:30pm – 4pm

Free Entry

Performances :

Set One : 6 September Friday 7pm | Benedict Taylor (viola) and Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone)

Set Two : 7 September Saturday 4:30pm | Barbie Mukoda (solo flutes)

Set Three : 7 September Saturday 6pm | Caroline Kraabel (alto saxophone) and John Edwards (double bass) [FULL]

Set Four : 8 September Sunday 4:30pm | Sue Lynch (solo saxophone)

Set Five : 8 September Sunday 6pm | Kate Carr (electronics) and Cath Roberts (electronics)

Tickets £7 – or £12 for two sets | 8 places available for each set | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets | There are still tickets available for all sessions except Set Three.

Exhibition and live improvised music to celebrate the launch of Setlist zine vol. 4. Setlist is a series of A7 riso-printed mini-zines compiled by Cath Roberts (Ink-Paper-Sound Press), where artists are invited to contribute a tiny provocation/agitation/starting point to be used in improvised performance. The theme for Setlist #1 was micro-texts, Setlist #2 was all about images, Setlist #3 questions and Setlist #4 (miniature) maps.

This exhibition will focus on the two image-based zines, volumes 2 and 4, with work by Sam Andreae, Old Bort, Angela Guyton, Bell Lungs, Kim Macari, Khabat Abas, Sophie Cooper, Hannah McCann, Livia Garcia, Tullis Rennie and Benedict Taylor. To date only seen as tiny pages of an A7 booklet, artists’ zine contributions will be blown up to comparatively huge sizes and projected onto the space. Responding to the visuals with improvised live sets will be members of improvising large ensemble ONe_Orchestra NEw and Setlist artists.

Medial Dark Ages : Laura Netz

Sound Exhibition:

23 August 2024 Friday 5:30-8pm

24 August Saturday 2:30-6:30pm

25 August Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

41 minutes. Free Entry

Live Sound Performance:

Session One : 24 August Saturday 5pm. £7 [Cancelled due to illness of artist. Tickets bought will be refunded.]

Session Two : 24 August Saturday 6:30pm. £7 [Cancelled]

£7 | 8 places each session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Sound Exhibition:

Field recordings by mathr & netz: Sound is everpresent in the human and natural world, so we often do not notice it. Even in the city, there can be birdsong, and even in the countryside, aircraft can be heard. Field recording is a space-time machine, and we can listen back later and in different places and be transported back to the original environment. Listening in a different context can surprise us with sounds we didn’t notice before but were always present. Recording nature is a way to document the changing world; the climate catastrophe means her songs may be very different in the future.

Live Sound Performance:

‘Medial Dark Ages is a piece that uses field recordings, DIY electromagnetic detectors, and open-source electronic instruments. I have worked with bats, crickets, and sheep recordings in this composition. I have been experimenting with Bat5 Digital Bat Detector for the bats, which amplifies and filters the bat’s signals. The composition adheres to a postmaterialist perspective on technology, such as in James Bridle – New Dark Ages – and intends to fit music technology in the context of critical thinking and media archaeology theory.’

DIVFUSE / INNOVATE 2024 : Open Call

***This Open Call is now closed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to make a submission. Selected artists and work have now been announced. They are Nick Land’s Meltdown AI-fication by Kosmas Giannoutakis (US) and Inertia Instruments by David Sappa (UK). Details of the exhibitions can be found in the other posts following this page.***

Calling for work with an emphasis on making sound with innovative/renewed/alternative methods, technologies or equipments (non-commercial). Selected art pieces will have the opportunity to exhibit in our micro project space in July/August over a weekend to mark the 3rd anniversary of Project DIVFUSE.

Submission Deadline : 14th June 2024 Friday

Inertia Instruments : David Sappa

Sound Installation Exhibition :

9 August 2024 Friday 5pm – 7pm

10 August Saturday 2:30pm – 6:30pm

11 August Sunday 2:30pm – 4pm & 5pm – 6:30pm. There is a performance from 4pm to 5pm. See below for ticketing details.

Free Entry

Performance :

9 August Friday 7:30pm with Nouria Bah £7

10 August Saturday 6:30pm £7 (Places available)

Additional Session 11 August Sunday 4pm £7 (Places available)

£7 | 8 places only | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Inertia Instruments (2022-2023) by David Sappa (UK) was selected from the DIVFUSE / INNOVATE 2024 Open Call.

Inertia instruments is a collection of 8 D.I.Y kinetic zither like-instruments, tuned to corresponding systems that when played without intervention, sound over long periods, slowly detuning as time progresses.

‘They started as just one – something for me to improvise over with saw or guitar, but I gradually built more with a variety of differences and additions (some more generative, others more cyclical, different materials, sizes and mechanisms) to explore what sort of textures and atmospheres would arise in multitudes, and how that would feel if the instruments were diffused acoustically at different locations within a room. ‘

‘They developed more animistic qualities as a result of listening to them – imbuing an inanimate object with movement makes it feel like it has its own personality – so I got into the habit of experimenting with this idea over the course of their creation.’ – David Sappa

David Sappa is a sound artist, experimental musician and researcher working through D.I.Y kinetic and interactive sound objects, improvisation, field recording, oral histories and quantum listening. They are interested in sound for its tactile, textural and somatic qualities, and as modes for interrelatedness and interplay that can explore dynamics between our social, psychological and material entanglements within different environments.