Sound Body - CD curation (project investigating the impact of digital technology on improvised music and sonic arts)

CD curation
The CD release, Sound Body, was released as an outcome of an AHRC Research Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts. The project Sound Body investigated the impact of digital technology on improvised music performance/sonic arts. As a practice based fellowship, the research focussed on Toop’s own use of the computer in conjunction with analogue electronic devices and acoustic instruments, both in the context of live improvised performance, audio recording and sound installations.

Productive interaction between these modes resulted from the research: since the computer was a common element, strategies emerged that gave more coherence to the totality of Toop’s practice. Being engaged in the functionality of the computer as a real time sonic instrument led to experiments with different groupings of musicians, leading to the formation of two working trios.
Collaborations with musicians were incorporated into sound installations created for works exhibited in Kinsale, Belfast, Stourhead National Trust Garden, and Beijing during 2005-2006, where Toop’s use of iPod Shuffles explored the non-linear, random access characteristics of digital technology.

Research into the nature of digital recording was the stimulus that led to the method of constructing hyper-real ensembles of players within the virtual space of the computer. This research was developed as practice and theory, informing papers on the process at conferences such as Sonic Focus (Brown University, Providence, 2006), Music and Postmodern Cultural Theory (University of Melbourne, 2006), Isolation (School of Art, Hobart, 2006) and the Sound Body symposium Toop convened at London College of Communication in 2006, along with performances at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and a Sound Body event curated for Krems Festival, Austria.

The CD assembles in the digital domain the playing of 11 musicians, along with the voices of artist John Latham and writer Kenji Siratori.