Bug Compass is a freelance sonic artist and musician and has lectured on Sonic Art, Music and Music Technology at the University of Kent, University of Greenwich, Canterbury Christchurch University and Canterbury College. His work as a musician and producer can be found on vinyl and digital formats, has been broadcast on radio and used in theatre and dance productions.
The sound art of Bug Compass focuses on making music from the broken; either traditional musical elements are realised using broken instruments or objects whose original function no longer works (a guitar with one string, a rotting piano, a harmonium with a stuck key or squeaky pedal) where through careful editing these anomalies or errors reveal their own musicality; similarly through the use of self programmed software, generally accepted musical idioms and forms become broken and distorted. These ideas collide in a world beyond digital music, where both music is processed digitally and where the digital is processed musically.
Bug Compass has created and exhibited several sound installations including: Twister, using the children’s game Twister, electronics and homemade software to edit and rearrange music in realtime; Sisyphus Loops, a tunnel lined with pairs of speakers, whose audio loops interact and interfere acoustically (and psychoacoustically), and The Mayan Calendar, using algorithms from the Mayan Calender in homemade software to repeat and gradually evolve multichannel reiterations of a soundfile. The Mayan Calendar software has also been used by the artist in remixes of Lamb’s Stronger and Slovo’s The One. As an installation the Mayan Calendar is presented in its raw form, where the calendar is allowed to play for the length of the exhibit, day and night – no one point is sonically the same other than when all the calendars realign.
In his spare time Bug Compass makes his own acoustic and electronic instruments, makes field recordings, creates computer software for manipulating existing sounds, plays keyboards live and as a session musician, and creates illicit remixes of pop music under the name Bingo Starr!
Releases/performances/installations (selected highlights):
Bug Compass composition “Sheng” featured as part of an evening of immersive sound and vision at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London (2011)
Bug Compass remix of Boychild’s “Counting What Ifs” released on Three Sixty Records (2011)
Artist Talk - Horsebridge Arts Center (2010)
Sonic Art Installation - “Mayan Calendar” - Horsebridge Arts Center (2010)
Live Performance - Faversham Hop Festival (2010)
Live Performance - Lounge on the Farm Festival (2010)
Live Performance - Lounge on the Farm Festival (2009)
Bug Compass remix of Slovo’s “The One” released on Brixtown Records (vinyl and download) (2007)
Radio airplay of remix work on XFM London (2006)
Sonic Art Installation – “Twister” at “Prime: Contemporary Art Exhibition by Eight Artists”, The Wedge, Folkestone (2005)
Sonic Art Installation – at “EarJob”, Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, London (2003)
Highlights from sound installation broadcast on Resonance FM, London (2003)
Radiophonic Composition “Rudeboy” broadcast on Resonance FM, London (2002)
Electroacoustic Composition “Bjell” broadcast on Resonance FM, London (2001)
Bug Compass’s tracks
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