To hear on Sunday 5. and 12 October 2014, 2pm - 9pm:
Sonic Skin 1.3
by Liam Slevin
Liam Slevin on 'Sonic Skin 1.3':
Sonic Skin is a transient, unseen, research unit and live audio platform devised, maintained and disseminated by Liam Slevin. Sonic Skin is currently active in two cities; Detroit and Berlin.
Sonic Skin approaches the urban environment as an analogy of the corporeal, with a complex set of systems: organs, nerves, glands, fluids, skeleton and skin. Using field recordings taken from the urban sound ecology of Detroit and Berlin, Slevin will present a selection of these recordings that are composed at random, creating a layered and dissected soundscape.
The recordings from both cities have been made through the use of minimal, simple technologies, primarily contact microphones and contact speakers. This simple act of physical connection between microphone and membrane transforms each glass window, metal rail, bus stop shelter, café countertop, worn seat into both an ear and mouth, a sonic orifice to ingest and release the frenetic energy within these seemingly passive surfaces.
Liam Slevin
B.1984. Cork, Ireland
Slevin is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and from Cork Ireland. He has exhibited and performed throughout Ireland and abroad. Most notable exhibitions and performances include MIA, Portugal (2011), Sonic Vigil, Cork (2011) IMOCA, Dublin (2012), Holz Kohlen Koks, Berlin (2012), Listhus, Iceland (2012) Open Spike Island, Bristol (2013) and Popps Packing, Detroit (2014) He holds a B.A honours degree from the Limerick School of Art and Design and has been the recipient of the Travel and Training Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2012, 2013 & 2014.
In 2008 he co-founded the artist collective Cork Contemporary Projects. Its main ethos was to facilitate emerging artists, collaborate with alternative art discipline and to open dialogue and discourse with peer organisations. In 2009 he set up and became the co-director of theSPACE, a one year artist led project space. theSPACE hosted 8 exhibitions, artists talks, workshops, screenings, performances and a series of sound art events called ‘Input/Output’ ?
In July of 2011 Slevin set up TACTIC, a new gallery and project space in Cork city with Pamela Myers. TACTIC was formed to address the lack of cultural space available for curators to develop and maintain a working practice in the Munster region of Ireland and was quickly established as a leading venue for curatorial projects with a focus on sonic, new media and live art, garnering several reviews, most notable from the Paper Visual Art, Avant and Enclave Review for Slevin’s own curated show ‘Uncanny Sounds’.
In 2012 he moved to Berlin, where he undertook a 10 month curatorial residency at the Waterloo Artspace. Over the 10 months he curated and facilitated over 15 experimental art events at Waterloo under the banner of Av format.
He lives and works between Cork, Ireland and Berlin, Germany.