Son[i]a #368
Anthea Caddy
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Anthea Caddy is a Tasmanian-born and now Berlin-based experimental cellist and sound artist who explores projected sound energy through spatial practices that highlight acoustic and physical phenomena.
She has a background in media arts and electro-acoustic improvisation and is currently a PhD candidate under the supervision of media historian Douglas Kahn. Her work is an ever-expanding practice from the vibrational body of the cello into multiple amplification systems that harness and project sound energy.
Anthea’s ongoing research into long-throw sound projection in recent years has led her to develop a set of parabolic speakers in collaboration with artist and designer Miodrag Gladović and the Spatial Media Art Labs in Rotterdam. Throwing beams of sound up to 3 km long and 60 cm in circumference, this technology broadens the usual boundaries of installation and performance spaces, expanding the sonic possibilities of resonant architectural bodies and outdoor environments.
In this podcast, Anthea Caddy walks us through her journey from playing cello in rock bands as a teenager to her ongoing research into projected sound energy. She explains her long-term research on directional speakers and the results of the iterations and testing of the parabolic speakers. She also talks about documentation and about the difficulties of approaching large-scale sound performance.
These three excerpts are from the series ‘Long Throw’ these are documentation recordings from the Installation titled ‘Longthrow X HetHEM’ at the Sonic Acts Biennial October, 2022, Zaandam, The Netherlands.
Sound references
00:00 “Projections #3_2”. Documentation for Anthea Caddy’s Long Throw series, from the installation Longthrow X HetHEM at the Sonic Acts Biennial October, 2022, Zaandam, The Netherlands.
01:32 “Projections #3_2”. Documentation for Anthea Caddy’s Long Throw series, from the installation Longthrow X HetHEM at the Sonic Acts Biennial October, 2022, Zaandam, The Netherlands.
15’08 Performance at Oude Kerk. Documentation for Anthea Caddy’s Silence series, october, 2022.
41’09 “Projections #3_1”. Documentation for Anthea Caddy’s Long Throw series, from the installation Longthrow X HetHEM at the Sonic Acts Biennial October, 2022, Zaandam, The Netherlands.
<p>Conversation: Anna Ramos. Script and sound production: Albert Tarrats. Voice over: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros. Sounds: recordings by BJ Nielsen of Anthea Caddy's installations and live performances.</p>
Deleted Scenes
We dig up some unreleased bits of our conversation with the Tasmanian-born, Berlin-based experimental cellist and sound artist Anthea Caddy. We talk about the dialogue between her practice and science and academia, but also about infrasound, long wave data, mirrors, reflection, the ungraspable and the negotiation with the environment and space.
Edwin van der Heide
Artist, composer and researcher Edwin van der Heide expands musical composition and musical language in spatial, interactive, and interdisciplinary directions. His often site-specific, highly immersive installations don’t just take up space: they are a very deliberate inquiry into space itself and into its affordances as an artistic medium and material. Edwin’s pieces create space, modifying its actual and perceived boundaries. They make space present, apparent, and even tangible. In this podcast, we talk to Edwin about art in public space, air pressure, sounds under water, loudspeakers, networks, odd spatial experiences, and sonic phenomenology.