Kate Brown is an interdisciplinary artist working specifically with the human voice. She is fascinated by how it sits in the body, how it is produced, and projected out to be placed elsewhere. Accordingly, she has been focusing on live event-based performances in installation, outdoor environments, and gallery contexts.
2020 Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarship SCA Galleries, University of Sydney
Kate Brown, Hypo/ Hyper - Ergo/ Tropho, sculpture and sound installation, Gretsch Electromatic electric guitar, Ebow, Rose Quartz crystals, MDF, white seat belt webbing, 5” all purpose speaker, Acrylic rod, tracing paper, dimensions variable, 2020
The relationship between sounding bodies and objects is an ongoing investigation across a number of live installation events and body centred experimental projects. The development of these ideas has led to considerations around the placement of sound across bodies and how this plays a role in human interaction. My current investigations hover and are deeply tuned to how we experience and are affected by our own sound. This installation aims to procure resonant frequencies that hum through our biggest organ; the skin, inviting a bodily exchange with sound materials. This is accompanied by an intermittent vocal sound recording played through a single speaker installed in the space. This recording maps an instructional vocal score which demonstrates the body in Hypo/Hyper + Ergo/Tropho states. Instruction to take your pulse jolts the body back into itself and creates a physical rapport with sound in space. The seat belt webbing sculpture pinned above the technical sound equipment is an image of a material body in suspension and a harness for where an imagined resonant body could lie.
2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship Artspace
Kate Brown, This is a Ghost voice, 2020
4 channel video, stereo sound, white seat belt webbing installation, 5:06 minutes, courtesy the artist
Videos clockwise, left to right
THE GUT WHIRR- In a Turbine room with Pillars I This is a Ghost Voice redirection
THE ESOPHAGUS GULL- In a Stairwell I This is a major thoroughfare
THE MOUTH SPRAY- By the Water I This is a connecting space
THE HEAD CHAMBER- In a Car I This is an inside Voice
This is a ghost voice is a multi channel video installation that places the sounding body across four transitory sites. The title comes from a concept called a ‘ghost voice’ that identifies traces of human sound as they echo and pass through various sites. Within the video, the performance creates a cacophony of sounds as each sequence overlaps, interrupts and dissects the other. The work is intensified with strobe effects and visual glitching, alongside the chaotic layers of sound that together create a sense of disorientation. Each video depicts the artist performing a vocal score within a specific site of connection, redirection and thoroughfare, referencing the architectures within which the human voice occupies. The location of the videos all respond to different sites in relationship to the exhibition: the passageways and unoccupied sites of Artspace, by the water on the edge of the Botanic Gardens in Woolloomooloo and the backseat of a moving car. These sites are locations that conceptually personify and connect architectural spaces back to specific parts of the body. White seat belt webbing is used in each performance to hold, anchor or restrain the performer. This is then brought into the physical installation by wrapping the pillars in the exhibition space to consider the pressure and release of the material on the body and the architecture. The four vocal scores are hand drawn in white pen on the gallery entrance doors.
Camera Operation: Ivan Lentell
Editing by Kate Brown
Artspace Artist Spotlight Video
Kate Brown, This is a Ghost Voice: THE ESOPHAGUS GULL- In a Stairwell- This is a major thoroughfare, still image from video, 2020
Kate Brown, This is a Ghost Voice: THE ESOPHAGUS GULL- In a Stairwell- This is a major thoroughfare, still image from video, 2020
Kate Brown, This is a Ghost Voice: THE MOUTH SPRAY- By the Water I This is a connecting space, still image from video, 2020
Kate Brown, This is a Ghost Voice: THE HEAD CHAMBER- In a car, still image from video, 2020
ACTS OF AIR: reshaping the urban sonic, curated by Lisa Hall, University of the Arts London online Collection
⋉ Where there is echo
At the Guts of it
by Kate Brown
Artwork made in Sydney, Australia
'At the Guts of it' is a relational sonic work for voice and echo. Using an instructional graphic score and video, the work prompts vocal responses to urban spaces that have reverberant acoustics - under bridges and inside tunnels. These architectural ‘non’ spaces where sound travels to, whirrs and dissolves, are gently made noisy again. The vocal instructions encourage reverberations of both the site and the body, hearing the human as engine and the body as an architecture - sounding out their togetherness and their distinct separateness throughout the performance. This work instructs a form of vocal communication that pushes at the boundaries of communication norms in urban space; an in-betweenness, reminding us of what else is possible.
Location: Where there is echo - a bridge, tunnel, underpass, stairwell, underground carpark
Format: Instructional vocal performance score and video - solo
Duration: 8.30 minutes
You need: A mobile device with speaker or headphones
Kate Brown performing the vocal score, At the Guts of it, 2020
http://acts-of-air.crisap.org/at-the-guts-of-it.html
Camera Operation: Ivan Lentell
Editing by Kate Brown
Kate Brown, At the Guts of it, 3 part instructional vocal score, University of the Arts London online collection, 2020
Acts of Air traces recorded and uploaded from around the world on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/acts.of.air/?hl=en
Ventriloquy: Self by Proxy curated by Liquid Architecture, The Meat Market, North Melbourne, 2019
Kate Brown, Talk box and throat mic experiments, Ventriloquy: Self by Proxy presented by Liquid Architecture, Meat Market, North Melbourne, 2019
Kate Brown presented a solo work for Liquid Architecture's Ventriloquy: Self by Proxy program exploring the sonic flow between internal (as in inside the body) and external architectures and structures. This performance continues Kate’s long running practice of turning (and tuning) the voice inside out, and outside in. -Liquid Architecture
Photography Keelan O’Hehir
Suddenly You Are There, solo exhibition and performance across Parramatta road, Our Neon Foe Gallery, Leichhardt, 2018
Kate Brown, Suddenly you are There, vocal performance and gallery installation, mixed materials, dimensions ions variable, Our Neon Foe Gallery, 2018
Suddenly you are there is a performance exhibition by Kate Brown that incorporates graphic notation, text, installation and a vocal performance placing the sounding body across Parramatta rd. This video documents the one off performance where Kate Brown performs the graphic notation exhibited inside Our Neon Foe gallery. On Tuesday 4th December 2018, a sounding body was placed on the opposite side of the road to Our Neon Foe Gallery and created a disruption of space. Cars slowed and filmed as they drove by. Beeping and yelling from cars combined with the whir of Kate’s vocals, creating a sound beam bouncing between the performer, opposing buildings and audience via a PA system. Suddenly you are there specifically focuses on the sound interruptions of the external spaces surrounding the gallery. ‘I have listened and mapped these spaces and reinterpreted them through graphic vocal scores, performance and text based installations. I am interested in the things that acutely stop one thing and allow another to start. I am interested in the overlapping of humans with machines and that control to harness something that is bigger than oneself.’ Kate is also fascinated by the idea of conversation breakdown or misinterpretation of context, colloquialisms, languages and how people quickly decipher and react to accumulated things they hear. The graphic notation was composed after listening to the arrangement of sounds bleeding into the gallery from Parramatta rd over intermittent listening sessions over a 2 week period.
Video documentation by Ivan Lentell
Editing by Kate Brown
In Azimuth, live vocal performance and installation, Lane Cove Gallery
Curated by Rachel Kiang in Matter of Materials and Materiality with Kath Fries and Alia Parker
Kate Brown, In Azimuth, live vocal performance and installation, 100m of white seat belt webbing, seat belt buckles and clasps, cotton thread, dimensions variable, Gallery Lane Cove, 2019.
'In Azimuth' was an installation and performance included in 'The Matter of Objects and Materiality'. This group exhibition also included work by Kath Fries and Alia Parker, curated by Rachael Kiang at Gallery Lane Cove, Sydney in March 2019. ‘In Azimuth’ is a new vocal performance and installation work by Kate Brown. Using white seat belt webbing and seat belt buckles, she installs long stretches of the material looping across the space. The relationship between materials and the body in this performance has associations with form and function, Participation Mystique and Object Oriented Ontology. Participation Mystique sees a body/object as psychological and relational whereas OOO rejects this idea and places an object into an independent realm of perception, removed from the body. This confusion in interaction between Participation Mystique and OOO and the body/object is the premise of this work. ‘Azimuth’ meaning the direction of a celestial object from the observer, expressed as the angular distance from the north or south point of the horizon to the point at which a vertical circle passing through the object intersects the horizon. ‘In Azimuth’ distorts ideologies surrounding objects by creating new images, relational approaches and the removal of them through movement, sound and placing the audience into an otherworldly environment.
Video documentation by Ivan Lentell
Editing by Kate Brown
Photography by Ellen Dahl
Currents of Exchange, solo exhibition and a series of 3 vocal performances, Kudos Gallery, Paddington, 2018
Kate Brown, Currents of Exchange, live, recorded vocal performance and installation, 2018, Kudos Gallery, Paddington
Currents of Exchange explores the relationship between objects, how they are observed, interpreted and interacted with during vocal performance. The representation of an object can be defined by a single reality, position and cultural perspective. Over the duration of theexhibition Kate will present 3 vocal performances where she will activate or shift some components in the space. Live experimental vocal performance, Object Oriented Ontology and Participation Mystique are key frameworks relevant to the research that has influenced this current body of work. The sound produced in the space will be absorbed or ricocheted via bodies and objects. Some sounds recorded, preformed, notated and/or improvised will determine the interaction across the space. As images develop during this interaction an audience can interpret the evolving framework and experience the volume, extension or brevity of a performing body. There are designated parameters within each performance alongside an unfolding of ephemeral, otherworldly and physical vocal elements that will continue to change the pace of the work as itdevelops.
Video documentation by David Ma.
Editing by Kate Brown
Photography by Kieran Butler.
Conversation in Whispers, live interactive vocal performance, Inner West Art Trail, Scratch Artspace, Marrickville, 2018
Kate Brown A Conversation in Whispers, 2018 was presented at 'The Open Body' curated by Tom Isaacs at Scratch Artspace Marrickville.
Kate invited the audience to interact with her using military grade throat microphones placed around the neck of performer and participant. The amplified sounds were heard coming directly from the throat area. The performance took place in two parts, a demonstration performance using the throat microphones and then the invitation, set up and conversation in whispers to follow. This includes an audience member standing with the performer, asked about their direct experience and relationship to their voice. These whispers were amplified via the military grade throat microphones and a mixer/speaker set up, allowing the audience to hear this private/ internal conversation. 'A conversation in Whispers' sonically places the audience inside the body, exploring the internal cavities of the throat and larynx. This is an area of the body that is more commonly heard and not seen. By highlighting the peculiar aural moments of the vocal body the audience, participant and performer will be taken into closer proximity to their bodies and its functions. Often the articulations of language were lost but the audience is left with a clouded view from inside the peculiarities of the body.
Video documentation by Kath Fries
Editing by Kate Brown
Alleyway, live/site specific vocal performance, curated by Sebastian Henry- Jones and Mauve Parker for Desire Lines 3.0, 2017
Kate Brown, Alleyway, performed at Desire Lines 3.0, curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones and Mauve Parker, Ultimo, 2 minute excerpt from 15 minute performance, 2017 Performers: Kate Brown, Tom Hungerford, Simona Jovanovic and Luke McMaster Location: 18 William Henry St, Ultimo, NSW
For Desire Lines 3.0, Kate activated an ambiguous non-space with a mobile phone feedback orchestra titled Alleyway. Alleyway is a site specific performance work incorporating mobile phone feedback placed across bodies, voices and architectural spaces. Each performer held a mobile phone device, activating when it connected to another device, creating feedback via the in built speaker and microphone. The performers proceeded to ‘play’ the feedback by moving the phones at various distances/speeds from one another. As the speaker and microphone were active, the feedback carried across all four devices. Various physical experiments changed the dynamic, pitch and frequency of the feedback. Alongside the feedback loop performers intermittently chanted the word ‘Alleyway’ into the phone speaker. By chanting the word continuously it distorted, overlapped and eventually lost meaning as it was amplified across devises and whirred into the feedback loop. Initially the performing voice created a familiar, recognisable layer within the feedback. However, with the fatigue of repetition, this layer distorts and tangles itself into the soundscape. Alleyway is a conversation between bodies, architecture and technology to create a reactive sound space. Kate is interested in how the site for Alleyway carried and collected sound. It is a space that is disused and no longer plays a definite role in the urban landscape. By placing sound across this space in such a way activates the inside/outside of the body and the space it occupies. It is a way to audibly experience sound in new ways- across bodies and technology.
Video Documentation by David Ma
Editing by Kate Brown
New Contemporaries, A speak back to the Echo, live vocal performance and installation, 2017
Kate Brown, A Speak back to the Echo, live vocal performance and sound installation, New Contemporaries, SCA, 2017
This piece references my MFA work A body of echoes, where I activated the space and its history through the idea of a space that has carried and collected sounds over time. This second iteration A Speak back to the Echo also has reference to Alvin Lucier's 'I am sitting in a room' where sounds in the space start to take their own form. Dissimilar to Lucier’s piece, I did not record my voice and play it back, I simply let the vocal sounds sit in the in between spaces of the echo to absorb and be placed elsewhere. After the performance I amplified the recorded event through the same PA my voice occupied during the performance. By layering the recorded sound the space inevitably adopted a whirring sense of imperfect placement of voices, as moving temporal bodies entered and exited the space.
Video documentation by Paul Matereke
Editing by Kate Brown
Beyond Capitalist Surrealism curated by Joel Stern and Kusum Normoyle for Liquid Architecture, 2015
Skyscraper
Kate Brown, Skyscraper, vocal performance, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney, 2015
Video documentation by Anya Mckee
Editing by Kate Brown
National Experimental Arts Forum, curated by Liquid Architecture at the Hellenic Club, Perth, 2015
Kate Brown, Tail Gater, National Experimental Arts Forum, Liquid Architecture at the Hellenic Club, Perth WA 2015
Love City III: The Planetary Festival curated by Arie Rain Glorie, performed in Cardiff UK and streamed live to the festival at Testing Grounds, Melbourne
Long Distance, 2016
Kate Brown, Long Distance, live streamed sound performance from Cardiff UK displayed on monitor, 2016
How do you engage an audience through the intimate and sometimes distant interface of a computer screen? Global positioning systems, the Internet, common ground, interactivity, displacement, latitude and longitude coordinates, cultural exchange and the knowledge and the acceptance of that distance, means the intimate connections that we have with and through technology are in constant states of failure.
All the way in Cardiff, UK, Brown will assume a character that exists in a dimension running parallel to the festival timeline. The sound performance will play and experiment within the bounds of love and technology to highlight the transparencies of what it means to be face to face.
Expect to experience a fleeting long distance relationship during this performance. Even though you are perpetually connected you will never have this same moment again. This love affair will begin and end during Love/City III: The PLANETARY.
Copyright © 2020 Kate Brown. All rights reserved