ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION

This talk traces the emergence of a compositional, curatorial, and performative practice that seeks to move beyond abstract environmental concepts of “matters of concern” (Latour, 2004) towards “matters of care” (de la Bellacasa, 2017). This shift highlights the distinctive contribution that arts practices can make to environmental communication: the capacity to implicate audiences in relationships of responsibility through shared affective experience.

The term Sounding refers to “the activation of a place or space by a musician that is both investigative, information-seeking, and performative” (for example, Sounding the Condamine, Clocked Out, 2012). As Mat Klotz observes, “sounding amounts to a committed and intentional orientation towards the nuances and politics of place” (Klotz, 2024). Such practices generate “new knowledge, new relationships, and new experiences for performers and listeners” while deepening understandings of place (Tomlinson, 2019).

Listening within site-specific environmental sound practices invites deeper engagement with place through cultivating what Anna Tsing describes as the “art of noticing” (Tsing, 2015): a careful and sustained attention to the bodies, relationships, and processes particular to place. Such listening can reveal subtle shifts in ecological dynamics and foster a more responsive environmental awareness (Rose, 2013; Wright, 2016).

Drawing together matters of care, sounding, and listening, this keynote explores a range of performative approaches that foreground directionality, proximity, time travel, multispecies performance, technologically mediated sound practices, and imagination. The talk will be grounded through three creative projects: P.L.A.C.E. (Tomlinson, 2021, 2026), Imaginary Aviary (Tomlinson, 2023), and Made of Wood: Easter at the Piano Mill (2025), alongside the article “Intersecting Place, Environment, Sound, and Music” (Tomlinson, 2019).

Video examples and live participatory sonic happenings will be included.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Vanessa Tomlinson
Director, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Vanessa Tomlinson is a percussionist-composer working as a solo artist, as one half of Clocked Out, and in collaboration across artforms. Her work orbits around site-specific investigations, minimalist reduction, free improvisation, and creating a sense of embodied play. With a long history in experimental and improvised music, she has toured internationally for more than three decades, creating new contexts for improvisation, premiering hundreds of works, performing at major international festivals, and sharing her knowledge as a teacher, mentor, director, and arts advocate.

Vanessa’s recordings appear on Innova, Black Truffle, Earshift, Unsound, Immediate, Room40, Etcetera, Jazzhead, Mode, Tzadik, Hathut, and Clocked Out labels. Her writing has been published in Leonardo, Contemporary Music Review, Intelligent Arts, Uro Publications, and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, among others. A leading contributor to the development of Artistic Research in Australia for more than twenty years, she recently co-hosted the Artistic Research Summit in Sydney.

She is Professor of Music and Director of the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University.

Join internationally acclaimed composer Dai Fujikura in conversation with symposium convenor Dr Adeline Wong as he reflects on his creative practice, compositional approaches and the ideas that shape his work. This session offers insight into Fujikura’s journey as a composer.

PANELLISTS

DAI FUJIKURA, composer
with
ADELINE WONG, symposium convenor

ABOUT DAI FUJIKURA

Dai Fujikura is a composer based in London, UK. Born in Osaka, Japan in 1977, he moved to the UK at fifteen and later studied with Sir George Benjamin. His diverse work spans opera, orchestral and chamber music, music theatre, experimental and improvised music, and collaborations across artistic disciplines.

His operas include SOLARIS, The Gold-Bug and A Dream of Armageddon, which premiered at the New National Theatre Tokyo in 2020. His orchestral works have been performed by ensembles including the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Seattle Symphony and New York Philharmonic. In recent years, he has received commissions for Japanese traditional instruments including shamisen, koto, shakuhachi, biwa and sheng, as well as European period instruments.

Fujikura works closely with performers throughout the compositional process, often sharing score fragments and recordings to develop works through direct dialogue. He has collaborated across genres with artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian. Since 2017, he has served as Artistic Director of the Born Creative Festival at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and leads composition workshops for children in Fukushima. His numerous awards include the Ivor Novello Award, Royal Philharmonic Society Award, Silver Lion from the Venice Biennale and WIRED Audi Innovation Award.

Join Mivos Quartet’s Victor Lowrie Tafoya, sound engineer Paul Coleman and others in a pre-concert conversation exploring Steve Reich’s music, his influence on contemporary composition, and the works featured in Celebrating Reich at 90.

SPEAKERS

VICTOR LOWRIE TAFOYA
Violist, Mivos Quartet

PAUL COLEMAN
Sound Engineer, Mivos Quartet
Asst Professor (Composition and Audio Arts), Pennsylvania State University

and more

Celebrate the 90th birthday of Steve Reich, one of the most influential composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in a programme spanning three landmark works. Different Trains, Eight Lines and Triple Quartet bring together Mivos Quartet, T’ang Quartet, Vértice Quartet, Nomos Quartet and YST musicians, exploring Reich’s distinctive rhythmic language, layered textures and groundbreaking approach to ensemble writing.

PROGRAMME

STEVE REICH
Different Trains

MIVOS QUARTET:
OLIVIA DE PRATO and WILLIAM OVERCASH, violins
VICTOR LOWRIE TAFOYA, viola
NATHAN WATTS, cello

Eight Lines

LIEN BOON HUA, conductor
ERIC LAMB and SIMEON YAP, flute
STEPHANIE TAN and HAYDEN BUTT, clarinet
JONATHAN SHIN and ABIGAIL SIN, pianos
MIVOS QUARTET
VÉRTICE QUARTET:
FOONG SHU YAN ASHLEY and SIEW XUAN YING, violins
GOH KAI'EN SKYLER, viola
LEV ALIEIEV, cello

Triple Quartet

LIEN BOON HUA, conductor
MIVOS QUARTET
T'ANG QUARTET:
ANG CHEK MENG and NG YU-YING, violins
XU ZHUORUI, viola
ARIEL REN ZHIYI, cello
NOMOS QUARTET:
CHEN YUN-LI and CHEN YI-TIEN, violins
HAN OH, guest viola / mentor
ZHU RUONING, cello

Uncharted brings improvisers together for two late-night sessions of spontaneous music-making, collaboration and unexpected encounters.

PROGRAMME

GERARDO GOZZI and TIM O'DWYER, saxophones
BERT MOOIMAN, piano
RICHARD BARRETT, electronics