Andrew Garton
Encyclopedia
History
Since the mid 1970s Andrew Garton participated in numerous independent and community media initiatives in Australia and South East Asia: from radio and public access video in his teens to computer networking in the late 1980s and 1990s with Pegasus NetworksPegasus Networks
Pegasus Networks was set up in 1989, and became Australia's first public Internet provider. It acted as a "gateway" to emerging online networks working the fields of environment, labour, peace, women's and the human rights movement....
. Garton was motivated at an early age towards collaborative media art works, combining interests in music, performance and public media. In the past twenty-five years he has written and performed plays, joined and formed bands, written scores for television documentaries, penned countless songs, piano and electronic compositions, experimented with recording and performance techniques.
Andrew began composing music in the late 1970s and studied composition with composer and pianist, Sykes Rose in the early 1980s. Andrew went on to perform, write and record with numerous bands, ensembles and free improvisation groups most notably Private Lives, Astrobeatniks, Lingo Babel, White Punks on Hope and Back from Nowhere.
In the mid-80s Andrew began composing for film and stage. He completed scores for numerous documentaries produced by UK's Channel 4 and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
(ABC), most notably, the award winning Anyone Can be A Genius and In Grave Danger of Falling Food, a three part series investigating the life-time work of Permaculture
Permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
founder, Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison
Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...
.
Andrew's music for theatre is largely focused on his own solo works and spoken-word operas (Black Harlequin, Auslaender und Staatenlose), with commissions for Queensland's Omniscient Gallery and the Debacle Theater Company, most notably their landmark interpretation of Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
' A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
(1994).
Collaborations and commissions
Garton contributed to several international and Australian collaborations with artists such as StelarcStelarc
Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete...
, Ludwig Zeininger, Kazayuki Null, Hank Bull, Ollie Olsen
Ollie Olsen
Ollie Olsen 1958, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian composer, synthesist and sound designer who has been producing and performing rock, electronic and experimental music for the past thirty years...
, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, Tetsuo Kogawa, Martin Breindl and Jimi Chen. Andrew has performed with the International Theremin Orchestra and continues to be commissioned to produce sound works for both radio and Internet.
1997 saw the completion of his first major generative and online composition, the six-week opus, Sensorium Connect, commissioned by the ABC's, The Listening Room, and produced in collaboration with the performance artist, Stelarc
Stelarc
Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete...
.
In 1999, Andrew was awarded the John Bird Award for Excellence in an Online Multimedia Production for his piece, Ausländer Micro, a virtual opera exploring the plight of Eastern European political refugees.
Mid-2000, Garton's nine-day, generative composition and installation, Tat Fat Size Temple, a collaborative work produced by Toy Satellite, was released internationally by ORF/KunstRadio (Austria) as CD and Booklet of their landmark collaborative netcast, Sound Drifting.
Other works include sound design for Bodyssey, an interactive CD-ROM by Gary Zebbington; STREET (e)SCAPE, a 24 hour generative soundscape commissioned by Alien Productions, KunstRadio and Polycollege Stobergasse, Austria; Sinawe, a performance produced in collaboration with video artist Kim Bounds, depicting numerous forms of traditional and contemporary Korean music for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Works of note include sound design for the award winning interactives, MEMO, by Matt Riley and Mud Map, by Sam Fermo. Andrew was composer/producer and artistic director for the Toy Satellite production, Undercurrents, which premiered at the Taipei International Arts Festival, April 2001. Late 2001 Andrew toured Undercurrents in Australia, performing at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne Fringe Fashion Awards, This is Not Arts Festival and the Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific Festival with support from the Australia China Council.
Mid-2003 Andrew completed a major work commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image - a video installation (From Drift to Derive) and prototype stop-motion narrative engine, D3, taking inspiration from Situationist theory.
From 2005–2006 Andrew curated Frequency Post, a series of five sound pieces from composers in Australia, Taiwan and China, for KunstRadio. The series was broadcast twice across the EU.
You can listen to Andrew Garton's collaborative computer performance work Drift Theory 2 online at ABC Classic FM's classic/amp website.
Discography
- Son of Science, Andrew Garton, 2008 (Secession Records, SR:008)
- Little Flower, Andrew Garton, One Love Project, 2004 (for Navigator, curated and produced by Monbaza, Taiwan, Jul 2004)
- Headlock, Andrew Garton, 2004 (Secession Records, SR:007)
- Talking Crosswalks, 2004 (various artists, pumpkin records, pump 09-2004)
- Timor Mass, Andrew Garton, 2002 (Earthdance, Melbourne 2002)
- Creating Regions, Lost Time Accident, 2001 (Secession Records, SR:005)
- Secret City, DOODS, 2001 (Secession Records, SR:004)
- Future Schwitters, Andrew Garton, SchwittCD, 2001 (ORF/KunstRadio, Austria)
- Ramp Speed, Dark Ambient Operators, 2000 (MP3 Release, Secession Records, SR:003)
- Tat Fat Size Temple, Andrew Garton, Sound Drifting, 2000 (ORF/KunstRadio, Austria)
- ZERO, A Collection of Minute Soundworks, 2000 (2000 Audio Research Editions, compilation CD, The other side of zero - video positive 2000 - Liverpool, # ARECD103)
- Audible Lines, Lost Time Accident, 1999 (MP3 Release, Secession Records, SR:002)
- TRACE, A Collection of Artists Soundworks, 1999 (1999 Audio Research Editions, compilation double CD, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art 1999, # ARECD102)
- Touchless, International Theremin Orchestra, 1998 (ORF/Kunstradio, Kunst Halle Krems, Austria)
- Age 2 Wonder At, Lost Time Accident, 1998 (Secession Records, SR:001)
- A Clockwork Orange, Andrew Garton and Andy Bagley, 1993 (Debacle Theatre Company, independent release)
- Work, The Private, 1985 (RCARCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
. Despite performing on the album and his keyboard arrangements used else where, Garton was not credited.) - Pleas/Like Her Daddy, Private Lives, 1984 (RCARCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
) - Live at the WirelessLive at the WirelessLive at the Wireless is a radio show, and now a long standing tradition, of Triple J, an Australian radio station. Live music is one of the central philosophies of the station....
, 1983 (JJJ/ABC Records, live session with Private Lives) - Pleas, Private Lives, 1983 (Independent EP release, produced by Private Lives and Baldy Karkitt. Recorded at Emerald City and mixed at Alberts Studios, Sydney.)
Book chapters
- Garton, A. 2008 - Herd Listening, Re-inventing Radio - Aspects of Radio as Art, Revolver, ISBN 978-3-86588-453-4
- Garton, A. 2005 - From BBS to Wireless: A Story of Art in Chips, At a Distance, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03328-3
Other publications
- Garton, A. (2005) Synesthesia Urbania - Towards an Australasian Commons, Filter, Australian Network for Art and Technology Magazine, Issue 61, pp 4–5
- Garton, A. (2005) From BBS to Wireless: A Story of Art in Chips, At a Distance, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03328-3
- Garton, A. (1997) The Politics of Dissonance, Somesuch, Journal of New Musique Australia
- Garton, A. (1997) Theatre as Suspended Space, 1997, Falter, pp 54–55
- Garton, A. (1997) Multimedia Imaging and Sound: Towards collaborative development of interactive sound and image, WSCG 97 Conference Proceedings, Volume III, Ed. Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, Václav Skala, University of West Bohemia Press, Plzeň, Czech Republic
- Garton, A. (1996) Lost Time Accidents, Somesuch, Journal of New Musique Australia
- Garton, A. (1996) Artists and Copyright in Cyberspace, Artlines, Issue 1.6, Arts Law Centre of Australia, ISSN 132-695X.
- Garton, A. Parikh, J. Nanda, S. Fernandez, L. (1994) PAN Asia Networking Report, International Development and Research Centre, Singapore / Canada
- Garton, A. Garnsey, R. Peter, Ian. (1993) Networking for NGOs, AUSAID
External links
- Andrew Garton's web site
- Andrew Garton's wiki
- Toy Satellite (Co-founded by Andrew Garton)
- Secession Records (Garton's record label)
- apc.au (Co-founded by Andrew Garton)