Chris Mann is an Australian composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do."
He is currently based in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Mann studied Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

 and linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 at the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory

Information theory

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...

 and has been recognized by UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 for his work in that field.

Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 and Kenneth Gaburo

Kenneth Gaburo

-Life:Gaburo was born in Somerville, New Jersey. He served as a professor of music at the University of Illinois, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Iowa. His notable students include James Tenney and Allen Strange...

. He has performed text in collaboration with artists such as Thomas Buckner

Thomas Buckner

Thomas Buckner is an American baritone vocalist specializing in the performance of contemporary classical music and improvised music...

, David Dunn

David Dunn

David John Ian Dunn is an English footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder for Premier League club Blackburn Rovers.-Blackburn Rovers:...

, Annea Lockwood

Annea Lockwood

Annea Lockwood is a New Zealand born American composer. She taught electronic music at Vassar College. Her work often involves recordings of natural found sounds...

, Larry Polansky

Larry Polansky

Larry Polansky is a composer, guitarist, mandolinist, and a professor at Dartmouth College. He is a founding member and co-director of . He co-wrote HMSL with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom....

, and Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...

.

Mann's unique style of reading incredibly dense, parenthetical texts at a high speed has brought him recognition as a unique performer and recording artist. He has had a variety of recording projects over the years, including the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart

Amanda Stewart

Amanda Stewart is a contemporary Australian poet and sound/performance artist.Amanda Stewart began writing and performing poetry in the 1970s and has since produced a wide array of sound, video and multimedia work. In the 1980s she worked for ABC radio as a producer...

 and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois

R. Luke DuBois

Roger Luke DuBois is an American composer, performer, conceptual new media artist, programmer, record producer and pedagogue based in New York City.-Biography:...

, features realtime spectral analysis

Spectral analysis

Spectral analysis or Spectrum analysis may refer to:* Spectrum analysis in chemistry and physics, a method of analyzing the chemical properties of matter from bands in their visible spectrum...

 and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s. Mann has also participated in the 60x60

60x60

60x60 is a collection of 60 electroacoustic or acousmatic works from 60 different composers/artists, each work 60 seconds or less in duration. 60x60 project showcases sixty new works, each sixty seconds or less, by sixty composers in a continuous sixty minute concert, for a one-hour cross-section...

 project.

Mann currently teaches in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School

The New School

The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...

.

Articles and Reviews

Artist Chris Mann to vocalize his new work to St. Cloud
by Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio
1 April 2005

Publications

• Words & Classes, Outback Press, Melbourne 1978.
• doin 2s, phon'm, Melbourne 1982 and Artelec, Paris 1983.
• Word for word, Christine, New York 1983.
• Subjective beats metaphor, NMA, Melbourne 1985.
• LA DE DA, collective effort, Melbourne 1985.
• The Rationales, NMA/post neo, Melbourne 1986.
• da-dum, Glass Box/WA, Melbourne 1987.
• of course, collective effort, Melbourne 1988.
• Tuesday, collective effort, Melbourne 1989.
• Birth of Peace, NMA, Melbourne 1990.
• 38'37" A Machine for Making Sense, NMA, Melbourne 1990.
• Chris Mann and Grammar, Lingua, Iowa City 1991.
• On second thoughts, Tall Poppies, Sydney 1994 and OO Discs, New York 1994.
• Chris Mann and the Impediments, OO Discs, New York 1995.
• 62 Composers on Chris Mann, Frog Peak, Hanover 1997.
• Talk is cheap, split, Sydney 1997.
• Working hypothesis, Station Hill, Barrytown 1998.
• Consciousness, split, Sydney 1999.
• chris mann and the use, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 3091, 2002
• Of Course (newsprint); The Rationales (pad, from NMA Publications);
• Tuesday (pamphlet);
• "I got ten bucks says Barrabas had a dad. . ." (ribbon);
• "fee fie form odds is on. . ."(postcard)
• Tablecloth.
• Word for Word.
• Chris Mann and Grammar. (Lingua Press).
• Frog Peak Anthology. Writings by Harrison, Mann, Wendt, and others, edited by Carter Scholz. Frog Peak Publication.
• Working Hypothesis.
• How Do You Know That. Guppy Vol. I, No. 3: Text. .

Discography

• Frog Peak Collaborations Project
• 60x60 (2006–2007)

Talking about Healesville. Man04. $10.
The Birth of Peace. Multimedia work for goldfish-controlled computers and poets; Comes with book, ring and plastic fish.. NMA22. $30.

External links

• Home Page (includes mp3s of work)
• National Public Radio Interview (2002)
• Discography at Lovely Music