Sound Forms 2023: speaker, you

John Richards explores Dirty Electronics focusing on shared experiences, social interaction and critical making. He is concerned with the performance of large-group electronic music and DIY electronics, and he has come to consider these activities as a holistic action. It is a fluid, live practice associated with the ideas of workshop-installation and performance-installation. His work pushes the boundaries between music, performance art, electronics, and graphic design and is transdisciplinary as well as having a social dimension. He has also written numerous texts on DIY practices, performance of electronic music, and object-oriented and material approaches in relation to sound art. 

Serene Hui is an artist working between Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Her practice is research-focused and multi-faceted, engaging primarily with installation, audio and live works, printmaking and text. Hui's work is involved in a discursive and artistic exploration of her own context, using the geographical distance from personal lived experiences to investigate the wider social impact of how meaning is made and who has access to making it. Her practice is currently invested in epistemological colonialism for the ways it affects social structures, languages, psychology and its potential susceptibility for manipulation. In her works she addresses obscurity and nuances by creating an ontological shift of displacement — meaning to transform social conventions, normative ignorance, and language ambiguity into resistance, reflection and criticism of contemporary systems. 

Hui’s works have been included at TENT (NL), Research Academy, Zurich University of the Arts (Zurich), Para Site (Hong Kong) and Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong), among others. Her printmaking works are collected by Museum Meermanno – House of the Book (NL) and KB National Library of the Netherlands. She is an artist-in-residence at MMCA Seoul (South Korea), Nida Art Colony (Lithuania), and more. In 2021, she released her book-length publication “May We Live In Interesting Times — The Politics and Poetics of Ambivalence”. Hui’s artistic practice and exhibitions are supported by Stroom Den Haag and Mondriaan Fonds (NL).

Lam Lai received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Department of Composition and Electronic Music at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and studied further at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Through her work on the concept of music, Lam has expanded the meaning and characteristics of performance by employing various elements of theatre and exploring places where different concepts of listening experience can coexist and evolve towards a balance with other art forms. Her activity as a composer is not limited to instrumental music, but is also present in her multidisciplinary works, which predominantly use electronic sounds and performative elements. She also collaborates with theatre directors, choreographers, actors and visual artists, exploring indoor, outdoor and virtual performance spaces. She has worked with music theatre company de Veenfabriek (Netherlands); SWR Experimentalstudio (Freiburg); New European Ensemble (The Hague); and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. Art festivals she has participated in include the Munich Biennale, Stuttgart Die Irritierte Stadt, Musica Nova Helsinki, Iceland Cycle Music and Art Festival, Hong Kong New Vision Arts Festival and Sonic Anchor.

Tim Shaw is an artist working with sound, light and communication media. Presenting work through performances, installations and sound walks. Shaw is interested in how listening environments can be constructed or explored using a diverse range of techniques and technologies. He works with field recordings, electronics, video, modular synthesis, sound objects, self-made hardware and DIY software. His artworks, recordings and writings have been featured in The Guardian, Arte Tracks, Neural, BBC Radio 3, We Make Money Not Art, The British Music Collection, The Field Recording Show, Alphr, Its Nice That, SHAPE and The Space.

Hui Ye (born in Guangzhou) is a video artist and composer based in Vienna. She works with different media including experimental documentary, video and audio installation, and often address questions in regard to individual social identity and its entanglements with different cultural and political contexts. In her recent projects, the artist focuses on the sociopolitical aspects of the act of listening in contemplation of exploring diverse correlations between sound and the different social phenomenon in contemporary societies. Hui Ye is laureate of the Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2018 and a nominee of Follow Fluxus Wiesbaden Grant 2020. In 2022, she holds the fellowship of BS projects for sound art – a scholarship program hosted by the Kunsthochschule Braunschweig and the state of Lower Saxony. Ye is cofounder of Mai Ling – a queer-feminist Asian artists collective and a member of Vienna Secession as well as the Association of Women* Visual Artists Austria (VBKÖ). Her works have been recently presented a.i. at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna Secession (AT), the Jim Thompson Art Center (TH), WRO Media Art Biennial (PL) and Times Museum (CN).

Mengting Zhuo (b. Guangzhou, 1990) composes situations with site, sound, body and time, in the forms of performance, participatory installation, and concerts. Often minimalist, subtle and intimate, her work invites the audience to investigate themes of connection, transmission, contingency and distance.

Sonically, she is exploring the politics of listening — the creation, reception and manipulation of signals — as well as the liminal points where sound and space intersect, through a series of happenings predominantly using non-instruments, unwanted noise, found objects and the body. Recent scores were developed for MAO Torino, Italy, Frieze London, and Cafe OTO London, UK.

As a performer and director, she has made encounters with audiences in theatres, galleries and other spaces, including a park, a beach, a karaoke club, a flat, and online. She studied Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is now based. Her work has been presented internationally, including in the UK, the Mainland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Slovakia.