Two performances as part of Sound Junction.
Enjoy both shows for a discounted of £15 for both or £10 per show.
Friday 28th November: Stephen Carley and Guests
aUDIOMAPS is the sound project of artist Stephen Carley, blending field recordings, lo-fi audio techniques and found sound into collaged, experimental soundscapes. Using glitches, loops, and re-configured samples, Carley creates live works that are as much about process as they are about performance.
Texts and voices emerge as fragments – cut-ups, overheard conversations, found declarations – layered with sequences, whispers, and post-industrial funk. The result is part manifesto, part immersive sound experiment.
Carley’s wider practice spans large-scale paintings, collages, cameraless photography and short films, often made with ‘poor’ or discarded materials such as dust, cardboard, chalk, and ashes. Across all mediums, his work resists convention, oscillating between the confrontational and the beautiful, always leaving space for the audience to think, feel, and interpret.
This is his punk rock.
Additional pieces will be performed by:
- Jake Parry
- Matthew Bridson
- Boyi Bai
- Alex Brommage
- Amy Spearman
Saturday 29th November: Lou Barnell and Benjamin Thigpen
Lou Barnell is an award-winning vocalist, sound and performance artist, one of Sound and Music’s New Voices 2022 Composers, and one of Manchester Jazz Festival’s Hothouse Residents 2023.
She was winner of the 2021 Oram Awards, supported by The PRS Foundation and BBC Radiophonic Institute in recognition of innovation in sound and technology. She is currently studying a PhD at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire which is led by her artistic practice called ‘Live Dreaming’.
For this performance Lou will present Ginko ‘A performance where moss, lichen, seed pods, seal-song, birdlife and desire are woven into a textural participatory sensory experience.’
The work is performed in the round, with visuals projected into the centre of a space encircled by speakers. The audience is seated or stood around the outside. The performance takes place in the centre, and features multichannel sound controlled and triggered by performer and audience movement. The audience will play elements of the score using tiny microphones.
Benjamin Thigpen
What is noise (music) to you?
Noise is a manifestation of truth.
Why do you make it?
To be in touch – in an immediate and total connection – with the real.
To participate in the opening up of what is undisclosed and unexplained.
To be drawn into a vortex of primal energy…
– B.Thigpen, in Noise in and as Music (Huddersfield University Press, 2013)
Benjamin makes experimental music for loudspeakers: “musique concrète” or “tape music,” usually in multichannel formats; live electroacoustic music, primarily in the duo Rust, with Jean-François Laporte; music for real-time electronics and acoustic sources, which are often newly-invented experimental instruments.
He studied music, literature and philosophy. He travelled, listened and observed. In 1993, he moved from the United States to France; in 2025, he renounced my US citizenship. After teaching computer music for six years at Ircam (Paris) and for eight years at the Conservatorio di Cuneo (Italy), he currently teaches at Arts2, the Conservatoire Royal de Mons, in Belgium.
Immersive Audio and Multi-speaker Open Session – Saturday 10:00 – 14:00
The USSS Immersive Audio system will be available for composers and artists to explore and experiment with on the morning of Saturday 29th November. If you are an experienced practicing composer or artist and would like to explore the possibilities of multi-speaker systems please get in touch. You might want to experiment with the system in a performative or playful manner, or may have an existing stereo composition that you would like to explore on a multichannel system. We are happy to hear your ideas before the workshop to discuss feasibility. Technical support will be available and will focus on the loudspeaker system and routing. It is expected that artists will have full command of their systems (e.g. DAWs, Max/MSP, etc.).
