A Room with a View – Edwina Stevens
“The world is full of sounds that we don’t hear as music. But, the sounds are very interesting musically. So, I have a strong desire to incorporate them. A sonic blending that is both chaotic and unified. ”
Today we're showcasing our second artwork in connection with A Room with a View by Melbourne-based audiovisual artist, performer and writer/researcher Edwina Stevens, whose work has been my companion in these recent COVID-19 months.
Stevens works across composition, live performance and installation focusing on field recordings, synthesized sound, found acoustic elements or instruments and obsolete technology, to create atmospheric, minimalistic soundscapes and filmic portraits of place.
Since 2011 Stevens has also performed live sound and visual works under the moniker of 'eves'. She has presented at major events in New Zealand and Australia and produced several studio albums (eves.bandcamp.com), for which she earned a nomination for The Age Music Victoria Awards Best Experimental-Avant Garde Act 2015.
In 2019 Stevens made 'The material thing is vibrating into the emptiness', a video work which she presented as a two-minute excerpt and a 'long-play'. Like much of her oeuvre, the artwork investigates how the human experience of time and a sense of place may be captured, transformed and re-told through audiovisual composition.
The material thing is vibrating into the emptiness 2019
A personal reflection
— Emma Thomson
Below are my reflections upon this much-loved artwork. In keeping with this project's focus upon the idea of the home as a place for nurturing our creative or inner selves, this personal account seeks to explore the place of this work in my home and life.
Whilst my focus will be upon the excerpt of the work, I have also looked towards the 'long-play'. In so doing, I found serendipitous intersections and discontinuities in the experience of sight and sound, that highlight the experimental nature of Stevens' work which resists notions of preconception and control. I encourage you to do the same.
To read my words, press on the each of the grid elements below, which are video stills which I have borrowed from Stevens' work. In each still is a caption. Or, ignore this, watch the video and then look to Stevens' artistic statement below.
Note:—Mobile readers, to read the captions you must explore via desktop. For some questions to think about whilst you are listening, head to this introduction to sound art by the Tate featuring an extract from John Cage's Composition as Process.
“Sound is materially invisible but very visceral and emotive. It can define a space at the same time as it triggers a memory.”
The material thing is vibrating into the emptiness is a video work considering the chance encounters across various materialities. In this work, two phenomena of light, materiality, and time intersect.
One element is comprised of winter light filters through a Eucalyptus tree, refracted through a warped 100-year-old windowpane onto the wall, on an oblique angle for a brief moment every day over a week, then it is gone. Another element is also of winter light, filtered through a different Eucalypt, refracting through a glass on a shelf causing it to 'bend' around a corner and streak down the hallway wall. These moments were recorded every morning for the week and compiled together as visuals for live performance.
In this production of this video, the visual was arranged to sound, and then in response, the performance is made to the visual, exploring the relationship between the two and the potential they carry in this relationship.
— Edwina Stevens, Artist Statement
Virtual Opening
A Room with a View - Edwina Stevens
Opening Date: 31 October 2020
I am just wanting to relate my own experience – and I am quite set on calling it “transmutation”, 'cause it is like I am trying to speak through it and I'm not trying to design a particular sound, in general. I'm just trying to think of the experience of being at the place, and I have this particular set up with this modular synth, where it is quite characteristic of exactly the kinds of sounds that I feel really portray what it is that I have experienced. So sounds like wind, and small textures, and more organic, disrhythmic ways of generating sound.
— Edwina Stevens, Interview for SONIC.LAND
Note:— To avoid being re-directed to Soundcloud, press “Listen in browser”.
To learn more about The material thing is vibrating into the emptiness 2019 and Stevens' broader practice, join us for a virtual tour of her 'Room with a View', featuring an interview with the artist and her brand new video made in connection with the project.
In the 'viewing room', register to join our conversation with the artist to be live-streamed. You can also pre-nominate your questions for the artist here. To inspire you to join us for the imaginative journey ahead, listen in to the track 'Slippage' above (from the album of the same name) which inspired our conversations during her making process.
If you would like to join us to celebrate leading creative practice, leadership and thinking, make new social connections and support vulnerable women and children in our communities, head to our campaign via the below.
Biography
Edwina Stevens (Otepoti, Aotearoa/Narrm-Melbourne) is an audiovisual artist working across composition, live performance and installation focusing on field recordings, synthesized sound, found acoustic elements/instruments and obsolete tech. A self-taught musician, she takes an improvised approach to music and sound design influenced by her involvement in the Aotearoa experimental noise scene. Her work investigates audiovisual processes of engaging with places that are improvisational, collaborative and incidental. Her practice explores the entanglements of the temporal, material and experiential through chance encounters, tangential processes and unanticipated outcomes.
Stevens also performs under the moniker of ‘eves’. Since 2011 she has presented live visual and sound performance works at major events across New Zealand and Australia (FFFFFF, eves) including Lines of Flight Festival, Ladyz In Noys Australia, Sisters Akousmatica 2016, Nowhere Festival Auckland 2014, Make It Up Club Melbourne. She has also recorded and released three albums (eves.bandcamp.com) and was nominated for The Age Music Victoria Awards/Best Experimental-Avant Garde Act for 2015.
Stevens is currently undertaking a Research Masters Degree at Deakin University, School of Communication and Creative Arts under the supervision of Cameron Bishop, Ann Wilson and cultural advisor Liz Cameron, researching possibilities in the methodologies of transmutation of place via the sound artist. She is also a senior lecturer at Melbourne Polytechnic.
