acousmatique

TIM CATLIN is a Melbourne based guitarist and sound artist. His guitar practice focuses on extending the sonic possibilities of the guitar in live and studio settings. As a performer he uses customized and home-built effects, guitar preparation and constructed playing devices in conjunction with live processing and improvisation to produce finely textured and shifting fields of sound. He has performed at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the What is Music, Articulating Space and Next Wave festivals.

Back in the late '80s, Melbourne's Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis collaborated in the aurally volatile project simply called Gum. With little expertise or training, the two gathered up what objects they were familiar with, in particular thrift store turntables and soiled records. Eschewing their original attraction to the giants of Industrial Culture, Gum quickly developed an aesthetic privileging the caustic rupture of skipping records and smoldering surface noise, predating the current avant-turntablist aficionados like Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, and Otomo Yoshihide.

Ross Bolleter (b. 1946 , Subiaco, Western Australia) is an Australian avantgarde composer and improviser notable for his experimentation on ruined pianos. He has been a member of The Blackeyed Susans and he is a co-founder of the WARPS Music label. Bolleter started his career by practicing improvised music with the flautist Tos Mahoney. He later went to study music, including theory, history and composition, at the University of Western Australia, between 1964 to 1967.

Natasha Barrett (1972, UK) is a composer and performer of electroacoustic art music. Her compositional aesthetics are derived from acousmatic issues, but in addition to acousmatic composition she composes for instruments and live electronics, sound installations, multi-media works and computer music improvisation. She currently lives in Norway. Natasha Barrett began working seriously with electroacoustic composition during a master's degree in analysis and electroacoustic composition, studying with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham (UK).