Since early beginnings in high-school rock outfits, my creative practice with sound and technology has been informed by a myriad of interests and influences, and developed over a wide range of creative and professional undertakings. Early aspirations of becoming an acclaimed sound engineer led me to an undergraduate degree in Music Technology at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, which I completed while working for at Vast Yonder, an experimental events agency, as a creative producer, and freelance as a production technician. These experiences provided bountiful opportunities to learn and extend myself, and by twenty-three I had production-managed multi-stage weekend camping festivals; secured funding for and delivered youth music initiatives; and produced experimental music exhibitions featuring multi-channel speaker arrays and large scale projections

Growing up as a surfer in the Noosa hinterland, I developed enduring attachments to the region’s rich natural landscapes and ocean, which became increasingly influential in my creative work while at the Conservatorium. Being introduced to field recording, generative music, and the experimental music tradition more broadly, I was particularly inspired by Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and the influence of eastern philosophy on John Cage. When my professional work halted due to COVID-19, I began experimenting with durational music composed in response to field recordings, and then improvising with electronic instruments in the natural environment. When festivals returned, these experiments informed ‘The Space Between Notes’, an environmentally-embedded ambient stage featuring long-form sets (including my own) that I produced at Yonder Festival in 2020 and 2021. Performances on the stage were encouraged to embrace the natural soundscape, which closely surrounded audiences at the stage’s rainforest and grove locations. While studying and working in Brisbane, my connection to the Sunshine Coast and Noosa regions persisted, and I would frequently return to tutor audio production at Noosa District State High School, participate in environmental initiatives with my father, or explore field recording in the natural expanses of Noosa’s forests, lakes, and headland.

In 2023, I completed ‘The Human Theremin Project’, an Honours project at the Conservatorium that explored how the movement of a human body may be incorporated into audiovisual performance with a modular synthesiser. This project led to several creative output exhibitions, including a juried work at ISEA 2024 with contemporary dancer Isaak Mclean.This performance explored trance states through mutual improvisation within an interactive cycle; Isaak’s body modulating my synthesised soundscapes that, in turn, influenced his movement, which I followed by mixing layers of voices and effects. Working with motion tracking and contemporary dance opened my mind to the intriguing aspects of physicality as data; I became increasingly fascinated by the relationship of the biological body to its digital interpretation, and how I might design musical systems that are driven by unpredictability in physical phenomena. Beyond generativity, these methods replaced chaos with something meaningful; something audiences could witness and perceive as connected to the sonic output. Being exposed to sensing technologies helped me discover the staggering amount of biological and environmental processes that can be captured and articulated digitally, opening endless possibilities for human and non-human agents to influence electronic musical systems. 

While ‘The Human Theremin Project’ was exciting, challenging, and satisfying to deliver, I couldn’t ignore part of me that felt it lacked some substance, or significance, beyond that of the spectacle. I was familiar with sound’s capacity to conjure emotional experiences, motivate action, and pass tacit ideas, but the growing impression that I had engaged such power to simply highlight capabilities of technology felt disingenuous. These reflections coincided with a budding desire to whole-heartedly re-integrate with the landscapes of Noosa and the Sunshine Coast, as several years of experimental music practice in Brisbane had constituted a highly interior, concrete, and often nocturnal experience of creative expression that felt increasingly removed from the predominantly ecological crises facing human existence on earth. Finally, I felt it was time to tug on the cord I had loosened with projects like ‘The Space Between Notes’, and explore how my interactive music systems might be adapted to natural environments in ways that encourage people to value them more deeply. This thread has led me to the University of the Sunshine Coast, and my now-supervisors, Toby Gifford and Leah Barclay, with the support of whom I embark on my Higher-degree research project performing experimental music with the natural world: ‘Hearing Now’.