This week, the MA Art & Material Histories course was lucky enough to host a talk by the electroacoustic musician and composer Erik Nyström. Nyström’s output includes live computer music, fixed-media acousmatic composition and sound installations.
Nyström’s recent piece ‘Intra-action’ takes its title from the new materialist Baradian concept that proposes that agency is not an inherent property of an individual, but a dynamism of forces in which all designated ‘things’ are constantly exchanging and diffracting, influencing and working inseparably. (Barad, 2007, p. 141)
Writing algorithms and employing artificial intelligences, Nyström’s complex compositions produce intricate textures that build into electroacoustic ecosystems that intra-act with the physical world. He describes his work as synthetic and acousmatic, where code-born sounds disturb and become distributed throughout actual space and experience.
Much of the new materialist and post-humanist thinking guiding Nyström’s work also directs the research outcomes of the MA Art & Material Histories course, and it was fascinating to discuss with Erik how acoustic and material aesthetics might converge and differ.
The Art & Material Histories course is multidisciplinary by nature, and a number of the MA Art & Material Histories students this year are exploring sound in different ways; Erik Nyström’s brilliant lecture will certainly help to shape their work and thinking.
Many thanks to Erik for an inspiring and educational introduction to your work and its theoretical territories.
Some of Nystrom’s recent international appearances include Ars Electronica Festival 2019 (Linz, Austria), NEXT Festival 2019 (Bratislava, Slovakia), Influx 2019 (Brussels, Belgium), BEAST FEaST 2019 (Birmingham, UK). During 2019 he participated in CECIA (Collaborative Electroacoustic Composition with Intelligent Agents), a collaborative AI-driven composition project hosted by ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany). His music has been released by the Canadian label empreintes DIGITALes, and he has published articles in Organised Sound and EContact! and presented research at conferences such as International Computer Music Conference, New Instruments for Musical Expression and Beyond Humanism Conference. He is a Lecturer in Music at City, University of London.
Watch Nyström perform his work Intra-action here and listen to other examples of Nystrom’s work here.
See the 2014 collaboration between Erik Nystrom and the MA Art & Material Histories course leader Tom Groves here.