The Masque of the Red Death audio debut at Words Out Loud

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Words Out Loud is putting out a special podcast as part of the Melbourne Spoken Word Festival Online; the festival replaces the Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival, forced online by social distancing requirements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It runs 24 July to 9 August. The Words Out Loud podcast will go live on 30 July. This event will be the audio debut of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’.

‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is an arrangement of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, originally published in 1842. This interactive composition rendition features spoken word performed by Jason Nahrung, with voice recording by Kirstyn McDermott, and music and sound design by Talie Helene. The work holds Poe’s story up as a prism for viewing the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Poe lived through tuberculosis and cholera pandemics, and he experienced great personal bereavements – his story shows us how little has changed, and how science is not as omnipotent as we perhaps thought; the masquerade ball echoes our dysfunctionally danced suppression strategy; issues of classism are as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century; and the ebony clock chiming balefully stands as massive as the ICU ventilator in our collective anxiety.

Living Instruments Exhibition

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The Living Instruments Project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music and the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne. Supported generously by a Melbourne Engagement Grant, this project multi-sampled the unique Grainger tuned percussion collection and explored ways these samples could then be turned into digital instruments – historically preserving the sound of the original instruments, but also investigating ways these sounds might be more widely accessed.

The following playlist by Interactive Composition students at the University of Melbourne reflects this sampling and instrument building process, and importantly examines how contemporary makers are not just preservers of sound but creative agents. Using these digital sampled instruments, (and a little creative freedom!), this playlist represents a range of new works reflecting the sampling process and a sound world from our own time.

This exhibition is presented within HOW IT PLAYS: INNOVATIONS IN PERCUSSION ONLINE
How it plays is a collaborative exhibition and performance project, involving the Grainger Museum, Federation Handbells (Museums Victoria/Creative Victoria), Speak Percussion, the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, and Melbourne School of Design.

The exhibition is on display at the Grainger Museum from 8 May 2019 to June 2020 – Exhibition Curator: Heather Gaunt, Artistic Advisor: Peter Neville.