A big part of my compositional and collaborative composition process is to devise moments of tension, surprise, and humour to create communal experiences whereby spectators are welcomed as participants in a compositional process. This implies that listening in itself is active: audience members are not mere recipients of music as finished form, but drawn into a piece’s compositional questions where listening and spectating can be viewed as a form of composition. 

This workshop is an invitation to create, compose, and experience a sound walk as a group. We’ll start by making some sound experiments (absolutely no musical experience necessary!), testing ideas, thinking about everyday items and objects as musical instruments, considering the musicality of everyday speech, then participate in some deep listening exercises, before venturing out into the streets for a sound walk (or ride or roll).

Antonia Barnett-McIntosh (Kāi Tahu) is a composer-performer, sound artist, editor, and curator. She collaborates in cross arts spaces, gently tapping on the borders between speech/music, performance/rehearsal, composition/writing, and juxtaposing the formalities of presentation with the aesthetics of failure. She has collaborated extensively with musicians, dancers, visual artists, poets, theatre and filmmakers.