Leaky bodies and touchy software

Edinburgh College of Art and BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) invite you to a concert featuring new music that explores instruments, bodies, software and hardware.

The first part of this event features new work for harpsichord and electronics by BRAID fellow, Martin Parker, performed by keyboard superpower, Xenia Pestova. She'll also perform a solo version of her piece Baile, which was premiered in March 2025.

Following these pieces, Xenia will lead the audience through the amazing Russell collection of musical instruments, leaving a trace of sounds from various keyboards she walks and plays you through the museum. The journey will end at a new, reactive instrument crafted especially for this stunning museum by sculptor and gilder, Henry Martin, sonified by Martin Parker. Martin will introduce the instrument and present a short performance before you get a drink.

As part of Martin's BRAID project, Machining Sonic Identities, he has been working with St Cecilia's collection, imagining new ways for the heritage sector to create innovative interfaces between AI and their collections. Here, Martin has built a digital model of instruments that we are not normally allowed to play. Metal parts of the sculpture are connected to this computer model, making it possible to explore and examine the sound world by touch.

After your drink, the concert continues with the Scottish premier of Je mets mon scaphandre by British composer John Aulich, written in collaboration with the Irish and Berlin-based bassoonist Olivia Palmer-Baker.

The work explores the feminist theory of the leaky body, which invites us to rethink the human body as fluid and amorphous, constantly reconfiguring in response to its environment. Here, the built-in spatiality and the leaky, unstable nature of the bassoon are brought into dialogue with this theory, amplified and translated with live electronics and reactive light. The electronics invite us to hear the bassoon through a number of different lenses, amplifying the smallest details not only in volume but in dimension, with the sound being panned around the entire room.

After a period of experimental concerts in Berlin and Basel earlier this year, this second and final version features in addition a reactive light design created by a further collaborator, the Spanish, Berlin-based light-designer José Del Avellanal Carreño.

We extend huge thanks to our funders and supporters:BRAID: https://braiduk.org/

Arts & Humanities Research Council: https://www.ukri.org/councils/ahrc/

Goethe-Institut: https://www.goethe.de

Hinrichsen Foundation: https://www.hinrichsenfoundation.org.uk/

Supporters:

University of Edinburgh | Edinburgh College of Art | Reid School of Music

KLANGZEITORT: https://klangzeitort.de/

( ( NYT ) ) Art Space: https://www.instagram.com/nyt.art.space/

Kollektiv Unruhe: https://www.kollektivunruhe.com/

Musikkultur Rheinsberg: https://musikkultur-rheinsberg.de/

Image: UNESCO Week of Sound - Wed 18 October 2023 - Xenia Pestova Bennett (© photographer - Andy Catlin www.andycatlin.com).

Access

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Image: Olivia Palmer-Baker.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

St Cecilia’s Hall: Concert Room & Music Museum, The University of Edinburgh, 50 Niddry Street, Edinburgh, United Kingdom