Philip Dadson

New Zealand
Interdisciplinary
Artist in Residence, 2016
↗ www.sonicsfromscratch.co.nz

Artist Statement

A preferred working and performing strategy of mine is to to welcome the unexpected, to be open and responsive to the influences of any new situation and location and so while at Headlands I look forward to what might evolve. There is one planned project however, to revisit and update a video work I made in 1991 titled, SOUND STORIES – Meetings with 14, US, Experimental Musical Instrument Builder/Performers – a number of whom were, and still are, based in and around the Bay Area. Several luminaries included in the video—Lou Harrison, Ivor Darreg, Darrel Devore, Richard Waters, and others—have since died, and this along with increased archival interest in the material has been a catalyst for the remake plan.

While sound is my primary motivator the outputs range across video / audio works, invented experimental-musical-instruments & sonic objects, performing & exhibiting solo & collaboratively, visual-music notations, compositions, and drawings.

In terms of pure sound I am attracted to intricate texture—the microscopic, the unexpected, the naturally rhythmic, and the adventurous—to sound atmospheres and layered perspectives, distant to foreground, to sounds that conjure association, mood and imagination, sounds that convey ideas and reflect the heart and soul. The works I make communicate something of this I hope.