Philip Samartzis 09/10

Two Antarctic Arts Fellows travelled to Antarctica in the 2009/10 season. Philip Samartzis and Tina Evans travelled to Antarctica in January.

Philip Samartzis is a senior lecturer in sound at RMIT University and has performed and exhibited widely in Australia and overseas. While in Antarctica Samartzis' objective was to explore the impacts of extreme environmental conditions on people and the way they adapt to those conditions. Samartzis made field recordings of sounds during his trip, travelling on the Aurora Australis to Davis station, where he spent six weeks before returning via Macquarie Island. These recordings will be used to develop a series of audio pieces for galleries, performances and festivals.

Samartzis uses field recordings of natural and constructed environments as his primary material to render densities of space and discrete zones of aural experience, which are arranged and mixed to reflect the acoustic and spatial complexities of everyday sound fields.

Philip presented some of his field work in Paris in June 2011 at the Parisonic Festival. Details are available at http://psonic.free.fr

Philip also presented 'Crush Grind' at the Antarctic Creative Arts Conference at the Australian National University:  http://music.anu.edu.au/antarctica

ABC Classic FM  featured a story on 'Crush Grind' recorded during Hobart's MONA FOMA festival in January, which can be heard at http://www.abc.net.au/classic/australianmusic/stories/s3159237.htm

Philip also participated in an Artist in Residence program at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology at the University of Arts – Zurich in July 2011. He composed a new work from his field recordings of the Aurora Australis.

For further information, visit his website.

Listen to an interview with Philip and some of his recordings.