Mike Callander. Juried Artist
SAE
SAE
Artist Statement
Ten Turntables is a real-time interactive installation featuring ten record players and a suite of “locked grooves,” loops that are or both incredibly short and infinitely long. The combination of sounds can be altered at your whim: moving the “needle” (stylus) from one groove to another on any of the ten turnta-bles results in a new component of sound to be summed with others at the mixer.
With the locked grooves tempo-matched to a single revolution of the record, by design the format ad-dresses one of two key components of “beatmatching,” a technique deployed by DJs to combine discrete audio sources by playing each at a common tempo. The other component of beatmatching relates to alignment; altering the position of one in relation to the other can transform the feel and character of the combined sound. At its most elegant, these combinations could represent an extension of Steve Reich’s phasing. A more chaotic outcome might be more akin to the provocative “turntablism” of Christian Mar-clay.
Ten Turntables encourages participants to consider: is this a catalogue of short sketches, a new collabora-tive performance, a sonic tapestry, or a rhythmic disaster? As both performer and audience, participants decide in real-time whether the summed audio output is desirable and worthy of further listening, or whether the installation can be improved through intervention.
About the artists
Dr Mike Callander is a Lecturer in Music Industry and a key figure in Australian electronic music. His work as a producer and performer since 2001—including a coveted weekly DJ residency at Melbourne’s Revolver Upstairs since 2010—informs his practice-led research and creative output.
Callander’s work with chart-topping artists has taken him to music festivals such as Glastonbury, Roskil-de and Fuji Rock, and to a collaboration between The Avalanches and The Adelaide Symphony Orches-tra. His sound design can also be heard on The Avalanches’ Australian Music Prize winning album We Will Always Love You (2020). Callander’s collaboration with The Presets, “Until The Dark,” was the closing track of the top-5 album Hi Viz (2018), and the crescendo for their energetic live shows.
The reach of Callander’s work is vast: an online audio-visual performance co-presented with The City of Melbourne; sound design for Josh Muir installations in Australian and Singaporean art galleries; a vinyl release and cultural panel funded by Australia’s embassy in Berlin; a set-opening club track played by a superstar Brazilian DJ at Coachella.
In 2013 Callander became an Ableton Certified Trainer, one of less than 400 specialists worldwide to be endorsed by the makers of Live (software) and Push (hardware). Subsequently he has facilitated perfor-mance, production, and training in conservatoriums, in the homes of rockstars and politicians, and in abandoned warehouses.
After completing a PhD at The University of Melbourne, Mike joined RMIT’s School of Media and Communication, where his current research scrutinizes the traditional form of recorded music and the im-pact of technology on performance and culture.
Credits: Dr Mike Callander
URL: https://www.rmit.edu.au/contact/staff-contacts/academic-staff/c/callander-dr-mike