About

GIRRL is an international organization that supports and promotes new work by women working in the sonic arts and digital media.

Girrlsound promotes and represents contemporary women in sound and their work/thinking/research, with an online web interface/presence. Girrlsound is a resource space for women sound artists, of others artist’s works, sound theory, tools and opportunities for exhibitions and collaborations. Girrlsound is an organization for arranging and presenting projects and sound works. Girrlsound is a distribution site for innovative women’s sound works. Girrlsound presents local and web-based workshops in sound technology and creativity, and professional practice …

Digitalgirrl promotes and represents women working in the digital arts encouraging new innovative work, critique and distribution.

Vision
::

We believe that new things are being said in culture with digital media especially sound based media. This development through creative and critical engagement enables and inspires people to become active co-creators of their contemporary culture and societies. This co-creativity includes women's contributions. Women are saying things with sound, creating new digital languages and technologies for articulation. Girrlsound makes that sound heard. Digitalgiirl makes it both seen and heard.

Mission ::
GIRRL is a co-creative space that's mission is to promote,         appreciate and acknowledge women’s unique contribution to the     field of sonic and digital arts
GIRRL provides distribution and publication opportunities for     women
GIRRL offers and links new sound and digital collaborative         relationships
Girrlsound presents women’s sonic work for review and 
discussion
Digitalgirrl presents women’s digital media work for review 

and discussion

Areas of activity ::

   Promoting all things Sound and Digital by women

   Contributing to Contemporary Sound Theory

   Engaging with both low and high-tec voice and digital

    scoring/improvisation/composition/performance

   Reviewing/Curating & Archiving

   Listening Practice – distribution

   Archiving of Women's Sonic and Digital Arts work and projects

Girrl has many points of contact for women. It is a web based internationally connected organization that presents interviews with pioneers in women’s sound and digital arts. It hosts monthly, new artist, presentations of new work. Girrl also hosts a blog with new and innovative use of sound and digital media and it is active on FB. It provided updated resources and opportunities for artists. A Girrl email list is also available for anyone to participate in. 

In addition, locally organized events such as meetings and presentations by sonic and digital artists, (at The Glasshouse, QUT Creative Industries Precinct), workshops, and performances and presentations (Queensland Conservatorium) are being held  initially within Brisbane Australia, with plans to extend these in other major cities.

A further frame of activity is an annual symposium/conference, the first will be held in Brisbane, Australia in May 2012. Proceedings of these conferences will be available from the Girrl website. The conference serves as a forum for the members’ activities, creative work and research. 

Girrl has its initial base in Brisbane but Girrl members activate sound and data all over. Girrl’s aim is to make links and partner with regional and international organizations building the community of creative women working in the sonic and digital arts

Girrlsound Terms ::

Sound art :: creative use of non-musical sound, often by artists who are not ‘musicians’, installations, environmental sound, radio art, sound sculpture, etc.

Hybrid :: experimental use of concepts or instruments from other cultures; Text :: focus on spoken language, often emphasizing sound over meaning.

Sonic :: of or relating to audible sound.

Sonic art ::  sound/art of or relating to art/sound

Sound art ::  sound/art of or relating to art/sound

Cochlea’d sound :: audible sound

Non-cochlea’d sound :: non-audible sound

Sound art = Sonic art

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GIRRLS BEHIND GIRRL

Majena Mafe  the founder of GIRRL girrlsound : digitalgirrl(Australia)

I'm interested in sound in language ..."I work as a researcher, sonic artist and writer re-verbing the sound of subtle or ‘othered’ information in language. In this I am exploring the possibilities of re figuring sound in language to be apprehended as a range of potential events for saying ‘the unsaid’ through its own re-contextualized and inherent meaning. This is a working towards and beyond the comically contested edge of represented meaning"... phew

I’m presently engaged in PhD practice-led post/transdisciplinary research at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia, based on Gertrude Stein and the notion and implications of sound I read/hear in her work. In this I am working toward a new frame for meaning and making in language that has implications across the range of digital language(s). My research/work also operates as a score for ecstatic voice play. I create ‘baroque’ digital operas(operations and interventions) choired by digitally animated ventriloquist dummies. These dummies sing/speak (un)theory. These works are presented as looped presences on the web and on video.

I am also involved in linking and building online communities, setting up short and long terms collaborations and creative links with other practitioners. I have recently returned from a research trips to the US and London and Canada to set up collaborative links with sonic artists and theorists and as a result I have set up GIRRL an ARI for women working in the sonic and digital arts.
my projects and web sites ::
furtherfieldartists web
that-unsound blog
opsound sound


featured works ::
12789 Ventriloquist Project
Curly Toes
monstrous singing
Voice opera
blanks
twice mouthed
blobber
 
Visual Arts Degree with Honors, Master of Fine Arts-Visual Arts, Master of Philosophy - Creative Writing, Doctorate of Philosophy post/transdisciplinary visual art/sound/literature/theory (in progress)

 
  Heather Dewey-Hagborg (NY)

Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist who is interested in exploring art as research and public inquiry. Traversing media ranging from algorithms to installation, her work seeks to question fundamental assumptions underpinning perceptions of human nature, technology and the environment. Examining culture through the lens of information, Heather creates situations embodying concepts.

Heather has shown work nationally and internationally, most recently creating a collaborative site-specific installation at the Jaaga art and technology center in Bangalore, India. In the past year she has participated in PS1's Saturday Sessions, the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas, Bushwick BETA Spaces, Art in Odd Places, Nuit Blanche/Bring to Light, and Williamsburg Walks public art festivals in New York. She participated in the Flow/Slow art conference on the Delaware River last September calling attention to the fragility of this ecosystem and the risks of fracking. In the past two years she has created site-specific installations for Issue Project Room, Splatterpool and The Northside Town Hall in Brooklyn, Skydog Projects in Narrowsburg, NY, I-Park in CT, and CEPA Gallery in Buffalo. Her recent project Totem is featured on Art Fag City's premiere Sound of Art album and is currently on display at Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey. In addition to her individual work she collaborates often with the collective Future Archaeology.

Heather has received grants from Jaaga, PS1, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, CEPA Gallery, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She received a National Science Foundation award and ITP/TSOA as well as Tisch Achievement Scholarships from New York University. She has also been awarded artist residencies at Jaaga in India, I-Park in Connecticut and Sculpture Space in Utica New York where she was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Heather has a BA in Information Arts from Bennington College and a Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University where she currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor.


Artist's web site: 
http://deweyhagborg.com

 
 

  Amber Hansen (Australia)

Amber Hansen is a multidisciplinary Australian composer, producer, performer, researcher and teacher. Amber's innovative and contemporary work embodies the experiences and perceptions of a woman of mixed Arab, European and Asian ancestry born and raised in an urban multicultural landscape.

Amber's creative realizations utilize diverse artistic mediums such as electro-acoustic composition, traditional and contemporary Arab Near Eastern music and dance, experimental sound manipulation, live performance art, dance, theater, installation, remixing, film and other visual media.

As an emerging professional artist, Amber has and continues to collaborate and perform with many local and international artists, ensembles and companies as a multilingual vocalist (English, Classical Arabic and regional Arabic Dialects, Bulgarian, Spanish, French, Farsi) Oriental and Arabic Folkloric Dancer, a pianist, percussionist, composer and as a multimedia performance artist.

website (www.amberhansen.com) 

Elsie Martins is GIRRL's London  link.... she is a musician who takes raw elements of atonal field recordings and morphs them into compositions and rhythms - both dark and light, intense and subtle, whole and transient - an art form she developed in her guise as the driving force in the previous musical vehicle, Phantom.  Broadening those horizons and introducing new elements such as analogue tape loops, drone and world percussion, Atom Eye takes you on a journey: it's the soundtrack to your dreams... or your nightmares.

Featuring guest appearances from award-winning percussionist Pete Lockett (part I & II) - (Björk, David Holmes, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Lee Scratch Perry, Primal Scream), percussionist Fabio Barbato (part III) - (Ethna Morte) and Mute Artist, Composer and Producer Simon Fisher Turner (part III) - whose works include soundtracks for Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, The Last of England and The Garden as well as the David Lynch-produced Nadja;

Elsie has just completed Cinematic Trilogy 120 which is an exploration of experiments with field recordings, analogue tape loops, reel-to-reel machines, guitars, cellos, ambient drone and world percussion. Drawing influences from film soundtracks, experimental music and sound art, Trilogy 120 was mixed & co-produced by James Aparicio (Liars, Spiritualized) and will be offered in three individually released parts, all available as a free download on https://www.atomeyemusic.com

Part I - release date 30.01.12
Part II - release date tbc
Part III - release date tbc
 

Atom Eye www.atomeyemusic.com