Art to lunch: A2L:
Andrew Kettle: A:

A2L: You are listening to 'Art to Lunch'. And we are now joined in the studio with Andy or Andrew Kettle. Which is it?
A: Well, it depends on how you are feeling.
A2L: well, do you want to be a serious person or a sunday sort of like bbq person?
A: Well, we can be a bit schitzophrenic if you like.
A2L: Ok., well it should be andy. Hi, Andy how is it going?
(laughter)
A: Arr., good thanks. Excellent.
A2L: This is the first time I have interviewed someelse who is like a Dj around here.
A: yeah.
A2L: and you are probably a bit more experienced that I am, so you could actually interview me.
A: I'm not quite sure about that, it's sunday midday.
A2L: o.k. for the people that don't usually listen to andy during the week, you do the experimental music show on Wednesday nights.
A: Yes, wednesday night. That's right.
A2L: And this week and next week you are taking over the world.
A: that's right, part of the MAAP's festival.
A2L: You can't sneeze without jumping over a KETTLE event can you?
A: It's exhausting this week.
A2L: Do you want to take us through it?
A: Ok. It's all mainly surrounding the MAAP's festival, tuesday night ...
A2L: for people who don't know what MAAP is. It's a Multi-Media Arts Asia Pacific festival, that opened on Friday Night.
A: that's right. It was great. we had drinks at Lennon's.
A2L: Love the Champers. Ended up at the Press Club at 2:30 in the morning... a bit seedy.
A: Yeah, i think a lot of people the next day where a bit ... had.
(laughter)
A2L: absolutely.
A: But, part of the MAAPs ... chasing along the runner. Tuesday night we are at the Zoo with the Turing Test, which is myself, SEO and Adam Donovan, who has recently had an installation at the IMA. We are doing our own individual performances surrounding Turing, who was a scientist earlier this century, looking at artificial intelligence how computers .. is it the computer or the musician that makes electronic or computer music... looking at space ... there is a whole gammit that starts about 8 o'clock.
A2L: So, what will you be doing there? I mean when you actually go to do a performance do you pretty much just bring your computer and a couple of CDs or ...
A: Lately I have been going on a bit of a journey with a lot of my work surrounds and is infiltated by Alchemy. And it as a part of that is always a continual process. Most of my performances are all different, they are all experiments, laboratory experiments to some extent.
A2L: no bunson burners.
(laughter)
A: Might incorporate it one day.
A2L: i'd love a bunson burner in one of your works.
A: Well flame, at the moment in popular culture expression, especially our youth is prodominant.
A2L: even flame has a sound. there you go even bunson burners.
A: well that is true , maybe we should do it. But, with the Turing Test and my performance is eight organs, electronic organs, old, double keyboard, foot pedal.
A2L: O.k., are these the kind of organ, because I'm as so with you, that have the laminex wood?
A: that's right.
A2L: because I have one with the samba and the 17 pedals, I am so there. you know my grandmother just gave it to me, I put it in my house last week.
A: I find it is really symbolic, well I have collected eight of them from different parts.
A2L: would you like mine as well?
A: Yeah, well. we could burn it perhaps.
A2L: I'm keeping it . It's a family heirloom.
(laughter)
A: I find it very symbolic of the neuclear family, as well as it's not usually considered to be a musical instrument, and they are really cheap at the moment. I had a budget of $400 to collect eight organs, which as been a bit of a challenge, and it has taken me places, and IO have interacted with society on different levels that in itself.
A2L: like a wide variety of home pets ..
A: well if you remember being a kid, how your parents either bought you a piano or an organ to encourage you to be musical and expressive.
A2L: they always bought the boy an organ. for some reason they thought that it was more technological. that's what I have always seen. From what I know, Girls always played the piano and boys play the organ. What did you play?
A: I had neither?
A2L: oh, bummer.
A: well, that is why I am going through this process.
A2L: SEE IT'S YOUR PARENTS FAULT! Blame the parents!
(laughter)
A: I go through this process where I ...
A2L: so you have eight organ..
A: I'm doing this ring, it's symbolic. A lot of my work is religious or subtly religious. The eight organs in a ring are symbolic.
A2L: the holy sactity of the organs.
A: yeah ... they are set up on the N,S,W & E stations, and the chapters that are inbetween, so you also have this stone hendge type effect. The performance specifically is running around that, the ring, with weights slowly moving them up the keyboard to produce a drone. So each organ is individually tuned out of each other as well as the vibrato settings are individual for each organ. Each organ in itslef is it's own performance, and inbetween those spaces, between the organs, they will be clashing and mingling, and producing their own sounds, so the idea is that the space within the Zoo creates standing waves and resonances in that every cubic inch of the performance area is individual. So there isn't a performance or a musician, it's the invigorating of the area.
A2L: the thing as well that someone sitting over there will get a completely different sound to someone sitting over there.
A: It's encouraging the audience to move and to explore each organ and have this familiarity with the organs as well ... going "Wow, I used to have one like that"
A2L: that's right, like way back when grandma and grandpa, my grandparents got divorced the only thing they fought over was who got the organ. So organs where realy fought over back then, so I can understand the holyness of the organ. So that is Tuesday night. So the organs have been done, it's been great, people love it... Thursday night.
A: well, before we get to Thursday night is Wednesday. Wednesday night is ADAPT. We have masterclasses.
A2L: That's right we had some people on last week from ADAPT. It's going to be huge at Metro Arts.
A: It is going to be great. It's really fun being part of it and the development of it and now that it's here it's like 'Oh, God!'
A2L: I wanted to ask you something, because you have your ear to the ground with this whole multi-media and sound. Where all of these artists working this area before MAAP come along or has it taken a festival like that to bring it all to the front?
A: well, ...
A2L: I know that Nude and LowKey Operations have been around for a long time...
A: You'd be surprised. Doing the experimental music show on 4ZZZ, for over a year and a half now. The number of people out in their bedrooms making music is phemominal. I have a regular interaction with about 24 artists in the Brisbane scene who are creating all sorts of noise, experimental music and sound. It's an undercurrent that isn't getting exposure until recently. There was always Dead Air before Atmospheric Disturbances. I've been doing a lot more networking with the local scene. Adapt has really captured that spirit as a professional relationship and a professional development of the artists involved. My talk on wednesday night is specifically concerning noise, experimental music.
A2L: So you have a talk on Wednesday night. What will you be teaching?
A: It's a masterclass. I'm looking more at what is happening in Brisbane as far as experimental music and sound art. The politics behing it and the symbolic representations that it is focusing on our community and our society as expressive people. using experimental music, sound art and noise as a way of communicating, perdominately a musical communication. I find it facinating. A2L: Funny, the way that you talk about it could make it almost a religion. I think that we are discovering some KETTLE religion. You could be like the David Coresh.
A: Well there you go. I might go to Helenvale, I hear there is a position going ..
A2L: The devil's town..
A: O.k., going onto Thursday, the 9 of the 9 at 9 pm going for 9 hours..
A2L: I love this because, there are all these nerds going "Oh my god, Y2K". Forget Y2K, 9999 that could be freaky Do you have a generator for the event? just in case, because you never know.
A: Well the idea of the Drone9 performance at 109 edward street, the Metro arts is positioned as the focal point for this.
A2L: just as well you aren't doing it with 6's.
A: Well imagine if you where in 666, you would have been 'wow, this is really weird'
A2L: well, we wouldn't have been doing experimental music with computers and organs that's for sure.
A: But that whole Y2K event is really interesting because I think that in theory the 9999 event is more important because it all surrounds microprocessors and basic digital calculations. Now, in the microprocessors dates are two movable numbers with a present of 19, so when it turns over to 00, and the computer has the present of 19 that the year is 1900, which presumably create confusion, even to the effect that the computer thinks that 'well I am living in a time before I was designed', so it's mainly concerning the banks and the finance. That's the major problem. With the 9999 there is the theory that it will all click over to 0000, which is more detremental. As well as the really early processors, a lot of the stop codes where 9999 and with the computers taking the source code of the time and date to generate random numbers. Using the 9999 they can then reinterpritate the date as a stop code. Now you think of the home PC's there isn't any mahor trouble theoriticaly. One of the major worries is the old technology that still exists in the nuclear warheads that the russians have. If there is one thing that the whole world should do, that is disarm all the nuclear warheads, because if they have a major problem and they go 'well what the hell is all this, my head just hurts' and then go 'o.k. that's it. lets launch' then we are in major problem.
A2L: So where do you want to be at the armagedon? Listen to Kettle music.
A: That's it. We are creating this drone that will suspend the audience of 9 hours over this time. It's heavily laydened with subliminal mind candy and brainwave generators.
A2L: And this is what you will be dealing with on Thursday night?
VA: Well, this is where my work has lead me to, before that I was looking at collage. A lot of what I was doing before with my computer work was taking the voice ... actually a good way of explaining subliminal mind waves, is if you speak realy nicely to someone or your parents are being really supportive they use certain tones in their voice. Now if you extract those tones, and just experience those tones your head gets the idea that someone is speaking really nicely to you.
A2L: No, that's not true... does it work like pheromones for sound
A: That's the idea of it. Yeah, like pheromones for sound. So putting someone in this state for nine hours is going to make them feel really good, excellent.
A2L: like aural LSD.
A: It's creating tranquility so if there is this destruction, and everything goes pop at 12 o'clock.
A2L: Oh, yeah ... there is a warhead ... it loves me. cool.
A: You are going to be so eurphoric that it doesn't matter. So Drone9 is ...
A2L: You're not going to take advantage of the audience.
A: Well, SEO and I during the event are standing at the focal point. It's the carriage way at metro arts, it's 3 metres by 5 metres by 24 metres. It's bitumen, concrete and wooden ceiling so we are creating standing waves. It's going to be a soup of sound.
A2L: and it goes for nine hours. when you say 9 hours, from 6 o'clock or 9 o'clock.
A: nine o'clock on the 9th of the 9th , 99, until 6 in the morning.
A2L: So basically, when you are out on Thursday night, where ever you might be the APT opening, the Zoo, pop in at some stage.
A: One of the elements of the performance is that it is next door to the Victory, so they are starting up this popular culture next door, and around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning they will be dying off so there will be a mingling of the two areas.
A2L: Do you really want the shombray shirt boys coming in singing to every woman.
A: that interaction is very good, because it is the interaction of cultures and different communities, so it's going to be really fantastic.
A2L: Sparks will fly.
A: It's interactive.
A2L: That's Thursday night at 109 Edward street in the city, and then that is not all that is coming from you this week.
A: Then Saturday night is the ADAPTED performance...
A2L: which is the big party.
A: and then the 17th of September is the Spring Equinoc Festival at City Farm, I'm doing ambient sounds for that. And then at the end of MAAP, I'll be working with David Cox, on his Media Art and Technology film nights. We are doing what he terms, "Telescapes", which is taking a theme and projecting as many different aspects of that theme at once, which is "Space & Place". He has 16mm film, 8mm film and slide. It will be up to five to seven projections and I am doing ambient sound and experimental music for that, as a soundtrack to the movies, and then we are off to Electrofringe down in Newcastle.
A2L: wow, you are out of control. Has this been building up or are you always this busy?
A: It's been building up and now I have gone into this frenzy, so hopefully this is going to be the launching pad for a lot of my work.
A2L: Now do you consider yourself to be a musician or an artists? It's a really blurred area isn't it?
A: Politically I consider myself to be an 'art worker'.
..laughter..
A: Music .. using a language a musician has a specific definition in our culture. Using language as a communication tool, saying 'musician' is confusing, saying 'sound art' is a preferred term that I use..
A2L: And who do you feel more on line with? Do you feel that you are more on par with musicians or artists?
A: I tend to think of myself as being between the two. Where I can move between the two spheres. But they are very much associated with each other.
A2L: It's the future of hybrid arts..
A: Well, It's a diverse culture. We are trying to encourage diversity in our culture. I mean 'Multi-culturalism' is dead, it's 'Cultural Diversity' now. so,..
A2L: There is some much going on, if there is one thing that people have to see it would be the Drone 9 event?
A: Of what I am doing solo? It's by baby..
A2L: I think Anna's tip is to see the organs. Burn, baby burn.
A: Well, Adam and Jeremy's performances at The Turing Test is another story. I can touch on it very quickly.
A2L: Please. Please.
A: As a really cut-down basic idea on the night .. Jeremy is looking at bass modulations between 1 and 13 hrz, and he is creating these 'structures' ...
A2L: I don't like these boys playing with my body in this way ...
A: well, working with sound is a very liberating experience.
A2L: And people are only really getting into it which is very odd.
A: Arr, no not really. There has been a lot on the local scene. I would say that this has just happened. It maybe in it's golden age ..
A2L: So that is what Jeremy is doing. What is Adam doing?
A: well, Jeremy's work as far as space is concerned is creating standing waves in the Zoo, and they are structures and they have a position, so you have to walk through and find these. So, where in one particular space you won't hear the sound, it's won't move, you have to move around and find these spaces, but it also means you can escape if you find that standing wave is effecting your body too much.
(laughter)
A: That is a different use of space and audience. So then with Adam Donovan's piece.. He has been looking at focusing sound. He was doing the piece at the IMA using the dishes. So, to focus the sound he is using weather balloons full of Carbon Dioxide in front of the speakers, Carbon Dioxide focus' sound, so his performance theoriticaly focussing the sound to a specific point, a bit like a checkout. So the audience has to go through that space, to experience specifically his work.
A2L: Arr. You boys are much too smart for me. Andy I am so glad you are taking over the world that is wonderful.
A: It is.
A2L: So in complete summery, Tuesday Night the Zoo, Wednesday afternoon masterclass, wednesday night Atmospheric Disturbances, Thursday at 9 o'clock is the Drone 9 event.
A: So, if we ever come out of that...
A2L: if the warheads don't come there is Saturday night at the Metro Arts. Andy it has been fun talking to you, and if you survive ... well, take care.
A: Thank you.