60 Seconds of Hope

Alaric Sumner (1952-2000) was a writer and performer of distinction and astonishing invention, an artist, an editor, critic and educator. A one time Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, St Ives, latterly he had lectured in Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts in UK, where he was also undertaking doctoral research. He was editor and co-founder of words worth (Journal of Language Arts) and founder and editor of words worth books. In addition, he edited the Writing and Performance section of PAJ = 61 which includes an interview with Reedy and work by Reedy, Upton, Cheek and Bergvall, was UK Associate Editor of Masthead Literary Arts Magazine (edited by Alison Croggan in Melbourne, Australia), and the Sound/Text section of the Fall 1999 Issue of Riding the Meridian. His performance work has been presented throughout Europe and North America. Of particular note, the prize-winning Voices (for 9) was performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1994. His collaboration with Joseph Hyde, Nekyia (for speaker, singer, electroacoustics and video) toured during 1999-2000. Its last scheduled performance took place at Nunnery Gallery in London, shortly after Sumner's death, with Joseph Hyde and Steve Halfyard (singer) and with Lawrence Upton taking the place of Sumner as speaker. Hyde presented a recorded version of Nekyia at the later as celebration at Dartington. The Unspeakable Rooms (a collaboration with Rory McDermott funded by the Arts Council of England) was described by Frank Green in the Cleveland Free Times as "one of the most powerful performances I've ever witnessed, and I've attended hundreds - a difficult masterpiece". His collaborations with sound artist John Levack Drever have been broadcast and performed in concerts around the world and published on CDs from ISEA and Doc(k)s. Joseph Hyde used Alaric's texts from Nekyia in his CDRom work for Performance Research. Dr John Levack Drever, Lecturer, studied Music at the University of Wales, Bangor, followed by a Master study in Electroacoustic Music Composition at the University of East Anglia. In 2001 he was awarded a PhD from Dartington College of Arts, titled 'Phonographies: Practical and Theoretical Explorations into Composing with Disembodied Sound'. Prior to coming to Goldsmiths he was a visiting lecturer in Visual Arts, Media Arts and Media Lab Arts at the University of Plymouth, lectured on Electroacoustic composition at Exeter University and tutored on a wide range of interdisciplinary courses at Dartington College of Arts. From 2000 to 2002 he was a Research Assistant for the Digital Crowd, University of Plymouth, co-ordinating Sounding Dartmoor, a public soundscape study of Dartmoor (www.sounding.org.uk). He is a co-founder and director of the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (affiliated to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology), for whom he chaired Sound Practice: the 1st UKISC Conference on sound, culture and environments, and is an elected director of Sonic Arts Network. From 2003-04 he was an ACE/AHRB Arts and Science Research Fellow with Centre for Computational Creativity, Department of Computing, City University, exploring electronic music performance interfaces that learn from their users. He regularly presents his work internationally in a wide range of contexts including concert hall, radio, Internet, cathedral, catwalk, ice cream van, classroom, fine art gallery, theatre, dance, video and for specific sites. Much of his work is collaborative working with Alice Oswald, Alaric Sumner, Lawrence Upton, Louise K. Wilson, Tony Lopez, Tony Whitehead and Blind Ditch, and has a special interest in human utterance and environmental sound. He has twice won a prize in the annual Musica Nova competition, Prague.

CFR: n. Arch. 184.22