Sparky Conversations #8: The Ecological Soundwalk - Balancing Advocacy and Abstraction with Robert Coleman

Sparky Conversations are monthly online community conversation events that bring composers, performers and contemporary music practitioners together to explore big topics, dive deep and spark ideas! All are welcome to ask questions, share experiences and engage with a broad range of issues affecting the music community, and our world at large. 

CMC Composer and Sound Artist Robert Coleman gives an insight into his current practice and ideas around Ecological Sound Art and why the soundwalk has become the ideal format for his work in connecting audiences to nature. At the core of this approach is the tension and balance between an advocacy for nature, and the creative and abstract expressions of sound art and music.

Robert Coleman

Composer Robert Coleman’s current work draws from numerous fields such as soundscape studies, site-specific art, field recording, and community and participatory arts. In 2019 he completed his Masters studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Yannis Kyriakides and Diderik Wagenaar and having also previously studied architecture his work often features spatial concepts and metaphors as frameworks for the composition process. He is currently a PhD student at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast focusing on Ecological Sound Art. He has been commissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Crash Ensemble and New Music Dublin, the National Concert Hall Dublin, Irish National Opera, Tallaght Community Arts, violinist Larissa O’Grady and others. Highly active in artistic direction he is a founding member and performer with Dublin based experimental music group Kirkos and in 2023 he founded the School of Wild Listening, a platform for the discussion and dissemination of ecological sound art. Its aim is to promote an understanding of the living world and the current challenges we face through open and accessible listening and creative sound events.

Register

This is a free, online event designed for composers, performers, and those with an interest in contemporary music on the island of Ireland.

Closed captioning will be available. If you have specific access needs to join this event, please let us know via the registration form.

Register for the Zoom event here.

To view the full Sparky Conversations Autumn/Winter Schedule click here.