Dr Jon Pigott
Jon Pigott is an artist, researcher and academic whose work explores sound, materials, systems and (occasionally) place. His practice based research draws in histories and theories of sound art, kinetic sculpture and technology as well as various making processes including digital fabrication and hand made electronics. His written publications, like his artworks, often draw together themes from science and technology studies with artistic practices.
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Speaker Park, 2019.
Speaker Park was an internationally curated collaborative event combining the production of a sculptural, multi-loudspeaker installation with two original and bespoke musical compositions. Jon Pigott’s sculptural speaker designs were combined with those of Roar Sletteland to create an immersive 24 channel speaker environment – a Speaker Park. The installation was conceived as a bespoke sculptural sound system which works as an alternative to and as a critique of the commercial high-end technological systems typically used for the electronic production and reproduction of sound. The aim of the project was to forgo the established technological norm of linear and predicable speaker design and all the conveniences that accompany that in order to foreground particular themes and pursue a creative method that forces unique and unusual decision making in the organisation and production of sound.
The installation premiered at the Borealis Festival of Sound Art and Experimental Music, 6th – 10th March 2019. The installation was subsequently exhibited at the gallery Oseana Kunst & Kultursenter also in Bergen, Norway, 2019). Speaker Park was commissioned and curated by the WRAP centre for artistic production in Bergen with funding from the city of Bergen and the Norwegian Arts Council. Compositions by Dr Antti Sakari Saario and Mari Kvien Brunvoll were created specifically for the installation. A publication is forthcoming.
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‘Across fields: sound, art and technology from an electromechanical perspective’, Organised Sound 22(2): 276–285. 2017.
This article follows electromechanical technologies through different contexts of electronic and experimental music, sound art and kinetic art as well as through parts of their industrial development and application. The aim is to explore connections between these different fields which are often obscured by disciplinary and genre divides, and which are typically unrepresented by critical and historical accounts. The approach is influenced by the field of science and technology studies (STS, also science technology and society) where technical and cultural entanglements are seen as crafting particular truths, and where the method of following a technology across disciplinary boundaries is found. By taking this approach to identify connections between the areas of electronic music, sound art and kinetic art, new and rediscovered critical appraisals of the use of electromechanical technologies as tools in creative sound production are identified. These positions are then applied to a selection of contemporary practitioners who continue to work with and forefront electromechanical technologies within the fields of electronic music and sound art. Click here for the journal website.
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Further information on Jon Pigott’s work can be found on his website.
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