EP#95: Pushing the Boundaries of Sound: Oram Awards Special

What unique facets of our existence and identity does sound allow us to explore as women and gender diverse artists? This is one of the big questions that emerges inside this conversation with three of the five 2024 Oram Award winners.

Whether it be through choreography, performance art, hacking or design, Lola De La Mata, xname and The Silver Field are all artists who have come to sound through alternative pathways. Inside this episode, you’ll learn about the role that sound and experimental music plays in their practice, how they harness technology to express deeply personal and sensitive experiences and we’ll also listen to some of their work too. 

You’ll also learn more from one of the 2024 judges Dr Mariam Rezaei about the Oram Awards themselves, including the judging process and how you can apply for the next round. 

Find out more about:

• The Oram Awards >>
• xname >>
• The Silver Field >>
• Lola De La Mata >>
• Dr Mariam Rezaei >>
• Girls Twiddling Knobs >>
• Isobel Anderson >>

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Girls Twiddling Knobs is hosted by Isobel Anderson and produced by Isobel Anderson and Jade Bailey.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:53 Who was Daphne Oram?
• 5:05 Mariam’s practice and her judging process
• 9:47 About the winners of the 2024 Oram Awards
• 9:50 The Silver Field on her track Tell Me When You Want To Go
• 11:50 About The Silver Field
• 19:21 What made The Silver Field stand out to the judging panel
• 20:39 Intro to xname
• 26:56 xname on her track 109 Balfron Tower
• 30:29 What made xname stand out to the judging panel
• 31:55 Intro to Lola De La Mata
• 42:43 Lola on her track Stereocilia
• 43:24 What made Lola stand out to the judging panel
• 44:20 What does sound experimentation offer to gender diverse artists?
• 51:22 Music as solace and liberation
• 55:20 Where to find out more about the Orams and the artists
• 57:07 Outro

Transcript

00:01.05
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
So thank you so much for joining me, Lola, Coral, Elianora and Mariam. It's been really lovely to be able to get you all together. I'm surprised we managed it because if everyone's schedules are probably quite busy.

00:14.54
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Let's kick off the conversation first by just talking about what the ORAM Awards are for anyone that doesn't know. Maybe we could come to you, Mariam.

00:24.64
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Can you tell us about Daphne ORAM and how the rewards are kind of honoring her work.

00:25.42
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Yeah.

00:32.68
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Well, Orem worked and innovated with many different collaborators and on her own with her own solo work in the studio and with various different electronics. One of the things I think is most interesting about Daphne Orem's work is the innovation which is key, I think, to all of her work lies in the use of technology and how she worked and interacted with the technology. So it's really a wonderful thing to be part of the Orem Awards and to learn and discover about all of the brilliant talent across the UK with women in in and different gender diverse minorities that are interacting and innovating

01:15.15
Dr Mariam Rezaei
with technology, finding time to experiment. And I think really, most importantly, looking for something new. So the Orem Awards, I feel, as they have done every year and very much so this year, they're celebrating that experiment, that innovative look in use with technology, and of course, just making brilliant new music.

01:40.80
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Excellent. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. And so, Mariam, you were one of the judges. You also have your own practice in experimental music, turntableism, composing. So perhaps could you just tell us a little bit about your um work and then how that informed your judging process, I guess?

01:59.90
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Well, I suppose on a very personal note, I know how lonely it can be to be somebody in a little, you know, I'm based in the northeast of England, out in Gateshead, next to Newcastle. So I'm often away from the bigger, larger hubs and larger cities in in in England, like I'm not in London.

02:21.00
Dr Mariam Rezaei
There aren't a great deal of turn tableists in the UK.

02:23.81
Lola de la Mata
So.

02:23.96
Dr Mariam Rezaei
So, you know, I felt quite isolated over the years. um I understand what it can feel like to be disparate, to feel separated from different communities.

02:34.88
Dr Mariam Rezaei
It's also been one of the sort of enabling and positive pushes and forces behind my needs to experiment and to find solace within sound.

02:46.61
Dr Mariam Rezaei
And that's something that I think comes across in my work. I interact with music on a very femoral level. I'm very interested in the turntable as an object, the record as an object. I'm also interested in materialism and how sound is an object that is beyond the body and how we work with that, how we pull that up up apart.

03:08.03
Dr Mariam Rezaei
The turntable is still a very mysterious and new instrument in many respects, I think all technology is. I think it's up to the person using that to consider it that way and to begin to see the endless new possibilities.

03:23.47
Dr Mariam Rezaei
The turntable allows me to consider how I'm going to work with sound, and I'm very interested in sample culture. And once you can see beyond the ideas and the bounds and constructs of genre, the possibilities really are endless.

03:42.46
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, I love that. I think that's a really wonderful way of describing it and also that sense of kind of being othered or feeling kind of outside of something and then how that informs how you engage with sound and the way that that allows you to kind of explore it as a ah ah language that's quite intimate.

03:57.00
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Yeah.

04:04.51
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
So, Mariam, you you you have this experience yourself of being a woman in this arena. And then, you know, when you come to judging the works, what is the process that happens in the ORMs of judging? Because I'm aware there's people who will be really intrigued and maybe wanting to submit to the ORMs next year, but maybe don't know what it involves. Maybe don't know what you're looking for.

04:34.23
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Can you tell us about that process?

04:36.91
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Well, I would think the first thing that I should say is if you're considering it, please go ahead and do it. We need to see more people applying, putting themselves forward. I know what it's like being from ah various different minority groups, the lack of confidence that we can sometimes feel. Yes, we feel like outsiders. Please don't be held back by that. I want to say if you nobody else tells you, go for You can only be in it to win it.

05:04.89
Dr Mariam Rezaei
And if you don't enter, you never know. As part of the process, of the different judges, we all spent a fair bit of time listening, reading through, watching. you was lots of different kinds of submissions. It's not just written. There's also video and oral. And really getting to know the work of all of the different artists. So there is a process and there's a scoring process where we we consider where the innovation lies and the use of and and how artists are interacting with technology. also the potential to see where that artist is going and in the application artists talk about how they work with technology, what the wishes are, what kind of support they're looking for. all of these things are taken into consideration and the judges get together for a day and we all spend that time talking and discussing and

05:59.08
Dr Mariam Rezaei
I think the biggest thing that I want to express to everyone is it's all positive. There's never enough money to so share. aren't ever enough awards to give. And the Orem Awards are bursting desperate to support as many artists as possible. that's our wish, of course. if we had a million pounds, we would give it away every year, you know?

06:20.33
Dr Mariam Rezaei
But, you know, the RM Awards are working and they're getting stronger and stronger every year and more prizes are happening and more exciting things are happening. So yeah, be in it to win it, go for it, don't hold back and you never know what's going to happen.

06:35.46
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yes, I think that's really good advice. And so we have three of this year's winners with us so we'll come, um I'm excited to come and speak to um you, three of you in a minute about your work. Just wanted to make sure that we kind of flag who the winners are this year. So there's five winners and it's Hannah Tuliki, Lola de la Marta who is here with us, the Silverfield who is here with us, X name who's here with us today and also Dali de Saint Paul. So but before we come and speak to Coral, Lola and X name, Mariam can you tell us what was it about these five winners

07:16.03
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
If you can think of something, I know it's difficult because their practice is also varied, but can you tell us what it was it that made you choose these five winners as a judging panel, do you think?

07:26.21
Dr Mariam Rezaei
In each application of the winners, there was one thing about how they were interacting with technology. That was something new. That was very clear. And also the way in which these artists were working with technology shone very immediately into the future. So it was very clear for us as judges to see where the through line of the artist's work is going towards.

07:53.21
Dr Mariam Rezaei
I don't really know what else to say about that because it was just super clear and there was this this list of ah the applicants where perhaps it wasn't as clear where they might want to go, but they had some really great work.

07:56.91
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah.

08:05.89
Dr Mariam Rezaei
But I think that the artists that all applied that one in the end made it really crystal clear. And and wasn't about using fancy language.

08:16.23
Dr Mariam Rezaei
I think it was a passion and a ah ah real, a brutal honesty as to where things are now and where they need to go. And that changed and resonated with the ah judges.

08:29.52
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, no, that's really clear. Thank you. I think that's really useful for people to hear because it's really important therefore to the awards that you're finding people who are interacting with technology in new and very specific ways.

08:42.64
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
So with that, I would really like to talk to the winners that we have here. Coral, I'd like to come to you first. So Coral, your artist name is The Silver Field.

08:51.44
Coral
Sure. It is, yeah.

08:55.05
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
And so would you like to just tell us a bit about your work in general first?

09:01.15
Coral
Sure, yeah. As the Silverfield, I've released a couple of albums over the last few years and I guess like working with tape loops is what really got me into composing. I never studied music so it's been a sort of making through doing kind of journey. And through experimenting with take loops that got me into experimenting with electronics and then was really lucky to get the Arts Council developing your creative practice in 2021 and that was all about learning how to actually make my own circuits, make my own instruments with

09:38.88
Coral
with analog technology basically.

09:41.50
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Mm.

09:42.41
Coral
Which is is funny you say about interacting with technology in new ways because I always read that and I saw what people were doing with the ORMs and it's often very new technology that people are interacting with in these interesting ways.

09:54.00
Coral
So I was like, maybe this isn't for me, but because I'm in, you know, the circuits that I'm the components that I'm using, it's all like circuit design that's been around for since the 60s and the 70s and stuff. It's it's old technology, but I guess I am. Yeah, I am interacting with it in in new ways by making. So I make.

10:12.91
Coral
got got yeah I make instruments and I also make music and I'm still sort of working out how those two things fit together. I do use the instruments in the in the music that I make but I made an instrument a couple years ago that was with an online residency thing as I was just in my studio at home but it was based on sort of the environment that I can see out the window right now which is like at the back of our house there's an old quarry or like industrial area like an old train station and it's been abandoned for about 20-25 years something like that

10:52.32
Coral
I'm living back in my hometown right now so I remember when it was less abandoned when I was a kid it's kind of interesting but through um through lockdown and stuff I was just walking there a lot and just so inspired by how it was the environment was kind of rewilding itself and the amount of like diversity of plants and animals and stuff that is there now is amazing there's bee orchids and there's like yeah so many species of just life, just life coming back into it.

11:22.59
Coral
So I made this instrument inspired by that, by like sort of the sounds of this environment and like the cycles.

11:23.06
Lola de la Mata
Thank you.

11:28.42
Coral
it's all really kind of simple circuits that are of using using as few components as possible and making them sort of a bit unpredictable and a bit sort of wonky and a bit hard to control but it the instrument itself has become this environment where you never quite know what's it's essentially a modular synthesizer and that you can sort of patch bits together and there's a kind of control voltage system going on but um Yeah, it's been interesting trying to integrate that into my sort of previous composition practice because it is such an environment in itself. It's this sort of quite unique sounding sort of space.

12:07.55
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Well, I'd love to listen to a little bit of one of your tracks that you've given us, Carl.

12:12.58
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
So the one that you sent over is Tell Me When You Want To Go.

12:16.58
Coral
Yeah.

12:16.91
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
So we'll listen to a little bit of that now.

12:19.96
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Okay, so that was Tell Me When You Want To Go. So, Coral, can you tell us a bit about this track? I'm just picking up on what you said before we listened to it about this kind of almost like creating an instrument that has its own sort of ecosystem that's a bit unpredictable.

12:37.06
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
I definitely feel that in this track, it feels very expansive. It feels

12:41.79
Coral
The instrument isn't actually in this track.

12:43.98
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, no, no, but but it feels like the sound world that you're making in that track is very, it's very expansive and it's very spacey, but yeah, or also contained in a funny way.

12:48.24
Coral
Right, right. Yeah.

12:57.92
Coral
That's a nice way of talking about it. Yeah, that's one that's got like a tape loop as sort of the backing, which is kind of this thing that I've been doing for ages as is kind of like way of collaborating with the technology in a way.

13:10.78
Coral
When you're recording into a tape loop, it throws something back at you that you weren't expecting. There's some rhythm in there. There's some melodic structure that you didn't know was going to be there. So it feels like a sort of collaboration with uncertainty, I guess.

13:25.52
Coral
But yeah, creating an environment, I guess, always feels important to me or interacting with some sort of sonic environment.

13:34.70
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Do you know what that sense of an environment means to you? Why is that important?

13:40.73
Coral
space to be i think you know um i think it's perhaps one of the reasons a lot of women make electronic music um it's it's it's ah world you can go into away from this one isn't it um you can i don't know i really enjoyed what you were saying myriam about like finding solace i think you said or like um yeah this kind of

14:10.18
Coral
I don't know, just a ah ah different perspective or something within sound. I loved it, it was so inspiring what you said.

14:19.62
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, i and thinking about the sort of the the technology and the piece that we just heard, Coral, can you dissect a bit more of that for us in case anyone's listening thinking, oh, how did you do that?

14:27.06
Coral
Hmm. Hmm.

14:33.08
Coral
uh there is well there's a tape loop as yeah as i said as the backing there is um

14:39.53
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
And for anyone that doesn't know what that is, Coral, can you tell us what that means?

14:43.67
Coral
I can't remember if I did it with reel-to-reel or with a cassette tape. You can cut basically just cut a loop of tape and then you're recording onto that loop and you don't necessarily know where the start and the start points of that are going to be. It's not accurate like sort of a sampler where you can sort of choose the thing but you just get this loop that's literally just a circle of tape and when you're playing it back you get this sort of repeating rhythm that kind of works as like a a drone or like a a a motif or something that can last through something.

15:19.45
Coral
um um And then there's a Eurorack module that I use in that. It's called Arbar. It's like a granular sampler that you record like 12 seconds of sound into, and then you can pick all the little bits from it. It's an incredibly inspiring instrument. I love it. So that's got the vocal line that sort of tell me when you want to go vocal melody recorded into it, and then I'm sort of scrolling through it. You can hear that more towards the end.

16:11.36
Coral
m

16:13.05
Lola de la Mata
It is.

16:13.68
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
But yeah, and I think sometimes it's combining things that we don't associate with these types of technologies that really bring new perspectives to them, doesn't it?

16:13.90
xname
Yes,

16:14.83
Coral
guess it

16:23.11
Coral
The clarinet is the instrument that sounds most like a synthesizer, in my opinion. It's got this amazing timbre of...

16:31.43
Coral
It's almost like a square wave sound. It's beautiful. I used to play with a clarinet player and she moved to Berlin.

16:36.51
xname
it is.

16:41.01
Coral
And then this year I bought one from the car boot sale and I've been teaching myself, which has been really nice. Um.

16:47.26
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah. and and Well, thanks so much for sharing a bit of, you know, of the technological components that make up, at least that track,

16:51.52
Coral
Oh. oh

16:55.77
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
I was wondering, Mariam, can you share a little bit about what made Choral's work stand out to you in the judging panel?

17:04.99
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Yeah, was very clear that choral is interested in building an instrument making, which I think in one of the most sort of, yeah, it's, how do I put this? I'm trying not to say the word literal, but it literally is innovating by building an instrument building. So that was something I think that was very appealing. Choral of course isn't the only person to have won the Orem awards this year who is also an instrument builder. But also the interaction with different forms and formats of sound making and the processes was very clear that there's some very interesting new ideas coming through. And then Coral just hearing you talk about it as well, it was just exactly what we were thinking, you know,

17:49.74
Dr Mariam Rezaei
all these different instruments coming together, the way that you interact with them. And yeah, and I'm also like you, you know, a big fan of analog and using the old technology in a new way. And yeah, and after doing all of these, you know, working and with all this kind of these different forms of processes to then make beautiful music. I mean, that's really hard to do. But that's also what we're all aiming for. And that's something that Corel has most certainly achieved.

18:19.18
Coral
Oh thank you so much, that's lovely.

18:21.05
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
me Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your work, Coral, and telling us a bit about it. We're going to come back and have more of a sort of group discussion, but I now want to move on to talk to X name and your artist name, Elianora is your person name.

18:38.89
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Elianora, could you tell us a little bit about your work as well?

18:45.00
xname
So I'm probably the other ah person person who's also building instruments among the winners. I'm an artist, I'm a media artist, I actually started from visual arts and painting and critical theory and then I moved towards radio, DJing, VJing in the 90s and pure data, early 2000s, I was making really cableistic minimal tech.

19:14.12
xname
I have been traveling all over the world more or less oscillating between interactive installations and performances. And music making became more ah prevalent when I moved to London. I'm Italian, so I'm from Milan. I studied in Bologna, and then I moved to Holland to work at the Netherlands Institute for Media Art for many years.

19:39.38
xname
and there I was more working with videos because I was working with a lot of video artists and so was composing on images, I started to compose and I didn't consider myself a musician but I needed sound for some of my work and then I started composing and it kind of became of like it's more like music came to me than than opposite because also when I lived in Bologna at some point like people would come and say oh we have a spare mixer we leave it at your place or do you mind to put some of the music and then never push me on stage and I was like no but why so it kind of I never really decided it

20:23.11
xname
but somehow it it it came to me and it's interesting because as child I was really interested in music and I wanted to play the piano and it was the story that ah ah my parents didn't want me to study music and then I thought of teaching myself and I drew all the notes so it was pre-internet so you had to do some research how to teach yourself something was a bit more complicated than now with a couple of YouTube videos But then i was sort of punished for for attempting to study music. So I i i see somehow the desire to also building instruments as a way to fulfill the fact of not having access to musical instruments and education, but wanting to make sound. And I think often my approach is very

21:11.62
xname
It still comes from visual arts and arts. I started making music with lights and that was a sort of reaction to a computer burnout moment. I was just always in Holland working or ah making video, working as a video editor, but also hacking a lot in the kind of activist hacking community and at some point I just started to make ah sounds with solar panels and they were also very very very cheap to build small robots but really interesting play with and then as I developed that as one of my performances then in London people started to call me musician

21:59.68
xname
and ask me more of that and more of of composing, making studio works, which for me has been always a little bit, I don't know, I wouldn't say difficult because I can, you know, if you tell me, okay, make it track, I'll do it. It's just like that decision of wanting to make an album. So now, for example, with the grant receive, I committed to that. So I can do it, but I think it's just this idea of really accepting yourself as as producer,

22:30.65
xname
I mean that may be like the sort of like female or female identified. I tend to see that women um um or women identified challenge themselves more. It's like before you can really consider yourself something or you can engage into into a definition, you really think about it a lot and try and experiment a lot. So right now I'm from making music with lights, which is a very also hypnotic way of making music. And my play with technology is always going come come towards

23:14.59
xname
somehow using also technology to ah experiment with the invisible, with our identity and also the sort of lost of the brain and meditation and this kind of telepathy or ah ah some exploration of the sense of magic because I could see a lot of parallels with that. So I moved at some point towards using the electromagnetic field like invisible frequencies.

23:43.22
xname
And I made an instrument which was actually ready on the centenary of the theremin. And it is like the theremin, it's called rebus, it's like the theremin, it is a contactless interaction instrument. it uses electromagnetic waves, not electric field sensing. And it's quite advanced technologically in terms of like, you know, newest technology, new design, so to say, it's,

24:46.02
xname
aspect of that of course there was first first huge wall just to climb and then there was like errors and then impossibilities people even told me it's impossible what you want to do at the beginning I was like great I want to do it

25:00.86
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Excellent. Well, Elianora, I want to just play some of your music for people to hear. So you have shared 109 Balfour and Tower, so we're just going to take a little listen to that now.

25:15.42
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
OK, so that was an excerpt of 109 Bal from Tower. Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on in this particular track, please, Elianora?

25:24.37
xname
Yes, so this is actually a track that I chose because it contains, it's made exclusively with my own instruments and ah ah it contains ah ah the bots with, you know, my live bots and some proto.

25:45.02
xname
ah ah experiments, pre-reboos with electromagnetic field sensing, but because I was living at 109 Balfourne Tower, so I was at the 19th floor of the infamous Brutalist building in Balfourne Tower,

26:02.75
xname
And I did a lot of art projects there and also a lot of experiments because being so high, I was um um working so for example, the rebus is active instrument. So it sends and receives electromagnetic waves. But these instruments that are there are mainly receiving, um detecting microwaves in the environment.

26:25.90
xname
but I used the gigantic antennas that I kindly borrowed from the antennas laboratory with Mary's or something that maybe would cost, I don't know, 6,000 pounds, not exactly what you take every day to your gigs, but I was somehow with these standard gain horns really a chip that would detect the prevalent frequency in the environment and because the prevalent frequencies in the environments are constantly changing in in the city because.

26:57.19
xname
was like London City Airport and then Canary Wharf. The Balfourne Tower is in Poplar, so there was all this electromagnetic environment which ah ah um is full of events and sounds and influences that ah reach us, but we are not aware of that. So this exploration on on also sound and the electromagnetic field as both like waves of a different kind. Pressure waves on the one hand or ah know waves that go in the voids. And then also playing with this idea of

27:39.40
xname
and difference in both perception ah between working with lights and an invisible frequency. So in that track that's really a in between performance and studio track because it was like alien gems asked me for a track and then I was like okay I have to do it I don't know I don't I don't want to sit in at the computer so I'm just gonna connect everything and record a home so it's it's sort of ah ah performed the home but then I did edit did some some of it to you know I took the material and I re-edited it

28:15.60
xname
a bit in logic so this this is how that track comes so there is basically almost no instruments only circuits that are there

28:26.82
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Wonderful. Thank you so much for telling us about the components of that and of your process as well. Mariam, can you share what was it about Elianora's work that drew the panel to pick her as one of the winners?

28:43.74
Dr Mariam Rezaei
I think it's really clear that Elianora experiments in several different veins and channels at the same time. I think one of the things that's very impressive is to see the instrument building, like the rebus, and also just hearing their X name discussing exactly how those instruments operate, how different circuits and and different elements of the composition all interact. Of course, instruments are, for me, instruments are very much compositions in their own right. So it's really wonderful to see and hear understanding coming from

29:18.79
Dr Mariam Rezaei
different young musicians who, yeah, also the the electromagnetic sensors, you know, you've built an instrument that makes very site-specific composition I think that really taps into the nerve of bearing witness and that's very much, I feel, the zeitgeist of music making today. It's about the experience and manifests into how audiences experience and of course You know, X name works with sound and also other mixed media. So it is an experience very much. So a performance that absolutely speaks loud and clear from X name's work. And so for us, it was very clear that support should be happening there, you know.

30:05.34
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, excellent.

30:06.96
xname
Thank you.

30:07.71
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Well, finally, I'd love to speak to Lola de la Mata about your work. And so you are also one of the winners this year.

30:17.29
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Can you tell us a bit about your practice?

30:21.19
Lola de la Mata
Sure. think it's a recurring theme that we all come from something other than sound originally. studied weaving and printmaking and from that kind of found my way to studying dance notation and working with dancers and eventually came across something that we probably all know now, but graphic notation, which

30:47.46
Lola de la Mata
Even though i I had studied violin as a child but stopped quite early on, I was kind of rejected by Guildhall. I went to the kiddie school and so did it when I was really young, but I really enjoyed how all the learning that I was doing was more through the body.

31:06.49
Lola de la Mata
It was a lot of mimicry and movement, and that's how we would kind of play, I guess. So I really enjoyed the choreography side, I think, of understanding music, which it's probably why I still don't know music theory, and I enjoy improvising so much a very physical way. So where am I? Dance notation, graphic scores,

31:33.17
Lola de la Mata
And then improvisation. Yes. I started improvising with people, but I was the only woman in the space. There was a very big difference in age as well. And it became a challenging environment because I was I don't know, different, I guess, and new. And so I got a lot of unwanted attention. And so was part of an ensemble, a trio and a duet, and I kind of had to move away from all of those spaces. And it took a while to find my way back, but actually it was through doing collaborations with people outside of the music space.

32:17.83
Lola de la Mata
I did projects with dancers and theatre makers and bits of film I collaborated with queer performance artists as well who for me were kind of bringing out a bit of a rebellious and some sort of kind of protest.

32:35.68
Lola de la Mata
It took me a while to know what it was that I wanted to say. so for a while that was kind of what I was doing. I was curating projects and I did something with Non-Classical for a while, I was one of their alumni, then I was curating with Feminist Library in Peckham and we did some projects then eventually, well I should also add that my health kind of kept preventing me from doing things so I would have a lot of setbacks.

33:07.44
Lola de la Mata
and there was about three years where I was homebound and I kept having issues with speech and mobility and so that kind of put things on hold and so I kept having to kind of bind It's almost like the technology I keep having to rework as is myself. one of the things that kind of occurred was that I lost my hearing in my left ear for a while. And when it did kind of troubleshoot, I should say, that's a way of putting it, I guess, it has all of these new tones attached to it. So I have really very intense tinnitus that also causes vertigo. And although it's been about four years now since

33:50.07
Lola de la Mata
I had the initial issue occur. still have, in a slightly more quieter way, this very, very present tinnitus. And so I was actually told that I should stop working in sounds, that I should start playing the violin, which obviously has a sound box right here, because it was really having devastating impacts on my on my health. And so I taught for a while. I taught a master's program. It was the Royal College of Music, and it was the history of electronic music, but more practice-based for, but again, I was the only woman in the room. um um And I was actually younger than a lot of the students, which was interesting. And so I think the work that I've been doing

34:40.63
Lola de la Mata
for the last three or so years with the help of a DYCP has been to a a kind of dive into the ear.

34:46.44
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Mm.

34:47.72
Lola de la Mata
don't believe that I should give up sound because my hearing is different. I can't believe that was something that was even pushed on me.

34:59.13
Lola de la Mata
And so so ah very dissatisfied with the and NHS and their approach with my particular case, not generally. want to make that really clear. I started researching individuals who were working in the neurological field, neuroscientific field, and kind of seeing how they were writing about the ear and sound. And I came across this lab in New York called the Hudspeth Lab.

35:26.67
Lola de la Mata
run by James Hudspeth and they research the capacity that the ear or the cochlear has, I should say, of producing its own sounds. So not an echo, not a reverb, but really its own spontaneous emissions.

35:41.50
Lola de la Mata
so we talked for a while and they invited me out there to visit their labs and meet with the different kind of biophysicists there who were working on different elements of the cochlear. And a collaboration just kind of happened. I think that's the wonderful thing about working on the kind of fringes of sound is that you don't and not being composed in the traditional sense, you know that something will probably a arise because it's connection and communication and exchange, whatever. But there was no defined plan of I will make something from meeting these people.

36:24.14
Lola de la Mata
And so just interviewing one of the biophysicists and recording elements of his equipment and some of the sounds from the experiment you know, that led to a track on the record that I put out in May. And then actually the organizer of the sort of secretary, but organizer of the space was also a musician or is a musician, I should say. And ah we ended up having collaboration, which was from

36:53.75
Lola de la Mata
a place of how she was an outsider in the scientific context and would sit in all of these, you know, group meetings and hear all of this terminology, which in music had a very different meaning to the way it was being employed in that context. So things like, you know, Pink Noise, which I relate to is like Tara Rogers's book,

37:16.51
Lola de la Mata
And yeah, and we think of Pink Noise in a very different way than, you know, a neuroscientific community would, which is all about kind of chaos and data. And so, yeah, so we we we kind of, she lifted all that terminology out. And then we had this kind of fusion of, she was really interested in baroque music and aspects, almost like pantomime coming into that.

37:42.61
Lola de la Mata
then I thought we would meet as kind of two solos and my main improvisatory kind of object would be my violin because it's my first voice other than you know, my speaking voice. So that was kind of that project. But aside from that, sorry, I'll stop talking soon. Aside from that, I'm also an instrument maker in a way. But in the most analog, going way back way, I work with clay, I work with glass. And for me, it's a way of touching, grasping for like the inner middle and inner ear. So you can't get in there, it's inside bone.

38:25.07
Lola de la Mata
you know, it's in your skull. And you definitely can't touch tinnitus. It's this kind of rattling sound, which you can't see on scans and you can't touch. And so for me, it was really, and like is probably, ah ah this is what I pitched to the Orem, which was to really make instruments that were from the physical form or from imagined kind of,

38:53.12
Lola de la Mata
I started imagining that there were creatures living inside the oceans that we have in our cochleas. that are related to the the actual biological forms that are there but also like we have silica which is the also what glass is obviously so I was looking at other deep sea creatures that existed that were silica based and anyway so my project's a bit mad and all over the place but that's that's kind of what I'm doing

39:23.16
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much for for for sharing all of that, Lola. I would love to hear a little bit of your work. You've shared a track which is called Oceans on Azimuth.

39:36.52
Lola de la Mata
So that's actually the album.

39:38.21
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Oh,

39:38.74
Lola de la Mata
actually the track that I shared is called Stereocilia.

39:41.42
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Ah, yes, yeah.

39:42.64
Lola de la Mata
I included it thinking more about the twiddling knobs audience, but actually it doesn't quite back up the things I've been talking about.

39:53.91
Lola de la Mata
it's a nice a kind of connection with X name because I'm actually playing a theremin on there and it's the theremin that was created for the centennial by Moog, it's the Clarevox theremin, which is a bit of a wild beast and they're definitely not supporting the instrument so it has all, but I love that, it has all of these pitfalls and it's kind of,

40:20.62
Lola de la Mata
that you can't control it, you have to just blindly go with it. And so I, yeah, so the track Stereocilia is it's the name of the hair cell bundles that are inside the coplia, which are what vibrates and kind of how the brain interprets pitch. And so I've written this kind of like,

40:44.15
Lola de la Mata
It's almost like a love song to my ear. I've just realised in this moment that that's totally what that was. Sorry. Oh, that's weird. And and it's actually just me singing and kind of duetting with this wild beast of a theremin.

41:04.60
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
excellent so so the whole track is your voice and this theremin then yeah yeah and did you layer up different recordings of the theremin it's not just one performance yeah yeah because there's a lot of textures going on aren't there yeah

41:08.80
Lola de la Mata
Yes.

41:14.68
Lola de la Mata
Oh yeah, absolutely. No, no, no. Yeah, my live performances and my recorded material are almost separate. Well, they are pretty separate. I don't find that...

41:30.33
Lola de la Mata
Well, a lot of my work when it's performed is silent because I really enjoy like experimenting with kind of loudness, visual loudness, but actually it's mostly silence. And so there's a massive amount of physicality and a bit of drama and a bit of fetish in there, I would say. And that just doesn't translate to audio at all because it would just be half a narrow silence, basically.

41:58.00
Lola de la Mata
So yeah, my recorded work is very woven, actually. It's a lot of layers, a lot of texture, and there's this density, for sure.

42:07.35
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to take a little listen to stereocilia now. Okay, so that was a section of Stereocilia by Lola de la Mata. I just want to come to Mariam. Mariam, what was it about Lola's work that stood out to the panel?

42:26.58
Dr Mariam Rezaei
It's very clear that Lola has a very sophisticated approach to music making and her history of working with sound from improvisation to graphic scores, ensemble and solo work. So that was like very clearly informed.

42:45.13
Dr Mariam Rezaei
The immediacy and pertinence of Lola's work situated in a very personal matter. I think also the fact that there's a very clear plan for Lola and the way that she's working with scientists to discover more and to experiment in a way that of course for everyone we want to make sure it is is safe but really like on the cutting edge of an experiment to make something new and to learn there's going to be untold learnings from these kinds of experiments so

43:16.18
Dr Mariam Rezaei
For the judges, it was very clear that this was a great project for artists to support.

43:21.45
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much to all of you for talking about your work and sharing, ah allowing us to listen to some of your work as well on the episode. I would love to kind of pull on some of the themes that are coming across. We kind of talked about there's been some lovely phrases like working on the edges of sound or the hinterlands of sound. I feel like that's really come through of all of you in very different ways. And then also kind of finding solace in sound as well. So I just wondered what you think. i'm I'm thinking of people listening and people who maybe are listening and thinking, wow, this sounds amazing, but don't know where to start. I feel under confident about getting my hands on

44:06.54
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
some of the technology. What do you think that sound experimentation offers potentially to women and gender diverse artists in particular?

44:19.94
Lola de la Mata
Um, can I actually say something?

44:22.51
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yes please do, yeah I'm just throwing this out.

44:25.50
Lola de la Mata
Um, that failure is celebrated. Um, and I, so I knew this for sure of my practice. Um, and then for about, well, almost four years, I ran a, um, a group, like an artist group and everybody was from a different, um, uh, kind of,

44:48.60
Lola de la Mata
background. So you had an opera singer, a hacker, and a a book publisher, blah, blah, blah, blah. the first thing on and obviously we had kind of, I curated the group, so it had gone through a selection process. And, and the first, on the first day, everybody said, oh, I, I feel like I shouldn't, you know, be here, I feel like such a fraud. And it's like, oh, okay, so we all we all feel like this, because what what what we think sound is from the outside or what what think, you know, dances from the outside. um But actually,

45:24.76
Lola de la Mata
When you start connecting with people and you hear about how they work, you know, I'm sure we all do things the wrong way. And that's the good way. it was the same when I met people at the lab.

45:35.85
Lola de la Mata
They all were celebrating failure every day. They would constantly say, oh, we've just spent, you know, three years looking at this. We have no idea how this thing is doing this, but we found all the other things because that failed.

45:42.79
Coral
Hmm.

45:50.62
Lola de la Mata
And so I just think it's, yeah, for me, that's what it is.

45:54.55
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, I love that, Lola, and I think that's a really helpful way to frame this for people. Anyone else have any responses to that or ideas about what this, what using sound and technology offers women and gender non-conforming artists?

46:11.71
Coral
like a way into yourself maybe for me we're finding out things that are going on inside you maybe

46:23.67
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah, what do you think it is about using technology for you, Coral, that allows you to do that, that maybe other things wouldn't?

46:31.04
Coral
It's something, to me I think it's something about that you let your hands take over. <unk> You're not overthinking things in your brain and it sort of bypasses some of the things that maybe you don't normally think in certain ways when you're just thinking things over in your head and maybe sometimes so with your hands or thinking with other parts of your body, thinking with the voice even. And you were saying about people getting into technology and how it can be intimidating but like the voice also is an instrument and that's like a beautiful thing to explore and get into as a kind of technology.

47:05.58
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
That's something that I feel has come up a little bit in this conversation is reframing what technology even is because, you know, we mentioned the clarinet and then a couple of people said, no, that is technology.

47:15.65
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
And then you were saying, Lola, that you've kind of realized that your ear and your hearing is a kind of technology that's had to sort of

47:22.03
Lola de la Mata
Mm.

47:23.46
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
that's almost in some ways you might say broke or malfunctioned. A lot of the time that's how we talk about our health. I have a history of tinnitus as well and I can really relate to some of what you're saying. But that it kind of recalibrates and particularly hearing it feels like it's just very mysterious.

47:44.34
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
you can't grasp it and you're kind of almost observing its shift and recalibrate and morph. So I think that's really interesting as well. And like, Coral, what you're saying about the voice, it's kind of um also owning the fact that so many of us as artists, even if we haven't yet kind of ventured into more traditional technology, we are engaging with it all the time. We just maybe haven't free termed it like that.

48:13.64
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Um, excellent. Were you going to share something before?

48:17.49
xname
don't know if it relates so much to sound but I personally have a fascination for it. I mean obviously I agree with the exp expanded vision of technology and I almost see like machines nowadays as a sort of like new entities that are part of our environment and we relate to them every day and we have also forms of affections and interactions that go beyond the kind of idea of like the tool that just extends your body because it's other than an extension it's becoming like an actor that is part of ah our life and in that I mean this comes more from the sort of maybe the my hacker phase of like really melting into the internet early early

49:03.43
xname
kind of like ah horizontal internet in the 90s and that there was no gender. We had no more gender in the internet because at the beginning, first of all, ah ah computers did not mind, so to say, like we are humans and we are machines. And also there was no need in the early internet. No one would use name and surname. And you it was always, or what age or what gender you had. And this created a sort of like, I think,

49:34.44
xname
a flattening those differences where like actually machines enable you to experiment with your own identity in a different way and kind of relate and communicate to other humans in a different way. I i don't know, with sound or ah with new technology I feel like

50:00.75
xname
the more women or women identified are ah ah drawn into the creation of new technology the better because there's always you know there's always this idea that at the most of some of the development of technologies is connected to you know bellick war and you know capitalism, money, and weapons. But there's also this ah ah performative the idea of technology, so reconnecting also to what Lola says. There's always this idea a precise idea of function, so something works to achieve a specific effect. And I see more like

50:43.66
xname
ah ah the multitasking, cyclic, ah you know, imagination-drawn approach that many women display with technology is really actually liberating because, ah for example, like, ah ah celebrating failure is also, or having, like, as Karl was saying, machines that, you know, barely function or instruments that are on the brink of explosion. what happens? Why is it nice to to play with those instruments? Because they ah ah enable you to ah ah enter in a different also ah concentration state and to really perceive the other instrument, perceive and are used to perceive ah ah other than perform in terms of like outperform or function or compete. So I think there's a lot of

51:36.50
xname
wisdom that can be brought to technology from our perspective.

51:43.47
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
I think that's something that's been really interesting in this conversation is thinking about what I'm thinking after, you know, what you're saying there, Elianora and other things that people have said is, as as women, this is a generalisation, but we're often socialised to be highly perceptive.

52:01.63
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
of what is going on in a space, picking up what's going on with other people, picking up whether there's danger, for example, but also just picking up who do I need to attend to? Where am I needed right now? And I think that there's something about sound that is almost feels like home in that you're already highly attuned. You're already highly attuned to these invisible currents that are moving between people, that are inhabiting spaces, just for one of a better word, vibes.

52:39.59
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
And that then working on the hinterlands and kind of working on the unseen, unspoken plane, And so it feels like there's a lot of exciting possibilities in sound to, at the very least, see that kind of mirrored and validated as a thing. And then even more to play with it, to harness it, to express it, to share it, to record it, to perform it. How liberating is that to be able to perform that very internal, at times very marginalized

53:13.07
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
and quite heavy experience.

53:16.31
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Yeah, I think it's very liberating. I think for me, I would certainly say it's essential. For me, it's a part of my everyday life. without it, I'm missing a part of my everyday existence and reason why I wake up. And yeah, a very important part of who I am. It feels really important to acknowledge a lot of what's been said by everyone here today when talking about how they interact with sound I was really chime in with what you were saying, Coral, about the self um um and that there was a reflection and I feel like sound can very much be a mirror. It can be a mirror in an image we would like to draw of ourselves. Not always. Sometimes it's just in one or two pieces and I indulge in that and fantasize and explore in a way. There's so many fascinating things it can be. Elianora X name was talking about

54:13.84
Dr Mariam Rezaei
we decide with technology and how we work with it. I'm keen on ideas, certainly musicians like Mark Fell talk about, about the inherent value of tools and instruments and what we decide, what value they carry, they embody. And it is up to us as musicians what we want to pursue with those and the instruments themselves give back to us.

54:38.31
Dr Mariam Rezaei
So one of the things I think that's been very prevalent with the ORM award winners this year is that There are technologies that have assumptions, that have standardized, whether that be from capitalist agendas, from the manufacturers, whether that be something where we've seen cis white men continually work in one way, whether that's the bounds of genre, there are ideas. And each winner is doing something different. And it was always there all along. They just are thinking differently outside the box. And oh, my goodness, the awesomeness that comes from that.

55:12.38
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
I fully agree. I feel like that's a wonderful point to end on for this conversation. I feel like we could speak for hours more.

55:19.71
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
There's so much to discuss, but I feel like that really is such a wonderful thing to finish on for this conversation. And really urge everyone to check out all of the winners' work. and It's so diverse, but also there's just these lovely threads of connection.

55:33.34
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Thank you to Lola, Coral, Elianora, Mariam for joining me today. there anything maybe we could go around and see How do people catch your work? Do you have gigs?

55:43.31
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Do you have releases coming out? Let's start with you, Lola. Where should people go and find out about you?

55:49.30
Lola de la Mata
Um, I'm very anti Spotify. Um, so my work is on Bandcamp and otherwise, um, I'm on Instagram and I do respond to people, you know, if you ever want to chat about your work or anything, I'm always, you know, happy to, to chat.

56:07.70
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Excellent. And Coral, how about you?

56:10.86
Coral
Uh, also, say you know, hate Spotify. My music is on there, but why? I don't know. Um, yeah. I'm also on Instagram. Was I happy to have a chat? Um, I'm also touring in November.

56:22.13
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Excellent.

56:22.12
Coral
Um, yeah.

56:25.71
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah. And X name.

56:27.34
xname
I don't know what Spotify is. I might be old school so you can find my website xname .cc and of course I'm on Instagram at xnam and I'm playing on the 26th of October at Pecan Digital Algorave.

56:53.41
xname
can check out maybe my label Nebula Rosa and something coming up on Modulism in 2025 and I bid no bounds with the rebus.

57:07.82
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Excellent. Excellent.

57:09.46
Lola de la Mata
Yeah.

57:09.61
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Wonderful. And then, Mariam, just finally, if people want to find out more about the RMs, the actual award ceremonies on October the 11th. That's correct, isn't it?

57:18.86
Dr Mariam Rezaei
Yes, yeah, but no bounds festival.

57:19.40
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Yeah. At No Bounds Festival.

57:21.93
Dr Mariam Rezaei
So it'll be a celebration. Yeah. Check out Instagram for the Orem Awards. The website as well. Social media is really great. Orem Awards are always on that and sharing. and You'll see all the previous award winners, current award winners, forthcoming gigs. I hear whispers that there's a tour happening next year of the Orem Award winners throughout the UK. But the reaches worldwide, previous winners have been international also. So yeah, definitely check the Orem's on socials.

57:52.36
girlstwiddlingkn0bs
Excellent. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And yeah, I can't wait to share this with everyone.

58:00.24
xname
Thank you.