Beau Beaumont and Steve Angstrom are Liverpool-based sound artists and composers. Both with varied histories spanning commissions and performances for The Royal Opera House, Nike, Tate Gallery, Glastonbury, BBC Radio 1 and Red Bull Music, to name but a few. Beaumont has been developing her interest in synthesis, field recording, sound design and installation-based works in unconventional locations. Her work explores the realms of sonic ecology, minimalism and acousmatic exchange. Angstrom is an electronic musician specialising in sound design, foley and modular synthesis. His work focuses on repurposing and re-contextualising our mediated experience to reformulate new narratives.
Their project was born through a shared interest in the interpretation of physical and psychological spaces through sound – the bidirectional establishment of “meaning” in a physical space. A space can only become a place through an observer superimposing meaning. What defines a place as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy? The observer’s mind creates the meaning of a place. Many people felt the change of meaning after COVID redefined familiar spaces and triggered new definitions and anxieties.
The collaborative works will traverse ideas surrounding society’s current subjective recontextualisation of physical places and illustrate how new and more beneficial meanings can be crafted; through the senses of touch, electrical impulses and field recording which is atemporal, yet rooted in place and time. Modular Synthesis is at the core of their sonic research. Beaumont and Angstrom were both forced to reassess concepts of self and location due to shifts in health and well-being which drew them to explore subjective interpretations of place. Now, this work is more vital than ever as the public try to accommodate psycho-social changes post-COVID, Beaumont and Angstrom address these issues through audio metaphors and influence for their residency at Metal.
Image credit: Oscillik
