Awardees
The Daphne Oram Trust Emergency Support Grant
We’re delighted to announce funding to the following sound and music practitioners. We hope this support from The Daphne Oram Trust will help our awardees to continue their careers or studies or meet essential living expenses as the Covid-19 pandemic continues.
Thanks to all who applied for our emergency support grants. We were overwhelmed by the number and high quality of applications. We are a small charity and sincerely wish we could support more of you at this tremendously difficult time for the sound and music community.
Venus ex Machina
Venus Ex Machina is a composer and technologist based in London. She has contributed sounds and music to a range of projects including releases on NON Worldwide and Optimo Music, and a score for ICA & Channel 4’s short-film series, Random Acts. Venus Ex Machina has also produced an installation for Hyperdub, a “pirate AI” opera with CTM HackLab, and led a workshop on building radio transmitters at Moogfest. Her debut album will be released on AD 93 later this year.
Cat Scott
Cat Scott is a self-taught, international sound artist in her third year and an Affiliate of the Yorkshire Sound Women’s Network. She creates kinetic sound and media installations and experiences about wave phenomena (light, sound, liquids and gases), such as bubble worlds that are deceptive in scale. She’s currently developing installations using STEM processes, made up of bubble machines in viscous liquids, tanks and bubble soundscapes. These works allow audiences to experience what it would feel like to ‘step inside’ a bubble.
“I’m so grateful to be awarded with this grant, because I slipped through the net with many other funds and financial support. I’ll remember this award for a long time as I continue my practice with a new sense of hope, that I can at least survive financially in the short term and how this grant has raised my chances of surviving in the long term too.” Cat Scott.
Suren Seneviratne
Suren Seneviratne, better known through his alias My Panda Shall Fly, is a Sri Lankan born London based multidisciplinary artist whose work often exists at the periphery of art, technology and music. From home-made electronic instruments to chance-based recording techniques and experimental software composition, Seneviratne is a strikingly innovative voice in today’s colourful landscape.
“This is such a vital lifeline for artists like me who have had almost all our upcoming work cancelled or postponed! I’m very grateful to be receiving thing which will help me to continue working on all my current and future projects.” Suren Seneviratne
Leon Trimble
Leon Trimble is an audiovisual performer from the UK who uses modular synthesis, acoustic instruments, analogue video, physics test equipment, interference patterns, 3D engines, projection mapping and 360º projection domes to tell stories and collaborate with other artists in a live setting. He is undertaking Experimental Performance, MMus at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and is an associate lecturer at Birmingham City University. He has bounced the sounds of his Gravity Synth off the surface of the Sea of Tranquility from inside a nuclear reactor at KTH, Stockholm and played it live on the BBC World Service.
“Being supported by the Daphne Oram Trust is not just a financial boon but a great honour for me because the seal of Radiophonic Approval that is associated with Daphne’s electronic music and instrument design has legacy down the ages not only throughout the Grainer and Derbyshire years but the ‘tape musicians’ and tinkerers into the 90s such as fellow Brummies, Broadcast and today with people like my good friend Graham Dunning.” Leon Trimble
Justin Wiggan
Justin Wiggan‘s work has been shown both nationally and internationally and uses phonics, text, film, performance, object changing and drawing to make interface solutions to creative and site / circumstance specific problems. His body of work engages with the links between the internal tourist and the external explorer. It embraces a sense of evolution and eradication of a problem that goes way beyond cultural breakdown, addressing the problem with an end of a system. It also engages with the redevelopment of the sense of hearing as a learning tool and an awareness machine and for sound alternatives for health benefits.
“Justin is one of the most important artists working across sound arts and health right now, his ground-breaking work has huge potential for impact across life sciences, a testament to the power of creativity in health and wellbeing.”
“I am so grateful for the support from The Daphne Oram Trust, in the current situation there is a direct threat to the continuation of creative investigation by humans due to the impact of the virus. It is in these times that these creative expirations are vital in a redirected focus for society other than just present issues. The Daphne Oram Trust are an incredible supportive organisation, who stand behind values of supporting musicians to stay sane, safe and focus on the act of making and creating in troubled times.” Justin Wiggan
Nicola Woodham
Nicola Woodham has composed solo, timed, live performances since 2014 and performed in experimental music venues, DIY spaces and art galleries in the UK and internationally. Noise, free improvisation and treated voice are mainstays. Recently, she has learnt to use music computing platforms and build e-textile sensors and electronic circuits that are embedded into performance garments. Her latest release is an e-pom EP ‘Buffer’. She takes part in live streamed events and is making an e-textile jacket to wear in movement and sound performance.
“Financial support to keep my sound practice afloat right now is so vital, thank you!” Nicola Woodham