Staff Profile

Introduction

I am a composer, improviser, and cultural theorist, with particular interests in electroacoustic music, environmental arts, and free improvisation. As  theorist my particular interests are in the relationships between the human body and technology, the human voice, the mid-twentieth-century avant-garde in music, literature and the fine arts, and artistic perspectives on and engagements with the natural environment.

http://landscapequartet.org/

Background

Bennett Hogg completed his undergraduate degree in music at Nottingham University in 1982 and also has an MA in ethnomusicology from Durham University and an MMus in electroacoustic composition from UEA, supervised by Denis Smalley. He has worked as a composer in both electroacoustic and "conventional" media and has received several prestigious commissions and awards for his work, including commissions from the Royal Opera House's "Garden Venture", Sarajevo Winter Festival, Sonic Arts Network and Welsh Jazz Society, organisations whose diversity attests to his pluralistic creative outlook. He is currently a lecturer in ICMuS having spent the past five years in Newcastle researching for a PhD partly funded by an AHRB scholarship. “Who’s Listening”, an essay on power relations in recorded music was published in 2005 in the collection Sounds of Resistance, Suppression, and Subversion: Essays on Music, Politics, and Power edited by Annie Janeiro Randall (Routledge). "Meetings, Spaces, Desire: Some Personal Reflections on the Work of Ann Rosen" is an extended essay for the exhibition catalogue "schhh...", a major solo exhibition of sound installations by Ann Rosen, Swedish artist and composer, at Konstacademien, Stockholm - see www.annrosen.nu/sch/katalogEN.pdf

His electroacoustic work "What Did You Find?", completed at EMS. Stockholm in January 2007 was part of an installation at FutureSonic07, Manchester, and was broadcast as part of the Cornerhouse Gallery's "Art Radio" project in June-July 2007. He recently was a featured artist on basic.fm. His collaborations on the group projets My Little Pop Group and Wormhole are now released on the web-label "Clinical Archives" in Moscow, and collaborations/CD releases with Technonucleo (Spain) and Bryan Day/Public Eyesore Records (Nebraska, USA) are sceduled for early summer 2008. During 2008-9 he worked on a "resistant violin" (see his personal website bennetthogg.co.uk for details and images) at STEIM, Amsterdam, and composed "l-oiseau chante avec ses doights" for classical guitarist Magnus Andersson (in collaboration with EMS Stockholm, funded by Svenska Rikskonserter).

He is the co-founder of the research series "Music and Machines", see http://www.musicandmachines.co.uk/ which has included a 3-day conference on "improvisation: freedom and tradition" with David Clarke in December 2007, and was one of the organisers and moderators for "Music and Machines VIII" as part of Newcastle-Gateshead's "AV Festival 2008".

His academic writing is published by Routledge, Oxford University Press, Lund University Press, Cambridge Scholars Press, as well as in online journals such as Hz (Fylkingen, Stockholm) and the CILM site of the Open University.

He was Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded research project "Landscape Quartet", see http://landscapequartet.org/ , and was involved in running projects as part of AHRC-funded "Northumbrian Exchanges" (PI Eric Cross), and has project involvement with AHRC-funded "Digital Originals" (Northumbria University and Newcastle Culture Lab) and "Creative Exchanges" (Culture Lab, Newcastle). He was awarded a School Strategic Research grant by Newcastle University to develop the online creative engagement software ArCCADDE (Archives and Creative Collaborations for Artists working in the Distributed Digital Environment) in 2013, in collaboration with Culture Lab and basic.fm/Pixel Palace at the Tyneside Cinema.

With Stefan Ostersjo he made a successful application to the Swedish funding agency RANK for three artistic residencies developing environmental sound art projects in Sweden during 2013-14, with flautist Sabine Vogel and electronic sound artist Matthew Sansom.

From February to September 2014 he was co-researcher on an Austrian Science Fund project "Emotional Improvisation" at University of Graz, Austria, directed by Prof Deniz Peters.

With John Bowers and Irene Brown he presented "An Imaginary Museum" during the British Science Festival in Newcastle in September 2013. With Landscape Quartet he has held artistic-research residencies in Gavle, Kalv, Klagshamns udde, and InterArts Centre, Malmo (all Sweden) and in Morpeth, Allenheads Contemporary Arts, and Cheeseburn Grange, Stamfordham. With Sabine Vogel and Deniz Peters he was featured in the European Project for Artistic Research in Music conference, Graz, the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, and the exploratorium, Berlin. He is curator of Environmental Sound Art and Music for Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Garden, Northumberland, and a collaborator with Alan Smith of Allenheads Contemporary Arts.

He is currently collaborating with artist Mike Collier, wildlife sound recordist and musician Geoff Sample, and printmaker Alex Charrington on a book, funded by Arts Council England, which develops the work of this inter-disciplinary group responsible for the "Singing the World" project which was featured at Cheesburn Grange sculpture gardens in 2017, led by Mike Collier. His music for this project, and for a follow-on exhibition of new work at Drawing Projects UK will be released as part of the book. He is also working on a new piece for ten-string guitar for the Swedish guitarist Stefan Ostersjo, for commerical CD release during 2019, and a new work for Icelandic early music ensemble "Nordic Affect", also for 2019.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Lecturer in Music
• School Rep on University Library Committee

Qualifications

• BA Hons in Music
• MA in Ethnomusicology
• MMus in Composition
• PhD in Music

Previous Positions

• lecturer, norwich institute of art and design
• lecturer, university of east anglia
• lecturer, city university, london
• lecturer, muzicka akademija, sarajevo
• lecturer, edinburgh college of art

Memberships

• performing rights society
• MCPS
• UCU
• CILM Research Network
• sonic arts network
• canadian electroacoustic community
• editorial board of ARiADA text (webjournal)
• member of editorial collective, Radical Musicology (webjournal)

Languages

• English
• French
• Serbo-Croat/Bosnian

Informal Interests

Walking in the country, reading Harry Potter books, gardening, watching decent films, cows, travel, Sweden, alchemy, surrealist literature, Max Ernst, punk rock, free improv, british folk musics - especially playing the fiddle.

Research Interests

Electroacoustic composition
free improvisation
cultural theory and the voice and technology
psychoanalytical informed hermeneutic approaches to culture
environmental sound art

politics and philosophy of the natural environment 

Other Expertise

Mostly gardening

Google scholar: Click here.

Current Work

composing music for release with Arts Council of England funded book with Mike Collier, Geoff Sample, and Alex Charrington - also writing a chapter for this book.

commission for new work for Icelandic early music group Nordic Affect.

commission for ten-string guitar piece for CD release in 2019 by Stefan Ostersjo.

collaboration with glass artist Laura Johnston, wildlife recordist Geoff Sample and Medical Sciences staff at Durham University, funded by Arts Council England, looking into sound design for High Dependence Care in hospitals.

Director of Landscape Quartet - formerly an AHRC-funded environmental sound art project.

Curator and producer of sound art and music for Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Gardens, Stamfordham, Northumberland.

co-editing with Matthew Sansom a new edited issue of Contemporary Music Review - "Music, Sound, and Landscape" - now in press

publications in progress include invited book chapters for Routledge "Sound Studies Reader" (ed. Michael Bull) and OUP "Sound and Imagination" (ed. Mark Grimshaw, et al). "Weathering" for Landscape Research Journal, "Healing the Cut" in Contemporary Music Review, "Aesthetics of Sonification" with Paul Vickers and David Worrall for Routledge "Sonification Handbook" (ed. Clemens Wollner), a critical position piece for the Canadian journal "Critical Studies in Improvisation", and a co-authored journal chapter with Stefan Ostersjo for Contemporary Music Review have all now been published. Musical projects include developing ArCCADDE further, curating a year of environmental music and sound art at Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Garden, collaboration with Alan Smith on the ACE-Funded "As Above, So Below" project in the lead mines of the North Pennines, and a new piece for ten-string classical guitar with electronics for Stefan Ostersjo, for release on CD in 2016 along with recording of "l'oiseau cante avec ses doights", also for ten-string guitar and electronics. 40 minute film with Stefan Ostersjo on work done as part of Landscape Quartet, to be released on DVD by Orpheus Institute for Artistic Research in Music, Ghent.

Future Research

Distributed performance and improvisation.

environmental sound arts.
Theories of free improvisation.
Electroacoustic composition.
Free improvisation (violin and electronics).
Instrument design.

instrumental and vocal composition

mid-century English music

Bodies and technologies.

Recent Research Roles (since 2013)

PI Landscape Quartet

researcher Northumbrian Exchanges 

researcher and project director ArCCADDE

participant Creative Exchanges

co-researcher "Emotional Improvisation" Graz, Austria from Feb 2014 

Co-director of Postvernacular Music Research Project (CETL funded)
Co-organiser of "Music and machines" seminar series (with S J Norman)
Co-organiser of conference "Improvisation: Freedom and Tradition"
Co-organiser of "Music and Machines VII" associated with Newcastle-Gateshead AV Festival 2008".

Postgraduate Supervision

Supervisor of PhD students Craig Pollard, Rachael Hales, Phil Begg.

Esteem Indicators

• conference papers accepted through peer review at Music and Sonic Arts conference, Karlsruhe July 2018 and Literary Birds, Durham, October 2018.
• invited participant at Interference#5, an interdisciplinary symposium on artistic research in music, Malmo, January 2018

• invited curator for environmental sound art and music, Cheeseburn Grange, Northumberland 2016

• invited participant in EIM-Live (Embodied Intelligence in Music), Leicester De Montfort University, April 2016.

• invited as co-researcher for "Emotional Improvisation" research project at University of Graz (beginning Jan 2014)

• speaker at "Beyond Soundscape", Sonorities Festival Belfast (April 2013) 

• panel member for revalidation of BA in Music at Havering College on behalf of Open University

• recipient of SACS Strategic Research Fund, 2013, to develop ArCCADDE project 

• external PhD examiner at UEA, SARC Belfast, York University, Goldsmiths London University, and internal examiner at Newcastle

• external examiner Huddersfield University (2012-2015)

• Guest lectures at Sussex University, Queen's Belfast, Kingston University, Edinburgh University, EMS Stockholm, Kunst Universitat Graz, University of East Anglia, Bath Spa University, etc. 

• invited critical respondent at (re)thinking improvisation, Lund University, Malmo, Dec 2011 

• Invited as performer and speaker to GEM Days at Huddersfield University, January 2010.
• Invited to contribute to collectively produced composition for the retirement celebration of Prof Denis Smalley, City University, October 2009.
• peer reviewed papers given at "The Musical Body, IMR, London" (April 2009), and "Music Since 1900, Keele" (July 2009).
• Joint keynote with Magnus Williamson at "Nothing new: Understanding newness in medieval and contemporary music", Huddersfield (April 2009).
• Invited presenter at "Creativity, Innovation and Labour in Music" at The Open University June 22-23, 2009.
• Member of CILM Research Network based at OU, Milton Ketnes.
• Music broadcast by BBC Radio 3, CKCU-FM Ottawa, QRSoundhour Belfast, ArtRadio Manchester, and featured in installation in FutureSonic07 Manchester.
• Member editorial board ARiADA text (webjournal).
• Member editorial collective Radical Musicology (webjournal).
• Reviewer/reader for "Organised Sound" journal
• Keynote speaker at Music and Surrealism study day Leicester DeMontfort University, July 2006.
• Guest research papers at SOAS, Bath Spa University, UEA, De Montfort, Norwich School of Art, University of Aberdeen
• Conference papers IASPM UK (Newcastle), IASPM International (Montreal), "British Forum for Ethnomusicology" (Brunel), "Music and Gesture" (Norwich), "ConferenceCATH" (Leeds), "Surrounded" conference on electroacoustic music (Keele).
• Solo and group perfromances at Stockholm Konstakademien and Fylkingen. residencies at EMS (Stockholm) and STEIM (Amsterdam).
• Co-organiser of conference associated with Newcastle-Gateshead AV Fetsival 2008.
• CD of collaborative project "my little pop group" released on Clinical Archives label, Moscow, 20-21st october 2007, release of two other projects scheduled for later in 2007-early 2008 - "wormhole" (with Will Edmondes and John Ferguson) and "january 2007" (with Sten-Olof Hellstrom)

Industrial Relevance

slim

Keywords

Undergraduate Teaching 2017-18

sole-delivered modules

Music, Sound and the Environment (MUS2006)

Themes in Musical Modernism (MUS2004)

co-taught modules

Music Theory Common Practice MUS1020

Postgraduate Supervision

PhD supervisor:

Phil Begg

Martin Eccles

• Articles

  • Hogg B. Weathering: perspectives on the Northumbrian landscape through sound art and musical improvisation. Landscape Research 2018, 43(2), 237-247.
  • Hogg B. Improvisation in Process. Critical Studies in Improvisation 2017, 12(1), 1-7.
  • Hogg B. Healing the Cut: Music, Landscape, Nature, Culture. Contemporary Music review 2015, 34(4), 281-302.
  • Hogg B, Ostersjo S. ‘Patterns of Ecological and Aesthetic Co-evolution’: Tree-guitars, River-violins and the Ecology of Listening. Contemporary Music Review 2015, 34(4), 335-349.
  • Hogg B. When Violins Were Trees: Resistance, Memory, and Performance in the Preparatory Experiments for Landscape Quartet, a Contemporary Environmental Sound Art Project. Contemporary Music Review 2013, 32(2-03), 249-273.
  • Hogg B. The Violin, the River, and Me: Artistic Research and Environmental Epistemology in Balancing String and Devil's Water 1, Two Recent Environmental Sound Projects. Hz 2013, n/a(18), n/a.

• Book Chapters

  • Hogg B. Meetings, Spaces, Desires: Some Personal Reflections on the Work of Ann Rosen. In: Sten-Olof Hellstrom, ed. Recycling the Work Process. Borrby: Schhh Publishing, 2023, pp.40-43.
  • Boehringer J, Pietruszewski M, Bowers J, Hogg B, Newbold J, Sharma GK, Shaw T, Vickers P. Listener-Centred Sonification Practice as Trans-disciplinary Experimental Artistic Engagement. In: Murillo, A;Monreal, I;Tejada, J;Carabias, D, ed. New Paradigms for Music Research: Art, Society and Technology. Vanecia, Spain: ARTSLAB Contemporary Art Education, Universitat de València, 2022, pp.167-194. In Preparation.
  • Hogg B. 'The notes that did so haunt me': Birdsong, Twilight and the Great War. In: Collier M; Hogg B; Strachan J, ed. Songs of Place and Time: Birdsong and the Dawn Chorus in Natural History and the Arts. Gaia Project Press in partnership with Art Editions North and Bath Spa University, 2021, pp.84-99.
  • Hogg B. Geographies of Silence. In: Bull M, ed. The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp.166-176.
  • Hogg B. ". . . they call us by our name . . .": Technology, Memory and Metempsychosis. In: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard, Mads Walther-Hansen, and Martin Knakkergaard, ed. Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination, volume 2. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp.219-236.
  • Vickers P, Hogg B, Worrall D. Aesthetics of sonification: taking the subject-position. In: Wollner,C, ed. Body, Sound, and Space in Music and Beyond. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, pp.89-110.
  • Hogg B. "A violin by any other name . . .". In: Rose, J, ed. The Museum Goes Live Catalogue. Sydney, Australia: Performance Space, 2016.
  • Hogg B. Dry Stone - Bennett Hogg and Matthew Sansom. In: Edit2.0 / What Does Green Really Mean?. London: London College of Communication, 2015.
  • Hogg B. not here, not yet: thinking improvisation. In: Ostersjo, S., Frisk, H, ed. (Re)thinking Improvisation: Artistic Explorations and Conceptual Writing. Malmo, Sweden: Lund University Press, 2013.
  • Hogg B. Music Technology, or Technologies of Music?. In: Clayton, M., Herbert, T., Middleton, R, ed. The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012, pp.217-226.
  • Hogg B. Enactive consciousness, intertextuality, and musical free improvisation: deconstructing mythologies and finding connections. In: Clarke, D., Clarke, E, ed. Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.79-93.
  • Hogg B. Who's Listening?. In: Randall, AJ, ed. Music, Power and Politics. New York: Routledge, 2005, pp.211-230.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Freeth B, Bowers J, Hogg B. Musical MESHWORKS: From networked performance to cultures of exchange. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques (DIS 14). 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada: ACM.
  • Freeth B, Bowers J, Hogg B. Musical Meshworks: From Networked Performance to Cultures of Exchange. In: DIS 2014. 2014, Vancouver, Canada.
  • Hogg B. Embodied Consciousness as a Site of Cultural mediation in Thinking About Musical Free Improvisation. In: Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts. 2010, Lincoln, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.
  • Vickers P, Hogg B. Sonification Abstraite/Sonification Concrète: An `Æsthetic Perspective Space' for Classifying Auditory Displays in the Ars Musica Domain. In: The 12th Meeting of the International Conference on Auditory Display. 2006, London.

• Edited Book

  • Hogg B, Norman SJ, ed. Resistant Materials in Musical Creativity, Special issue of Contemporary Music Review. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2013.

• Editorial

  • Hogg B, Norman SJ. Resistant Materials in Musical Creativity INTRODUCTION. CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW 2013, 32(2-3), 115-118.

• Exhibitions

  • Hogg B, Collier M. LISTEN: Singing the World (exhibition curated by Helen Ottaway and Melanie Day). 2019. Frome, UK: Black Swan Art Centre, Three musical compositions.
  • Hogg B, Collier M. Dawn Chorus: Mimesis and Birdsong (exhibition curated by Mike Collier). 2019. Middlesborough: Platform A Gallery, 2 musical compositions.
  • Hogg B, Collier M. A Dawn Chorus (exhibition curated by Mike Collier and Anita Taylor). 2018. Trowbridge, Wiltshire, UK: Drawing Projects UK, 2 musical compositions.
  • Hogg B, Collier M, Tani A. Singing the World (exhibition curated by Mike Collier). 2017. nr. Stamfordham, Northumberland, UK: Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Gardens, 2 musical compositions.
  • Hogg B. Flow. 2012. Newcastle University: Gallery of Wonder.

• Musical Compositions

  • Hogg B. Water into Stone. . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cheesburn Sculpture Gardens, 2019.
  • Hogg B, Snell M. Reflected Absence. . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cheesburn Sculpture Gardens, 2019.
  • Hogg B. Out of the wood of thought that grows by night. . 2018.
  • Hogg B, Williamson MG. Lost Voices. . 2017.
  • Hogg B. . . . singing every minute high up in the golden-green blossom. . 2017. In Preparation.
  • Hogg B. . . . a note touched upon the instrument of night. . 2017.
  • Hogg B, Sansom M. Dry Stone. . London, UK: London College of Communication, 2015.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. Razer (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna, Austria: GELP, 2014.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. Pace (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna: GELP, 2014.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. How (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna: GELP, 2014.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. Delock (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna, Austria: GELP, 2014.
  • Hogg B. “l’oiseau chante avec ses doigts” for classical guitar and live electronics. . 2011.
  • Hogg B, Ferguson J. untitled [rumple]. . York: kakutopia, 2010.
  • Hogg B. "l'oiseau chant avec ses doigts" for guitar and live electronics. . 2009.
  • Wormhole, Hogg B, Ferguson J. Steaming Priest. . Moscow: Clinical Archives, 2008.
  • Wormhole, Hogg B, Edmondes W, Ferguson J. Breath Wood Bone. . Moscow: Clinical Archives, 2008.
  • Hogg B. What did you find?. . 2007.
  • Ayers J, Ferguson J, Hogg B, Schrimshaw W. A dark room on a summer's day. . Moscow: Clinical Archives, 2007.

• Performances

  • Hogg B, Peters D, Vogel S. nature table # 3. 2017. Berlin, Germany: Exploratorium, 1 hour.
  • Hogg B, Peters D, Vogel S. nature table # 2. 2015. Graz, Austria: Mumut, 20 minutes.
  • Hogg B. The Resistant Violin. 2007. STEIM, Amsterdam.

• Reports

  • Hogg B. The Cultural Imagination of the Recorded Voice, 1877-1940. Newcastle: Newcastle upon Tyne, 2008.
  • Hogg B. Meetings, Spaces, Desires: Some Personal Reflections on the Work of Ann Rosen. Stockholm, 2005.

• Review

  • Hogg B, Sansom M. Perspectives from Practice. Contemporary Music Review 2015, 34(4), 259-261.