BIOGRAPHY

Alexandra Spence is a sound artist/musician from Sydney, Australia, currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice includes music performance, improvisation, composition and sound installation.

Alex is interested in the relationship between humans and their sonic environments, in the connection between sound and its context, and the idea of listening as an active practice. She is inspired by the idea of ‘collaborating’ with one’s environment, understanding the relationships between the listener, sound, and the surrounding environment to be a kind of communion or conversation. Her work favours subtlety, quietude and unusual sound sources.

Alex has performed and presented work in concerts, festivals, symposiums and galleries in Australia, Canada, and Europe, including the Women In Sound Women On Sound forum: Educating Girls in Sound, Lancaster, UK; NOW Now Festival, Sydney, AU, Destroy Vancouver, CA; Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, CA; and the FKL Symposium, Besenello, IT. In collaboration with artist Katrina Stamatopoulos, Alex has presented work at Is This Art? dLux Media Arts, Sydney, AU; DAS2015, Belfast, IE; and Festival Images Contre Nature, Marseille, FR. Alex is a MFA candidate at Simon Fraser University.

Composer website:  afivepence.wordpress.com

FEATURED WORKS

Submerge, a pre-recorded installation work in stereo for violin, cello and field recordings.

Submerge is a composition inspired by the lights, noises and allure of Port Metro Vancouver, as seen nightly from the windows of my studio. It weaves field recordings of water meters and parking meters from the East Hastings area with a composition for strings.

Submerge was originally presented as an audiovisual installation for eight speakers and five photo-cell activated sound sources. It has since been adapted as a stereo composition, which premiered at the Teck Gallery in 2015, overlooking Vancouver Harbour and the North Shore Mountains, Vancouver, Canada. This work is designed to be experienced as an immersive, continuous loop.

Featured in Sonic Environment Waves July 2016