Andrew Garton

Andrew Richard Matthew Garton (born 19 May 1962, Sydney, Australia) is a composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, sound designer, video artist, writer and independent media advocate.

History

Since the mid 1970s Andrew has participated in numerous independent and community media initiatives in Australia and South East Asia: from radio and public access video in his teens to computer networking in the late 1980s. He was motivated at an early age towards collaborative media art works, combining interests in music, performance and public media. In the past twenty-five years he has written and performed plays, joined and formed bands, written scores for television documentaries, penned countless songs, piano and electronic compositions, experimented with recording and performance techniques.

Andrew began composing music in the late 70s and studied composition with composer and pianist, Sykes Rose in the early 80s. Andrew went on to perform, write and record with numerous bands, ensembles and free improvisation groups most notably Private Lives, Astrobeatniks, Lingo Babel, White Punks on Hope and Back from Nowhere.

In the mid-80s Andrew began composing for film and stage. He completed scores for numerous documentaries produced by UK's Channel 4 and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), most notably, the award winning "Anyone Can be A Genius" and "In Grave Danger of Falling Food", a three part series investigating the life-time work of Permaculture founder, Bill Mollison.

Andrew's music for theatre is largely focused on his own solo works and spoken-word operas ("Black Harlequin", "Auslaender und Staatenlose"), with commissions for Queensland's Omniscient Gallery and the Debacle Theater Company, most notably their landmark interpretation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (1994).

Collaborations and Commissions

Garton contributed to several international and Australian collaborations with artists such as Stelarc, Ludwig Zeininger, Kazayuki Null, Hank Bull, Ollie Olsen, Brian Eno, Tetsuo Kogawa, Martin Breindl and Jimi Chen. Andrew has performed with the International Theremin Orchestra and continues to be commissioned to produce sound works for both radio and Internet.

1997 saw the completion of his first major generative and online composition, the six-week opus, "Sensorium Connect", commissioned by the ABC's, The Listening Room, and produced in collaboration with the performance artist, Stelarc.

In 1999, Andrew was awarded the John Bird Award for Excellence in an Online Multimedia Production for his piece, Ausländer Micro, a virtual opera exploring the plight of Eastern European political refugees.

Mid-2000, Garton's nine-day, generative composition and installation, Tat Fat Size Temple, a collaborative work produced by Toy Satellite, was released internationally by ORF/KunstRadio (Austria) as CD and Booklet of their landmark collaborative netcast, Sound Drifting.

Other works include sound design for Bodyssey, an interactive CD-ROM by Gary Zebbington; STREET (e)SCAPE, a 24 hour generative soundscape commissioned by Alien Productions, KunstRadio and Polycollege Stobergasse, Austria; Sinawe, a performance produced in collaboration with video artist Kim Bounds, depicting numerous forms of traditional and contemporary Korean music for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Works of note include sound design for the award winning interactives, MEMO, by Matt Riley and Mud Map, by Sam Fermo. Andrew was composer/producer and artistic director for the Toy Satellite production, Undercurrents, which premiered at the Taipei International Arts Festival, April 2001. Late 2001 Andrew toured Undercurrents in Australia, performing at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne Fringe Fashion Awards, This is Not Arts Festival and the Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific Festival with support from the Australia China Council.

Mid-2003 Andrew completed a major work commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image - a video installation (From Drift to Derive) and prototype stop-motion narrative engine, D3, taking inspiration from Situationist theory.

From 2005 – 2006 Andrew curated Frequency Post, a series of five sound pieces from composers in Australia, Taiwan and China, for KunstRadio. The series was broadcast twice across the EU.

Persondata
NAME=Garton, Andrew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Contemporary Australian composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, producer
DATE OF BIRTH=1962
PLACE OF BIRTH=Sydney, Australia
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=