David Worrall (composer)
Encyclopedia
David Worrall is an Australia
n composer
and sound art
ist working in sound sculpture
and immersive polymedia (a term he coined in 1986) as well as traditional instrumental
music composition. He performs and exhibits internationally. Worrall studied musical composition
at The University of Sydney
with Peter Sculthorpe
, Ross Edwards
, where he also studied mathematics
and Western philosophy
, and at The University of Adelaide
with Richard Meale
and Tristram Cary
.
Worrall's creative practice encompasses a number of endeavours: instrumental and electroacoustic
composition, sound poetry
and sound installation
s including those that utilise PIPES (Portable Immersive Polymedia Event Spaces). He is a programmer in several computer languages and has developed software for music composition, text transformation and sonification
. His PhD
dissertation was on the development of a software framework
for the sonification of information in large or high-frequency multivariate
data set
s, such as those from securities
trading engines.
Worrall was appointed to the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne
in 1979 to teach musical composition and undertake research in computer music
. In addition to composition, orchestration
, twentieth-century techniques and free improvisation
, in 1981, before the advent of the personal computer, he designed and taught the first undergraduate
course in computer music in Australia using a mainframe computer, and MusicC (a development of CMusic
) and Gary Lee Nelson
's Music Programming Library (written in APL). His music from this period includes the Albert H. Maggs Award
commission Images for Two Pianos and the Seymour Group commissioned Glass Games for ensemble and computer–generated tape — the first Australian work in this format. Other notable works from this period include Mixtures and re-collections and ...with fish scales scattered... .
In 1986 he was appointed Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Canberra School of Music
. He established and became the Foundation Head of the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology (ACAT) (now Centre for New Media Arts) at the Australian National University
in 1989, a position he held for over a decade. During that time ACAT offered the first Australian postgraduate degrees
in multimedia
: considered a sub-discipline of the Electronic Arts, along with electroacoustic music and computer animation
. Worrall's output from this period is dominated by electroacoustic (e.g. Harmonie du Soir), polymedia (e.g. Cords), computer animation soundtracks (e.g. En Passant Marcel Duchamp) as well as his continued interest in combining acoustic instruments with electroacoustics (e.g. Air).
Since 2000 he has been working as a freelance composer, experimental artist (e.g. The Twins and researcher with a growing interest in the human voice, both acoustic and synthetic (e.g. algorithmic poems such as A doing resounds and the extended text-to-speech work I am on the net as well as the continued development of PIPES works such as the large scale collaborative Alien Garden. In addition to this work he acts as a regional editor for Organised Sound
(Cambridge University Press).
Worrall has won various composition and research awards and has held artist-in-residence and visiting fellowship positions in universities in Australia, France, Spain, the US and in the UK, where most notably he was Leverhulme
Fellow in the Music Department at the University of York
in 1996. He was a founding member of the Music Council of Australia
and the Electronic Music Foundation
and has served on a number of organisational boards, including the Australia Council’s Music and Innovative Projects (later Mixed Media) Boards, the Australian Music Centre
, where he is a Represented Artist, and as president in 1998/1999 of the Australasian Computer Music Association
.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and sound art
Sound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
ist working in sound sculpture
Sound sculpture
Sound sculpture is an intermedia and time based art form in which sculpture or any kind of art object produces sound, or the reverse...
and immersive polymedia (a term he coined in 1986) as well as traditional instrumental
Instrumental
An instrumental is a musical composition or recording without lyrics or singing, although it might include some non-articulate vocal input; the music is primarily or exclusively produced by musical instruments....
music composition. He performs and exhibits internationally. Worrall studied musical composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
at The University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
with Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Joshua Sculthorpe AO OBE is an Australian composer. Much of his music has resulted from an interest in the music of Australia's neighbours as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of native Australian music with that of the heritage of the West...
, Ross Edwards
Ross Edwards (composer)
Ross Edwards is an Australian composer of a wide variety of music including orchestral and chamber music, choral music, children's music, opera and film music. He is not to be confused with a British up and coming singer-songwriter of the same name.-Life:Ross Edwards was born in Sydney...
, where he also studied mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and Western philosophy
Western philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
, and at The University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...
with Richard Meale
Richard Meale
Richard Graham Meale, AM, MBE was an Australian composer of instrumental works and operas.-Biography:Meale was born in Sydney and studied piano with Winifred Burston at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, as well as clarinet, harp, music history and theory, before studying at the University of...
and Tristram Cary
Tristram Cary
Tristram Ogilvie Cary, OAM was a pioneering English-Australian composer.-Early life:Cary was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and Westminster School in London. He was the son of a pianist and the novelist, Joyce Cary, author of Mister Johnson...
.
Worrall's creative practice encompasses a number of endeavours: instrumental and electroacoustic
Electroacoustic music
Electroacoustic music originated in Western art music during its modern era following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the mid-20th century are associated with the activities of composers...
composition, sound poetry
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
and sound installation
Sound installation
Sound installation is an intermedia and time based art form. It is an expansion of an art installation in the sense that it includes the sound element and therefore the time element...
s including those that utilise PIPES (Portable Immersive Polymedia Event Spaces). He is a programmer in several computer languages and has developed software for music composition, text transformation and sonification
Sonification
Sonification, a form of auditory display, is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. Auditory perception has high temporal and pressure resolution, which opens up possibilities for it as an alternative or complement to visualization techniques.For example, the...
. His PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
dissertation was on the development of a software framework
Software framework
In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...
for the sonification of information in large or high-frequency multivariate
Multivariate statistics
Multivariate statistics is a form of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one statistical variable. The application of multivariate statistics is multivariate analysis...
data set
Data set
A data set is a collection of data, usually presented in tabular form. Each column represents a particular variable. Each row corresponds to a given member of the data set in question. Its values for each of the variables, such as height and weight of an object or values of random numbers. Each...
s, such as those from securities
Security (finance)
A security is generally a fungible, negotiable financial instrument representing financial value. Securities are broadly categorized into:* debt securities ,* equity securities, e.g., common stocks; and,...
trading engines.
Worrall was appointed to the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
in 1979 to teach musical composition and undertake research in computer music
Computer music
Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...
. In addition to composition, orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
, twentieth-century techniques and free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
, in 1981, before the advent of the personal computer, he designed and taught the first undergraduate
Undergraduate education
Undergraduate education is an education level taken prior to gaining a first degree . Hence, in many subjects in many educational systems, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a bachelor's degree, such as in the United States, where a university entry level is...
course in computer music in Australia using a mainframe computer, and MusicC (a development of CMusic
CMusic
cmusic is an audio compilation language which was created by F. Richard Moore. A full explanation of CMusic can be found in the book Elements of Computer Music, by F. Richard Moore , ISBN 0-13-252552-6....
) and Gary Lee Nelson
Gary Lee Nelson
Gary Lee Nelson is a composer and media artist who taught at Oberlin College in the Technology in Music and Related Arts department. He specializes in algorithmic composition, real-time interactive sound and video along with digital film making.-Biography:In 1964, Nelson attended Utrecht...
's Music Programming Library (written in APL). His music from this period includes the Albert H. Maggs Award
Albert H. Maggs Composition Award
The Albert H. Maggs Composition Award is a commission-based Australian classical composition award given in order to "encourage and assist composers who might otherwise abandon their efforts for want of means"....
commission Images for Two Pianos and the Seymour Group commissioned Glass Games for ensemble and computer–generated tape — the first Australian work in this format. Other notable works from this period include Mixtures and re-collections and ...with fish scales scattered... .
In 1986 he was appointed Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Canberra School of Music
ANU School of Music
The School of Music is a school within the Faculty of Arts of the Australian National University. It consists of four buildings, including the main School of Music building - which contains Llewellyn Hall - and the Peter Karmel Building....
. He established and became the Foundation Head of the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology (ACAT) (now Centre for New Media Arts) at the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
in 1989, a position he held for over a decade. During that time ACAT offered the first Australian postgraduate degrees
Postgraduate education
Postgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...
in multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
: considered a sub-discipline of the Electronic Arts, along with electroacoustic music and computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
. Worrall's output from this period is dominated by electroacoustic (e.g. Harmonie du Soir), polymedia (e.g. Cords), computer animation soundtracks (e.g. En Passant Marcel Duchamp) as well as his continued interest in combining acoustic instruments with electroacoustics (e.g. Air).
Since 2000 he has been working as a freelance composer, experimental artist (e.g. The Twins and researcher with a growing interest in the human voice, both acoustic and synthetic (e.g. algorithmic poems such as A doing resounds and the extended text-to-speech work I am on the net as well as the continued development of PIPES works such as the large scale collaborative Alien Garden. In addition to this work he acts as a regional editor for Organised Sound
Organised Sound
Organised Sound is an international peer-reviewed academic journal which focuses on the rapidly developing methods and issues arising from the use of technology in music today...
(Cambridge University Press).
Worrall has won various composition and research awards and has held artist-in-residence and visiting fellowship positions in universities in Australia, France, Spain, the US and in the UK, where most notably he was Leverhulme
Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the will of the First Viscount Leverhulme, William Hesketh Lever, with the instruction that its resources should be used to support "scholarships for the purposes of research and education."...
Fellow in the Music Department at the University of York
University of York
The University of York , is an academic institution located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects...
in 1996. He was a founding member of the Music Council of Australia
Music Council of Australia
The Music Council of Australia is a national peak music organisation for Australia. It is the official Australian representative to the UNESCO world peak music organization, the International Music Council , Paris...
and the Electronic Music Foundation
Electronic Music Foundation
Electronic Music Foundation is a not-for-profit 501 organization that produces events, publishes and disseminates media and information, and provides access to materials relevant to the history and creative potential of electronic music....
and has served on a number of organisational boards, including the Australia Council’s Music and Innovative Projects (later Mixed Media) Boards, the Australian Music Centre
Australian Music Centre
The Australian Music Centre fosters the development of an Australian music community by providing specialist support to its membership of performers, composers, sound artists, educators, students, and music specialists across Australia and throughout the world.The AMC is the Australian national...
, where he is a Represented Artist, and as president in 1998/1999 of the Australasian Computer Music Association
Australasian Computer Music Association
The Australasian Computer Music Association is a nonprofit Australia and New Zealand based organisation founded in 1989, which aims to promote electroacoustic and computer music...
.
External links
- David Worrall personal website
- Anthology of Australian Music on Disc. Australian National UniversityAustralian National UniversityThe Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
. Series I and Series II.