Benjamin Thigpen to explore sound at BEK in January
Published
Working with his invented instruments, Paris-based electroacoustic composer and performer Benjamin Thigpen will be in a studio residency at BEK from 10–22 Jan 2022.
Objects such as knives, baking dishes, paper clips, and saws often figure in Thigpen´s instruments, which are built around piezo contact microphones, inductors used as magnetic field microphones, small exciters for mechanical feedback, larger coils for electromagnetic feedback, various objects to insert in the feedback chain or otherwise excite the microphones, and digital signal processing using Max.
“My goal is just to play. To immerse myself in the sounds, to explore, to record. I will be working with an objective not of live performance – which is what I developed these instruments for and have always used them for – but of going as deeply as possible into the sounds they can produce and of making recordings for electroacoustic composition”, says Thigpen of his BEK residency.
The first versions of Thigpen´s instruments were developed at USF Verftet in 2014, and they were first presented in concert at Landmark by nyMusikk Bergen.
BENJAMIN THIGPEN
Benjamin Thigpen is a composer of electroacoustic music. He has had numerous commissions from Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, with CDs on Sub Rosa (divide by zero), empreintes DIGITALes (flux) and on EMF Media (human for scale). He also performs live electroacoustic music in various constellations, primarily with Jean-François Laporte in the duo Rust. Thigpen mostly performs on invented instruments built around piezo microphones, inductors, exciters, short-range acoustic and electromagnetic feedback, miscellaneous objects and digital signal processing in Max. Thigpen teaches at the Conservatoire Royale de Mons, in Belgium. See also Benjamin Thigpen – biography on electrocd / Benjamin Thigpen on soundcloud.
Photos: Ilya Privezentsev