Áine O'Dwyer
Áine O'Dwyer says: “My research on the musicality of time, place, and people aims to illuminate the characteristics of the accented voice within the environment through collaborative social engagement. While being a resident in Siena, I am particularly keen to investigate the origins of opera. Collaboration with place is essential to my practice, often listening in situ over long periods of time in order to appreciate the rhythms, the atmospheres, the people, the weather etc. My wish is to extend the notion of instrument–this is why ‘listening’ is a main component of my sound making. In each environment there is a pre-existing, collective, living sound and my approach aims to celebrate these tonalities.”
Áine O’Dwyer is an artist whose work focuses on both the conceptual idioms of sound-art and traditional compositional techniques while embracing the broader aesthetics of sound and its relationship to environment, time, audience, and structure. Áine’s work is informed by the individual idiosyncrasies found in each pipe-organ and her realization that each organ is meticulously tuned to the measurements of the building in which it is housed, allowing it to connect intimately with its surrounding architecture. Poems for Daedalus (2018) was a series of site-specific performances developed in Athens, based on the exploration of a building and its intimacies as well as the surrounding neighborhood. Playing Place (2020) was a live radio broadcast performance from her home in Plaistow, London, where she exposed the multifarious tones and natural musics at play, both within the structure of the building, and in dialogue with the resident community. Similarly, the notion of the holding-space- as-extension-of-instrument is notable in Accompaniment for Captives (Open Ear Festival, 2019), another site-specific performance staged in the expanse of Horseshoe Bay on Sherkin Island off the southwest coast Ireland. The performance centered around two local fishing boats, creating an environmental tapestry where land, sea, man, and animal were woven into one symphonic whole.