Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/gordon-monro

Birth Place

New Zealand

Biography

Monro was born in 1946 in New Zealand and moved with his family to Australia at the age of seven. He specialised in science at high school and University, completing a BSc(Hons) at Monash University in 1967 and a PhD in mathematical logic at Bristol University in 1971. He subsequently taught mathematics at the University of Sydney until retiring in 2006. Monro’s interest in music goes back to his schooldays but it was not until 1989, when he attended a music technology camp, that he started his creative work. He subsequently met Ian Fredericks, an electronic and computer music pioneer in the then Music Department of the University of Sydney and began an association with the Music Department that continued for 10 years or so. He also became involved with the WATT concerts, an annual event run by Fredericks together with Martin Wesley-Smith from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. These concerts had a strong multi-media focus, including collaborations with George Gittoes . In 1991 Monro began attending the composition workshop in the Music Department, run by Peter Sculthorpe and Anne Boyd. An early work of Monro’s from this period was Old Tom’s Numerical Prophecies , a setting of poems by Thomas Shapcott for chamber choir and two synthesisers, which was performed at the Horizons Festival of Contemporary Australian Choral Music in 1992. At this time Monro began writing software to work with continuous streams of sound, circumventing the “score/instrument” approach dominant in computer music at the time. Results from this work included Dry Rivers , awarded an Honourable Mention in the 1996 Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria , and The Voice of the Phoenix (1) , which appeared on the CD distributed with the Leonardo Music Journal for 1997. Both works incorporated mathematical processes, fractals for Dry Rivers and chaotic oscillators for The Voice of the Phoenix (1) . In 1997-8 Monro undertook a Graduate Diploma in Composition in the Music Department, with supervisor Kirsty Beilharz. A course taken with the composer Ian Shanahan inspired Monro to write the “extended techniques” piece The Voice of the Phoenix (2) for bass flute and tape; it was joint prize winner in the first Australian Flute Composition Competition in 1999, and was performed at the 2000 International Computer Music Conference in Berlin. During Monro’s association with the Music Department he organised or co-organised a number of computer music events, performing new works by local and overseas composers. In 1993 he and Anthony Hood organised the first of what became the Australasian Computer Music Conferences, now held annually in Australia or New Zealand. Monro also launched the series of computer and electronic music concerts known as “Live Wires”, which continues at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Monro’s work in images came much later than his involvement with music. He contributed a small number of fractal-based images to WATT in the early 1990s, including a piece generating in real-time images related to the “biomorphs” of Richard Dawkins. In 1999 he attended a National Summer School on Science and Art, organised by the Australian Network for Art and Technology. This had a strong focus on visual arts, and for his project in the Summer School Monro wrote a small program to breed images, using genetic algorithm techniques. His interest in generative processes was further encouraged by attendance at the Second Iteration conference on generative systems in the electronic arts, held at Monash University in 2001; his tape piece Peer Pressure appeared on the audio CD produced in association with the conference. In 2002-7 Monro undertook a part-time Masters of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, with supervisor Anthony Hood. Monro became involved in audio-visual work there and made several abstract videos using computer software he wrote himself. The video Red Grains , made using two laser pointers and a Lego robotics kit, won an award at the Kaleidoscope short film and multimedia festival in Sydney in 2003; Dissonant Particles was awarded a Mención Especial in the fifth Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Colombia in 2006 and selected for the first Visual Music Marathon in Boston in 2007; Triangular Vibrations is on a DVD produced by the Australian Network for Art and Technology in 2007. During his Masters, Monro also made What Are You Really Thinking? , a sonification of brainwaves and a work midway between art and science; it was played at the “world-first concert of data sonifications” in the Sydney Opera House, part of the 2004 International Conference on Auditory Display. In 2008 Monro commenced a PhD in the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University with supervisor Dr Karen Burns, working on multimedia works based on genetic algorithms and other ideas from the realm known as biologically inspired computing. Writers: Monro, Gordon staffcontributor Date written: 2008 Last updated: 2012

Born

b. 1946

Summary

Gordon Monro is a digital media artist working with generative procedures that produce images and sound.

Gender

Male

Died

None listed

Age at death

None listed