University of Huddersfield Residencies, 2019
An acoustics specialist, Georgia Rodgers’ work focuses on site-specific performances and immersive, surround-sound listening experiences. Buildings and environments are often the starting point of her music: premiered at the eponymous church, St Andrew’s Lyddington began by considering the ‘impulse response’ of the space, in finding out what frequencies were optimal for it to host. Rodgers describes this kind of composing as ‘extraction’ – she takes music that has always existed in the space she’s using and makes it something we can hear.
Rodgers’ music explores how things are mapped out to synthesise with each other, or – as is often the case – how they’re mapped out to do the exact opposite, deliberately clashing into tones that bray around the senses. Premiered at hcmf// 2019, her sound installation Line of Parts took advantage of the University of Huddersfield’s immense SPIRAL Studio, an intimate and spatialized venue laid out with a ring of loudspeakers. Running as an all-day loop, the piece made use of stunning environmental sounds, utilising soft crackles of noise that sounded like electrical raindrops. Listeners stayed at SPIRAL and spent time with the piece, adjusting their ears to the immense acoustic details Rodgers had poured into it.