Joel Stern
MESS Commissioned Artist, Sonorous X – November 2024
Joel Stern is an artist, curator and researcher based in Naarm/Melbourne who has been involved in experimental music and sonic art for more than two decades.
Joel is currently a Research Fellow at School of Media and Communication RMIT University, and co-lead on the Machine Listening project with Sean Dockray and James Parker — a platform for collaborative research and artistic experimentation, focused on the political and aesthetic dimensions of the computation of sound and speech. Machine Listening emerged out of Stern’s previous work ‘Eavesdropping’ with James Parker, a multifaceted project staged at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, and City Gallery, Wellington, addressing the capture and control of our sonic worlds, alongside strategies of resistance.
Joel performs as both a solo artist, and has played in groups including Sky Needle, Abject Leader and Soft Power.
How did you first get involved with synths and electronic sound?
I started listening to electronic music seriously as a teenager in the 1990s through labels like Warp, Mille Plateaux, Basic Channel, Sub Rosa etc. I was more or less educated at Synaesthesia Records where Mark Harwood would play me, and my high school friends, things like Stockhausen and Xenakis. In the 1990’s in Melbourne there was a whole generation of young artists exploring electronic music through experimental computer software, circuit bending, tape manipulation and cutups, and other techniques. I don’t remember many people having synthesisers, as a lot of the vintage equipment had disappeared into collections, and the revival of the market for new synths hadn’t really taken hold. The thing that probably got me into it more than anything was the cracked electronics approach of groups like Voice Crack, and playing around with circuit-board synths like Bug Brand weevils.
How would you describe the sounds you make today?
I am interested in making a lot of different kinds of sounds depending on the context. In bands like Sky Needle, I try to focus on simple, raw, and expressive sounds through improvising with experimental instruments. In my projects with Machine Listening, I incorporate emerging technologies like AI and machine learning to generate and organise sounds, alongside narrative elements, and texts. It’s much more deliberately composed. For this Sonorous commission I’m trying to bring together some of these approaches so that the work will include live acoustic sounds, generative ai, and analogue synthesis. In terms of describing the sounds, I’m attracted to unusual combinations and arrangements that somehow feel ‘wrong’ or ‘unsettling’, like they shouldn’t go together, but as you listen more, it begins to make some kind of sense.
Where do you find inspiration, what motivates you?
I love music, cinema, writing and all types of art, especially works that are laced with contradictions, playfulness and humour, and shift registers in unexpected ways. I like things that give you the feeling of an underlying structure at work, but which hold you at arm’s length and keep you guessing.
What’s been one of the most rewarding or satisfying moments of your journey so far?
The most rewarding element is stepping out of the day-to-day world of tasks, appointments, emails and work, and spending time in another world which is so much more abstract and open-ended, and forces you to think and respond in a totally different way. It feels very healthy to do this, psychologically and otherwise.
And the most challenging?
Finding the time and focus to work on music without distraction, and to translate studio experimentation into something that you feel confident performing in front of an audience.
Do you have a current ‘go to’ set up at MESS? Any favourite machines or combos that you’re currently digging?
The two main instruments I’ve used so far are the Deckard’s Dream and the Buchla 200. They’re totally different from one another but both amazing, and great at incorporating external inputs which is something that is important to my setup.
Are there any machines in the MESS collection you’ve had your eye on but haven’t tried yet?
I love the ARP 2600 which is a pretty canonical machine. I’m also keen to have a go on the UDO super 6 as an example of a totally modern polysynth.
If you could give yourself one piece of advice when you first started what would it be?
Joel Stern performs at Sonorous X
Date: Thursday, November 14th, 2024
Time: Doors at 7pm
Venue: Primrose Potter Salon (Melbourne Recital Centre)
