Critical Senses

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About

Biography

Somaya Langley is a sound and media artist (www.criticalsenses.com). Her work has been presented and performed in festivals and conferences throughout Australia and internationally including the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), Transmediale.08, Tuned City, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), das kleine field recordings festival, Liquid Architecture 6, the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Sound Lab Channel III, Electrofringe, the Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC), the Australasian Sound Recording Association (ASRA) Conference, the Totally Huge New Music Festival, the Melbourne Fringe Festival and Skylounge at the National Museum of Australia. In 2005 she completed commissions for Experimenta’s New Visions and the National Film and Sound Archive’s Ten Minutes of Passion, for which her piece Passion in the Protest also received a finalist’s award. Highlights over the past few years include surround-sound compositions for tele path, a trilogy of video works by media artist David McDowell, funded by artsACT and sound for the solo theatre work The Minutiae of Inertia, as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. She also participated in the Performance Space’s Time_Place_Space 5 workshop, which was supported by an artsACT 2006 Travel Grant and participated in the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s Create_Space 2005 New Media Lab, which was supported by an ANAT workshop grant. In 2007, she attended the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s re:skin Media Laboratory that was supported by an ANAT workshop grant. Subsequently, she travelled overseas to attend the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in New York, the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) in Montreal plus a collaborative residency at STEIM in Amsterdam ,which was made possible by an Australia Council for the Arts Run_Way grant.

In recent years, she has received funding support for her sound installation works through artsACT and the Australia Council for the Arts. Current projects include a solo live performance endeavour – ID-i/o – supported by an Australia Council for the Arts Sounding Out grant. In addition, from 2002 to 2004 Somaya was a member of the Australian sensor-based trio, HyperSense Complex and from 2005 to 2007 one half of the live multi-channel audiovisual duo MetaSense. For over a decade she hosted a weekly radio programme, SubSequence, broadcast across the Australian Community Radio Network and until mid-2007 was the National Library of Australia’s Digital Preservation Officer. Over five years of employment at the Library, her work included creation of MusicAustralia and the Library's online Digital Collections. Additionally she developed models and workflows for long-term sustainability of complex digital objects as part of the Library's Digital Preservation Project. In 2006, she was the recipient of the inaugural Friends of the National Library of Australia Travelling Fellowship to research models for archiving complex born-digital objects, in California USA. In 2007 and 2008 she was the Australian Network for Art and Technology's international media correspondent. From 2008 to 2009 she co-curator and online developer for Transit Lounge 2009 and was the Australian Music Centre's Online Project Officer for their newly launched service.

She is currently co-director of the Electrofringe festival held in Newcastle, Australia. She currently lives in transit - mainly between Berlin and Sydney.

somaya & her bike - berlin Turkish Markets, Maybachufer, Berlin. photo: Maria-Eleni Alesandre

CV

Current Positions

  • Co-Director - Electrofringe 2008 - 2009, Festival of Electronic Arts and Culture (Newcastle, Australia)
  • Freelance - artist, sound artist, arts writer, digital archiving and online consultant, independent media arts researcher

 

Grants

Awards

Commissions

Qualifications

Workshops & Residencies

Peer Review Boards

Publications & Refereed Conference Papers

Conference Presentations

Audio & Visual Releases

  • tele path, a trilogy of audiovisual works, single channel video and 5.1 surround sound DVD (2008)
  • out | side | in, Unfenced, the Australian Computer Music Society Compilation Double CD (2008)
  • Shimmer, Electricity 2, Blatant Propaganda, Compilation CD (2004)
  • Shimmer, ACMA2004, the Australian Computer Music Society Compilation CD (2004)

Reviews & Articles