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This thesis provides a commentary on a portfolio of original compositions produced through a series of practice-as-research projects. These compositions explore the mediation of text in aural and situated experiences. The mediations of text (adaptations, translations and montages) are approached from the perspective of an artist working in the broad field of sound art - producing performances, installations, locative-media and radiophonic work. The portfolio embraces interrelated disciplines primarily concerned with the production and reception of work in aural and situated modes of delivery, often composed for specific contexts in Northern Ireland. This commentary explains the motivation behind the research, makes explicit creative decision-making processes and contextualises the work within historical and contemporary artistic research and practice.

The Drake Music Project Northern Ireland (DMNI) is a charity with the aim of enabling disabled people to compose and perform their own music independently through the use of music technology. Thus, DMNI is a charity that works at the intersection of music, disability and technology. This research contributes to raising further awareness on the issue of inclusion and disability, and at the same time presents an example of a charity working on practice-based and technical solutions to transcending both material and social disabling barriers to music making. Interviews, observations and professional perspectives on DMNI techniques and inclusive music practices were gathered through a sixteen-month ethnographic study of the charity between 2013 - 2015. In this thesis I explore the ways in which people produce exclusions and barriers to inclusion whilst using computer-based music technology. In addition, I argue that a music technology device’s potential to be used in accessible ways, or to be inaccessible to certain users is not determined by its design. Through practices of adaptation, or by creating assemblies of devices, even interfaces that are not matched to the specific requirements of a certain user can provide access to music making. I argue that a relational understanding of “independence” serves to reveal a layer of activity beneath simply the physical ability to perform musical actions unaided, and recognises that independence also exists in the choices and opinions of the individual. I argue that the practices of resistance to various barriers and constraints to music making at DMNI are highly improvisatory and creative. Moreover, looking at the practices of music making, and the design and adaptation of devices I discuss throughout this thesis, I argue that DMNI provides a space and platform for disabled musicians to exercise acts of resistance against individual, social and material barriers.

This portfolio of compositions was written from 2003 to 2006. It contains the following works: Nijinsky's Eye - a music theatre work for 3 singers and an ensemble of 8 players Ophelia for flute and piano Sol for solo horn Impractical Device for bass clarinet and piano Mutant Strain for solo oboe Autopianos and Battleship Row for chamber ensemble of 7 players String Quartet No.1 Poisoned Lake for solo harp The following recordings are also included: Nijinsky's Eye VHS and Nijinsky's Eye CD - recorded November 2003 Autopianos and Battleship Row / Mutant Strain CD - recorded May 2006 Photos: 10 images of Nijinsky's Eye dress rehearsal

The following paper is a review of compositions written during the period 2000 to 2007. In presenting the work, I have looked at the way that my music is influenced by outside material, some of the significant features of each piece as well as some technical details I consider relevant. To begin with, it might be useful to mention some ofthe composers that attracted 'me to contemporary music. I am particularly drawn to the compositions of BirtwistIe, Carter, Zappa, Boulez and Nunes as well as Stravinsky, Varese, Webern and Barraque. All of these composers demonstrated or demonstrate a powerful and highly evolved personal musical aesthetic. I believe they arrived at their objective aesthetic only after a long period of intense refinement and subjectivity. It strikes me that for a composer to keep writing music they must feel that they can still develop their technique or techniques. I want to continue to evolve as a composer; however, the scores do suggest a late 20th century modernist style with sonorities and structural procedures reminiscent ofBoulez and Birtwistle. 2. SONG SETTINGS Throughout this period, I used text as something to begin a compositional process. It therefore seems appropriate to discuss the way text influences my aesthetic and provides a starting point for composition. Much of the music I have composed has poetry at its heart or it takes as its starting point a literary source. It seems to me, when setting words to music one must consider whether the musical context is an aid to understanding. Does it serve the text or lie in opposition, or does it lie along side it, as a commentary? It would seem integral that the music serves the text by displaying it at its best advantage. However, the text normally stands alone and does not actually require a musical setting at all. The poet's job is finished. In my view, poetry is essentially artificial, both in structure and in terms of the imagery used, and of cour~e when it comes to the composer's part the poet (unless living) is not usually consulted. I feel it is appropriate to treat the text in whatever way suits the composer's aspirations and do not necessarily feel that the music should 'serve' the words or that the context should necessarily use the structural elements of the text. Therefore, the music can be any of the above. Nevertheless, poems have form, it therefore seems reasonable to consider if or how much of that form is represented in the context. I have taken several approaches to this. For example, the 5-7-5-syllable form ofa haiku informs some ofthe parameters of the settings. However, in the Pessoa piece, the poems are fragmented to reflect the nature of their author, in effect the piece is more about the poet than the poems. In the Rilke, 1 decided that the music would provide scaffolding on which to hang the

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This dissertation is concerned primarily with the body of workwhich has eme~ged from the author's project with endangered click-languages in the Kalahari Desert. It looks at the development of his sound art practice by tracing the work leading up to Hearing Voices and by discussing the directions it has taken since the completion of that project. Itexamines the dichotomy in contemporary (sound) art betweenwork which deals with ethnic identity and otherness and that which does not and outlines the ways in which the author's practice attempts to bridge this gap. Detailed examination of the socio-linguistic context ofhis work with Khoisan languages leads to an investigation of the issues and ethical responsibilities of cross-cultural practice. Links between acoustic ecology and language ecology are explored and consideration given to the way Hearing Voices and other works explore the boundaries between language and music, documentary and abstraction. The possibilities for new relationships between sound and (still) image are assessed through the author's use ofnew flat speaker technology and, through an examination of the differences in approach required for the various media used in the Hearing Voices project (installation, radiophonic work, CD-ROM and work for multi-channel co1!cert diffusion), the roles each of these forms can play in research-led sound art projects will be considered.

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