Artist of the Week
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Artist: Elizabeth Ditmanson
Artform: Composer What is your main focus? I guess I make sound and visual art. I compose both fixed and open-form pieces of music for combinations of instruments and electronics. Then I also make sound and visual installations and performance events: sometimes site-specific, often in collaboration with other composers and performers. One of my current focuses is exploring ways of combining my sound and image work, as part of both the audience and performer experience. Why do you compose? I compose/make because I find I come across a lot of sounds, sights, phenomena that intrigue and interest me. These have always lent themselves to ideas that fester in my head if I don’t do something with them. I like making time to take those ideas and work them into something concrete and tangible, especially if they turn into something other people can appreciate. |
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Where have you studied?
My undergraduate and master’s degrees are both from the University of Manchester. I am currently living in Taipei, Taiwan. Tell us a bit about your piece 'shadow filter ii' 'shadow filter ii' is a piece for mezzo-soprano, flutes, and cello, written for Trio Atem for their 10th anniversary celebrations last year (2017). The score is a combination of open-form notation and photograph prints that the performers arrange, interpret, and improvise with for each performance. So each realisation of the piece sounds quite different. In some ways the performers are using the materials they have as a sort of sound and image library to work and play with. This piece is actually the second in a series looking at this balance of composed material with improvisation, using still images as part of the score. Watch here: https://soundcloud.com/elizabethditmanson/sets/shadow-filter-ii |
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What are you influenced by?
Lately I’ve found that a pretty wide range of things are influencing my work: the music I’m listening to, politics, my physical location/surroundings and their sounds and sights, other jobs. Makes for some tangled creative thinking sometimes.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to become a composer or sound artist?
Listen, listen, listen; and then make, make, make. Always. And in whatever way or format that suits you.
Lately I’ve found that a pretty wide range of things are influencing my work: the music I’m listening to, politics, my physical location/surroundings and their sounds and sights, other jobs. Makes for some tangled creative thinking sometimes.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to become a composer or sound artist?
Listen, listen, listen; and then make, make, make. Always. And in whatever way or format that suits you.
Further Links:
Website: https://elizabethditmanson.weebly.com/ Website: https://geode-creations.weebly.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/e_ditmanson Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.ditmanson Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/elizabethditmanson/ Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/elizabethditmanson |
What challenges have you set for yourself?
A constant one is to listen as broadly and diversely as I can. Another current challenge for myself is to figure out the best way(s) of bringing together some disparate threads of ideas in my work. What motivates you? Time alone with my thoughts. Things like sunshine, long walks/runs, and chocolate are pretty useful motivators too. What are your future ambitions? To keep creating things (pieces, experiences, systems, words, anything), regardless of where I am or whatever else I’m doing. 
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