Áine O'Dwyer: Turning in Space

Turning in Space, a new cassette box set by Áine O’Dwyer, compiles a series of sonic choreographies conducted at the artist’s living and studio space in suburban East London. Since summer 2015, O’Dwyer has been a resident of the Lady Helen Seymour House, a former hospital, in a building-wide unit that gives the artist a stereophonic impression of the auditory surround. Inspired by the “natural musics” of the house’s structure (its acoustics, creaks, and room tone) and the community that holds it (sirens, bells, the weather, pedestrian murmurs), O’Dwyer live-mixes multiple vantage points—an extension of her search for Klangfarbenmelodie, a melody split between instruments, which “binds together both the intrinsic and extraneous in real-time.” These three tapes, recorded between 2019 and 2023, capture an array of post-collagist techniques, in which splicing, over-dubbing, and dissolving are performed live, and O’Dwyer’s subtle compositions for found-tune piano and synthesizer blend seamlessly with the environment, keeping true to her belief that listening is “both an instrument and a compositional element” in her work. 

Turning in Space is produced in a limited edition of 200, with an art edition of 25 featuring a hand-drawn insert by O’Dwyer. Only available directly through Blank Forms. 

O’Dwyer is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is informed by both the conceptual concerns of sound art and traditional composition techniques, embracing the broader aesthetics of sound and its relationship to environment, time, audience, and structure. She has created works for large-scale and intimate settings that allow for both planned and chance compositions to co-exist in live situ. Recent works include Poems for Daedalus (2018), a series of site-specific performances developed in Athens; the book Poems for play (2018), a collection of scores for a Jesuit monastery; Accompaniment for Captives (Open Ear Festival, 2019), a performance for two fishing boats; Performance for Live Stream (Cafe OTO, 2021), an audio-visual work; and Song of Place (2022) a street opera staged in Bristol suburbia.