Emma Margetson and Andrew Knight-Hill - Call and Response Prompt for Issue Six
by Emma Margetson and Andrew Knight-Hill
Published onJul 27, 2024
Emma Margetson and Andrew Knight-Hill - Call and Response Prompt for Issue Six
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Celebrating the complexity of creativity
“Any disconnection between the ways we think about doing, and the ways in which we actually do, limits our abilities to imagine, understand practice, and embrace the full creative possibilities available to us” (Knight-Hill & Margetson 2024: 216).
Creativity is complex, messy, rich, convoluted and diverse. But rather than seeing this complexity as a negative, we should recognise this as the core affordance and strength of its power.
Sometimes conversations about sound and music practice can tend towards the technical or prescriptive as we seek to apply structured forms of analytical analysis to objectively analyse them in grossly simplified ways. But this oversimplification obscures the full potential subjective and the intangible. In our research on ‘Art of Sound: Creativity in Film Sound and Electroacoustic Music’ we identified a network of emergent Principles, Approaches and Techniques (Knight-Hill & Margetson 2024: 28-29) shared by world leading Film Sound Designers and Electroacoustic Composers echoed across and between their practices. We set these out in a map of possible points of creative choice which tells the stories of how these practitioners respond to, negotiate and work with sound. Our map is filled with terms that invite question, engagement and reflection; and which welcome you to develop your own perspectives.
How can this map encourage and enable new opportunities for reflection on, and inspiration to drive, creative practice? What else may be missing?
Emma Margetson (1993) is an acousmatic composer and sound artist with extensive experience in multichannel composition, sound diffusion and interpretation. She has received a variety of awards and special mentions for her work including, first prize in the prestigious L'Espace du Son International Spatialisation Competition by INFLUX (Musiques & Recherches), klingt gut! Young Artist Award in 2018 and Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2019.
Emma’s compositional work is focused on developing novel compositional approaches that are actively geared towards increasing engagement with acousmatic/electroacoustic composition in order to reach wider audiences, in particular disadvantaged segments of the community, and younger people. Having recently completed a PhD in Musical Composition funded by the AHRC Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership titled ‘Sonic Immersion: Reaching New Audiences through Sound’, Emma has collaborated with a variety of organisations including the IKON gallery, Research & Cultural Collections at the University of Birmingham and The Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
Her works have been performed and exhibited internationally, including at Ars Electronica Forum Wallis (CH), University of Birmingham (UK), The Barber Institute of Fine Arts (UK), 5to Festival de Música Electroacústica (CL), BEAST FEaST (UK), SEAMUS (USA), CEMI circles (USA), EMAS (UK), Festival Ecos Urbanos (MEX), BULO (UK), RMA (UK), SPECTRA (CO), NYCEMF (USA), Birmingham Hippodrome (UK), Audior Acusmonium (ITL), Sound-Image Colloquium (UK), Delian Academy of New Music (GD), Noisefloor Festival (UK), [ ex_nihilo ] (MEX), MAtera INtermedia (ITL), Sound Junction (UK), Musica Electronic Nova (PL) and Electric Spring (UK).
She has compositions released with labels Urban Arts Belin, Sonos Localia and Obs.
Andrew Knight-Hill (1986) is a composer of electroacoustic music, specialising in studio composed works both acousmatic (purely sound based) and audio-visual. His works have been performed extensively across the UK, in Europe and the US. Including performances at Fyklingen, Stockholm; GRM, Paris; ZKM, Karlsruhe; New York Public Library, New York; London Contemporary Music Festival, London; San Francisco Tape Music Festival, San Francisco; Cinesonika, Vancouver; Festival Punto de Encuentro, Valencia; and many more.
His works are composed with materials captured from the human and natural world, seeking to explore the beauty in everyday objects. He is particularly interested in how these materials are interpreted by audiences, and how these interpretations relate to our experience of the real and the virtual.
He joined the University of Greenwich in August 2014 having previously worked as a freelance composer.
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