Recent/ongoing work:

202403 onwards: Matt McMahon and Roger Dean are working on a two piano album, which will include microtonal pianos, and a range of other unusual features.

2023 onwards: Prof. Melanie Swalwell (project leader) and Cynde Moya (post-doctoral fellow) are working on an Australian Emulator system EAASI, to permit continued use online of digital-born works that are no longer functional (such as many Flash works). They have succeeded in emulating austraLYSIS early works WORDSTUFFS (1996-7), and Walking the Faultlines. Links will be available in due course.

202305 Sandy Evans and Roger appeared at the "AI for U" festival, and Roger played piano in TAKA, with Trevor Brown (winds) and Clayton Thomas (bass) at Tempe Jets. Our piece Dolphins in the Reservoir was shortlisted (5 from 50) for the 2023 international new media writing prize and presented at the Electronic Literature Conference, Coimbra, Portugal (202307), and the online Wild Media (USA) conference. At the Art Gallery of New South Wales (202209), Dean presented his new work for 1 live/two virtual pianos), Regeneration: human-machine-human, responding to Katie Paterson's Earth Moon Earth installation (using a Disklavier automated grand piano). It was also heard 202212 in MARCS Institute's new performance space.

On Sept 16, 2022, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Roger Dean presented his new work for 3 pianos (1 live, two virtual), Regeneration : human-machine-human, responding to Katie Paterson's Earth Moon Earth installation work featuring a Disklavier (automated and manual grand piano). It was also heard in the new performance space of the MARCS Institute in Westmead, Sydney, 20221208

Given continued issues of Covid, austraLYSIS canceled plans to present new work at The Old 505 Theatre (Newtown, Sydney: now sadly closed) in the first half of 2022, but completed a day's recording session of work with Roger Dean, Sandy Evans, Phil Slater, Hazel Smith and Greg White in December 2021 for our 2024 album Dualling. Here's our AV work The Lips are Different (published 2020; play the work at the end of our article on it). And Pan Pitches, a covid-19 related work for multituned piano released on world Make Music Day (202006). Here's a very short article on interdisciplinarity involving music and science (published 202008). And here is Roger Dean discussing music, emotion and cognition with Andrew Ford on ABC Radio National's The Music Show (202007): the segment occupies the second half of the programme. March 2021: The Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic music (co-edited by Roger Dean) became available in paperback at a reasonable price (c.40AUD, similar to the Kindle price).

Recently on Youtube: Torbjörn Hultmark discusses the first ten years of his Soprano Trombone project, and includes a complete performance of our piece Vocal Shafts (soprano trombone, electronics, pre-recorded sound). 

August 2021 Pitching Spaces, for 3 pianos and 3 tuning systems was presented in the 24hGuelph Improvisation Festival online , run by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation; and our prizewinning intermedia piece novelling was chosen for inclusion in the international Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4 (joining our work motions, in volume 3). May 6 2021 projection in the LIGHTYEAR 73 show, onto Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn: our piece Hypnagogia is showing (and separately in window display at ScopeBLN, Berlin)! View online on Facebook. The long video there now shows multiple cycles of the set of videos, then at about 6h:20min the bridge projection begins with the credits (just after Rick Silva's piece ends). Hypnagogia appears at about 6h:50min. 

May 2021 in Perth, WA: Heimlich Unheimlich, an installation work by Sieglinde Karl-Spence and Hazel Smith, in an austraLYSIS collaboration, was shown at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery (South Sydney) October-November 2020 and then in Edith Cowan University Gallery 25, Mount Lawley, Perth, Western Australia (30/4 to 20/5 2021) with afloor talk by the artists on 19/5. The performance premiere was in Sydney 201911. It was presented next at the online show of the Electronic Literature Organisation Conference, hostedby the University of Central Florida, 202007.

Ongoing: Collaboration with Will Luers (video artist, programmer) on a new intermedia work, provisionally entitled Metaversical; Roger Dean also has a commission to compose a work Niche Turbulence for the Monash Art Ensemble, for a Melbourne performance originally planned for 2020, now deferred to 2025. 2020-1 live performances by austraLYSIS planned for Australia and UK were deferred, replaced by online work, and we hope to be in action in Sydnery again (e.g. at the Old 505 Theatre events) in 2022.

Some part Events(Australia and Abroad):

201911 at Western Sydney University Milperra campus: we presented the second of two Milperra Session, performances of new Australian music, with discussion/Qand A, part of our process of making a web resource for teachers and others interested in new electroacoustic, audio-visual, and text compositions for performance. Go here for information and here for program notes. The preparation of the resource, including interviews with musicians and researchers is ongoing in 2020.

201910: the austraLYSIS Electroband (Sandy Evans, Roger Dean, Greg White) performed at Bohemian Grove, Sydney.This included premieres of Dean's Comparative Views, and Couperin meets Pelog.

201909: austraLYSIS (Torbjörn Hultmark (soprano trombone, electronics) and Roger Dean (piano, electronics)) performed new music at Iklektik, in Waterloo, London, UK. The program was curated by Roger Dean, and also involved solo sets by Jamie Forth (electronics), and Alex Bonney (trumpet and electronics). Info. Earlier Hultmark and Dean performance extracts from 2018 can be viewed here.

201909: Bimblebox, a work of poetry, sound and image, curated by Alison Clouston and Boyd (and involving 153 musicians including members of austraLYSIS) was presented in Brisbane, as part of its nationwide tour.

201901: Roger Dean premiered his Digging Deep , for piano, live processing, and algorithmic performance of material generated by his Deep Improviser (deep learning computational device) in Perth, WA, 201812, and we have since released a 4ch recording. 201810-11, Hazel Smith performed in Nottingham UK; austraLYSIS (Torbjörn Hultmark (soprano trombone, electronics) and Roger Dean (piano, electronics)) performed new music in Bath, Birmingham, Leeds and Leicester. INFO.

UK: In October/November 2018 we presented several performances around the UK:  

          Hazel Smith performed her poetry in Nottingham at Five Leaves Bookshop Oct 22, 19.00: information is here, and Matt Welton also performs.     

          austraLYSIS in the form of Torbjörn Hultmark (soprano trombone, electronics) and Roger Dean (piano, electronics) performed a new program of music for the rare combination at de Montfort University, Leicester (17 October,19.00); Leeds University (19 October, 13.00); Bath Spa University (31 October, 19.00); and Birmingham City University Conservatorium of Music (2 November, 13.00).

Australia: in 2018/2019 we also present the Milperra Sessions, two performances of new and recent sound and intermedia works at Western Sydney University's Peformance research space at the Bankstown campus. These will be free events for an invited audience, and involve recording of webcasts, access materials, and a new austraLYSIS CD. These events are presented in collaboration with the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, as part of its engagement program, and celebration of the Milperra facilities. The first session was on August 9, Thursday, 18.00 at the Performance studio, Bankstown Campus (Milperra), Western Sydney University: progam is here. Enquire using our email if you would like more info or an invitation to the 2019 event.

    December 2018: Dean premiered Digging Deep (a multipiano solo electro-acoustic work) in Perth. It was recorded 20181228, and released here in 201901 (with multichannel spatialisation). April 12 2018, 13.00: we performed for Western Sydney University's Art of Sound event series, at the Playouse on their campus in Kingswood. The program included a new work by Charles Martin and austraLYSIS, involving sonic environments created by Martin, and performed together with interactive improvisation. You can view the whole performance on Youtube, and read the program notes.

    Keith Armstrong's exhibition Future-Future was at the Riddoch Gallery, Mount Gambier, South Australia (November 2017-Jan 2018). It includes Inter-State (2016), with sound by Roger Dean. Download the exhibition catalogue.

    Hazel Smith performed some of her related poems, some new work for the occasion, and discussed John Ashbery, the late American poet, at an event celebrating his life, Sydney University, October 31 2017. It will be published together with Roger Dean's musical tribute 'Average Violin: 90 Seconds for John Ashbery', an acousmatic piece composed in late 2017.

USA: novelling was shown in the Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival, July 20-23 2017.  novelling (Luers, Smith, Dean)is a recombinant digital novel (text, image, video, sound) published by Binary Press (Ireland), and in 2017 was shortlisted for the European Union TurnONLiterature prize. This is a prize for literary intermedia works that encourage participation. Consequently during the remainder of 2017 it will be seen by an estimated 100,000 people on display in libraries in Denmark, Norway and Romania. Read the short-list announcement.  In 2018, it won the major annual international prize for a work of electronic literature, the Robert Coover Award, administered by the Electronic Literature Organisation.

Portugal: at the Electronic Literature Organisation conference at Pessoa University, Porto, (July 2017) we performed the sonic version of The Character Thinks Ahead at Manuel Passos film theatre. We also presented a research talk on personalised manipulation of deep learning for text generation, together with stylometric evaluation, suggesting that we achieved our initial target of producing text distinct from either the learned corpus (20th century poetry including translations of Pessoa), or the input material from Hazel Smith which was used to seed the computational generation.   

South Africa:  Inter-State, an installation by Keith Armstrong and team, with sound by Roger Dean of austraLYSIS, showed at The Mesh, Stegmann Gallery, Sasol Library, UFS, Bloemfontein, South Africa, Jul 17th- Aug 11th, 2017 (an official event of Vrystaat Kunstefees/Arts Festival/Tsa-Botjhaba).  

UK: austraLYSIS, in the form of Torbjorn Hultmark (soprano trombone, electronics) and Roger Dean (piano, electronics), performed in the UK in September and October 2017. Venues: Milton Keynes (September), Queen Mary University of London (performance lab), Birmingham (where we gave the inaugural performance in the new Lab Studio of Birmingham Conservatoire at Birmingham City University), Kingston, London (October). The program included Hultmark's A Brief Note (2012), for soprano trombone and piano, Dean's Vocal Shafts (2016) for soprano trombone, digital sound and electronics and his Piano Stones (2002) for piano and electronics. In the austraLYSIS tradition, there was also improvisation by Hultmark and Dean. An album of work by Hultmark and Dean was released in 2018: see below for link.

New works/recordings (hear/see/read):

2023: Metasynthia re-released its 2005 album Metasynthia 3, focused on works created using the image to sound software Metasynth. The release includes two pieces by Roger Dean: Dr. Metagroove (4:37) and soundasSympathy (0:35). The album can be auditioned and purchased on Bandcamp Metasynthia 3

Roger Dean has a new series of pieces using a multi-tuned grand piano. On this physical synthesis instrument, any pitch, and not just the usual 88 pitches, can sound. For the Western Sydney University contribution to the international Make Music Day (June 21, 2020) he provided Pan Pitches 1, an algorithmic piece sonifying Australian and World covid19 data up till May 6th. For the Canadian Critical Studies in Improvisation Centre's 48h Improv Fest (August 7 2020, online), he provided Pitch Multitudes Pts1-2, an improvisation on the instrument, using a touch pad interface.

Recordings of earlier work are currently being added on an ongoing basis to all sections of the HearSeeRead portion of the site.

Digging Deep (2018) is released 201901 in 4Channel high quality sound (48/24) (and is available in compressed two channel mp3 for those without surround audio facilities). Subsequent to the death in 2018 of the influential African-American piano improviser, Cecil Taylor, Roger Dean played a brief tribute to him in every performance he gave that year. This piece is the final one in the series, and involves live piano, digital processing, and algorithmic presentation of a piece made by Deep Improviser, Dean's deep learning generative model for music making. Studio recording by Dean (piano, computer), 20181228.

Hem of Memory, a film art work by Ettore Siracusa, with text by Hazel Smith, was showing at Museo Italiano in Melbourne (Sept 18- October 20, 2018). The brochure concerning the piece is here and the work may be viewed here.

New Bandcamp release May 15 2018: Torbjörn Hultmark/Roger Dean, Soprano Trombone, Piano and elecronics, which seems to be the first album for soprano trombone and electronics!

Average Violin : This piece (by Roger Dean) was composed in late 2017 to celebrate the work of John Ashbery, consequent on the event at Sydney University mentoned above. The piece is for publication in a journal issue associated with the event and can be heard here.

A Brief Note by Torbjörn Hultmark (2012), as performed in Kingston University (201710) by Hultmark (soprano trombone, composition, audio track) and Roger Dean (piano) can be heard here. The piece has text by the late Brian Nisbet, recorded and transformed by Hultmark.

The Character Thinks Ahead: the latest intermedia piece (2016/7) by Hazel Smith, Roger Dean, and austraLYSIS, uses personalised computational deep learning techniques to generate some of the displayed text, and is now online. We are researching the nature of the text transformations and their impact in continuing work. An article on our deep learning research and creative work for this piece is in press in Leonardo (vol 51, 2018). Read a preprint here.

Music by EJ Moeran and Joaquin Turina: in 2017 we released concert hall recordings of performances of major early 20th Century works for violin and piano by these composers. Recorded by Hazel Smith (violin) and Roger Dean (piano) in 1979.

For a large selection of our earlier works go to the HearSeeRead section of this website.

News:

austraLYSIS grant funding: in June 2020 we were awarded a valuable grant from Create NSW, the NSW Government's Arts funding body. The grant supports us in making a commercial CD and accompanying AV web album, Dualling, featuring duos between people, person and media, or person and machine. The project is due for completion in 2022.

Alongside this we are making 5 videos of Music Speaks Science, Science Speaks Music, representing the creative and scientific aspects of two events of new music and intermedia we presented at the performance space of the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development (2018-end 2019), of which Director Roger Dean is a research professor. These will be open access material available for educational and general use to the music community.

International Prize: in August 2018 novelling (an austraLYSIS work by Will Luers, Hazel Smith and Roger Dean) won the major annual international prize for new works of electronic literature, The Robert Coover Award, given by the Electronic Literature Organisation.

International Shortlisting: in July 2017 the same work novelling (Luers, Smith, Dean), which is a recombinant digital novel (text, image, video, sound) published by Binary Press (Ireland), was shortlisted for the European Union TurnONLiterature prize. This is a prize for literary intermedia works that encourage participation. Consequently during the remainder of 2017 it was expected to be seen by an estimated 100,000 people on display in libraries in Denmark, Norway and Romania. Read the short-list announcement.