Music

public lectures on art & science

Microalgal Toxins. Invited speaker and panellist. Science of the Algal Bloom. Port Environment Centre, Adelaide, May 2025.

Neuroanatomy, Art and the (Re-)Construction of Conscious Experience. Invited speaker. South Australian Medical Heritage Society, Adelaide, May 2025.

Keynote: ‘Uncountable Cultures: Science, Art and the Limits of Knowing’ Australian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres Annual Conference, December 2021.

The Poetry of Science. Panel and performance. Quantum Words. Writing NSW, Callan Park, Sydney, November, 2018.

Narratives of Brain and Body. Workshop and performance. Vital Signs: The Healing Power of Story, Queensland Poetry Festival, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Fortitude Valley, Queensland, August, 2018.

Remember the Future: The Simulating Brain. Lecture and discussion panel. SimTecT Conference, Adelaide, August, 2015.

The Microscope Project: Sensing the Unseen. Lecture with poetry. With Catherine Truman.  Ausglass National Conference, Adelaide, February, 2015.

Reimagining Art-Science Collaborations. Lecture with video and poetry. Driving Forces Symposium, ANU School of Art, February, 2014.

Stilled Life: Seeing Faces and the Problem of Portraiture. Presentation at Portrayal and Identity Symposium, ANU School of Art and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, March, 2013.

Science as Culture. Discussion panel and poetry performance, Kumuwiki, Regional Arts Australia … Click here for more.

featured poetry performances

Ambient Loopscape. Poetry / improvised music / real-time video generation with Jutta Pryor, Masonik (Baziz Psanoudakis and Mark Martin), and Eiichi Tosaki, The Loop Project Space & Bar (Melbourne CBD, July, 2019).

Ambient Brainstorm. Poetry / improvised music / real-time video generation with Jutta Pryor, Masonik (Baziz Psanoudakis and Mark Martin), and Eiichi Tosaki (Bundoora, July, 2019).

Paroxysm Press – The Showcase Series. Video poem and live performance. Adelaide Fringe Festival, Broadcast Bar, Adelaide, February, 2019.

Surf’s Up! ART meets SURF at Christies!  Poetry feature with musicians Nick West and Khristian Mizzi. Arty Records HQ, Christies Beach, SA, February, 2019.

Back at the Red Rhino Room. Poetry feature with musicians Fergus Maximus and Khristian Mizzi. Red Rhino Room, Hilton, SA, February, 2019.

The Poetry of Science. Panel and performance. Quantum Words. Writing NSW, Callan Park, Sydney, November, 2018.

Southern-Land Poets Chapbook Series 6 Launch. Poetry. Garron Publishing, Halifax Cafe, Adelaide, October, 2018.

Narratives of Brain and Body. Workshop and performance. Vital Signs: The Healing Power of Story, Queensland Poetry Festival, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Fortitude Valley, Queensland, August, 2018.

The Hearth: “The Sea”. Poetry and panel. The Jade, Adelaide, June, 2018.… Click here for more.

not absolute: audio & video

Thoracic 2 includes some of the text and sound installation from the exhibition. The sounds were recorded by Catherine Truman in her workshop and in Ian’s laboratory.

 

Metal (you’ll be in trouble) is the audio from a section of one of the installation videos. The sounds include comments recorded accidentally during an anatomy class.

 

Ian made three video installations collectively called with your eyes closed for the exhibition. Here are some excerpts from them.

To see all Ian’s videos, click on the vimeo button.

Vimeo

polymag – floribunda mix

This music was composed as an installation to accompany Floribunda, an exhibition of drawings by Judy Morris and poems by Ian Gibbins at the Hahndorf Academy, 2015. Listen to the complete sequence via Bandcamp:

urban biology – audiodraft

This album features some poems from urban biology, as well as dirt track, which was featured on ABC Radio National’s poetica program; and a couple of instrumentals.

Listen to it via Bandcamp:

Buy the urban biology – audiodraft CD via PayPal at the Shop.

Microscope Music

Microscope Music sets some of the texts from The Microscope Project: How Things Work to electronic music derived from the microscopes themselves, as well as their documentation. Sound samples were made by striking, bowing, rasping, dropping and otherwise physically interacting with parts of decommissioned electron and fluorescence microscopes. Other samples were made by taken images or texts associated with the microscopes and converting the raw files into sound files. Each piece uses only a single set of samples.

Listen to Microscope Music via Bandcamp:

Buy the Microscope Music CD via PayPal at the Shop.

The Microscope Project

The Microscope Project

Flinders University Art Museum & City Gallery, 26th July – 21st September, 2014.

Ian Gibbins, Catherine Truman, Deb Jones, Angela Valamanesh and Nicholas Folland, curated by Fiona Salmon and Madeline Reece.

For much of his time at Flinders University, Ian managed the main microscopy research facility, contained divers kinds of sophisticated microscopes. In 2012, several old scanning electron microscopes, some fluorescence microscopes, and other ancillary equipment were decommissioned. Once state-of-the-art, they were now largely dysfunctional and no longer practically operational. However, they had long histories of contributing to internationally-recognised research into the nervous and cardiovascular systems, the gut, and much more.

… and then there was all their supporting documentation: schematic diagrams and plans, manuals, advertising brochures, catalogues, certifications of performance, packing lists.

Although much of the equipment had been disassembled down to their component parts, it was all to valuable to be dumped for scrap. There were many more stories to be told about these instruments. Perhaps we could re-imagine their pasts, their futures, the people who had made them, maintained them, used them…

So, over more than 12 months, the artists collaborated with these elements in the unique shared environment … Click here for more.