Warren Burt
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Statement
Warren Burt attended the State University of New York, Albany (BA, 1971) and the
University of California, San Diego, (MA, 1975) before moving to Australia in 1975. In
Australia he has worked in academia (La Trobe University, NSW Conservatorium, Victorian College of the Arts, Australian National University, Victoria University of Technology), education, and radio (freelance and commissioned productions for ABC and PBAA), and as a composer, film maker, video artist, and community arts organizer.
His works have been performed and shown in the USA, Australia, Europe and Japan and he has had grants from the Australia Council, the Victorian Ministry for the Arts and the McKnight Foundation (USA), and has been artist in residence with a number of organizations, such as the Australian Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization, the Los Angeles based art-science think-tank International Synergy, the Broadcast Music Department of ABC Radio, the Monash University Music Department, the RMIT Department of Fine Arts, the American Composers Forum, and Art-Science Laboratory, Santa Fe, and the Djerassi Artists Program.
Since the 1970s, he has toured and performed his electronic and computer music internationally, and has been especially active in the fields of interactive technology (especially with dancers and actors) and microtonality. Two books are currently available: Writings from a Scarlet Aardvark: 15 Articles on Music and Art, 1981-93 (Frog Peak Music, 1993) and Critical Vices: The Myths of Post-Modern Theory, in collaboration with Nicholas Zurbrugg (Gordon and Breach, 1999). Recent CDs include A Book of Symmetries on Zygotones: Loretta Goldberg (Centaur, USA, 2000), Five Tango Permutations on Homo Sonorus - International Anthology of Sound Poetry (NCCA, Russia, 2001), The Animation of Lists, and the Archytan Transpositions (2006, XI Records, New York) and Poems of Rewi Alley (2006, AAF, Melbourne).
From 1992 until 2003, he was involved with Al Wunder’s Theatre of the Ordinary in Melbourne, working improvisationally with dancers, actors and musicians. From 1998-2000, he held an Australia Council Composers’ Fellowship. In 2001 & 2002, he was Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. In 2003 he was involved in the reconstruction of Percy Grainger's 1961 Electric Eye Tone Tool, one of the first light-controlled synthesizers. In 2006, he performed 17 Pieces for Adelaide - a 6 hour long performance of live computer graphics and sound for Project 3, at the 2006 Adelaide Festival, as well as performing works for the Electric Eye Tone Tool at the Sound Symposium, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Currently (2008), he teaches audio engineering at the Illawarra Institute, and is an ARC Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong.