artist
Louise Mackenzie
United Kingdom
Listen to a live recording of the MOMENTUM 13 piece Attractor.
Louise Mackenzie is an artist and researcher based in Newcastle, UK.
Working across mediums and often engaging with fields outside of the cultural sector, her interdisciplinary practice focuses on art’s relationship with the environment, articulated through process, chance, appropriation and translation. With an interest in experimental and experiential practices, sound and new/found media play an important role in her work. Mackenzie has created live genetic modification sound performances, public conversations with future species, techniques for listening to microbes, the translation of 100-year-old dust into a composition for church organ and scores for listening with nonhumans.
Her artworks have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including ZKM (Germany), Charles Darwin House (London), the National Library of Spain (Madrid), Lumiere (Durham), Summerhall (Edinburgh), BALTIC39 (Newcastle) and Basement 6 Collective (Shanghai). She has written for Bloomsbury, Manchester University Press, Intellect, Springer and MIT Press. Recent works include Shit Happens! at Science Gallery London; (Trying and Failing to) Listen Carefully (2024) at CCA, Glasgow and BE THE SEA (2023) at The Word, South Shields.
Mackenzie holds a PhD in Fine Art, is a director of ASCUS Art and Science, Edinburgh and a lecturer in Contemporary Art Practice at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee.
Louise Mackenzie
Attractor, 2025
Sculptural microphones, UV paint, nectar (various), listening score, live streamed audio, live performance.
LISTEN TO LIVE RECORDING OF ATTRACTOR
For the work Attractor, Louise Mackenzie has created sculptures that use sensory modes of attraction – shape, colour, warmth, taste and smell – to bring different species close enough for us to listen. Influenced by the aesthetics of the parabolic microphone, the sculptures collect and amplify the sounds of local species at Galleri F 15, broadcasting them via radio to Naturhuset & Moss Church. Audiences are invited to reflect peacefully on our environmental relationship through the sounds in the work, which also form the basis of a live choral performance. The work tests our multispecies conviviality, encouraging new ways to share environments with other species.
As Moss transforms from an industrial hub to a cultural town, Attractor poses the questions: How can we bridge the human-nonhuman divide and deepen our understanding of multispecies communities? How can sound influence our perception of nature? A listening score invites audiences to explore these questions and Mackenzie has invited local choir, Moss Ensemble Consensus, to develop a live performance that empathically responds to the sounds of multi-species communities, fostering a deeper understanding of how we share space with other species through engagement.
Choral composition in collaboration with Moss Ensemble Consensus (founded 2010) and conductor, Margrethe Ek.
Copper spinning: Malcolm Cheyne, NE Metal Spinners; metalworking support: Jason Shearer, Lee Mitchell; Streamboxes and live support: Grant Smith; Powder Coating: Tayside Powder Coating Services
