Patch Notes: Vicky Clarke @180fact

Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

For this episode of Patch Notes, we invited Manchester sound artist Vicky Clarke to 180 Studios for a special performance of her AURA MACHINE project, accompanied by visuals from her collaborator Sean Clarke.

“This piece started off as a 10-minute online AV piece for PRiSM’s Future Music #3 at Royal Northern College of Music last summer,” she explains. “I’ve been working with Sean Clarke since then to develop the work as a live AV performance with the challenge of how to perform and improvise with machine learning materials – hence the new foray into modular. I started with the Make Noise Morphagene and it is slowly growing from there. I aim to develop this as a performance system for sound sculpture – AI and electronics.”

AURA MACHINE, which is part of Clarke’s artistic residency with NOVARS, University of Manchester, takes the listener on a journey through what happens to the sound object when processed by a neural network. The piece sees Clarke perform with live objects including her AURA Sculpture #1 STEEL – a resonant AI generated transmutational object (representing the sound object in latent space), and a glass bong.

“I became interested in the potential for neural synthesis to generate new raw sound materials and wanted to explore these systems working with my own recordings and sculptures,” Clarke says. “I was interested in what the models would detect and predict from sound data, where the autonomy of the artist is and just what these neural materials sounded like. Could neural synthesis be a new tool for musique concrète? And what does it mean for sampling and composition, as both sound source and collaborator."

“I wanted to create a visual narrative which reflected Vicky’s process, creating an immersive experience which plotted the transformational journey of the sounds by the aIgorithm,” Sean Clarke says of the visuals. “Utilising the symbolic content created by the AI, I was able to create a range of interactive scenes which transported the viewer from the material to the virtual world."

Vicky Clarke’s AURA MACHINE project continues throughout 2022 with a final sculpture currently being made. Clarke is also developing a music education project for young women around accessible sonic AI working with Brighter Sound. She plans to release the music from this research project towards the end of this year. "My debut EP Sleepstates will be self released this summer 2022 along with an accompanying net art piece,” Clarke says.

Vicky Clarke's website: vickyclarke.org
Vicky Clarke on Instagram: instagram.com/vickyclarke_sound

Sean Clarke's website: test-card.com

Rebecca Salvadori - The Sun Has No Shadow (Excerpt)

Gabriel Moses interview: “I’ve always wanted things to sit in the same world”

Marija Bozinovska Jones - Beginningless Mind (rivers, rhythms, rituals)

$spalarnia - Rozkosz As spalarnia, performance artist Wojciech Kosma makes experimental pop music with an explicitly queer, secular and anti-nationalist flavour. Seeking to dismantle outdated notions of division between eastern and western Europe, Kosma interpolates Polish folk music as the foundation of his sound, using trap percussion, drill bass, eurodance synthesis and an ear for irresistibly melancholy hooks to craft a singular take on traditional musical forms. On his second album, USTA, spalarnia addresses love in its various refractions, exploring lust, desire, sensuality and intimacy through evocative lyricism and exploratory sonics. “I wrote these songs thinking what would happen if I didn’t look for love, but sang as if it was already here,” explains Kosma. “I felt that it’s not true that love is supposed to be missing, that you have to wait for it. It’s been always here, it’s happening, in insane amounts, and it makes the world, at least my world.” On ‘Rozkosz,’ a slow and sensual highlight from the album, Kosma groans through an electronic dirge charged with longing, a quivering homage to overwhelming and all-consuming moments of pleasure and delight. Mixed by James Whipple, better known as M.E.S.H, Hesaitix and now EEA, ‘Rozkosz’ finds erotic tension in the interplay between throbbing low-end, sparse percussion, synthetic strings and primal flutes, coaxing lip-biting melodies out of negative space while Kosma’s foundation shaking baritone pins the track back down to earth with visceral heft. For the ethereal visual artist Ewelina Węgiel worked alongside movement artists Luisa Mateo Dupleich Rozo and Monika Błaszczak to collaborate with Kosma, illuminated against the dramatic backdrop of Kletno Bear Cave, the longest cave formation in the Śnieżnik Mountains. Filmed using both digital and 16mm film, the film uses pale light and expressive movement to collapse the wet walls of the cave into the same texture as glistening skin and soaking fabric, a portrait of lovers slick with sweat and rock worn smooth by condensation. Perspiring stone protrusions are viewed with the same amorous gaze as necks upturned in ecstasy and fingers grazing outstretched arms. Milky stalactites drip onto expectant faces, calcium deposits formed over hundreds of years take on the sensual form of smooth bodies, while craggy rock faces layered against each other in photographic assemblage suggest biological mutations, organic matter bursting at the seams, desperate to spill over into new, more expansive, forms. This desirous overflow reflects the yearning of Kosma’s lyrics, who follows a churning repeated refrain of “too much” with the assertion, “there’s never too much,” begging the question, “why see with eyes if you can see with delight?” Just as centuries transform cave formations, hewn through mountain ranges with crushing patience, so too does the pressure of spalarnia’s desire have radically transformative potential, as he sings: “under the cover of delight, delight / I want to be your husband and wife.” ‘Rozkosz’ is taken from USTA, which is out now. For more information about Wojciech Kosma and his work as spalarnia, you can follow him on Instagram. ‘Rozkosz’ Credits: Directors – Ewelina Węgiel, Luisa Mateo Dupleich Rozo, Monika Błaszczak & Wojciech Kosma Performance – Luisa Mateo Dupleich Rozo, Monika Błaszczak and Wojciech Kosma Camera – Ewelina Węgiel Editing – Ewelina Węgiel and Wojciech Kosma Color Grading – Igor Kawecki ‘Rozkosz’ Lyrics: too much too much too much too much of you there’s never too much too much too much too much too much never too much of our delight delight delight covers me right fine fine i can see fine sky sky sky sky sky through the thin veil of delight why see with eyes if you can see with delight under the cover of delight delight i want to be your husband and wife please please take my hand our beauty might make me break take me take me as husband as wife for you i’m alight yet i’m not at all alight i am a happy oasis of green no other place like you and me why see with eyes if you can see with delight – dosyć dosyć dosyć dosyć nigdy nie mam ciebie ciebie dosyć dosyć dosyć dosyć dosyć nigdy nie mam dosyć naszej rozkoszy rozkosz rozkosz całkiem mnie przykrywa dobrze dobrze dobrze dobrze widać niebo niebo niebo niebo niebo przez rozkoszy cienki welon po co patrzeć przez oczy jak można patrzeć z rozkoszy pod rozkoszy rozkoszy zasłoną chcę zostać twoim mężem i żoną weź proszę moją moją rękę z naszego piękna piękna zaraz pęknę weź mnie weź mnie za męża za żonę dla ciebie płonę chociaż wcale nie płonę jestem zieloną zieloną oazą szczęścia oprócz nas nie ma takiego miejsca po co patrzeć przez oczy jak można patrzeć z rozkoszy$

cktrl interview: Composing an immersive soundscape for I ♥ Campbell