Angus Tarnawsky

Angus Tarnawsky is an artist, musician, educator and researcher based in London, UK.

His doctoral research investigates the social and political dimensions of sound and listening in urban spaces—especially along canals, or other human-made waterways—via a wide range of site-responsive sonic activities. Several phases of this work are documented in the book chapter, "What do I Hear, and How do I listen? Thinking With Sound on the Lachine Canal" as part of Palgrave Macmillan's edited volume "Sound Research for Troubling Times."

At Concordia’s Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, as well as the multi-institution SpokenWeb research partnership, he works closely alongside a range of collaborators to produce “lathe cut” records using repurposed 1940s disc cutting machines (also known as "lathes") that have been salvaged from radio stations across North America.

As a musical improviser and curator, he has worked extensively with the lathe cut medium. Recently, this has meant exploring direct-to-disc recording techniques in live performance settings with the Tiohtià:ke/Montréal-based “Very Low Frequency Dub Collective.” 

Thesis title: Sonic Encounters on the Lachine Canal and Lee Navigation

Publications, writings and/or artwork:

• What do I Hear, and How do I listen? Thinking with Sound on the Lachine Canal. Sound Research for Troubling Times, edited by jessie beier and Owen Chapman. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
• Pocket. Metaphors in Music and Sound, edited by Nina Eidsheim, Dylan Robinson, J. Martin Daughtry, and Daniel Walden (Forthcoming).
• Habits of Listening: Encounters with Sound Art in Urban Spaces. Performance Research 28, no. 6 (2023): 57–58.
• Nothing to Hear, So to Speak: Spaces of Sounding and Listening at 100 McCaul Street. The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory 2, no. 2, Special Issue: Sound, Colonialism and Power (November 2021): 53–62.
• Variable Frequencies: A Sound Installation Investigating Process and Interaction. Panic at the Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal, UnDisciplined Special Issue (2020): 55–61.

Social media links:

Website: https://angustarnawsky.com