I’m an algorithmic artist, musician and composer based in the UK.
My work investigates the blurred lines between natural and artificial forms, and uses code to explore how mathematical processes can be used to create art and music.
I use Python, a programming language, to generate art pieces, and use a customised vintage pen plotter to realise them on paper, combining digital precision with the richness of real-world textures. Likewise, I utilise new technologies to create instrumental music which would be impossible to realise with conventional tools.
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Biography:
Desmond Clarke (b. 1989) is a composer, visual artist and oboist based in the North of England. His work has been performed and exhibited extensively around the UK as well as throughout Europe and in North America.
Throughout his multi-disciplinary practice, Desmond’s work unpicks the relationships between simple, atomistic processes and their resultant forms at micro and macroscopic scales.
His recent visual work, borne out of the 2020 lockdown, focuses on exploring the limits of legacy printing hardware with modern algorithmic processes to create structures and forms that articulate the friction between order and randomness found in the natural world.
Ongoing musical projects include a series of works using fixed and live-generated video scores to explore the boundaries and overlaps between notated and improvised music, and a number of audiovisual installations.
In 2016 he completed a PhD in composition at the University of York with Dr Martin Suckling, and has attended festivals and residencies at, amongst others, IRCAM, the Banff Centre, and the HighSCORE festival in Italy at which he was awarded the 2013 festival prize for his string quartet Insect-Wood-Growth. In 2015 he won the RPS Composition Prize, and was selected as one of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's inaugural young composers in residence.
He has worked with numerous professional and amateur ensembles including, amongst many others, the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cikada and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
As an improvising musician he has worked and performed with numerous groups and collectives. He is a member and founder of osc~, a loose collective dedicated to the realisation of large scale improvised works. Performances have included 6, 8 and 24-hour improvised megastructures.
As an oboist he has performed with, amongst others, contemporary music group Rarescale, Opera dei Lumi, Scarborough Symphony Orchestra and the Chimera Ensemble, with whom he premiered Zoe Birtwhistle's concerto for oboe and Northumbrian Pipes A Red Glow in the Sky.
Press:
"Desmond Clarke’s Xyla projected a very different sound-world, less tense and more playful in its oppositions. The composer tells us he was inspired by the growth and development of plants ... One could sense this in the groping overlapping string glissandi of the opening, which seemed persistent and yet somehow blind. These were reminiscent of Xenakis, while the surprising and delightful intrusion of uncoordinated whistling from the players was a distant echo of the ocarinas in Ligeti’s Violin Concerto. But these echoes enlarged the piece, rather than diminishing it."
- Ivan Hewett
philharmonia.co.uk
"Void-Song, a single-movement viola concerto, received a very convincing world premiere. A string-dominated orchestra offers considerable opportunity for interplay between soloist and ensemble; even at the opening, the way the music rises – quickly – from the lower strings seems to prefigure the appearance, albeit with very different material, of the soloist. The closing winding down is another immediately noticeable feature, whistling (literally) woodwind offering an intriguing effect in combination. Zeffman and his orchestra seemed very much on top of the score, as did the excellent soloist, Timothy Ridout. This was perhaps the finest performance of the evening."
- Mark Berry
Seen and Heard
"[Void-Song was] an approachable and attractive work. There was a genuine balance between the solo viola part and the string-dominated orchestra, with moments of considerable lyricism and virtuosity from both."
- John-Pierre Joyce
MusicOMH