Media Arts tutors pioneer unplugged electronic music

Waikato musicians have attracted national attention with a sonic art exploration using unplugged electronic instruments.

In a seismic shift senior academics at the renown music conservatoire at Wintec have launched a new sound art video Electronicaunplugged.

The video, launched discreetly today with little fanfare, draws on jazz, black metal, and drone music genres, and is expected to become a viral hit in the coming hours.

The composition, which uses a range of unplugged musical instruments in a free-form exploration of an early Bach harpsichord concerto (No 1 in D Minor BMW1052), has stunned the Hamilton music scene.

Waikato Independent music critic Defas Apost said the sonic art breakthrough would open a whole new field of academic and musical exploration for students and staff, not to mention new career paths.

“We’re always being told that education has the major challenge of training for an uncertain future where jobs and careers will be constantly reformulated. Well, here is an example of the innovative, disruptive, thinking needed going forward. Academe desperately needs more ruckus making of this genre.”