MONO 55 – Liam Keenan, Machine Learning presents ‘Environments 12’

The latest edition of MONO, the Institute of Modern Art’s experimental sound performance series, curated by Room40. Expect tonal contouring, spatial resonances, and octophonic diffusion.

Liam Keenan is a Gomeroi experimental guitarist and curator based on Dharawal Country in Sydney. Working through exploratory and extended technique, he is developing a relentless process of tonal contouring for guitar, working with feedback and spatial resonances. In 2025, in residence with Soft Centre he created a new improvised language which further deepens his explorations into the outer zones of how his instrument might be understood. 

Machine Listening is the collective undertaking of Sean Dockray, James Parker and Joel Stern. Their ‘Environments 12’ project is a speculative addition to the highly influential series of records created by Irv Teibel, which were released between 1969 and 1979 and anticipated a mass-market in mood-altering nature recordings. Presented as an octophonic diffusion, the piece is narrated by human performers and their ai generated clones, this work involves, or demands, a suspension of reality. A lesson in uncanny sound fields and dynamic listenership.