Swim Sound
“Stewart is an composer, musician, artist, and Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton University, Ottawa. Local audiences may remember him, and his transparent drum kit, from his performance under Barnett Newman’s $1.8 million dollar Voice of Fire painting at the NAG, or his recent exhibition of installation-based visual art at the Karsh-Masson Gallery.

Cruickshank is a multi-disciplinary artist, based in Toronto. He has been a board member at the artist-run centre InterAccess and has a deftness with electronics, which he will bring to the performance; having wired up his own underwater hydrophones and custom built the synthesizer he will be performing on.

The project has fostered some very ambitious thinking alongside creative problem solving. At one point in the evolution of the project the duo were brainstorming with architect Adrian Blackwell to put an iceberg in the pool. Shifting to accommodate the regulations that come with working in a public space, restrictions about working around water, and specific requirements of working within a historic building, as well as the complexities of remote planning, has seen the project evolve over time. It is a process that will only come to an end in the moment of the performance, making the process an experience and exploration for both the audience and artists.”

Jaenine Parkinson, 2011 Critical Writer-in-Residence, Excerpt from “Electric Fields: Swimming in Sound”