Biography
Aleksander Kolkowski is a composer and violinist who uses historical sound recording and reproduction apparatus and obsolete media to make contemporary mechanical-acoustic music. His numerous international projects in this field have combined wax cylinder phonographs, gramophones and vintage disc recording machines together with live musicians. His performances and installations often emphasise archaic techniques of sound amplification and modes of listening. Since obtaining a PhD at Brunel University, London, in 2012, he has been active as the first sound artist-in-residence appointed at the Science Museum, London, and held research associateships at the Royal College of Music and the Science Museum.
“These obsolete devices and media allow me to explore recorded sound as memory, our relationships to technology, to go backwards and forwards in time, to hear the present through the sound recording media of the past.”
