Crowned ‘Music Event of the Year’ at the FBI Radio SMAC Awards in 2017 and 2018, SOFT CENTRE is back for its newest installation across Carriageworks on June 4th. A frontier of new sound, art, and digital media, SOFT CENTRE is the pulse of radical experimentalism, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the future of art.

This year, expect to see a smorgasbord of international and local talent — spanning live AV performance, light installation, and large-scale ambient compositions that defy genre and distort worlds. It was a herculean effort to select only a handful. Underneath are the three acts I’ve cherry picked that offer a little preview to the sheer magnitude of what’s to come.

Consisting of DBR, Cypha, Brigitte Podrasky and Joan Shin, ‘Traces’ is an evocation of visual memory and temporal exchange. This live audiovisual set will take form at SOFT CENTRE with swirling elements that encompass IDM, trance and fractal co-creation in other interdisciplinary folds. Self characterised as “ghostly gestural markings” and “scrambled visuals, ‘Traces’ is the first lovechild that has bubbled from each artist, borne out of mutually bound respect and appreciation for one another’s hard forged craft.

Traces: “We went to a lot of each other’s gigs, where we grew a mutual appreciation for each other’s work. In conversation, we were already teasing the idea of working on something together, and then with Soft Centre, it kind of snowballed. Personality-wise we’re on a similar wavelength too, which made the collaborative process flow organically.”

Joan and Brigitte are responsible for the visual spectrum of the audio-visual performance. With cross-conventional approaches that range from web design to ceramic sculpting, they are then emulsified into creatures sculpted by virtual reality and controlled by audio-sensory input. Yoni and Cosmo, known respectively as DBR & Cypha make up the sonic portion of ‘Traces’. Both draw inspiration from the demo material they send one another.

Traces: We would often be asking ourselves: “How does this translate in sound?” or “How does this translate visually?”. The algorithm that follows can be broken down like this: Brigitte listens to sound snippets from DBR & Cypha whilst creating the ceramic and VR sculptures. Joan would cross process the sound snippets and sculptures whilst programming it into visual elements. To round it off, DBR & Cypha would take the fragments and still images of the generated visuals to guide their next composition.

We will get to witness the first reconstruction from this collective, with an artistic output one can anticipate seeing that transcends the worlds bridging the hyper generative both on and offline.

‘Amalgam’ was the word chosen to represent ‘Traces’, and it is one I find fitting. Despite the hurdles of having to conjoin everyone’s practice, the efforts of the group don’t come off as dilapidated. Routines, processes, methodology; all of these are native to interdisciplinary work as artists. To me, the working mechanism of the group almost resembles one of Joan Shin’s illustrations.

The striations of thorny lines are tightly bound, artery-like, in gradients of charcoal grey and white. I can almost see it pulse with life, zinging from one another from opposing ends while they overlap in an endless process of layering. No matter how embedded the host core becomes, each line of effort is palpable in all its shades and barbed differences. As a result, the path that converges laterally is one founded in the trust that this group has placed in one another, and the fruits of that are evident.

Even the general public can attest to the spunky, almost mythic way that just one member of this quartet has managed to set the bar and atmosphere at a raging high. And given our generation’s proclivity for the digital, the artists who can tread the line between both physical and mixed media mediums only strengthens the idea that the first ever collaboration that awaits is one of uncanvassed potential.

What the group may see as a ‘milestone moment’ can stand on its own as a doubling of a good time. Don’t forget to catch the first debut of ‘Traces’ at Soft Centre.