Shelly Knotts
On-the-fly residency
May - June 2021
Shelly Knotts. Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1985
Shelly Knotts produces live-coded and network music performances and projects which explore aspects of code, data and collaboration in improvisation. Her experimental and collaborative tendencies have seen her engage with diverse musical practices and styles ranging from electroacoustic tape music to live-coded dance music. Her work often investigates the intersection of data, technology, creative practice with socio-political concerns. This has included the use of network technology to interrogate the inherent politics of collaborative, data-driven and technologically facilitated music making. Based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, she performs internationally, collaborating with computers and other humans.
From 2018-2021 she was a Post-doctoral Researcher at Durham University working on AHRC project: Musically Intelligent Machines Interacting Creatively. Previously she worked at SensiLab, Monash University (AU) on ARC funded project Improvisational Interfaces. In 2017 she was Leverhulme Artist in Residence at Newcastle University School of Chemistry working on Molecular Soundscapes, a project exploring the sonification of drug design processes. She is also collaborator on the SSHRC Insight grant Platforms and Practices for Networked, Language-neutral Live where she collaborates on the web-based live coding ensemble, SuperContinent. She completed a PhD in Live Computer Music at Durham University with a focus on collaboration in Network Music.
She has performed at numerous Algoraves and Live Coding events worldwide, both solo and with collaborative projects including multimedia ensemble Project Group (with Sojung Bahng and Kirby Casilli), algo-pop duo ALGOBABEZ (with Joanne Armitage), OFFAL (Orchestra For Females And Laptops), and live coding performance [Sisesta Pealkiri] with Alo Allik. Notable performances include: Mutek Montreal 2018, SXSW 2019; Amsterdam Dance Event 2019; Algorithmic Art Assembly 2019 (USA); Microwave New Media Arts 2017 (Hong Kong); Bluedot Festival (2016 & 2018); Phonos 2018 and Zeppellin 2013 (Barcelona).
Publications of her work include: collaborative tracks Rift and Raft with Jan St. Werner on CRXSSINGS (a fundraiser Compilation album), in 2019; ALGOBABEZ album Burning Circuits on Fractal Meat in 2017; and Etude #16, 257, on Chordpunch record label’s RissEP, 2012.
In 2017 she was a winner of PRSF and BBC New Radiophonic Workhops’s The Oram Awards for innovation in sound and music.
