Steve Bates

Steve Bates is an artist and musician living on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis / Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Through his work, he listens to thresholds, boundaries and borders, points of contact, and conflict. Information and signal feedback onto themselves create new situations and events. Sometimes unpredictable and chaotic, at other times this same feedback is used as a way to provide stability. The history of ideas, experiences, and materials is an influence on his work and often leads to a research-heavy path resulting in multiple works around a theme.

The sonic is the starting point for his projects which are evocations of communication networks and systems or expressions of spatial and temporal experience. He frequently works with the material in situ and in relation to their sites. He releases music both solo and collaboratively, often through his own small-scale publishing and curatorial project, The Dim Coast. His work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States of America, Europe, Chile, and Senegal. He works in the field, on the air, in museum /gallery and performance contexts. These shifting territories reflect the content of his practice.

PROJECT

Bates will explore the acoustics of the Koumela Quarries by coordinating choir concerts in each of the Thalassa, Neon, and Julia quarries. The choirs will embody the “voice” of the Quarries, as it is articulated through the natural sounds of the marble, the sea, the air, and as it is visually represented through the sunlight/ shadow play during a day.
The final performance emerges from a thorough on-site survey, based on measurements regarding the hardness of the marble, the humidity, the direction of the air and light, the reaction of the soil to human walking, and weight.