Kaffe Matthews at the Goethe-Institut Boston

March 22, 2023

Presented by Non-Event & the Goethe-Institut Boston
Audio recording & mix: Matthew Azevedo
Video & edit: Nick Stevens

Kaffe Matthews works live with space, data, things, and place to make new electroacoustic composition. Site, accessibility and the physical experience of this music has always been central to her approach and so she has also invented some unique interfaces — the sonic armchair, the sonic bed and a variety of sonic bikes which enable new paths into composition for makers, and ways in to listening for wide ranging audiences. Currently, she performs with a new DIY instrument, the Ripley, a noise filter system designed on alchemical discoveries made by G. Ripley, a 15th British alchemist.

Long concerned with community and the environment, Matthews has also established the collectives ‘Music for Bodies’ (2006) and ‘The Bicrophonic Research Institute’ (2014) where ideas and techniques grow within a pool of coders and artists using shared and open-source approaches, publishing all outcomes online.

Since 1995 Matthews has performed and taught worldwide, receiving awards such as the NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship; Honorary Professor of Music, Shanghai Music Conservatory; a Scottish BAFTA with Mandy McIntosh & Zeena Parkins; Distinction Prix Ars Electronica Sonic Bed_London and Honorary mention for cd cécile. She is the first woman to have received the Edgar Varèse guest professorship, computer music, TU Berlin. Kaffe has also been releasing solo works on Annette Works since 1996.