‘Dream recorder’ for contrabass recorder and mirrors
Supralateral (accordion, e-guitar, baritone sax, electronics)
Ecologies of Embodiment: Video Essays II
Dream recall pieces; music from ‘Whale Fall’
Water Pail
(2021)
A sculpture and sound art installation about the artist’s Donna Chang’s intersectional Chinese-Australian identity and her mother’s and her maternal grandmother’s life in Hong Kong during the 1960s-80s. See more here.
Whale Fall
Memory Tape
(2015)
for cello, trombone, and recorded media
The work explores a lexicon of soft textured instrumental sounds taking their cue from the iterations of whispers produced by an empty rotating reel-to-reel tape machine. Small speakers are spread out across the space and are playing the recordings of multiple tapes crackling. The speakers played textured sounds, such as various grainy crackling noises that provide spatial colouring to the listening experience. Read more
Copy-make
(2015-ongoing)
Copy-make is a demonstration video about the physicality of sound and proposes new methodologies of working relationships between composer and performers in an open and visually centred collaborative approach. You can read further about this project here in a paper published in Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 30, 2020 or see further documentation on this website.
Mapping Australia / Cartografie in Australië
(2014)
This work is an experimental multimedia piece for piano, electronics, video score, live camera, and video. Archival footage of Australia’s cartography practices from the 1960s are transformed into a video score for a performer to engage with by tracing the movements of the people in the video. Read more
Serpentine
(2017)
Serpentine is a multimedia piece for erhu, percussion and spoken word. It centres around the winding shapes and lines of movement such as those made by a serpent or snake. Fragments of the text include: “The landscape is a system, a geometry of soil and sky”, “You cant think of a line without tracing it in our mind”, “What the rock doesnt say about itself”, “But whoever said you can only walk half way into the forest, has never been lost.” Read more
Hyperbodies
For robotic piano made as part of a workshop at the University of Huddersfield run by Prof. Peter Ablinger and Prof. Winfried Ritsch. Read more.
A Sense of Space
(2017)
Alba Bru Carci (flute), Diego Castro Magaš (guitar), Peyee Chen (soprano), St. Paul’s Hall, University of Huddersfield, UK. Read more.
The Glass of Imagination (2020)
https://danielportelli.com.au/glass-of-imagination/
The Glass of Imagination is a group improv piece where performers trigger video samples of singing wine glasses and bells ringing that are tuned to different microtonal pitches. It can be performed on multiple devices online by up to 4 people (or more). The videos also include chimes, guitar noise, and insect sounds. It can be performed on laptops, phones and other devices whilst sitting, walking and/or while singing.
Antibiosis
(2011)
This film is a reaction to a deeply felt concern, that we, the current generation, are not prioritising the needs of future generations through our degradation of the environment and its limited resources. The film is based on the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child – “Mankind owes the child the best it has to give”. It’s a film that looks to explore this greater social issue through archive footage and ghostly images that remind us of how fragile both our world, and our future are. The work is visceral, poignant and bleak, and highlights the careless interactions humans have with the environment, animals and our natural resources. Scored for chamber ensemble: flute (including piccolo), clarinet, tenor sax, piano, percussion, cello and uses a recording of a german lieder. View score here
Watershed at zed end
(2009)
Graduation exhibition of Fine Arts, Electronic Arts and Music at Bay 19, Carriageworks, Everleigh, Sydney, 2009. The exhibition, Watershed at zed end, marked the end of ‘Z block’ and the Fine Arts and Electronic Arts degrees at Western Sydney University. My works, Twin Phobias and Satori, were part the exhibition.
Choreographer and composer workshops
(2009-10)
I participated in two workshops at Critical Path in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, Australia. One was a choreographer and composer workshop with sound artist Cathy Lane and choreographer Rosemary Butcher. The works-in-progress that we made were shown at Campbelltown Arts Centre at an exhibition called ‘What I Think About When I think About Dancing’ and was a study in positive feedback loops in digital media, performance, dance, sound, and as a social function. The second workshop was with artist Christian Zegler where I developed the sound design for his ‘forest’ installation that uses interactive lights that the dancers choreographed works within.
Performance video
This is the video that accompanies the performance Animal. It consists of a match stick being stuck repeatedly and then a series of videos of waves crashing against the rocks at different rates and speeds. The video ends with the match stick bursting into a flames. Read more
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