Photo of Simon East

I am a creative technologist, sound artist, and composer working in the field of interactive installations and performances. I often work with quadraphonic and ambisonic surround sound. I also incorporate video into some of the works I produce.

My focus is on producing fully immersive, interactive pieces where participants have very clear feedback on what their input is adding to the work, such that they become part of the performance. Much of my work uses movement inputs from smartwatches or smartphones to trigger audio or visual responses.

Recent Work

Dance Workshops

November and December 2024, Ipswich and Worcester, UK

Rebecca Evans from Pell Ensemble and I were invited to create dance workshops for DanceEast Youth Fest and DanceFest. The dancers were given Flowfal smartwatches which they used to trigger and move sounds around the space in 3D. This video shows some of the DanceEast workshop.

Audience Controlled Music

July to October 2024, various locations, UK

As Thunkist I have developed a process of writing music that the audience at gigs then help me perform, using movement from the Flowfal digital wands that I hand out. So far I have tried this out at seven Electronic Music Open Mic nights around the country: Leeds, Wakefield, Sowerby Bridge, Chorlton, Todmorden, Sheffield and Camden.

Choreographic Coding Lab

July 2022, Chatham, UK

I was invited to attend this week long Choreographic Coding Lab Workshop with Rebecca Evans from Pell Ensemble, where we worked with other coders and performers to integrate Flowfal into a scratch performance.

Dovetailing Responses

November 2021, Ilkley, UK

I was commissioned by the creators of Dovetailing to contribute to the follow on Dovetailing Responses installation at the Manor House Museum in Ilkley. For this I took the original sound designs of the Responses video made by Clare Dearnaley and produced versions for my Movuku App that allowed visitors to add to the installation soundscape by making movements with their phone.

800 Lifetimes

August 2021, Bedford, UK

I was part of the team lead by Pell Ensemble that created 800 Lifetimes, a 45 minute contemporary dance, sound and voice performance around modern myth making with local communities. It is an immersive 360 sound performance that uses Flowfal to enable the dancers to move and manipulate the sound in the space in real time.

Frequency Festival

October 2019, Lincoln, UK

I was commissioned by Frequency Festival to create a new immersive soundscape using Flowfal. Visitors were able to trigger sounds and move them in 3D space by moving around the smart watches they were given. This is a video of the installation.

All Ears

2017 to 2020, Ilkley, UK

I collaborated with Tom Beesley to set up All Ears listening club in Ilkley. For each session we invited 6 people to play 30 mins of music on a theme we agreed with them. Tom and I curated the themes and accompanying visuals for each night. In total we ran it on a total of 29 evenings over three years.

Wild Woods

October 2016, Bradford, UK

I was commissioned by the UnCommons Wild Woods festival to create a new immersive soundscape using Flowfal. This installation also included movement controlled visual effects. This is a video of the installation.

Sonolope Installations

2016 to 2018, various locations, UK

I collaborated with Maria Kapsali to create Sonolope which produced sound from movement using smartphones and Native Instruments Reaktor. We were commissioned to create installations at a number of events using Sonolope: the National Media Museum in Bradford, a Materiality Symposium at Leeds University, Verspertine in York, and the Metabody Conference at Brunel University. Videos of these various installations can be found on the Sonolope YouTube page.

Body Remixer

2014 to 2015, various locations, UK

I collaborated with Jane Wood on a commission for Light Night Leeds to create a visual installation called Body Remixer for the October 2014 event. For this installation we captured portrait photos of participants which we then chopped up into three sections: head, body, and legs. We then mixed up these sections with those from other participants and projected the results onto the side of Leeds City Gallery. This is a video of the installation. We were asked to run this installation several times after that at: Nottingham Light Night, the National Media Museum, and for BBC 1xtra at Bradford College.

Contact

I am based near Leeds, in the UK.

Contact me via the social media links at the bottom of the page.

Or contact me via email me at: [email protected]