Sound is the Measure
Sound is the Measure
Sonic Anchor is an experimental music and sound art concert series jointly presented by CM and the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Sonic Anchor advocates, encourages and cultivates experiments in sound and music. Taking full advantage of the intimate setting of the McAulay Studio, Sonic Anchor brings curious audience and adventurous artists together, to enter into a conversation of mutual discovery and respect.
As a regular monthly or bi-monthly event, Sonic Anchor provides a platform and a home base for the wider sound-making community in Hong Kong, gathering under one roof academically-trained composers and musicians, musicians of the popular and sub-cultures, sound artists, conceptual artists, and other folks working with sound.
Sonic Anchor distinguishes itself from other concert presentation models in the city in a number of important ways. With generous institutional support from the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Sonic Anchor aspires to becoming:
A Safe Haven for Experiments and Investigations
Sonic Anchor is, first and foremost, a playground for musical and sonic experiments. We encourage artists to challenge themselves, to venture out of their comfort zone, and to try new working methods. We facilitate artists’ investigations by shielding artists from the pressure of box office and audience turnout. CM bears all costs of presentation and publicity of Sonic Anchor events. All box office proceed goes back to the artists.
CM measures the success of an event by its artistic impact, not by the number of audience attended.
A Forum for Meaningful Artist-Audience Dialogue
The presentation format of Sonic Anchor concerts are carefully designed to activate conversations and meaningful exchanges between artists and the audience, and to create opportunities for artists to reflect upon their own practices. Each Sonic Anchor concert is followed by up to 30 minutes of curator-moderated dialogue. To extend this dialogue outside of the theatre, in the aftermath of an event a concert review will be published on Hong Kong Arts Centre‘s publication Artslink and on CM’s website.
A New Model for Community Participation
Sonic Anchor creates a new model for the art-loving community to directly support artists. The basic pricing point for Sonic Anchor concerts is deliberately low: $50 gets you into our events. We don’t think of this as an “entrance fee,” but rather, a donation that goes entirely to the artist – CM makes absolutely no profit out of your donation. At the end each event, we will provide opportunities for you to contribute more if you feel so inclined, or, if you were impressed by the artists and therefore willing to show more support. Again, all donations are directly credited to the artists. In this sense, CM is not facilitating a commercial transaction, but rather, an exchange of mutual appreciation and respect between the artists and the community.
BM Space, Shanghai