Chris Mann
Chris Mann (March 9, 1949 Australia, September 12, 2018 New York NY)
was an Australian composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm saying better than I do". He was, in the last 2 decades of his life, based in New York City.
Chris Mann part of the expedition to Praha in 1991 together with Woody Vasulka, Terrence McKenna, David Dunn and Liz Rhymland
Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory and has been recognized by UNESCO for his work in that field.
Mann also founded Melbourne’s New Music Centre in 1972, then taught at the State College of Victoria before leaving to work on research projects involving information theory. In the early to late ‘70s, he began to make contact with avant-garde composers world-wide, and a collection of Mann’s texts, Words & Classes, was published by Outback Press in 1977. Also in the 1970s, Mann began early collaborations with Australian composers like Peter Mumme, Warren Burt, Syd Clayton and others.
In 1975 Mann was Lecturer in Music at The Institute of Catholic Education at the State College of Victoria and by 1977 Co-ordinator of Aboriginal Studies there. Later, he travelled to Paris and Italy to investigate his ideas, and also study the history of grammar. In 1980 Mann attended La Trobe University, studying for a Bachelor of Education, then briefly became artist in residence at two Melbourne primary schools.
The early 1980s saw Mann begin to collaborate with computer artists, allowing him to modify spoken texts in various ways. It was around this time that more established Australian composers, such as Felix Werder, began to notice his work. Then well known American avant-garde composer John Cage set two of Mann’s texts, and one – for voice and violin – was performed in Los Angeles in 1987.
Beginning in the 1980s, Mann’s larrikin activities in compositional linguistics earned him an increasing overseas reputation, and he received commissions from Radio France and the Paris Autumn Festival. An additional collaboration with Warren Burt was also performed at the Pompidou Centre, France.
Mann then co-devised a multimedia collaboration – commissioned by the Australian Bicentennial Authority – with theatrical director Arpad Milhaly; and another Bicentennial radio piece for the ABC, with Warren Burt, Les Gilbert, Kris Hemensley and (the late) Walter Billeter. A Mann text/sound piece was presented at the 1987 Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and in 1988 he was one of the 22 composers included in my book, 22 Contemporary Australian Composers, mostly collaboratively co-written with those included and published by NMA Publications under the general aegis of composer Rainer Linz. At this time, Mann divided his time between Launching Place on the rural outskirts of Melbourne, and suburban St Kilda.
Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. He performed text in collaboration with artists such as Thomas Buckner, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, Larry Polansky, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Mann recorded with the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart, Rik Rue and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois, features realtime spectral analysis and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phonemes. Mann has also participated in the 60x60 project.
Mann taught in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School. He died in September 2018 after a recurrence of cancer. He is survived by his wife and two children.
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