Sound Artist Part 2: Don Simmons
April 5, 2009
Originally from Nova Scotia, Don Simmons is a conceptual sound artist who is now based in Toronto, Ontario. His work mainly focuses itself as having elements of robotics, electronics, audio, and performance. Whenever he begins a new project or experiment he always has in mind the probability of failure.Simmon’s describes his work as bringing up problematic concepts encouraging debate, discussion and chaos. Simmon’s mostly concerns himself with the psychological effects of the stimulated process and he treats the body as a machine or robot. The body to him is something that is made for collecting data and information through his performances. Simmons also creates situations for ‘false’ emotional states to occur in the audience, in turn questioning the reality of simulated emotions.
Part of The Aural Cultures exhibition at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre in Alberta.
Researching all these different types of sound artists, Don Simmon’s is similar to the rest of the artists because he is now using the new technology and using the computer programs to his advantage just like his peers have been doing. He is also very interested with his immediate environment and his work can consist of outside influences. He differs from the other artists in that he is very much n the future and thinks of everything around him in a very robotic way. His vision of the human body being a machine and he thinks everything is all about technology and that where he differs from other sound artists because they are more with the emotional feelings of a performance.
http://www.donsimmons.net/gradualdisappearance.mp3
http://www.donsimmons.net
