Leah's on a pioneering music tour

Gail Forrer-Arnold | 16th October 2009

Leah Barclay's cutting edge music brilliance has been recognised with a prestigious residency in Seoul, South Korea at the UNESCO-awarded art centre Nabi.

Leah Barclay producing the podcastseries for Ignition New media at Community Radio at the J.

Geoff Potter

Music may have been one of the last fields to be transformed by 21st century technology.

For the adventurous and talented it is an area where you can metaphorically travel to the moon. For 24-year-old musician Leah Barclay it has given her a creative landscape where she is driven to complete projects across the globe, ranging from the ocean floor to desolate lava caves.

This month the Cooroy resident's cutting edge music brilliance has been recognised with a prestigious residency in Seoul, South Korea at the UNESCO-awarded art centre Nabi.

The award came from Asialink, Australia's leading centre for the promotion of public understanding of Asia and Australia's role in the region.

Leah follows a path of high-tech exploration and the placement of new sounds.

Words to describe her music include electrocoustic, and her work includes experiments with “hybrid sonic languages”. There are no precedents in this brave new world of artistic creation and Leah sees the residency as a chance to share her knowledge while forming cultural links.

“I see this as a great opportunity to develop a stronger dialogue between artistic practices in Australia and Asia and once the connections are established there are infinite possibilities of what we can do in virtual worlds,” she said.

Leah said she will draw on her theatre, interactive installations, live electronics and multi-platform production to create a series of hybrid intercultural performances that will be diffused live via broadband networks.

Leah believes countries such as China, Japan and Korea are leaders in the advancement of technology, and we should be looking to them for inspiration across all knowledge industries.

Now, more than ever before, creative thinking, driven by technology, could truly be a global tool for change, she said.

Since graduating from the Queensland Conservatorium Leah has performed, published and produced commissioned works in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe and India. Her many awards include the inaugural Premier of Queensland's National New Media Art Scholarship.

Despite her success, Leah still has her feet grounded on home soil and wants to use her experience to enrich the local community.

She currently holds a management position with the Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance and regularly hosts a show on Noosa Community Radio.

Upcoming local projects include several performances at Woodford Folk Festival, a major project for the Sunshine Coast council's “Treeline” in 2010 titled Cypress Trilogy, and Sound Mirrors, a unique installation for the Noosa Everglades that has just been selected as one of four national projects for the Australia Council's Environmental Leadership program.

You can follow the progress of Leah's Asialink project www.leahbarclay.com or follow her on twitter www.twitter.com/leahbarclay.