Dr. Paul Whitty

Dr. Paul Whitty is a Reader in Composition; Research Director for Film, Fine Art and Music; and Co-Director of the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes.

His work has been performed at State Of The Nation, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, ICA, Ultima Festival, Tate Britain, BMIC Cutting Edge Series and Tour, and Brighton Festival; and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM, DRS2 (Suisse), Nederlands Radio, and ABC (Aus).

His work has found its way into spaces and contexts not usually associated with experimental music including the Mecca State Bingo Hall in Kilburn, Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, the office of Beaconsfield art gallery in Vauxhall, the freezer compartment of a fridge in Romford, clubs in Hackney and Huddersfield and Vauxhall Cross Gyratory.

Recently Paul has been engaged in a series of interventions in pre-existing contexts – re-reading, re-organising, re-categorising, re-distributing and re-sounding the materials that are found there. These contexts can be scores, actual physical sites or instruments.He has received awards from ACE, AHRC, British Academy, Britten-Pears Foundation, British Council, Banff Centre for the Arts, Hinrichsen Foundation, Holst Foundation, RVW Trust and PRSF.

Paul is a founding member of [rout] an ensemble that he directs with composers Sam Hayden and Paul Newland. Recent projects include an appearance at the Night of the Unexpected at HCMF 2007. [rout] took up residence in a Warehouse at the industrial complex Bates Mill and performed a series of works including Paul’s instruction score …i was bored before I even began… and his film installation watching Antoinette Vischer playing Gyorgy Ligeti’s Continuum.

Paul has a particular interest in collaborative practice. His ongoing collaborative project Vauxhall Pleasure (2004-2008) with Anna Best consisted of a site event at Vauxhall Cross, London; an installation at the Museum of Garden History as part of their Tempered Ground exhibition; and two performances at Tate Britain. The latest phase of the project has been funded by the AHRC. In the introduction to the ACE publication Open Space: Art in the Public realm in London 1995-2005 Jemima Montagu comments: Both socio-political protest and live art and music performance, this project captures the richly layered, interdisciplinary and ultimately uncategorisable nature of art in the public realm today.

Paul has recently joined the Social Sculpture Research Unit Steering Group. He tutors the Masters programme in Composition and Sonic Arts and co-tutors the Creative Strategies element of the Masters in Interdisciplinary Art Practices with Shelley Sacks, Ray Lee and Richard Layzell. He is particularly interested in the strategies of engagement that Shelley has developed over time on this programme. Shelley has invited Paul to collaborate on the SSRU's Mobile Phones Opera, a project under discussion with Jo Ross of Oxford Contemporary Music.