Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Louise has a particular interest and expertise in supervising practice-led artistic research projects and welcomes contact from prospective PhD and Masters students.
Key research themes in The Sound Collectors Lab are percussion performance and presentation, post-instrumental practice, new music, and the climate crisis and environmental communication through music.

20152024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Dr Louise Devenish is a percussionist who creates interdisciplinary musical works as a performer, director and devisor. Her practice focuses on new modes of performance and instrumentality to explore the sounds, stories, and ecologies of the world around us. As a soloist, collaborator, and ensemble musician (The Sound Collectors Lab, Decibel, and others), she performs internationally at festivals such as MONA FOMA, Nagoya and Shanghai World Expos, Tage für Neue Musik, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Tongyeong International Music Festival. Louise's ‘interpretive flair and technical brilliance’ in performance has been recognised by APRA AMCOS Art Music Performance of the Year Awards and a Luminary Award, a Churchill Fellowship, and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship. Louise is Convenor of Classical Music and Percussion Coordinator at Monash University, where she is director of artistic research project The Sound Collectors Lab, creating new works with teams of collaborators across music, visual arts, digital arts and spatial design. Her writing on music is published in academic books and journals, industry publications and zines. 

www.louisedevenish.com.au

Research interests

Percussion performance, pedagogy and modes of presentation

Contemporary art music in Australia

Post-instrumental practice

The climate crisis and environmental communication through music

Digital notation

Music and gender

 

Key research themes in The Sound Collectors Lab:

Post-instrumental practice
Post-instrumental practice is a pioneering methodology integrating visual and sonic artforms/mediums in both process and product. This interdisciplinary approach to new music creation focusses on the expansion of musical tools and methods, with an emphasis on the application of structural, compositional and instrumental musical devices to materials traditionally associated with non-sonic aspects of performance (such as theatrical sets, lighting, gaming hardware, notation or physical gestures). The Sound Collectors Lab applies and develops the four key characteristics of post-instrumental practice in artistic research projects: Instrumentality, Plurality, Technique Transferral, and Integration (Devenish 2021).

See projects: Alluvial Gold, The SoundCatcher, Digital Phasing, Cosmic Time

The climate crisis and environmental communication through music
The climate crisis is a global issue strongly influencing the evolution of art music: shaping new directions in creative practice, informing conceptual frameworks, and guiding curatorial and collaborative approaches to programming and mentorship (Devenish and Goh 2024, forthcoming). The Sound Collectors Lab develops creative works that reveal and communicate environmental stories through music, with projects ranging from sonic representations of natural phenomena for solo performer, through to group projects emphasising human impacts on the natural environment and broader issues surrounding the climate crisis to bridge the gap between data, reflection, and action. Our approaches combine eco-artistic (Milligan 2022) and interdisciplinary collaborative methods

See projects: Alluvial Gold, The Bloodwood Series, Sonic Possible Worlds, Climate Notes, We’re Always Touching Underwater

Percussion performance, pedagogy and presentation
Creation, recording and performance of new works featuring percussion, aimed at expanding and developing percussive materials, techniques, performance practices and pedagogies. Research in this area is practice-led, emphasising performer-composer collaboration, historic and new directions in Australian music (Devenish 2015), gender diversity in music, and supervision of PhD and Masters artistic research projects. The Monash Percussion Studio undergraduate teaching program is informed by this research. 

See projects: Alluvial Gold, Sonic Possible Worlds, Cosmic Time, Digital Phasing, Self-World

 

Monash teaching commitment

Graduate Research Program Director (Music, Theatre and Performance)

Convenor of Classical Music Stream

Percussion Coordinator

Graduate Research Supervision

Unit Coordinator: Music Performance unit sequence (ATS1044, ATS1045, ATS2122, ATS2123, ATS3136, ATS3137)

Community service

Percussive Arts Society: New Music/Research Committee

Perth Symphony Orchestra: Artistic Advisory Board

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 13 - Climate Action
  • SDG 14 - Life Below Water
  • SDG 15 - Life on Land

External positions

Core artist, Decibel New Music Ensemble Incorporated

2013 → …

Senior Lecturer, Chair of Percussion, University of Western Australia

20132019

Research area keywords

  • Music Performance
  • Australian music
  • Percussion
  • Post-instrumental practice
  • Experimental music
  • Contemporary art music
  • Artistic research
  • Digital notation
  • Practice-led research
  • Climate crisis

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or