Thomas Lea Clarke is a sound artist and electronic musician living in Berlin.
His work spans installation, live performance, and composition, using sound as a material to shape experiences, articulate spaces, and tell stories. Through recent works that engage with spatial audio composition Clarke has been examining the ways in which sounds transform and interact with our physical environments.
His work has been presented at institutions including Casino Forum D’Art Contemporain, Hosek Contemporary, Silent Green, Fuse Art Space, SoundsAbout Gallery and Cafe Oto.
An installation for 12 turntables and locked-groove vinyl loops in quadraphonic sound. Twelve loops carved into vinyl with a razor blade play continuously, routed through software that automates mixing patterns and spatial panning, creating a modulating soundscape that morphs and alters the listening experience as the listener moves through the gallery space.
This installation explores themes of music consumption, personal and collective memory making, our experience of the passing of time, and the evolution of audio technology in shaping how we engage with pop culture. By blending analog and digital technologies, destroying audio media whilst simultaneously creating a new artefact of transmission, Cut Cloud invokes reflection on processes of repetition and difference and non-pulsed time.
- Sound Installation
- 12 Turntables, Locked Groove Vinyl and 4 Channel Sound
- Hošek Contemporary, Berlin
- 21-23.03.25
realm is a reactive audiovisual artwork in which the relationships between sound, space and colour are explored in an immersive environment. Source materials from ambisonic recording sessions with Berlin-based collective Kulku are processed and translated into a three dimensional sensory experience where colour and spatial audio interact and merge
- Audiovisual artwork
- Thomas Lea Clarke, Titouan Bessenay & Kulku
- Ambisonic composition and full-dome-format projection
- PORTALE 2024, Zeiss Planetarium, Berlin
- 09.12.24
- Festival Sous Dome, Cité des Sciences et de L’Industrie, Paris
Patch for live performance developed in Max MSP based on spectral processing via fast fourier analysis and granular synthesis. By analyzing the spectral profile of an input sound, the microscopic detail captured in a sonic moment can be dissected, drawn out, repeated, spatialized and transformed creating entire soundscapes from the minutiae of sonic detail.
- Programming Environment for Performance & Audio Processing
- MAX MSP
- Continuous
Four locked grooves of composed sound play continuously, drifting and overlapping, falling in and out of phase and synchronicity, creating complex polyrhythms as well as moments of tension and harmony whilst gradually degrading. The evolving patterns challenge preconceived notions of structure and sequencing, inviting the listener to question the dichotomy between predictability and randomness.
The opening night of the exhibition featured a live performance by Clarke, using the material of the installation to layer and blend the various loops to create an improvisational composition. Clarke also held a workshop on the secong day of the exhibition where participants learnt how to create their own locked grooves using vinyl records and a razor blade.
- Sound Installation + Performance + Workshop
- Multichannel sound for locked groove vinyl records
- SoundsAbout Gallery, Berlin
- 09-11.02.24
Performance, installation and research project that explores the topics of memory, technology, obsolescence and forgotten histories. Using radio cassette players and reel to reel tape machines from the DDR era of East Germany that the artist procured through the popular German second-hand trading website “Ebay Kleinanzeigen”, Clarke mixes excerpts of interviews that he conducted with the original owners of the various machines, with their own 1980s home-made radio cassette recordings, and field recordings made by the artist in various locations around Berlin.
- Sound Performance + Research Project
- Reel to reel tape machines, vintage radios + DJ mixer
- Casino Forum D’art Contemporain, Luxembourg
- 27.07.2023
04.10.2024
A multichannel loudspeaker installation that evokes the contemplation of language, its sonic properties, translation and the dynamics imposed by the omnipotence of technology companies. One phrase is translated consecutively, moving around in a field/chamber following the progression of the children’s game ‘Telephone’. The sounds of various languages enter conflicts, surrender, merge, and deconstruct through the act of translation.
- Multichannel Sound Installation
- 12 Loudspeakers
- UDK, Berlin
- In Collaboration with Hoiyan Guo, Damian Noguera & Loris Foti
- 14.11.23
Acid Drones is a new recordng and live project by Thomas Lea Clarke. Each Acid Drone is built around a spectral drone generating VST that is reacting to the filter modulation of a 303 clone.
- Album
- Analog Synthesizers + Digital VSTs
- Offen Music
- 14.09.2023
https://offen.bandcamp.com/album/acid-drones
Thomas Lea Clarke also co-runs Phase Group Records: https://phasegroup.bandcamp.com/
And releases music as MR TC: https://www.discogs.com/artist/4733261-MR-TC
And is 1/2 of Trystero:
https://trysteromusic.bandcamp.com/album/sfumare-e-vedere