John Cousins Photo: Colleen Anstey
Where does sound end and art begin?
There are few musical minds in this country who have explored the boundary between art and noise more than John Cousins, who has just turned 80.
John has gathered sound with everything from dictaphones to digital recorders.
He’s chopped it up, stretched it, distorted it, played it backwards, fast, slow – much of it in his own purpose-built studio, Studio 174, which is the best place to hear his art and has a seating capacity of one.
"My biggest thrill, the thing that makes my day, is if someone comes to the studio, sits in the space and listens. They get the work, and I get another set of perceptions listening to the work. That's just fantastic for me."
John doesn’t care so much about the legacy of his art, but he loves creating it, and the older he gets the more intense his desire to create seems to become.
"There's a huge communicative impulse there... I suppose it's a signal out of my 'solitary cell' to someone else, and they've turned and they've looked and they've noticed. And they witnessed."
"And I think everybody is looking for a witness to their lives, aren't they, and that's what I'm doing."
Three to Seven's Bryan Crump spoke with John about his work, and began the discussion by asking him what his first musical instrument was.
Selected recordings of John Cousins music made by RNZ Concert:
