"It’s the weird house party of your dreams." - Dots+Loops bring forth their latest art mash-up

There’s something very interesting brewing , a surreal house party with a mash-up of eclectic music and performance art. You can check it out next week on Saturday 27 March at Newstead Brewery. Dots+Loops have self-styled as creator’s of ‘Australia’s Post-Genre Arts Series’ and however you want to interpret that, Vibrations is extremely intriguing and ought to be checked out by all self-respecting strange art fans.

We had a chat to Kieran Welch, Artistic Director of Dots+Loops about how to smash together strange and unlikely artforms into an intriguing creative pavlova.

Tell us about the show in 50 words or less

It’s the weird house party of your dreams! Picture a big party at your best mate’s Queenslander, add three awesome adventurous musical duos, and make it about 10% weirder than you currently have in mind. We have bulk drums, we have synths galore, we have a clothesline, it’s all there!

This is some crazy looking house party – can you tell us a bit more about the venue and the audience experience?

For sure! We’re really excited with how we’ve utilized the huge ex-office space above Newstead Brewing Co. Milton for this one. Percussion duo Provocative Vibrations start in the "backyard", complete with a clothesline handily doubling as a projection screen, and a plethora of plants. Moving to the "kitchen"/bar area, Throat Pleats will bring their uniquely zany performance art to Brisbane for the first time, moving through the audiences and tables—quite possibly with vacuum cleaners or hoses in tow! Shugorei then bring the night to a glitchy peak in the "living room", surrounded by a multitude of mismatched lamps and couches, to launch their debut album, merging virtuosic live percussion with IDM-inspired live synths. Finally, I'll finish with a DJ set leading on from the rest of the performances, while audiences and artists alike can party into the early hours—with no neighbours to worry about!

As for a more general audience experience, we aim for Dots+Loops shows to have something familiar and welcoming for everyone, regardless of musical background, but at the same time to also have something completely new and exciting. So you’ll be at home, but also experience something you never have before. To sweeten the deal, our audiences are the some of the most friendly, interesting and fantastically diverse we reckon you’ll find at a gig in Brisbane—all of our shows are an implicitly and explicitly safe and accessible space for any and all audiences. And if that wasn’t enough, Newstead Brewing Co are supplying drinks all night, and providing heaps of comfy spaces to chill out and enjoy the musical mayhem!

What is your creative process like?

More and more, I think of curation as my primary artform. I love bringing things—music, art, people, ideas—together in ways that are both symbiotically beneficial for everyone involved, but also create something new and unexpected. Curation for me is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. I’ll come across a piece of music, or concept for a layout, or performer that I just have to program in a show. That forms the edges of the jigsaw if you will. Then I might realise that another jigsaw piece I’ve had on the table for months fits perfectly in the upper left-hand corner—a piece that pairs perfectly. I might take a few more months trying to fit things together, before I discover the next big piece of the puzzle, and then the whole jigsaw starts looking like something in earnest, and the other pieces slide in easier and easier.

What changed this a bit was opening up to co-curate with my amazing Associate Directors Connor D’Netto and Flora Wong. We have a set of central values that we use to curate our shows, such as making sure our programming is gender-diverse and reflects voices from different cultures. But after that, all bets are off… and the unexpected perspectives that come from letting two other amazing artists join in my process so centrally is thrilling, difficult, eye-opening and ultimately creates a series that I strongly believe is better than the sum of its parts.

Vibrations specifically was curated between the three of us, but this time also features a great deal of contribution from the artists themselves. Going back to the jigsaw metaphor, for this show Flora, Connor and I put together a good deal of the outline and corners of the puzzle, but the artists filled in the rest between themselves. And the result is just super fun!

Tell us your origin story. Where did Dots+Loops come from? And what does the name reference?

It perhaps goes back further than you’d think. As a kid, I was lucky enough to start learning violin through the fantastic instrumental program we have in Queensland state schools, and I loved it! But as I grew older, I found the music I was listening to was very different to the music I was training to perform. During my Bachelor of Music, I’d practice Bach and Bartok for five hours a day, then go home and listen to Boards of Canada, Bonobo or Björk. I ended up feeling uncomfortably like a round peg in a square hole—until I started trying to express that, instead of diminish it. I created a concert series that combined my classical training with the electronic music I’d DJ in my bedroom, the house party gigs I went to on the weekends, and the festivals I’d go to every summer—and was equally welcoming to anyone from any of those worlds. However, what really made Dots+Loops take off was the community. The artists, the audiences, the composers, producers and DJs… It very quickly helped me realise that the community was the best part, and most important part of Dots+Loops.

But as for the name… Honestly, I shared my idea for the first Dots+Loops show with my good friend and original co-Curator Chris Perren, who had listened to Stereolab’s 1997 album Dots and Loops the night before. Dots are slang for musical notation, and loops make up a lot of electronic music… and so began our battle for search engine results with a fantastic album you should listen to sometime.

Who is your perfect audience member? Who is going to LOVE this event?

I hope it’s not a copout if I say anyone with an ear for adventure!

Vibrations takes off on Saturday 27 March at Newstead Brewing Co Milton.