Briony Luttrell

The Chair and the Cello premiered internationally as the opening special event at the ADSA 2025 Conference in Studio 77 at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.

This is the premiere of a new performance work. Set over the course of one night, this performance explores ideas of loneliness, isolation and academia. The human need for connection is confronted by the inanimate object: sexy cellos, fascist chairs, and piles of doom. When we are overwhelmed with to-do lists and easy-clean DIY dystopian capitalism, when we are confined in a liminal and uncanny space, what is it that we need to survive? Devised by Hannah Banks, Nicola Hyland and Briony Luttrell with Carl Walling and Lucy Orkild. Performed by Hannah Banks, Briony Luttrell and Lucy Orkild. Directed by Nicola Hyland with Musical Direction / Composition / Sound Design by Briony Luttrell and Lighting Design by Carl Walling. Projection Design by Rebekah De Roo with

Technical Support by Lucas Neal.

"The Chair and The Cello: Developing industry guidelines for practicing creative safety" is a research project to develop an innovative best-practice industrial framework of practitioner wellbeing within the Creative Industries. This research is autoethnographic as the researchers investigated creative safety in the devising and rehearsal process by developing a new live performance. From this we will develop a trauma informed guide/toolkit for industry practitioners who want to engage in creative practice that uses difficult autobiographical

stories.

Research Background
Australian Universities are seeking to embed First Nations knowledges and practices into curriculum (Dianati & Bolt 2025). The approaches that Australian universities implement “Indigenisation” are varied (p. 1, 2025). One publicly visible way to demonstrate cultural collaboration with First Nations peoples would be to replace the academic procession music, “The Prince of Denmark’s March”, previously used at UniSC. This music is often used in film and television to signify pageantry or British heritage (Le Huray & Day, 2011). This work sought to discover ways to challenge the customs of the academic procession by the composition of a new ceremonial piece for a multi-campus university, led by First Nations Elder Uncle Kevin Starkey.

Research Contribution
Uncle Kevin extensively consulted with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across the country, to compose “Oro Yarta Milyarra”, meaning Northwind Country Ceremony. After a monologue, the work opens with a wullwora (bull-roarer) specifically created for the composition and recorded at an abandoned train tunnel for its acoustics. Uncle Gordon Browning performed a pre-colonisation yidaki (digeridoo) and modern replica yidakis, and the addition of clap sticks and Torres Strait drums represent many ceremonial practices across Australia. The work was recorded by the music faculty at UniSC in the K1 studios and on location. This project incorporates Aboriginal and Torres Strait ceremonial practices to mark the handing down of knowledge and connect graduands to ancient knowledge holders of the past.

Research Significance
“Oro Yarta Milyarra”, commissioned by the Vice Chancellor, is played at the commencement of every UniSC graduation ceremony since September 2024. Media coverage of this significant change to the graduation ceremony included local ABC radio, The National Indigenous Times, and the UniSC website.

Research Background
The environmental impact of creative work is an increasing concern in the carbon footprint of production and digital distribution (Brennan et al 2020, Marks 2020). Whilst creative reuse and bricolage are strategies used commonly to reduce the financial cost of creative work, they are now gaining momentum as environmental cost interventions (Hayward 2024). Surreal audiovisual comedy is a notable site of innovation in the bricolage and reuse of materials, notably in the works of Monty Python, Quentin Smirhes and Noel Fielding. This project explores the question: how can a comedic approach to creative reuse and bricolage help to reduce the environmental impact of audiovisual creative work?

Research Contribution
[SILENT] FILMS is a 7min collection of sketch comedy style videos that use captions to communicate “audio” elements of dialogue, voice-over, music and sound effects. The lack of audio encourages audiences to create the soundtrack for themselves via the creative reuse and bricolage of sounds in their own personal and cultural intertextual memory. It builds on industrial knowledge and scholarship of the creativity and techniques of captioning, prevalent in discourses around accessibility (Berry 2024, Zdenek 2015). The environmental impact of creating and distributing this video-only work is minimised in lower electricity needs and smaller data streaming rates.

Research Significance
Premiering on 25 July 2024 at Light Industry’s Arts and Manufacturing Showcase in Kunda Park, the work is part of a QLD Arts Council commission connecting manufacturing with creative industries which is now the focus of a national consortium of stakeholders and associated funding schemes. Over 300 hundred people were in attendance including local and state government representatives and delegates from Creative Australia. The work informs the development of HallowGreen 2025, a Halloween-based circular economy and creative reuse event celebrating the region’s light industrial sector.

[SILENT] FILMS is a 7min collection of video shorts created by Briony Luttrell, Hannah Banks, and Brodie Luttrell. Designed without sound, it uses open captions to communicate dialogue, voice over, music and sound effects, encouraging the audience to create the soundtrack in their own minds.

Made on Kabi Kabi / Gubbi Gubbi country.

It premiered on 25th July 2024 at Light Industry Arts and Manufacturing Showcase in Kunda Park QLD, at arguably the smallest cinema in Australia created by Teddy Horton.

SOUNDPLAYSTILL is a one hour recorded soundtrack work of sonic sensory play, comprising of two movements. It was commissioned for STILL an immersive one night only artistic experience showcasing 40 new artworks of Australian artist John Wren. The sold-out event was held on Thursday 23rd May 2024 at Superordinary in Brisbane, QLD. Movement 1 is 30 minutes long and accompanies the pre-show section of the event. Movement 2 is 24 minutes long and accompanies the catwalk section of the event.

Movement 1 credits: Briony Luttrell, Andy Ward, and Simon Kindt.

Movement 2 credits: Briony Luttrell and Andy Ward.

Research Background
Critiqued as a cornerstone of Neo-Liberal consumerism (Cavusoglu & Dakhli 2016), the fashion industry has long established the sonic and musical accompaniment as central to the commercial outcomes of a runway event (Skov et al. 2009). This ephemeral nature of the musical component of fashion shows is often credited with deeper audience engagement and consequently loans a level of value perception to the physical artefacts displayed on the catwalk (Strähle & Kriegel 2018), and by association the brand proposition at market. This is particularly the case when the music accompanying the show is bespoke in nature and ‘high art’ in stylistic choice.

Research Contribution
Visual art, often housed and traded in galleries, is often positioned as non-ephemeral propositions that are fundamentally materialist in nature (Harman 2016). As a result, their value is perceived through material perspectives (Chen 2009). SOUNDPLAYSTILL challenges this idea by providing a bespoke musical and sound art-based commission to accompany a visual art exhibition recontextualised as a runway event. In doing so, the work explores the rhetorical power of bespoke sonic creative labour (Hofman 2015) in persuading market perception of value in visual art cultural events.

Research Significance
SOUNDPLAYSTILL is a one hour recorded soundtrack work, comprising of two 30-minute movements. It was commissioned for STILL a sellout immersive one night only artistic experience showcasing 72 new artworks of Australian artist John Wren. The event was held on 23 May 2024 at Superordinary in Brisbane, QLD. A short-form documentary was made about the exhibition directed by Hayden Rossiter featuring excerpts of SOUNDPLAYSTILL and new music by Briony Luttrell. The success of the STILL exhibition for John Wren has led to significant art sales, multiple collaborations with businesses featuring his artwork, being a finalist in the Henry Jones Art Prize 2024, and a new feature with lifestyle concept store BECKER MINTY.

Archaeopteryx is an EP by band Nonsemble, composed by Chris Perren.

Role: string recording supervisor, string editor. 

Full credits and more info: https://nonsemble.bandcamp.com/album/archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx is a cycle of compositions for live strings and electronics, inspired by huge prehistoric birds. Chugging downbows, ethereal harmonic textures, and delicate pizzicato are nestled within lush synthesized textures and warm, thudding electronic percussion, exploring an expansive and totally unique soundworld.

Each movement is named after a species. Pelagornis, an ancient seabird with a 6m wingspan, the 3m-tall flightless “terror bird” Phorusrhacos, and others, including the eponymous Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird. These long-extinct majestic winged creatures, known only through incomplete fossils, scientific descriptions and drawings, evoke a sense of transcendence and mystery which flows through this music.

The story of this music begins in live performance, with motifs emerging and evolving slowly over many performances. As Nonsemble experimented with combining strings with dynamic live electronics, Archaeopteryx was honed and refined into the evocative and organic body of work presented in this recording.