Vanessa Isobel Black is an Australian/British composer, violinist, singer, visual artist, and tarot reader based in Oslo since 2017. She is classically trained in violin and voice with a Bachelor in Composition (Sydney Conservatorium) – including studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, and completed a Masters in Music (WSU) focused on Feminist Aesthetics, where she also taught and lectured in music philosophy. Through her compositions and improvisations she is exploring the effects of reverb and how it creates space by looking at the nature of vibration, dissonance, and reverb, and observing its role as a ghost performer. Working at the intersections of feminism, trauma, nature, and folklore, her work is influenced by personal experience or shared stories, merging sound, art, movement, and text to write new narratives.

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Through my compositions, improvisations, and visual art I am telling the stories of lost, hidden, and silenced voices, with a particular focus on women, trauma, and abuse. I do this by looking at the nature of vibration, dissonance, and reverb, observing its role as a ghost performer. By investigating the effects on the body and the physical spaces they are performed in I am questioning the possibility of giving trauma a voice and the potential to transform. Working at the intersections of feminism, trauma, nature, and folklore, my work is mostly influenced by personal experience or shared stories, both past and present.

I compose acoustic and electroacoustic sound works for soloists, chamber and vocal ensembles, and interactive installations inside which improvisation has become a bigger focus in recent years; introducing extended vocal techniques, visual art, movement, and text.  My fascination with the effects of reverb comes from how it creates space. The new voices that emerge from combining natural and processed sound act like a portal between worlds through which I am creating sound spaces that aim to give a language to something that was lost, silenced, or never spoken, in an attempt to heal and ignite discourse around affecting change in society.

My work is most often a reflection of my own experiences and observations with particular emphasis on women, intuition, and the importance of having a voice of one’s own that is not only heard but visible. I believe it’s important to take these conversations forward to promote awareness, connect, and write new narratives. For me, each composition is the expression of a story that has not been told or feels impossible to tell.