Dr. Douglas Tewksbury, associate professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Niagara University, has been commissioned by the City of Hamilton, Ontario, to compose a sound installation work as the featured artist during Winterfest, the city’s annual winter arts festival. His new work, “Different Ghosts,” will be the featured site sound installation at the festival’s Hub, a collection of more than 20 custom art installations, performances, and murals that will be displayed on the rooftop of Jackson Square in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, from Feb. 10-20, 2023.
“Different Ghosts,” is a one-hour long work of multiple long analog tape loops on the 8-track reel-to-reel machine that reflects on time, the recent past, and now-present.
“I wanted these long-form, meditative, constantly evolving ambient works to acknowledge the slowing down of the winter season, but also to serve as a coming together, a shared celebration of our community and its artists, gathering and creating again in public places, after so long apart,” Dr. Tewksbury said.
Dr. Tewksbury is an electronic and experimental musician from Hamilton, Ontario. His work commonly uses original and adapted material on very long loops of analog tape on multiple (and sometimes half-functional) tape machines, building mini-symphonies of human voices, instruments, and synthesizers to create long-form ambient works.