Porch Swing Orchestra explores musical improvisation and field recording. Fleeting melodies are recorded alongside the conversations of passersby, the rattle of air conditioners, birdsong, and all matters of environmental sonic phenomena. Since 2018, PSO has collaborated with dozens of musicians, artists, poets, writers, and activists to publish over 220 pieces. PSO has been featured in Glasstire and has performed at Lora Reynolds Gallery, in the UT Landmarks Sky Space by James Turrell, and will host a series of events at Co-Lab Projects in Austin in January of 2024.

Assembled especially for the ICOSA Soundscape program, Second Season is a 33-minute compilation of solo works consisting of 18 pieces collected from PSO’s second year. This album includes a diverse range of field-recorded acoustic guitar improvisations captured in all sorts of weather among swarms purple martins, the thrum of a landing seaplane, sirens, seagull discoveries, thunderclaps, and swirls of cicadas. A physical release is planned to accompany this presentation.

Barry Stone was born in Lubbock, Texas, and earned a BA in Biology and an MFA in Studio Art in Photography from the University of Texas at Austin.

Barry Stone played in the influential post-rock band johnboy in the early 1990s. The band recorded two full-length records, one with Steve Albini, for Trance Syndicate Records, King Coffee of the Butthole Surfers’ label, and toured with Japanese noise pioneers Zeni Geva fronted by the legendary K.K. Knull. johnboy music was reviewed in Magnet, Trouser Press, the Austin Chronicle, and countless other alternative weeklies around the nation. Stone founded Mountains in Stars in Brooklyn in the early 2000s and was reviewed by TimeOut NY. Stone received a 2023 Live Music Grant from the City of Austin to release an album cut to vinyl by Mountains in Stars, which will be accompanied by a collection of images collected by the Carbon County Historical Society and Museum made by his grandfather, Charles Wood, in Red Lodge, Montana during the first decades of the 1900s.

Barry Stone’s artworks are represented by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York, and he was the founding member of the artist collective Lakes Were Rivers. He is a Professor of Photography at the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His work has been nationally and internationally exhibited, most recently at the Center for Art and Media, (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, The Lianzhou Photography Festival in China, and with Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York City. His photographs have been acquired by many collections including the Cleveland Clinic, Fidelity Mutual Corporation Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His work has been reviewed in many publications including Artforum, Artlies, Artnet, Washington City Paper, The New York Sun, TimeOut New York, and the New York Times.

More information about the project and the collaborators, click this link Soundings Project

About

The Soundscape Project consists of sound works played via an outdoor stereo system in the breezeway at the Canopy Complex (916 Springdale Road), from sundown to sunset each day. Each month ICOSA will feature a new sound artist, culled from local and national artist submissions. Each monthly featured artist’s work will be played on a loop and will be accessible to the public free of charge. The Soundscape Project provides sound artists a unique and specific platform for their work, dedicated to the act of listening. For more information and to apply please follow this LINK