The Intermedial Composition Network's next Artist Spotlight features ICN member Tom Hogan, presenting the first showing of his PhD creative practice research into the inbetweenness of voice.
Train Pulling out of Station is a performance and surround sound installation that transforms an ordinary commute into a dense, unfolding voice event where breath, announcement, memory, affect, and mediation drift between sound and silence, breath and resonance. The work stages a live, recorded, or imagined journey in which narration, environment, and pop cultural references collide, building in density to a condition between coherence and nonsense. The voice is presented not as a sound or as carrier of language, but as an ongoing process that occurs across bodies, technologies, and time. As the train continues to depart, what emerges is not an experience of transit, but an encounter with perception, and the voice. Listening and attention is torn between being passive and active, where meaning is unstable, and the most “notable” moments hover just at the edge of noticing.
Tom Hogan is an Australian musician and performing artist living and working on Bidjigal land, Sydney. His practice spans sound, voice, theatre, songwriting and performance, and is driven by an interest in authenticity, mythology, and storytelling, often approached through comedy, collaboration, and popular song forms. He is known for charismatic and mercurial live performances, and for projects that sit between concert, theatre, and lecture. His theatre works include The Epic (2015, toured nationally in 2018) and Tamagotchi Reset & Other Doomsdays (2017), created with Finn O’Branagàin; Love Song Dedications (without Richard Mercer) (2018, toured nationally in 2021), created with Bonnie Leigh‑Dodds; and the tragicomedy musical Mount Hopeless (2022), created with musician Elana Stone. In addition to his collaborative and performance‑based work, Hogan releases songwriting/popular music under his own name, and improvisation‑led sound works and compositions under the moniker Arzner. He has designed and composed music and sound for over 100 performances and installations nationally.
