Ivan Lisyak

Born 1982, St Leonards, Sydney
Bachelor of Arts, Electronic Arts (Hons)
Graduation show: 2003, 2004 (Hons)
Graduation ceremony: 2005


Artwork in Space YZ

In The End, There's Nothing Left To Say, 2003
Single channel video with sound (VHS)
13:53 mins

The work in Space YZ, In The End, There's Nothing Left To Say is my third-year graduation work. It seemed to strike a chord with people because it has a time stamp. That time stamp is frozen popular culture re-edited, a trigger for a memory in being and time. I remember working on it for months powered by Red Bull, chicken sticks from the Kingswood campus café and no sleep. It was a randomly captured VHS recording, poorly transferred onto a Grey Apple G4 iMac at the UWS video lab. It was edited using an archaic version of Final Cut Express on Mac OSX Jaguar (version 10.2). At the time, you had a limit of 32 undo operations. Digital editing technology has come a long way; no one would attempt the editing methods then anymore as there are algorithms and plugin effects that do this work for you. In this work, In The End, There's Nothing Left To Say, every micro edit was manually created, like a painter would paint every stroke on a canvas.

In 2001, I had an interest in audio production, and I wanted to learn how Aphex Twin’s Come To Daddy film clip was produced. I was just out of a High School in the Blue Mountains when I found out I had three university placements available: a Conservatorium in Sydney; a music degree at UWS; and UWS Electronic Arts which eventually I enrolled in. Choosing the degree was a roll of the dice decision. Electronic Arts at UWS, from my experience, was a degree where you were encouraged to break the rules, use resources at your disposal, to collaborate with students from other degrees and make work without many rules. Electives included Radical Rock Video, led by David Haines with artist guests including TV Moore; Spatial Audio, where we had the opportunity to create music in 5.1 or more with the most up to date technology at the time. It was because the degrees (both Visual Arts and Electronic Arts, along with the Music Technology component of the Music degree) were run by course directors who had the freedom to develop classes that would challenge students, giving them opportunities to think outside of the box. I still use methodologies in my own arts practice from these times. I never really learned how Come to Daddy was produced.

Ivan Lisyak is a Music Producer, Sound Engineer, Noise Musician, Drummer, and Video Artist. Ivan has been invited to perform solo at Electrofringe, Performance Space, Museum Of Contemporary Art, The Now Now Festival and Liquid Architecture. Ivan has played drums and toured in notable acts, Brightness, Tanned Christ, Jack Colwell, Belles Will Ring, and The Paper Scissors. Ivan participated in IIII lead by Hisham Akira Bharoocha, at the Sydney Opera House as part of Sydney Festival 2012. Ivan’s production and mixing work has appeared on record labels Siberia Recordings, EMI, Mushroom, and Universal. Currently, Ivan is the live drummer in Skeleten (Astral People Recordings, PIAS), and producing post gabber techno under the name Turbo2.

Learn more about Ivan Lisyak by visiting his Instagram.