Manoli Moriaty is an artist and researcher, exploring the synergy and interactivity between sonic and performance arts. Athens-born and currently based in Manchester, UK, he regularly engages in collaboration with artists and technologists active in diverse disciplines. Appropriating the biological notion of symbiosis, his practice interprets practitioners, cultures, and expressive media as organisms of distinct species, and organises their engagement according to the spectrum of symbiotic relationships.
Having migrated to the United Kingdom in the late 90’s, Manoli caught the rave movement’s swan song, playing Jungle and Techno records at clubs, squats, and festivals across the North West and traveling with sound systems as far as Eastern Europe for the best part of the last decade. Following a diagnosis of chronic tinnitus, and the good fortune of studying composition and music technology with Stephen Davismoon, Joe Duddell, Nicola Spellman, Craig Vear, and Alan Williams, Manoli migrated into sonic-arts by carrying much of the ethos and methodologies of electronic dance music.
In the brief time of his artistic practice, he has engaged with numerous creative milieus. Highlights include presenting and performing work at Word of Warming, ICMC/SMC, Supersonic Festival, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Surge Glasgow, Electric Nights Athens, the Beijing New Dance Festival, the Manchester Science Festival, and the Ionian Academy’s Audiovisual Arts Festival. He has performed with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Echo Echo Dance Company, and composed live scores for Jim Cartwright‘s Burning Bright and Teresia Björk‘s Vi-We-Nous. He has received commissions and funding by Arts Council England, the British Science Association, Sound & Music, and IdeasTap, he held residencies with the NOVARS Research Centre, the Manchester International Festival, the Great Exhibition of the North, and Medea Electronique. As the principal curator and producer of the Metanast collective, he organised a series of concerts aiming to showcase artistic practices traditionally associated with academia in the context of nightlife clubbing, and featured over 100 artists from more than 30 countries.
He is the author of peer-reviewed publications by Taylor and Francis, Springer, and the Society for Artistic Research, and he recently completed a Practice Research PhD on polydisciplinary collaboration in performance practice under the supervision of Joanne Scott and Stephen Kilpatrick through the Pathway to Excellence Scholarship. Since 2016, he is associate lecturer of the School of Arts & Media, University of Salford, where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate modules on music technology, theatre practice, and multimedia performance.