David Cunningham (born 20 December 1954) is a composer and

record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure.Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

from Northern Ireland. His first significant success came with The Flying Lizards' single 'Money', an international hit in 197

Cunningham was born in

Armagh Armagh ( ; ga, Ard Mhacha, , "Macha's height") is the county town of County Armagh and a city in Northern Ireland, as well as a civil parish. It is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland – the seat of the Archbishops of Armagh, the Pri ...

on 20 December 1954. Between 1973 and 1977 he attended

Maidstone College of Art The Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD, often ) was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone Col ...

, in

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the c ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. In 1976 he released ''Grey Scale'', an own-label LP of pieces in

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

idiom, as his Degree show. The cover was from fellow student and video artist,

Stephen Partridge Stephen Partridge (born 1953) is an English video artist

with whom he made a number of collaborations over the next 20 years. Cunningham has worked as a musician and record producer, engaging with an eclectic range of people and music, from pop groups (This Heat,

Palais Schaumburg Palais Schaumburg is a neoclassical-style building in Bonn, Germany, which served as the primary official seat of the German Federal Chancellery and the primary official residence of the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1 ...

) to improvisers (David Toop,

Steve Beresford Steve Beresford (born 6 March 1950) is a British musician who graduated from the University of York He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, such ...

) to Michael Nyman's music for Peter Greenaway's films. From about 1993, Cunningham began to make installations in which sounds within an architectural space were picked up by a microphone and then fed back into the space; the presence of an audience altered both the shape of the space and the sounds within it. A work of this type, ''The Listening Room'', was installed in the Queen's Powder Magazine on Goat Island in

Sydney Harbour Port Jackson, consisting of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, is the ria or natural harbour of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The harbour is an inlet of the Tasman Sea (p ...

during the

Sydney Biennale The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...

of 1998. Film and television work has included two long continuing collaborations - with William Raban, recently '72-82', 'London Republic' and 'Available Light' and with Ken McMullen, most recently with 'Οχί An Act of Resistance' and McMullen's earlier films 'Being and Doing', '

Zina ''Zināʾ'' () or ''zinā'' ( or ) is an Islamic legal term referring to unlawful sexual intercourse. According to traditional jurisprudence, ''zina'' can include adultery, fornication, prostitution, rape, sodomy, incest, and bestiality. ...

' and (alongside

Michael Giles Michael Rex Giles (born 1 March 1942) is an English drummer, percussionist, and vocalist, best known as one of the co-founders of King Crimson in 1969. Prior to the formation of King Crimson, he was part of the eccentric pop trio Giles, Giles a ...

and

Jamie Muir Jamie Muir (born 1943 in Edinburgh) is a Scottish painter and former musician, best known for his work as the percussionist in King Crimson from 1972–1973. Biography Muir attended the Edinburgh College of Art during the 1960s, and began playi ...

) '

Ghost Dance The Ghost Dance ( Caddo: Nanissáanah, also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) was a ceremony incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wilso ...

'. Related work has included the production and treatment of sound for installation and broadcast artworks by Susan Hiller, Cerith Wyn Evans, Laure Prouvost, Martin Creed, Amikam Toren, João Penalva, Ceal Floyer, Ian Breakwell,

Gillian Wearing Gillian Wearing CBE, RA (born 10 December 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the 1997 Turner Prize. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her ...

, Thomas Demand, Sam Taylor-Johnson, John Latham, David Hall,

Stephen Partridge Stephen Partridge (born 1953) is an English video artist

Bruce McLean Bruce McLean (born 1944) is a Scottish sculptor, performance artist and painter. McLean was born in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1963, and at Saint Martin's School of Art, London, from 1963 to 1966. At Saint Martin ...

, Tony Sinden, Brad Butler and Karen Mirza and many others.

Recordings

as producer

*''

This Heat This Heat were an English experimental rock band, formed in early 1976 in Camberwell, London by multi-instrumentalists Charles Bullen (guitar, clarinet, viola, vocals, tapes), Charles Hayward (drums, keyboards, vocals, tapes) and Gareth Willi ...

'' (Piano Records, 1979) *''

'' (

Phonogram Records Phonogram Incorporated was started in 1970 as a successor to Philips Phonographic Industries, a unit of the Grammophon-Philips Group (GPG), a joint venture of Philips N.V. of the Netherlands and Siemens A.G. of Germany. Phonogram was the name ...

, 1981)

The Flying Lizards

*''

The Flying Lizards The Flying Lizards were an experimental English new wave band, formed in 1976. They are best known for their eccentric cover version of Barrett Strong's "Money", featuring Deborah Evans-Stickland on lead vocals, which reached the UK and US re ...

'' (

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldwid ...

, 1980) ( UK No. 60, US No. 99Strong, Martin C. (2003) "Flying Lizards", in ''The Great Indie Discography'', Canongate, ) *''

Fourth Wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

'' (

1981) *''Top Ten'' (Statik, 1984) *''The Secret Dub Life of the Flying Lizards'' (Piano Records, 1996) (vinyl re-release, Staubgold, 2010) *''The Flying Lizards & Fourth Wall'' (re-release, RPM Records, 2010)

Solo

*''Grey Scale'' (piano 001, 1976) *''Zina'' - film soundtrack (Filmtrax MOMENT 103,1986) *''Terminus'' - film soundtrack (Carrere – 66416, 1987) *''Voiceworks'' (eva WWCX 2041, 1992, re-released as piano 505) *''Water'' (MTM, 1992) *''ext.night'' (piano 507, 1997) *''Novembre'' (Editions Circuit, 2008)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cunningham, David 1954 births Living people British experimental musicians British record producers Record producers from Northern Ireland