Crafting the Score : In Conversation with Forest Swords

Hear from Forest Swords, one of the world’s foremost electronic artists and composers for videogames, film and experimental art scores

Matthew Barnes aka Forest Swords is an in-demand composer and sound designer—writing music for ballet, film and video games. These includes the iconic Assassin's Creed series, collaborations with artists like Liam Young and dance works with Emma Portner and the Norwegian National Ballet. Hear about his creative and technical processes, what inspires him and his creations and what it means to craft music for a diverse range of visual mediums. Take a deep dive into the art of making music for art, film and videogames and explore his unique soundscapes.

He’s also playing live in Australia for the first time in a decade. Later in the evening, at 7.30pm, he’s unsheathing music from his album Bolted. A set of expressive post-industrial landscapes—that bleeds between muscular and bleak, haunting and euphoric—that’ll be integrated with HD imagery on ACMI’s massive cinema screen.