Jacques van Zyl
Jacques van Zyl was born in Uitenhage in 1963. Since then he has worked and lived in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Betty’s Bay, Greyton, Gordon’s Bay, Somerset West, and Bredasdorp. He formed part of the Pretoria Seunskoor in the 70s, and later as a bass in the Bach Choir Pretoria. Under the working name hAshtAgblAck.n.o.i.s.e, he performs as an experimental/noise musician and sound artist, touching upon the fields of installation sound art, musique concrète, harsh noise wall, and improvisation.
Jacques’s works and performance events unfold according to a scheme that he terms “generalised music”, where the artist is any person who creates or reproduces an intended gesture using sound, irrespective of the nature of the sonic material that is being created or reproduced, or whether the instrument that produces the sound is a living or non-living object, a traditional musical instrument, an electro-mechanical sound generator, or simply a commercial music player, and where any recorded sound becomes the raw, operated-upon material for the creation of a musical event.
His most recent musical interests revolve around a growing number of self-designed semi-autonomous devices, which he refers to as Net-connected Neuro-electrical Instruments (NNIs, or neuroids). Through these devices, he explores a number of aspects of improvised and other musics. These include retroactive and circular causation, distributed agency, a-mergence, self-building systems, fractal intentionality, antimimetics, instrumentality, hyperchaos and correlationalism, and generalised consciousness.
His approach skirts authorship and post-human relationality by creating a surplus of uncodifiable, unmediated interfaces between human and electrical machines, which are then perceived and interpreted by conflating the seemingly antithetical notions of silence and sound.
Jacques’s conceptual project hAshtAgblAck.n.o.i.s.e is a musical exploration of the unsilent silences, whether conceptual or actual, which frame and define our various generalised sonic environments.
Writings on Music
A blog to record some musings on music has recently been started:
https://hashtagblacknoise.home.blog/
Solo Exhibitions and Performance Events
2024 Earthbox
https://thedreamcommission.com/earthbox/
2023 SENSA Drone Day
https://www.sensa.org.za/drone-day-2023-live-event-and-livestream/
2019 ToBeContinued 10th edition – Topolò, Italy
https://www.stazioneditopolo.it/24h-2019/indexComingSoon.html
2018 “hashtag_khoe” – The Interesting Party – Somerset West
2018 Ectopias – Edge of Wrong – Community House, Salt River, Cape Town
Group Exhibitions and Performance Events
2022 SENSA Boundary Conditions as “black creem” with Justin Allart as well as with Africa Open Improvising
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cenw3CsD6v7/?hl=am-et
2019 Under the Dome (Reflectance, with Jason Stapleton) – Iziko Planetarium, Cape Town
https://www.iziko.org.za/news/under-dome/
2019 Under the Dome (Animortis, with Kali van der Merwe) – Iziko Planetarium, Cape Town
2019 Ski Crime – Glitch Culture, NOISE EX. – EVOL, Cape Town
https://www.facebook.com/glitchculture/posts/634781103652464/
2019 Ski Crime – Glitch Party II – EVOL, Cape Town
2019 Working from the Inside – Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria: MERDELAMERDELAMERDELAMERDELAME
2019 Working from the Inside – Oppland Kunstsenter – Lillehammer, Norway
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/track/oppland-kunstsenter-lillehammer-norway-19-march-2019
2019 Working from the Inside – smac, Stellenbosch
https://www.smacgallery.com/exhibitions-archive-3/working-from-the-inside
2018 Working from the Inside – Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
2018 Working from the Inside, “Thrown” – blank projects, Cape Town
https://blankprojects.com/Thrown
2018 Mitch Glob, “Coffin Soup” – Dystopia is Now – EVOL, Cape Town
https://coffinsoup.bandcamp.com/album/dystopia-is-now/?brid=TPj8Z_4qydGdNRIF-5qmNw
2017 Working from the Inside – Edge of Wrong – Bijou, Cape Town
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/track/edge-of-wrong-bijou-cape-town-28-april-2014
Selected Collaborations and Works
2025 Jacques van Zyl x Rhéa Dally: LOVIN’ , a low effort quality brand
https://aloweffortqualitybrand.bandcamp.com/album/lovin
2025 Ski Crime: Pith, Black Ring Rituals Records, w. Andrea Dicò, Garth Erasmus, Justin Allart
https://blackringrituals.bandcamp.com/album/pith
2025 hAshtAgblAck.n.o.i.s.e. – The End Remix, A Young Persons Guide to NERVØS! : REMIXED! cool pro rec, Trondheim, Norway
https://coolprorec.bandcamp.com/track/the-end-remix
2024 Juliana Venter (ongoing): Soul of the White Ant
https://julianaventer.com/music
2023 Ben Watson: The OTL Show (ongoing), w. AOI
https://archive.org/details/the-otl-show-18-viii-2023
2023 Africa Open Improvising (ongoing), w. Pierre-Henri Wicomb, Esther Marié Pauw, John Pringle and others
https://soundcloud.com/user-610733588
2022 Procession (Stolen Land Boustrophedon) w. Garth Erasmus
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/album/procession-stolen-land-boustrophedon
2021 Ski Crime: Watermelon Snow, Black Ring Rituals Records, w. Andrea Dicò, Garth Erasmus, Justin Allart
https://blackringrituals.bandcamp.com/album/watermelon-snow
2021 Black Glass – Always Calling Home (Vanessa Lorenzo)
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/album/black-glass-always-calling-home
2021 GWAING: Bygones, w. Charles Palm, Garth Erasmus, Justin Jephtas, and others
https://gwaing.bandcamp.com/album/bygones
2019 SF_042719-093452 (with Jason Stapleton)
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/track/sf-042719-093452
2018 The Lost Jam (as part of Mitch Glob)
https://soundcloud.com/user-257248549/the-lost-jam-2
2018 BoundaryEffect WallofSound Live@ROAR (with As Is, nonentia and Justin Allart)
https://soundcloud.com/hashtag_blacknoise/boundaryeffect-wallofsound-liveroar-finale
2017 #loeriesfontein
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/album/loeriesfontein
2017 wildbook (w. Belinda Blignaut)
https://hashtagblacknoise.bandcamp.com/track/wildbook-2
2011 Brendon Bussy: The Wynberg String Accelerator
https://soundcloud.com/brendon-bussy/the-wynberg-string-accelerator
2009 Dean Henning: New Old Old New at Pan-African Space Station, cur. Brendon Bussy (with “Knapkas” neuroid instrument)
https://soundcloud.com/deanhenning/new-old-old-new-at-pan-african
2007Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “Quake”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/quake
2004 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “Cyclops”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/cyclops
2004 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “riverrun”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/riverrun
2003 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “The Calling”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/the-calling
2001 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “REM”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/rem
2001 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “Aurora Australis”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/aurora-australis
2001 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “Chimera”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/chimera-black-edition
1999 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “Oracle”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/oracle
1998 Audio for Minnette Vári’s video work “Alien”
http://minnettevari.co.za/video/alien