There will be a fundraiser on Saturday night, 6 pm to midnight, at Castle Clinton in Battery Park ($10 donation). Everyone is invited!

FIGMENT is a celebration of creative culture from June 27-29, 2008 on Governors Island in New York Harbor. It provides an open forum for artists, helps build a creative community, and fosters participatory and public art. A broad spectrum of arts are represented, including sculpture, performance, music, installation, dance, costuming and activities. Figment is free and open to the public. Everyone can participate — with whatever inspires them! There will be almost every conceivable option. Come, engage, build, paint, sing, experience, think, wonder, listen, create, dance, wander: In short, the public can participate in a vast array of imaginative experiences that over 200 artists of FIGMENT have conceived — or bring their own games, costumes, activities, or small works of art.

FIGMENT has moved art from the pedestal onto the front lawn for everyone to enjoy, with over 200 artists to celebrate creative culture and non-commercial art with the public.

• Among the projects planned for this event are:

Starlight on the Island—A series of solar panel powered, spherical steel sculptures that will absorb sunlight to light the island at night.

• The Art of Skateboarding, an art installation and talk with homemade ramps constructed of recycled materials.

• “Circus Sideshow”, an interactive art installation and performance

• The Rose Petal Pool, children of all ages can interact with this rich sensory experience (multi-media sound installation)

• Maroguzcaju Theater Puppet Show, “Silencio, Silencio!,” about finding happiness in life’s details

• “Planetary Dance,” participatory rhythmic circular dance

And many many other events and performances, including a lecture schedule which includes discussions on Interactive and Participatory Art.

FIGMENT 2008 will also offer a range of offerings by video and film artists sharing both their personal and collective expressions—often influenced by Governors Island— including the documentation of the construction of an elaborate reclaimed wood sculpture and one NY native’s 1979 marriage in the island’s Trinity Church.

Other FIGMENT art installations will incorporate such innovative materials and resources as telescopes, a teepee, 2,000 silver colored flags, and a pair of five-foot tall wooden lips! The majority of sculptures and art pieces are touchable and climbable—resulting in much art that is interactive and child-friendly.

The work of both emerging and established choreographers will be featured as part of the many dance performances taking place throughout the 3-day event. Similarly, FIGMENT 2008 will have a range of performance art offerings, including such original and unusual unions as the merging of creative writing with art and improvisational drama exercises with therapeutic movement, sound, and role-play. In addition, visitors to the island can participate in the creation of pop-trash poetry done karaoke style, Ukrainian body painting, private readings at the “Poetry Brothel,” and the “intrepid” use of cameras to record various urban explorations.

The musical offerings of FIGMENT 2008 are extensive, as well as exceptional in their variety and innovation. They range from boogie and classic rock to futuristic Brooklyn hip-hop to the “healing” sounds of electric keyboards to traditional bawdy German songs about murder, madness and mayhem—to the accompaniment of an organ grinder! Many of the performances are also representative of the collaborative spirit of multiple disciplines working together: a sound installation incorporating restaurant kitchen recordings, live electric flute accompanied by modern dancers, a mix of acoustic and electronic dance music resulting from remixes of Rwandan mass and folktronica.

Finally, humor permeates many of the offerings, as probably best represented by the Celtic vocalist who will be singing her heartfelt songs about love, loss and indigestion.

For more information on the highly interactive and collaborative art exhibits, performances, music and dance events, and workshops encompassing all media, go to http://figmentnyc.org/2008/participate.html or contact Rosemary Siciliano :: rosemary [at] FIGMENTnyc.org :: 207.332.9008

Close your eyes and listen. It is the Age of Noise: hums, buzzes, whines, traffic, ventilation systems, disc drives, cell phones, sirens, aircraft, muzak, televisions, radios, car alarms, leaf blowers, jack hammers, compressors — biproducts of an overheated visual culture bombard us endlessly. It’s no surprise that many people withdraw from our public hearing space and retreat into iPods or buildings with windows that don’t open. Harmony in the Age of Noise intends to empower the sense of hearing and deconstruct this sea of noise. In transforming this barrage of sounds into information about the way we live, the piece attempts to restore harmony and balance to the senses.

Anthropologist and poet David Guss invited sound artist, Bruce Odland — sonic thinker, composer, and sound artist known for his large scale, public space sound installations — to create Harmony in the Age of Noise. Along with sculptor Mark McNamara and media artist Michael Luck Schneider, they will collaborate with over 80 undergraduates and grad students as well as professors and staff at Tufts University. Together they are designing and building a sonic observation post that will allow visitors to navigate through sound maps of the campus and surrounding community. Harmony in the Age of Noise will be a parabolic gazebo where the hub of students and traffic are harmonized through a mix of a real time feed, a collection of stored psychoacoustic maps, and visitors’ sounds programmed to play like hourly chimes.

All students and the public are invited to participate and attend.

Read more here.

Using the RiffWorks desktop recording application, up to four musicians can connect and collaborate on a song simultaneously. As a layer records, it instantly streams to other players’ running RiffWorks. As the Riff loops, other players can add more. All contributions are saved on RiffWorld.com and can be opened later for further collaboration.

As Mike at Garagespin says: It’s “kind of an interesting spin on the space touched on by music collaboration & social networking sites Kompoz, Light Speed Audio, eJamming Audio, SpliceMusic, and a bunch of others. They’re all pretty different — some focusing on loop-generated music, some focusing on pure songwriting ideas, and others focusing on live interaction. ” (Mike hadn’t tried it out yet and neither have I; still you might want to have a look.)

Riffworld recording software includes automatic track creation, loop recording, guitar-oriented effects, InstantDrummer, professionally recorded drum tracks, online music collaboration, and instant podcasting so you can broadcast any song created in RiffWorks – whether it’s a solo effort or collaboration – for the RiffWorld community to hear. You can listen to songs, get feedback about them, talk about what your fellow musicians are creating, and find other musicians to jam with.

Thanks to MikeB.

Expo is the hub and playground of the experimental music and sound art scene in the UK and beyond. Free and open, the event mobilises a national network of artists and engages with communities from all backgrounds – placing sonic art and the people who make it in direct contact with the public. Expo steps out from traditional venues and into spaces that lie at the heart of the community - inspiring practitioners and the public to reconsider their environments.

Annually relocating, the Expo traverses the country creating its own community each year. It disperses into the locality it arrives in, scattering events, happenings and sounds across the towns and cities it visits, joining together place, people and art. Work is drawn from a national call and the event collaborates with local partners and highlights the work of local artists. In the spirit of open culture and accessibility the project has developed a social community ethic amongst contributing artists and has encouraged creative approaches to the staging of new work.

Expo aims to present serious, experimental and challenging work in a playful, open and inclusive context, encouraging the public, both local and national, to have direct experience of and access to the most radical and exciting sound work.

After the success of last year’s highly eclectic event in Plymouth the focus now shifts to Brighton in July 2008. This weekend of performance, exhibition, presentation and broadcast will take place across a variety of physical and virtual spaces. The weekend aims to highlight the broadest possible range of approaches and thinking that surround the sonic arts. We welcome submissions of all kinds.

Submissions are sought in all forms of sonic art including real-time interactive works, improvisation with technology, experimental electronica, instrumental/electroacoustic mixes, acousmatic music, sound installations, noise, environmental sound work, conceptual sound art, performances, internet-based creative work, radiophonic work, sound and image works and cross-arts work. In summary, we welcome submissions of all kinds of work incorporating experimental use of sound as a major element.

Submitted works must have been created after January 2007. Some resources are limited and, for example, performers must be supplied by submitting artists. Available equipment for this year’s festival will include an 8 channel sound system catering for the projection of multi-channel works and smaller, adaptable stereo systems suitable for installation work. Video projection facilities are also available. There are 4 streams that artists should consider submitting work for:

1. Market Day - We are seeking installations and performances for a variety of spaces within the disused Circus Street Fruit and Vegetable Market, the proposed main site of Expo Brighton 2008. This unique all day event will aesthetically reconfigure this stunning local landmark. Beyond concepts of concert hall and gallery space we are seeking work to sonically transform this building.

The former wholesale fruit and vegetable market on Circus Street is a huge building containing a vast central market area and a variety of unit sized spaces. This magnificent building was completed in 1937 after the clearance of slums in the town centre. Artists submitting work should consider the reverberant acoustic of the building when developing their ideas for submissions. We will be running both performances and installations in the market on Saturday 5 July and we will be offering an 8-channel sound system for the projection of multichannel work.

2. Radio Day - Sunday 6 July will be the Expo Radio Day. In collaboration with the Arika’s Radio Space festival Expo will deliver a day of broadcasts across Brighton. The main focal point for activity will be a Radio Garden Party event in the gardens of the Brighton Pavilion with Radio Reverb acting as a hub for broadcast activity from it’s nearby studio. Were are looking for innovative work for broadcast. We encourage submissions that pose the most radical rethinking of the radiophonic medium particularly those incorporating radio activism, participation and performance.

3. Expo Late - We are seeking performance-based work for our late night Expo events. True to the spirit of Expo these evening sessions will be as eclectic as possible, showcasing the widest range of current sonic art performance from breakcore and noise to performance and sound art.

4. Unconference - In Expo’s answer to a conference day visitors will decide themselves on the themes discussed through an on-line forum that will be active in the months leading up to the festival. The event, which will take place in the afternoon of Friday 4 July, will be designed to promote debate and to be an open forum for artists, researchers and the public. Debate will be lead by a discussion leader and the division between audience and speaker balanced and equal. Keep an eye on the Sonic Arts Network website for updates.

Sonic Arts Network
The Jerwood Space
171 Union St
London
SE1 OLN
United Kingdom

Recent travels have brought me into contact with some difficult and potentially dangerous places … Some are areas where extreme and hostile conditions have been created, in others the danger has been hidden or absorbed into the local economy… [More here and here. You can listen to an interview about the project on BBC Radio here.]

[Photography: Anne-Berit Schultz, Autumn Leaves] Peter Cusack initiated the Your Favourite London Sound project that aims to discover what Londoners find positive in their city’s soundscape. His performances are central to Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory (2004), written by former collaborator and respected music critic, David Toop. More recently, Cusack was interviewed for Autumn Leaves, a book that seeks to draw together a number of different perspectives on how the environment is made audible through sound.

Cusack curated Interpreting the Soundscape for Leonardo Music Journal Volume 16 (2006). It includes contributions by Tonya Wimmer, Andrea Polli and Joe Gilmore, Jacob Kirkegaard, Chris Watson, Rafal Flejter, Chris DeLaurenti, Christina Kubisch, Charles Stankievech, Sonic Postcards, Yannick Dauby and Pascal Battus.

Cusack is a member of CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Art & Performance), and a research staff member and founding member of the London College of Communication in the University of the Arts London. He was recently appointed research fellow on the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council’s multidisciplinary The Positive Soundscape Project: A re-evaluation of environmental sound with Mags Adams, Angus Carlyle, Bill Davies, Ken Hume, Paul Jennings, and Chris Plack. Cusack was a founding member and director of the London Musicians’ Collective. He is perhaps best-known as a member of the avant guard musical quartet, “Alterations” (1978-1986; with Steve Beresford, David Toop, and Terry Day).

“Why is WEF still alive? I need it, I have no time to listen to music on CD and no time to go to a concert. But music and media art is part of my life so I decided that it is much easier to put art on the schedule, to organize concerts and to administrate an online library of free music, to meet artists and to be an artist; this is my way of upgrading myself.

I am influenced by technology and music - these two things push me to get busy with music, jazz and new media art. This is why I had to organize my own art: the Warsaw Electronic Festival, since 2002. The same reason pushes me to promote unknown electronic musicians on the jazz radio program called Future Shock and to work on many other projects connected to electronic culture, some of them you probably know: Future Sessions for Polish National Radio BiS with Mateusz Kwiatkowski, Dresdner Radiostadt #1, Radio Copernicus.

Since 2001 almost 200 performers were invited to participate in many small and bigger events connected to my activity e.g. representatives of Scape Records, Deadbeat and Bus, Tonne from Klitekture Records. Swedish producer Mikael Stavöstrand and Johan Skugge from the MITEK records, projects from the French M-tronic label, many Polish performers-among them Mikołaj Trzaska, GB Productions Team, Rzutnik B9, April Tone, LOF, Qriozum, Game Boyzz Orchestra Project and Kunsbande SLA, Dagiel, Eta Carinae, Zen Lu, Ko On Ten, Markus Reuter, ISAN, Syntetika, Andrey Kirychenko and many others. I am sure that anyone interested could find many interesting projects on www.wef.pl, the home website of the Warsaw Electronic Festival, my primary project. Since 2003 I was honored to cooperate with ‘Zacheta’ National Polish Gallery organizing some new media exhibitions and presentations. Great names were invited to take participation in this program: Sheldon Brown - Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD); Chris Csikszentmihályi, who directs the Media Lab’s Computing Culture group, John Craig Freeman - an artist and educator exploring practices that challenge the function of art and the role of the artist, Jon Cates - an artist, but he also teaches in the Film, Video and New Media dept @ School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I am also an electronic musician – Seed Project is my solo project, but frankly speaking, at the moment I prefer cross cooperation with other artists like TASEEE (cross project with Mikołaj Trzaska) Send /Recv (Cross project with Robert Jeszke aka Lord Of Flies).” - Jarek Grzesica