The Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI) announces a Call for Participation in the 2008 SCI Student National Conference to be held October 10-11, 2008 at Ball State University, Muncie, IN (http://www.bsu.edu/music/). Student and Student Chapter Members are invited to submit compositions for performance consideration and/or proposals for paper presentations, lecture recitals, or panel discussions.

Score Submission Guidelines

Composers may submit up to 2 scores for consideration. There is no established limit on duration but feasibility of performance will be a consideration. Available performing resources are listed below, but composers are encouraged to bring their own performers. This conference will emphasize technology (http://www.bsu.edu/musictech/): Laptop Improvisation, Internet Improvisation, Video/Mixed-Media, and Electroacoustic Pieces (up to 8 channels).

All submissions must include the following:

1. Contact Information (name, phone number, email, street address)
2. Brief Biography (250 words or less)
3. Maximum of two scores. Title, Name, and Duration should appear on the first page of each score. Include a specification of any technical requirements, especially for electroacoustic works. Works for which no score is necessary can include this information on the cover of the recording or on a separate page.
4. CD Recording (strongly encouraged). CDs should be clearly labeled with the Composer’s Name and Title of Work. MIDI realizations will also be accepted.
5. Statement agreeing to attend the conference should a work or works be accepted. Also indicate if you are able to provide your own performers.
6. SASE if you wish for your score to be returned.

Alternatively, submissions may be made via the internet. Electronic submissions should be sent to benjamin@williamscomposer.com and include the following:

1. Contact Information (name, phone number, email, street address)
2. Brief Biography (250 words or less)
3. Maximum of two scores in PDF file format. All files should be named “Last Name - Title”. Title, Name, and Duration should appear on the first page of each score. Include a specification of any technical requirements, especially for electroacoustic works. Works for which no score is necessary can include this information in the body of the message.
4. MP3 Recording (strongly encouraged). All files should be named “Last Name - Title”. MIDI realizations will also be accepted.
5. Statement agreeing to attend the conference should a work or works be accepted. Also indicate if you are able to provide your own performers.

Available Performing Resources

• Conundrum: Soprano, Flute, Clarinet and Piano (http://www.conundrummusic.com/)
• Woodwind Quintet
• Woodwind Trio
• Any Solo/Combination from the following:
  • Flute, Oboe/English Horn, Clarinet, Bassoon, Saxophone (multiple)
  • Horn, Trombone, Tuba/Euphonium
  • Percussion (multiple)
  • Harp, Guitar
  • Piano, Organ, Carillon (4-octave)
  • Violin (1), Viola, Cello, Contrabass
  • Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, and Baritone voices

Digital-audio pieces can incorporate 8 or more independent channels (moveable speakers) as well as video.

Proposal Submission Guidelines

SCI welcomes proposals for papers, panel discussions, workshops, demonstrations, and other types of presentations.

Papers are limited to twenty minutes. Panels, workshops, and other collaborative sessions could take up to one hour. Proposals may deal with any aspect of composition and new music, including but not limited to, compositional techniques, career development, music technology, music preparation, performance supervision, cultural and stylistic context, and musical aesthetics. Of particular interest are proposals that deal with issues facing student composers.

Proposals for papers may be sent by post or email and must include:

1. Contact Information (name, phone number, email, street address)
2. Brief Biography (250 words or less)
3. Abstract of approximately 250 words. Methodology, goals and conclusions should be clearly stated. Please include a short description of your expertise or experience with the topic.
4. Specification of any technical requirements for the presentation.

Other proposals should include a one-page description of the event. Suggestions about who will participate in a specific panel or group are welcome and should be included on this page. Otherwise, proposals should adhere to the previous guidelines.

Contact Information

Benjamin Williams, Composition Fellow
School of Music
The Ohio State University
110 Weigel Hall
1866 College Road
Columbus, OH 43210
benjamin@williamscomposer.com

Expo Unconfernce is about discussing ideas about and around sonic art. By ‘sonic art’ we mean anything that uses sound with artistic intent. It is part of Expo Brighton, the UK’s largest weekend of free sound art and experimental music.

At Unconference, everybody participates! That means the attendees are the presenters and the audience. If you aren’t going to present, you can organize a discussion or publish notes from a talk.

How to Participate on the wiki:

To edit a page on the wiki you have to get a pass. You can request a pass here.

Basically, you use this wiki to put forward what you would like to present at this year’s unconference. You decide what you would like to do and then post it up here. When we get closer to the date we will start to create a schedule for the day.

Here are some ideas about what you might do:

Discussion
What: A forum to discuss particular issues, e.g. The importance of concentrated listening

Demonstration
What: A way of showcasing software you have developed, e.g. A new max patch

Panel Discussion
What: Gathering together a panel of experts to discuss a particular topic, e.g. The future of independent radio in the UK

Presentation
A straight forward paper presentation but with a forum for feedback e.g. delivering an academic paper

Lightning Presentation
A Lighting presentation is a super-quick presentation format, based on the Pecha-Kuha format: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. We plan to have a session of around 10 of these so add it below. Ideal for showing of a new idea or advertising something you’re upto.

Add your proposal now…

Why a non-conference?

Expo is The UK’s largest weekend of free sound art and experimental music. Three days and nights of people enjoying, playing, discovering and listening to sonic art. Experience the wiki-conference (described above), a radiophonic intervention in the Royal Pavillion Gardens, installations and performances, shopping centre public art, club nights and film screenings across the streets, buildings and air waves of Brighton.

We think Expo is great, but this year we wanted to do somthing about the ‘conference’ part of it. Expo is all about allowing more people to engage with sonic art, but with the straight papers day style we felt it was alienating younger participants, especially those who weren’t working in an academic environment. So we thought we would flatten the whole thing out and put the onis on the community. Now, anyone can feel comfortable proposing a discussion, presentation, demo or whatever else you can think of.

We talked to our friends at Brighton University - in particular Conall Gleeson and Holger Zschenderlein - and we decided it would provide the perfect setting to try this concept out. With studio spaces, performance areas, rooms to present and chat in and more. There is a also a very nice cafe (where we are also having performances that night).

On Saturday 26 April and Sunday 27 April 2008, the Veenfabriek and the Art History Department of Leiden University organise the Symposium On Sound. This symposium is a gathering of scientists, performers and artists, who will focus on the issue of mutual influence between art and science, more specifically with regard to sound. The exhibition On the Sensations of Sound, which is organised in cooperation with Museum De Lakenhal in Scheltema, will be opened during the symposium.

COOPERATION VEENFABRIEK & LEIDEN UNIVERSITY: Since 15 April 2006, the Veenfabriek and the Art History Department of Leiden University have been in charge of the unique, joint Scholar on Stage project. This project investigates the mutual exchange and confrontation between arts and science, applied to sound. The first Scholar on Stage is technique philosopher John Heymans. Heymans carries out interdisciplinary research into the influence of Helmholt´s standard work Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (1863) in the development of early-electronic and contemporary music. His doctoral research will result in a thesis which will be finalised at the end of 2008, and in the reconstruction and installation of the Siren Orchestra. In addition, Heymans is the main force behind the Symposium on Sound. The symposium includes an expert meeting for invitees only, during which Heymans will discuss the contents of his research with a group of international experts, as well as a public programme.

Symposium On Sound: Two international keynote speakers have been invited; the Canadian art historian Jonathan Sterne, who published The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (2003), among other works, and the American composer David Behrman. Both speakers will, emphatically from their own disciplines, discuss how the development of the art of sound, in the broadest sense of the word, is influenced, on the one hand, by the arts and, on the other hand, by science, and how this can be stimulated.

On Saturday 26 April, the programme also features a concertante lecture by the British composer Aleks Kolkowski who reconstructs instruments and machines from the pioneer days of recording and reproducing music. In addition, Sing Song — an ensemble that was established to make live ‘musique concrète’ — visual artist / actor Benjamin Verdonck and musician/composer Paul Koek will perform together.

On Sunday 27 April the Siren Orchestra will be launched officially, and the exhibition On the Sensations of Sound will be opened. This exhibition presents works by contemporary artists Carsten Nicolai (Germany), Suchan Kinoshita (the Netherlands/Japan), James Beckett (UK, Zimbabwe), John van Oostrum, Jochem van Tol and Der Wexel. The evening programme consists of a public interview / debate with the American composer and performer Laurie Anderson, who will comment on the theme of Symposium on Sound.

Siren Orchestra: As a result of the findings of Scholar on Stage John Heymans, the Veenfabriek sponsored the reconstruction of a number of musical instruments. These instruments go back to the work of the 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz: the sirens of the Dutch physicist H.A. Naber, and the intonarumori, the noise intoners, of the futurist Luigi Russolo. What originally seemed to involve a philosophical investigation into the effect of Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone on early-electronic music was actually realised with this orchestra.

During the Symposium on Sound, the complete orchestra, consisting of twelve sirens and six intonarumori, will perform for the very first time. Leading composers have been invited to compose works for this unique orchestra. The Siren Orchestra will perform new works by David Behrman (USA), John Butcher (UK), Yannis Kyriakides (NL, UK, CY), Paul Koek and Martijn Padding (NL), introduced by the composers themselves.

On the Sensations of Sound consists of sound objects and sound installations by contemporary artists Carsten Nicolai (GER), Suchan Kinoshita (NL/JPN), James Beckett (UK, Zim), John van Oostrum, Jochem van Tol and Der Wexel. These artists use sound as their basic material. Through sound they change or intensify the perception of space, of material or objects. Much of their work has a scientific or investigative angle. James Beckett, John van Oostrum and Der Wexel will compose new works, especially for On the Sensations of Sound.

British essayist and composer David Toop will open the exhibition on Sunday 27 April 2008 at 4:00 p.m. Toop published Ocean of Sound (1995) and Haunted Weather (2004), among other works, and also presented the exhibition Sonic Boom: the art of sound, in the Hayward Gallery in London in 2000. [via Mediateletipos]

To register, email turbulence at turbulence dot org with “Programmable Media II” as the subject.

Participants: Andrew Beck, Jason Freeman, Mark T. Godfrey, Sawako Kato, Zach Layton, LoVid, Adam Nash, Helen Thorington, Peter Traub, Dan Trueman, Tobias C. Van Veen. Bios here.

Based on the rapidly expanding archive of music/sound experiments to be found on Networked Music Review and the fifteen short works recently commissioned for it, the symposium aims to stimulate critical and far-ranging discussion on emerging music and sound art practice. Program here.

Parts of Netaudio’08 will be programmed through an open call for entries. With this call we would like to give you the chance to put our attention to your creative activities related to the festival theme. Call for entries runs in 3 strands: performance, installation and conference. Download the entry forms.

Please join us as we host an international group of scholars and practitioners who are gathering to explore the roles of narrative and mediation in art practices that engage sound as a material. The symposium will consist of three panel discussions as well as an exhibition of audio-works for portable music players made expressly for the geography, architecture, and social spaces of the Princeton University campus.

The exhibition will begin the festival on the morning of Friday, March 28th. Thirty iPods and corresponding maps will be made available for check-out from the Mendel Music Library Circulation desk in the Woolworth Center for Musical Studies. After participants have had time to explore the audio-works, opening comments and a panel comprised of artists and musicians will start the symposium. The first panel will consist of musician and sound artist William Basinski, whose melancholy minimal electronic music has achieved critical acclaim; artist Jon Brumit, whose Neighborhood Public Radio project is featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial; multimedia artist Brenda Hutchinson, who will lead sunrise and sunset bell-ringings throughout the festival; as well as sound artist Michael J. Schumacher, founder of New York’s Diapason Gallery for Sound Art.

After more time Saturday to explore the site-specific audio-works, the second panel will take up the notion of narrative as it relates to sound practices. Kristin Oppenheim’s spare and hypnotic sound installations invoke layers of personal memory, while Stephen Vitiello’s work transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. Mendi + Keith Obadike collaborate on interdisciplinary projects investigating race, history and identity, and Thomas Levin, a curator and cultural theorist, focuses on sound technologies and issues of surveillance in media practices.

The symposium’s third and final panel will address issues of mediation in sound art. Ruben Gallo will talk about Mexican sound artist Taniel Morales’s Pirate Radio. Ed Osborn will present his kinetic and audible sound installations, while Camille Norment will discuss her artistic practice, which extends the fine arts into extra-disciplinary realms such as scientific research, city planning, and interaction design. Tianna Kennedy, program director of Brooklyn’s free103point9 transmission arts network and a participating artist in the festival, will discuss issues related to transmission, participatory practice and social sculpture.

Sonic Fragments is sponsored by the Princeton University Department of Music, The Peter B. Lewis Center for the Performing Arts, The Graduate School, The Sound Lab research group in the Department of Computer Science, The Aesthetics and Media Track in the Department of German, The Program in Media and Modernity, The Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Tuned City is seeking proposals for short performances and artist presentations addressing issues of sound and architecture. These proposals should relate to one or more of the topics listed below, and should include links to online documentation of the proposed performance/presentation, or to similar work by the same artist / author. The deadline for proposals is April 30, 2008, but proposals will be considered as they are received. Please submit proposals in English.

Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation is an exhibition and conference project planned for 1-6 July 2008 in Berlin which proposes a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic. The project draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space within the architecture and urban planning discourse–as well as its strategies and working methods–into the context of sound art. This expanded discussion reinforces the potential of the spatial and communicative properties of sound as a tool and means of urban practice.

At the foundations of this event are artists’ works and theoretical approaches which examine in a critical and sensitive way the given urban and architectural situations alongside their resulting socio-political implications, that re-use existing spaces or that conceive and open new spaces.

A dialog will be built at the intersection of both disciplines which traces out the complex relations and interactions of space-sound, both presenting and testing new strategies, methods, possibilities and potentials of sound work within the artistic and applied context.

TOPICS:

The Built Space:
- examples that illustrate phenomena, problems or possibilities in the relation of sound and architecture
- usage of architecture as a space for sound and as an instrument

The Public Space:
- relation of sound and city
- situated sonic practices, site-specific sound awareness
- sound as a system of social communication, division and defense
- mobile sound

The Imaginary / Speculative Space:
- hearing-space - virtual acoustic spaces
- sound space in relation to human anatomy, memory and psyche
- mechanics and principles of translating sound into architecture and vice versa

PRODUCTION TEAM:

Carsten Stabenow
Gesine Pagels
Carsten Seiffarth
Derek Holzer
Anke Eckardt
Anne Kockelkorn

Fear of the Known will be hosted at the University of Cape Town (March 12), the University of Stellenbosch (March 14 + 15) and at the University of the Witwatersrand (March 16). Details >>.

Based on the rapidly expanding archive of music/sound experiments to be found on Networked Music Review and the fifteen short works recently commissioned for it, the symposium aims to stimulate critical and far-ranging discussion on emerging music and sound art practice.

To register, email turbulence at turbulence dot org with “Programmable Media II” as the subject.

Symposium Program

Date: April 11, 2008
Venue: The Multipurpose Room, 1 Pace Plaza, Pace University

10:00 am – 10:45 am: Introduction by Helen Thorington and Peter Traub

Thorington and Traub will set the groundwork for the conference by introducing a variety of recent works from Networked Music Review and discussing the history, ideas, tools, and theory behind today’s creative practice.

11:00 am – 1:00 pm: Round-table discussion

Panelists: Dan Trueman, Peter Traub, Zach Layton, Sawako Kato, Jason Freeman (moderator)

Panelists will be given 5-10 minutes to make a basic statement about their work. The discussion will center on the significance of networks and whether they – and the collective behaviors of their machine or human nodes – can form the basis of compelling musical experiences.

1:00 pm – 2:30 pm: LUNCH

2:30 pm – 4:30 pm: Round Table discussion

Panelists: LoVid, Tobias C. Van Veen, Adam Nash, Helen Thorington (moderator)

Panelists will be given 5-10 minutes to make a basic statement about their work. Discussion will continue with emphasis on cross-over works (music w/images, text, video, video games etc.). Nash will speak to the symposium from Second Life, which he calls a “post-convergent medium.”

Short performances by Jason Freeman with Andrew Beck and Mark T. Godfrey and Tobias C. Van Veen will be given during the course of the symposium.

Over the past year, the Cambridge University City Seminar at CRASSH has explored diverse and enlivening topics in the study of cities, urban space, architecture, and visual and material culture. These topics have ranged widely in time and space, from predictions for the age of the supermetropolis to the use of digital technology in architectural space to an analysis of Mussolini’s use of Rome’s imperial past in the construction of its present.

Out of these encounters emerged an aspiration to allow for a more intense investigation of a particular area within this field. This will find its preliminaryculmination in a one-day conference to be hosted by the City Seminar organisers at CRASSH in Lent term 2008. Taking as its theme the intersection of sound and the city, this seminar seeks to present theoretical, artistic and empirical accounts of the complex relationships between acoustics, sensory awareness and performance in the context of urban space, landscape and the built environment (historic and contemporary). But the concepts of ’sound’ and ‘the city’ are only intended to serve as departure points for more creative reflections on, or interventions into, this theme. A discussion of sound could well include an account of silence, just as a description of a city or urban space might well ask where the city ends and its other begins. Consequently, we expect an eclectic and illuminating discussion stemming from a variety of differing disciplines and backgrounds and forming previously unimagined connections.Confirmed speakers:

• Janet Cardiff (Installation artist, Berlin & New York)
  via videoconference
• Eric Clarke (Professor, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford)
  Various Realities: Sound, Music, and Ecological Theory
• Michael Bull (Media and Film, University of Sussex)
  Sounding Out Cosmopolitanism - Mobile Technologies and the migration of Difference
• Graham Jeffery (Institute for Performing Arts Development (IPAD), University of East London)
  Expanding the learning soundscape: notes from some interventions in urban arts education
• Juliana Hodkinson (Composer and arts writer, Copenhagen)
  Instrumentality and the urban instrumentarium: representation and agency in urban sound art
• Jacob Kreutzfeldt (Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen)
  Acoustic territoriality in a Japanese shopping area
• Robin Rimbaud/Scanner (Sound artist and composer, www.scannerdot.com)
  Imaginary Highways: Sound Polaroids in the City

A provisional programme can be downloaded HERE. [posted on Mediateletipos]