A performance including live chamber ensemble, electroacoustic soundscape and projected video, Psychodrama is a multiple re-scoring of the shower sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYcp1_onRdo

Psychodrama: 13 Variations is funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center and is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The whole piece is based on field recordings from: Mamori Lake, Amazonia, Brazil; Alphios Bridge, Ancient Olympia, Greece; Vibrations from the bridge which connects Denmark with Sweden; A bottling plant in operation and hydrophone recordings from Mamori Lake. Also used were sounds and notes from a church organ. Output signals have been manipulated and electronically treated.

Dramazon is made in memory of a long rainy night in Amsterdam… In the era of 01110011000111010110, one thing remains stable and it will remain stable and non-mutated for eternity. The way people kiss, the way bodies are connected…
Listen >>

TouchRadio is internet audio broadcast streaming direct from the server. To listen you need a mp3 player app. that supports streaming such as Apple’s iTunes for Mac and PC. In the archive >>: Jana Winderen, Guðni Franzson, Lasse Marhaug, Chris Watson, Steve Roden, Leif Elggren, Scott Taylor, The Skull Defekts, Daniel Menche, Fennesz/Rehberg/Toral & Feliciano, Brandon LaBelle, Stephan Mathieu, Leif Inge, Jacob Kirkegaard, People Like Us, KK.Null, Peter Rehberg, Toshiya Tsunoda, Philip Jeck, z’ev, Christian Fennesz & Max Nagl, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, BJNilsen.

The chapter discusses histories of audiovisual performance, including its ancestry in color organs, visual music filmmaking, light shows, cognitive science, and more - as well as various approaches to current practice including VJ’ing, live cinema, and digital media art performance. This one is not available online, but the book is available from the usual sources.

The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music includes original contributions from many international artists, including Karlheinz Stockhausen and Max Mathews. Chapters introduce the reader to the history and practices of electronic music, including electroacoustic music composition, perceptual aspects and sound synthesis. Considers recent contemporary trends and promotes new movements in this continuously evolving field.

The print journal, Acoustic Space is a forum for net.radio, sound art and creative explorations in the networked electro-acoustic environments. Now in its 7th edition, Acoustic Space - SPECTROPIA issue investigates the rapid transformation of the usage of the radio frequency spectrum that we are witnessing in the 21st century. It doesn’t refer only to a quantitative increase in mobile, satellite and wireless networks, locative and pervasive media, but also to a qualitative shift in the way people communicate and the way spectrum is used in arts, education, science and commerce. The recent scientific research and artistic explorations of electromagnetic (EM) spectrum will be published in this issue, in order to introduce which chances and risks this tranformation process bears for artists and the populations at large.

For the first time, Acoustic Space journal will come out as ‘peer review’ (refereeing) publication. It will be published by the MPLab (Art Research Lab) of Liepaja University in collaboration with the RIXC, The Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia.

Therefore, the publication will contain 2 main sections:

Section 1 - RESEARCH texts (’academic style’ writings with references, etc.)
Section 2 - ARTISTIC abstracts: ideas, concepts, pictures (this part will include mainly artists’ proposals for upcoming Spectropia festival exhibition - open-call is announced, deadline: April 21, 2008)

DEADLINES:

Deadline for submissions: May 19, 2008 - for completed research texts.
(For abstracts - April 21, 2007)

We encourage you to submit abstracts first. Proposals and inquiries regarding submissions should be made to Rasa Smite: rasa [at] rixc.lv

The RESEARCH texts should consist of 12000 - 15000 characters (i.e. 8 pages A4, 12 pt) + references.
(the ARTISTIC abstracts/texts - 2000-4000 characters)

Language: English (all texts will be also translated in to Latvian).

TOPICS:

The publication will cover wide range of topics under 4 main sections:

ELECTROMAGNETIC COSMOLOGY, SPECTRAL ECOLOGY AND EMF (ELECTRO-MAGNETIC FIELDS) RESEARCH: Modern cosmology constitutes the world we live in and our understanding about it by reducing ” the physical reality - galaxies, starts, planets, atoms - to electrical or electromagnetic configurations” - as stated by Bureau d’etudes (in their “Industrial dogma”). Could it be that “understanding the electromagnetic field is the only way to understand ourselves and our surroundings”? In such context the issue of “spectral ecology” will be investigated in the broadest sense possible. This section provides a critique of the industrial dogma and propaganda of electromagnetism, health and ‘green’ issues stemming from electrosmog and meriting more research, as well as sustainability and energy usage and other aspects in relation to communication and information technologies.

CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: FROM IDEOLOGY AND CULTURE OF SPYING (AND SECURITY) TO CONVERSION OF MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES: This topic studies secret past of communication technologies of military origin. Espionage phenomenon is explored, tracing back to its origins in military history of ancient culture. This part also brings up an issue of “cultural intelligence” - contemporary conversion and culturalisation process of military technologies by exploring how former military facilities have been conversed to become important social and cultural centers and objects.

FREE SPECTRUM: WAVES AND ELECTROMAGNETIC POLITICS: This field looks at electromagnetic spectrum as a socio-political space, investigating political practices in spectrum and bringing up debate on “free waves” and “open spectrum”. The spectrum is regulated and divided: for commercial use, military, radio amateurs, etc., yet wireless community networks continue to explore the exempt part of the spectrum, making small parts of the spectrum available for all.

TECHNOLOGY MYTH, ARTISTIC INTERPRETATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY GHOST STORIES: Electromagnetic fields have become the ghosts of today - invisible and surrounding us, opening up the boundaries of our imagination and bringing technology myths to life. This topic explores the place of those myths and stories in the life of modern society.

Scientific editorial board:

Armin Medosch - PhD., Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Rasa Smite - PhD., Riga Stradina University; researcher at MPLab of Liepaja University; director of the RIXC, The Center for New Media Culture, Riga, Latvia.
Inke Arns - Dr. phil., artistic director of the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV), Dortmund, Germany.
Douglas Kahn - Prof. and Head of Technocultural Studies at University of California at Davis, USA.
Andrey Smirnov - Head of the Theremin Center for Electroacoustic Music at Moscow State Conservatory, Russia.
Florian Dombois - Prof. and Head of the Institute for Transdisciplinarity (Y) at Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland.
Atau Tanaka - Prof., Culture Lab of Newcastle University, UK.

April 9, 2008; 7 pm :: The Fenway Center, 77 St. Stephen Street, Boston :: Free :: Contact a.rishi [at] neu.edu for more information.

THURSDAY MARCH 27:

“Living Cinema” is the creation of Quebecois filmmaker Pierre Hébert and San Francisco composer Bob Ostertag. This innovative project brings the creation of cinema out of the movie and recording studios and on to the stage. Ostertag has created custom software that allows the two artists to actually perform an animated movie with soundtrack, live on stage. They will perform their newest work Special Forces, which premiered last May in Beirut and San Francisco. Like their earlier works, it incorporates events from the world news; in this case, it begins with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

“Sonodendron” is a fully immersive work that explores the sonic potentials of cello and electronics on both the microscopic and macroscopic scale. With a 5.1 Surround Sound score by Mem1 (Laura Thomas-Merino, cello & M. Cera, electronics) and video by media artist Liora Belford, Sonodendron is a visceral tour through the bowels and ephemera of the cello.

FRIDAY MARCH 28:

“Messages” is a collaboration between Tres Warren of Psychic Ills and visual artist Taketo Shimada. Their sound falls somewhere between drone, raga, techno and psychedelia - mashing guitar, homemade tanpura, voice, percussion, turntables and everything else they can get their hands on. About their first EP from The Social Registry, Dusted magazine proclaimed: “This is some heavy, humid drone, pregnant with 4am electricity and, in the end, thick fuzzy beats. A beautiful surprise, engaging even in its abstract tendencies.”

Messages’ apprearance at Roulette will be a continutation of their recent live sets, the ‘Brain Damage On Broadway’ show at the Emily Harvey Foundation and their appearance at the ‘Evas Arche Und Der Feminist’ party at Gavin Brown’s Passerby. Expect an evening of hypnosis, experimentaion and improvised psychedelia.

Jeff Perkins (Single Wing Turquoise Bird, who provided light shows to Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few) provides his minimal psychedelic light show with four slide projectors and motorized fly wheels.

Violinist and composer Rebecca Cherry will present a new multi-media Surround-Sound installation exploring the relationship between sound and imagery. Juxtaposing original sound samples of stringed instruments employing extended techniques with video footage from popular music videos, the work seeks to generate new and unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated materials. Audience members will have the opportunity to interact with the installation through a computer interface provided by the artist.

SATURDAY MARCH 29:

A collaboration between guitarist Vernon Reid and multi-instrumentalist Leon Gruenbaum, gReid and Ruen is a kaleidoscopic conglomeration of field hollers, space sounds and general mayhem. Exploring instrumental groove-based futuristic improvisations, this is a rare opportunity to hear these virtuoso musicians in their most experimental mode. Yuko Sueta will be providing visuals via video projection.

Performing under his IDM/electronica moniker Plasticity, New York-based composer Robert Madler will perform a set of electronic works that explore experimental beats, static drones, loops, polyrhythms and noise. A 2006 Harvestworks Artist In Residence, Madler’s music has been featured at many universities in the US, including the SEAMUS festival, as well as in Canada, Mexicao, Spain and France.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Bob Ostertag is a composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist and kayak instructor. He has performed at music, film, and multi-media festivals around the globe and his collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Anthony Braxton, Lynn Breedlove, and Justin Bond. He is currently Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at the University of California at Davis.

Pierre Hébert, born in 1944 in Montreal, is a self-taugt filmmaker strongly influenced by animation film makers Norman McLaren and Len Lye. He worked for The National Film Board of Canada from 1965 until the end of 1999 and has since pursued a career as an independent artist and filmmaker. Since 1983, he has taken part in live performances with musicians such as Jean Derome, Robert M. Lepage and René Lussier, Fred Frith and Bob Ostertag.

Mem1 is an electroacoustic duo that seamlessly blends the sounds of cello (Laura Thomas-Merino) and electronics (M. Cera) to create a subtle evolution of textures that moves beyond melody, lyricism, and traditional structural confines, resulting in an organically revealed narrative.

Laura Thomas-Merino is a professional cellist originally from Los Angeles, currently residing in Providence, RI. An active orchestral and chamber musician, she has performed in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Italy with such artists as Pamela Z, the Robin Cox Ensemble, the group OXO as part of the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver, with the Providence String Quartet.

M. Cera is a media artist who is interested in exploring audio/visual control systems that are intuitive as well as experimental in nature. He is a member of the experimental media art group Redux, and the electroacoustic duo Mem1 alongside cellist Laura Thomas-Merino.

Liora Belford is a Tel-Aviv based video artist and a filmmaker. Her works have been featured at numerous worldwide festivals and art exhibitions including Art Film Festival (Slovakia), Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), Vancouver Film Festival (Canada), Washington Jewish Film Festival (USA), and many others.

Taketo Shimada is a visual artist and musician from Tokyo. He has lived and worked in NYC since the mid 80s. Taketo paints everyday and makes the most of instruments and sound systems for his music. He has worked with a variety of figures such as Henry Flynt, Alison Knowles and Rammellzee to name a few.

Tres Warren is an artist and musician living and working in New York City. He’s involved in various music collaborations including Messages and has performed as part of Damo Suzuki’s Network, in addition to recording and touring internationally with his band Psychic Ills.

Jeff Perkins is a visual artist and filmmaker. While serving in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Tokyo, he met Yoko Ono and her husband Anthony Cox. Through them he was exposed to the works of Cage, Duchamp, LaMonte Young and others and began participating in events, performances and concerts. He a co-founder of ‘Single Wing Turquoise Bird’, a multimedia group doing light shows for Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead and Dr. John to name a few. Jeff currently exhibits at the Emily Harvey Gallery and is now finishing up his new film ‘The Painter Sam Francis’.

Violinist Rebecca Cherry is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and has performed in the Baltimore, Annapolis and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, the London and Bergen Philharmonic, and with pop music performers including Jay-Z, Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, and more.

Best known as the founder and primary songwriter of the hard rock/heavy metal band Living Colour, guitarist Vernon Reid was named #66 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Reid first came to prominence in the 1980s in the band of drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. While he is perhaps best known for his work with Living Colour, Reid has had an active solo career that includes collaborations with Bill T. Jones, Salif Keita and James “Blood” Ulmer; performances with the Roots, Mick Jagger, Rollins Band, Spearhead, Public Enemy, Mariah Carey, and Tracey Chapman; and various original scores for film and television.

Leon Gruenbaum has been a vital force in the New York music scene for the last 20 years. After early classical training on piano and woodwinds, Mr. Gruenbaum developed an interest in jazz, funk and avant-garde music. Mr. Gruenbaum conceived of the world’s first relativistic music keyboard, a patented MIDI controller called the Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee. He has recorded and performed internationally with this instrument with guitarist Vernon Reid, and demonstrated it last year at the academic conference “NIME” (New Interfaces for Musical Expression).

Yuko Sueta is an interactive video artist who presents landscapes to live music. She creates sensual textures and stories into visuals by using chaotic mixtures of manipulated 16mm films and digital images. Her work has been performed live with rock, experimental, electro musicians such as Ifwhen, Apollo Heights, Costanza, Kayo Dot and played all around U.S, Europe and Japan.

Robert Madler is a composer and performer who has focused on experimental media since 1998, specializing in electroacoustic composition (both stereo diffusion and octophonic), compositions utilizing multiple video projections, and programming in Max/MSP and Reaktor.

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The Leonor Hirsch Award is a competition open to living artists of all ages and nationalities which aims to promote the creation of avant-garde culture through music and image. The Award is administrated by the Bunge y Born Foundation.

The increasing access to digital technology has opened up countless avenues of expression to contemporary musicians and composers, already familiar with the techniques involved in electroacoustic composition. Now they find themselves able to move naturally into the domain of digital image manipulation. Today’s composers are redefining the world of avant-garde aesthetics in their work, either alone or in partnership with visual artists, using both music and image simultaneously. The Leonor Hirsch Award will be selected from three Finalists. The winning work will receive $10.000 (ten thousand dollars), and three Finalists will be performed in a public concert in the presence of its authors and the international Jury of the Award.

A distributed laptop performance between SARC’s own BLISS (Belfast Legion for Improvised Sights and Sounds) and Göteborg’s Academy of Music and Drama laptop ensemble, Sweden. This networked performance explores techniques and strategies for improvised electroacoustic music over the internet.

The Legion does not prescribe its sights or sounds; they are the product of digital and contra-digital networks of gates, tables, switches, speaker objects, cabling and data… The Legion is not a band – we don’t play weddings – but we like playing in the network! This event is a co-production between SARC and the Siren Festivalen för ny music. The performance will include works by Justin Yang and Alain Renaud. Related article.

“Probing the furthest frontiers of rhythm science, alto saxophonist Steve Lehman represents some of the most advanced compositional thinking in jazz today. A child of the avant-garde, he’s a former student and bandmate of Anthony Braxton and a member of Fieldwork, the collaborative trio with piano visionary Vijay Iyer. Lehman’s 2005 outing Demian as Posthuman, featuring Meshell Ndegeocello, is a study in splintered soundscapes and mind-altering beats.” - Philadelphia Weekly

Named a Rising Star on the alto saxophone in 2006 and 2007 by the Downbeat Magazine International Critics Poll, STEVE LEHMAN is a saxophonist and composer whose work resides on the cutting-edge of contemporary music. He has been recognized as one of today’s truly original creative voices by The Wire, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and by National Public Radio. A former student of both Jackie McLean and Anthony Braxton, he has performed and recorded throughout the United States and Europe with his own ensembles, and with those led by Anthony Braxton, Dave Burrell, Mark Dresser, Vijay Iyer, Oliver Lake, and Meshell Ndegeocello. Lehman’s pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by the Janacek Philharmonic, members of Ensemble 21 and Ensemble Sospeso, and by the pianistMarilyn Nonken. Lehman’s recent electro-acoustic music has focused on the development of computer-driven models for improvisation using Max/MSP. Lehman is a doctoral candidate in Music Composition at Columbia University. Lehman’s recordings as a leader include On Meaning (Pi 2007) and Demian as Posthuman (Pi 2005), featuring 9-time Grammy nominee Meshell Ndegeocello.

Read The New York Times review.

PROGRAM: Prismic Generations (percussion, struck/bowed pitched instruments, computer, video) (2003); Mists (stone ensemble, noise) (1995); SXueAk (squeaky toys, saxophones, computer) (2007); Ted Coffey New Composition (2008); Kuik (voice, percussion, narrator, video, computer) (2006); Ted Coffey + Metasax&DRUMthings (2008); (dis)Locations (alto sax, tenor sax, video, computer) (2007); Mindcam (snowboard video, percussion, metasax) (2007); That which is bodiless is reflected in bodies (soprano sax, metalpercussion, computer) (2004).