The Consortium for Digital Arts, Culture and Technology (cDACT) at Stony Brook University presents the Sonic Residues Festival, April 29th to May 12th, 2008, Stony Brook University.

The Sonic Residues Festival will develop subtle and complex spaces of auditory experience, organized loosely around the theme of the remainders left by vibrations in time and space. It is concerned with sound as a medium of artistic expression encompassing performance, sculpture, phonography, experimental notation, and installation. The festival will synergistically combine a concert performance, a gallery exhibit, a series of portable media works, and provocative lectures as mediums of access to sonic residues.

The Sonic Residues Exhibition will take place in the Student Activities Center Art Gallery at Stony Brook University from April 29th to May 12th, 2008. The exhibition includes works by Mike Dory, Luke DuBois, Grady Gerbracht, Takafumi Ide, Stephen Lee, Annea Lockwood, Martine Loyato, Nobuho Nagasawa, Timothy Nohe, Jxel Rajchenberg, and others. There will also be a segment of European sound and video pieces curated by Valerie Vivancos. In addition, projects for personal media players will be available for download at the website.

The Sonic Residues Concert will take place in the Wang Center Theatre at Stony Brook University on May 12 at 7:30. The show includes Ray Anderson, Matthew Burtner, Odd Nosdam, Charlie Woodman, Pamela Z, Kinesthetech Sense, and other musicians. An after-party will follow the concert at the University Cafe, featuring music by Odd Nosdam and video by Luke DuBois.

The Sonic Residues Lecture Series includes: Luke DuBois (Keynote Speaker), March 26th at 3pm at the Humanities Institute, Rm. 1006; Melissa Ragona, May 7th at 4 pm in the Humanities Institute, Rm. 1006; and Pamela Z, May 12th at 3pm in the Wang Center Chapel.

The Organizers for the Sonic Residues Festival are Christa Erickson, Zabet Patterson, and Margaret Schedel. For further information, please contact Sean Connolly at 631.632.1056 or sonicresidues@gmail.com. Directions to Stony Brook can be found at http://www.stonybrook.edu/sb/directions.shtml.

A residue draws a pattern. It can trace an evolving process, recreate an experience, or reimagine a prior event. It can weave pattern, both absent and present, into meaning. Singing beeps of cellular telephones and quick snips of overheard chatter increasingly punctuate the contemporary sonic landscape. We are constantly enveloped by sound to such an extent that its particular textures often disappear, receding into what we might term ?noise.?

The London art space, E:vent, is among the first to chime-in with an exhibition addressing these issues. Their show, “Sound Proof” (open April 19-May 11), features six artists “using sound materials, drawings, and annotations [to create] audio and visual maps that preserve observations of transformation.” These site-specific works focus on the Lower Lea Valley, below London, which will be virtually reinvented for London 2012. In a way, they will function as aural time capsules–records or “proof” of a space and culture if not doomed for demolition, then certainly slated for overhaul. The valuable question raised by the show is that of preservation–what is deemed worthy of saving (memories, relics, cultural practices) and what is the responsible, effective way to do so. This form of ethnographic programming takes “game art” to another level. - Marisa Olson, Rhizome.

The group show Voice & Void is dedicated to the representation of the human voice – and its absence – in the visual arts. The voice and its fading away, speech and the loss of speech, both the presence and the immateriality of the voice, the relation between the voice and corporeality as well as sound and image are only a few of the many aspects addressed in this exhibition.

The exhibition studies the effects of a sensual perception being replaced by another one and the conditions under which the voice allows itself to be imparted by other means – be it written notation, technical recordings or visual representation. While the voice has very specific qualities in its immediate expression, “translated into another medium, the voice becomes apparent as a medium.” (Thomas Trummer) The works allude to the relation of image and sound so that they reciprocally define the specific characteristics of imagery and sound, either underscoring or even subverting each other.

The exhibition comprises thirteen very different approaches to “voice and void”. Historical points of reference include Joseph Beuys” legendary performance “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”(1965) which is featured in Ute Klophaus” photographs; John Cage”s text sheets titled “Lecture on Nothing (Silence)” (1959) where acoustics of a silence imbued with “presence” is implemented both verbally and visually by means of text notations; and VALIE EXPORT”s “Tonfilm” (Sound film) from 1969, showing the draft for a performance in which the voice is manipulated by means of technological interventions in the glottis and the ear.

These early works are followed by a row of contemporary studies on the phenomenon of the voice – also touching upon its absence. One work, by American artist Rachel Berwick, is an installation with two live parrots. In his journey through South America in 1799 explorer Alexander von Humboldt discovered a parrot that was the only surviving living creature which could speak the language of the indigenous tribe of the Mayporé. Humboldt documented 40 words of this lost language that is now being reanimated in Berwick’s work.

In his site-specific installation Hans Schabus refers to the particular acoustic and visual situation of hidden spaces. He makes these spaces accessible to the visitor by transferring them into the exhibition space.

Asta Grőting”s work revolves around the process of ventroloquism where the performer is no longer just the speaker but also the recipient and interlocutor of his own “second voice”.

The exhibition is rounded off by a number of other works by artists such as Janet Cardiff/ Georges Bures Miller, Anna Gaskell, Christian Marclay, Melik Ohanian, Nedko Solakov and Julianne Swartz. They all approach the voice as the vehicle of language, communication and bodily expression.

The curator of the exhibition is Thomas Trummer who developed the project as part of an international fellowship awarded by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT (USA) where the exhibition was shown first.

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]

An exhibition from the curator Nicole Gingras who joins the work of two artists fascinated by light, movement and sound. Diane Morin transforms her favourite material, light, into singular shadow plays, awash in penetrating sounds. The videos of Nelly-Eve Rajotte, who is just as sensitive to the power of light and sound, create destabilising experiences which may cause some viewers to lose their spatio-temporal bearings.

Nelly-Eve Rajotte leads the viewer into a world of constantly-changing visual and sound impressions. By superimposing several layers of images and slowing down their movements as they subtly slide over each other she suggests a state of weightlessness or a feeling of vertigo. The two pieces on exhibit here are examples of this. The video Ylö (2008) is an attempt to suspend time to create a feeling of elevation. Once again, she has designed a highly-dramatic soundtrack which contributes to the perceptible yet indescribable sensation of floating or an in-between state suggested by the work’s editing. With SI IS (2008), an installation made up of two projection screens and a quadraphonic soundtrack, Nelly-Eve Rajotte continues to explore what appear to be nameless spaces. Video enables her to film sentient and intimate spaces, and here she has turned to a deserted gas station, a non-space nevertheless endowed with undeniable dream-like qualities. The images projected onto the two screens reveal to the visitor two spaces which reverberate within each other. Reflections, shadows, transparencies and superimposed images contribute to our perception of an ambiguous, altering space. In search of connections between digital images and sound, she is attracted to the movement of light on the features of buildings and anonymous spaces, which she appropriates and transforms into abstract compositions.

Diane Morin continues her exploration of animated objects of her own design, using fragments of typewriters, calculators, knitting machines, record players, toys and musical instruments as well as found objects, electronic control circuits and electroluminescent diodes. She is interested in the shadows projected by moving objects she designs, in the traces they leave in the wake of their slow movements. Desirous of giving or giving back movement to inanimate objects and interested in the way light strikes the objects she selects, Diane Morin furthers her investigation into light as a means of revelation: shadow, trace, imprint, image, form, movement. Her work Capteurs d’ombres (“Shadow Catchers”, 2006-08) is a visual and sound installation made up of various items attached to the gallery wall, each showing forms in movement: choreographies of unusual objects and shadow plays. Plunged into darkness, these kinetic sound sculptures come alive when subtly and discreetly lit by moments of flashing, twinkling or pulsing light. Sounds help lead the viewer into a space in which time appears to be suspended.

Artists biography

Diane Morin was born in the Kamouraska region of Quebec and now lives and works in Montreal. She has been creating installations since 1998, joining her work with kinetic art and new media. She obtained an M.F.A. in fine arts (studio art) from Concordia University in 2003. Her work is currently being exhibited at VU in Quebec City. In 2006, she participated in Meanderings (curated by Nicole Gingras) at DAÏMÕN and AXENÉO7 in Gatineau and in the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Optica in Montreal and Mercer Union in Toronto in 2007, at Circa in Montreal in 2005 and at La chambre blanche in Quebec City in 2001, among other places.

Nelly-Eve Rajotte lives and works in Montreal. She has been a member of Perte de Signal since 2003. In 2006, she obtained an M.F.A. in visual and media arts at UQAM. She works in single-track digital video, installation and sound art. Her videos have been seen in various festivals in Canada, the United States, South America and Europe. In Montreal, her installations have been exhibited at Parisian Laundry, Fonderie Darling, the Occurrence gallery, the Clark gallery and as part of Ectoplasmes 5 x 2 (an event curated by Nicole Gingras and Eric Mattson at SAT; production : MINUTE).

Nicole Gingras lives in Montreal. She is an author and independent curator with an interest in images and sound. In 2007, she published Puisqu’à toute fin correspond – Entretiens about the work of the Montreal artist Raymond Gervais.

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

Sponsored by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Art & Technology Program at Stevens Institute of Technology, founded in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, to provide artists with access to new technology and to promote collaborations between artists and engineers.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

2:00 * Exhibition opening *E.A.T. Revisited: Documents and Works* (through April 28). Included is an installation of photographic documentation entitled The Story of E.A.T.: Experiments in Art and Technology, 1960*2001 by Billy Klüver; a selection of classic works: Floats by Robert Breer and Silver Clouds by Andy Warhol; and an installation of new works, *Transduced Objects,* created in a workshop inspired by David Tudor*s *Rainforest,* taught by John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein to artists and students from both Stevens Institute and Harvestworks.

3:00 * Panel Art and Technology, Historical and Current Perspectives with panelists Robert Whitman, Julie Martin, John Driscoll, Steve Bull, Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Anne Swartz (Savannah College of Art and Design), moderated by Julie Harrison (Stevens Institute of Technology).

5:30 * Performance Cellphonia: Tempo Variable (Cellphonia: Changeable Weather by Steve Bull and Scot Gresham-Lancaster, with Phil Edelstein, Hans Tammen, and Brooks Williams * a surround sound memorial concert for John Cage and David Tudor in which live performance, cellphone calls, transduced objects, and synthetic voices are mixed by the musicians and the neural synthesis ETANN, or electronically trainable analog neural net, developed by Forrest Warthman and Scot Gresham-Lancaster for David Tudor.

6:15 * Reception to meet the artists, panelists, and organizers

Sunday, April 6, 2008 (suggested donation $5, free to students and seniors)
1:00 * Film Screening *9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering* include Robert Rauschenberg*s Open Score; John Cage*s Variations VII; Öyvind Fahlström*s Kisses Sweeter than Wine and a work-in-progress on David Tudor*s Bandoneon!. Producer Julie Martin and director Barbro Schultz Lundestam, will be present to introduce the films and answer questions.

For more information, contact:
Carol Parkinson (Harvestworks) 212-431-1130
Julie Harrison (Stevens Institute) 201-216-8583

Root Division is pleased to showcase a selection of contemporary sound art devices created by artists, musicians, and technologists. This international survey includes site-specific installations, interactive devices, performances, and quiet evocations. Of particular note are: Paul Slocum’s compositions for a modified dot-matrix printer (Dot Matrix Synth); Paris Mancini’s video of singer Nina Petrochko mimicking ambient sounds from the city and countryside (Sustaining Notes for Ground); Rafael Canedo’s Punchcard Symphony; and PB8’s Collective Instrument #1.

Artists: Paul Slocum, Roddy Schrock, Jeff Ray, Nina Petrochko & Paris Mancini, PB8, Candice Jacobs, Robert Jackson Harrington, Jacqueline Gordon, Luciana Ohira & Sergio Bonilha, Elinor J. Domol, Rafael Canedo.

Curated by Annie Yalon, Scott Kiernan and Deric Carner.

Root Division is an arts and arts education non-profit located in the Mission District of San Francisco. Root Division acts as an ecosystem for artists in that we provide subsidized studio space to working artists in exchange for their service in the organization. While creating opportunities for individuals to develop both creatively & professionally, Root Division promotes creative expression and builds community through having these artists teach art in after school programs, lead adult education classes, and produce special events that showcase local emerging artists. It is in these connections between artistic exploration and public engagement that we spark the powerful synergy between personal inspiration and social change.

The exhibition Never Mind That Noise You Heard provides an opportunity to see (and hear!) recent videos and installations by the collaborative artist team of Jennifer Allora (b.1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.1971, Cuba). In the exhibition, the Stedelijk Museum CS is presenting two large installations: Wake Up and Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech), alongside four video works. The production and usage of sound is central to all of these works, which were created between 2004 and 2007.

The selection of works presented all have in common a shared interest in noise and its structuring through music. The continuum between these two sonic ends becomes a potentially rich tool through which cultural, social, and political relationships can be both gauged as well as challenged. Many works in the exhibition are the outcome of the investigations of the artists into how power, militarism, and war are encoded in to sound. Each work explores innovative ways to generate sound. The resulting sonic experiments provide new frames of meaning to otherwise familiar forms of musical expression.

In all the works presented, the artists theorize less about music, but rather through it. The design and setting of the exhibition were created in close collaboration with the artists so that taken as a whole the entire display creates a unique musical composition.

Allora and Calzadilla live in Puerto Rico and have worked together since 1995. In this time, they have developed a multifaceted oeuvre, consisting of installations, videos, performances, social interactions, work in public space, photos, and collages. Their work is characterized by a sense of playfulness, humour, and social involvement, focusing upon local situations, concrete materials and forms, all the while providing a platform to hear resonances within a larger global context.” - ‘The twisted soundtracks of war’,
Amsterdam Weekly

Curated by Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen.

At certain times during the exhibition, singers from the Operastudio Nederland will present live performances.