Musical improvisation is driven mainly by the unconscious mind, engaging the dialogic imagination to reference the entire
cultural heritage of an improviser in a single flash. This workshop will introduce a case study of evolutionary computation
techniques, in particular genetic co-evolution, as applied to the frequency domain using MPEG7 techniques, in order to create an artificial agent that mediates between an improviser and her unconscious mind, to probe and unblock improvisatory action in live music performance or practice.

David Plans Casal is a musician and researcher, and digital technologist at Brunel University. His research focuses on artificial intelligence and music. He has given concerts at IRCAM (Igor Stravinsky Hall), the Sonic Arts Research Centre in
Belfast, and several London venues. His research proposes that musical improvisation is driven mainly by the unconscious mind, engaging the dialogic imagination to reference the entire cultural heritage of an improviser in a single flash. He uses
evolutionary computation techniques, in particular genetic co-evolution, as applied to the frequency domain using MPEG7
techniques, in order to create an artificial agent that mediates between an improviser and her unconscious mind, to probe and
unblock improvisatory action in live music performance or practice.

Advance notice - a CAS-Xtra meeting will be held on 12 June in association with TESLA: Anna Valentina Murch, Recent Large-Scale Public Artwork

2008 is CAS 40 = 40 years of supporting the computer arts

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.?

Performativity, Ideologies of Liveness, and Listener-Consciousness in Electronic-Music Performance featuring Mark Butler: In DJ sets and laptop performances, an unprecedented level of technological mediation comes into conflict with the expected “liveness” of performance. As a result, musicians frequently express various techno-performative anxieties in explanations of their performance approaches. In particular, they are concerned that the audience experiences a performance, one that is imbued with a sense of live presence, rather than simply the playback of a recording or the clicking of a mouse. They work to convey this “presence” in a number of ways, which include dancing, other significant physical gestures, and the use of carefully selected electronic hardware. The audience responds in kind, thereby completing the liveness of the event. This talk will address these issues in both theoretical and analytical terms, drawing material for discussion from interviews and field recordings made in Berlin in 2005–2007.

Mark Butler is a music theorist with interests in popular music, rhythm and meter, music and sexuality, musical meaning and aesthetics, and the history of music theory. Butler’s research integrates theoretical, historical, and anthropological approaches to music, with particular emphasis on the use of ethnographic methodology to address music-theoretical questions. His book Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Indiana University Press, 2006) explores the rhythmic and metrical organization of electronic dance music from the measure to the complete DJ set, drawing upon field research with audiences and creators of electronic dance music as well as musical analysis. His current research includes a book focusing on relationships between technology, improvisation, and composition in electronic–music performance.

In March 2007, the Mobius Artists Group and guest artists presented John Cage’s Variations VII, for the first time since its original performances in 1966. This was one stage in a long-term project of investigating and producing all eight of Cage’s Variations pieces, in the order of their creation. Variations VII will be presented at Mobius again, in a redeveloped version, on April 18-19.

On March 13, David Miller, producer of the Mobius Variations project since 1996, will give some background on Cage’s work and the Mobius project. He will share some insights gained by the collaborators regarding the challenges of redeveloping these works today, and will show videos comparing two of the Mobius versions, Variations V and Variations VII, with Cage’s originals four decades earlier. This will be an informal expansion of a talk given by Miller at the University of New Hampshire last September, at a symposium celebrating the 95th anniversary of Cage’s birth.

‘Speeds of Time’: view behind the clock face - In advance of Speeds of Time a Chelsea College of Art & Design / Tate Britain commission for the Parade Ground in Autumn 2008 (a live interactive sound sculpture utilising the bells and clockwork of Big Ben), Chelsea Programme announce a public lecture by American sound artist Bill Fontana.

Listen here to one hour (10-11) of Speeds of Time:

See images and hear other selections here. Fontana will be discussing his philosophy, practice and ambitions as well as the evolution of the ‘sound sculptures’ for which he is internationally renowned. Fontana will also discuss the forthcoming Speeds of Time project at Chelsea.

To book a place for this event, please contact Sonya Dyer via s.dyer [at] chelsea.arts.ac.uk / 020 7514 7948

For more information on Bill Fontana, read the recent interview on Networked_Music_Review.

For further information on Chelsea Programme events, please visit here.

1972: Stockhausen on “sounds”

sound art: a-a-a-r-r-t = art! - thoughts about an on-going social experiment - a lecture by composer Gustavo Matamoros in collaboration with the FEASt electronic music festival at Florida International University in Green Library, room 535, on the University Park campus, Miami. The lecture is free and open to the public. There will be an open discussion about pushing the boundaries and the linguistic undercurrents that frame our perceptions, understanding and relationship with sound.
listening is an act of listening - a lecture by sound media artist Rene Barge. The lecture is free and open to the public. Rene Barge will be discussing his perspectives on sound and its meaning from recent experiences as fellow artist at the interdisciplinary sound arts workshop. He will also discuss aspects of his upcoming Dorsch Gallery show “Two Cambers Divided by an Opening”, a sound piece produced in collaboration with Gustavo Matamoros.

The excavation of musical possibilities from the double bass is the subject of Mark Dresser’s lecture / demo / performance. Exploring the micro details of string vibration through improvisation, recording, analysis, codification, and composition has led to the development of a custom made electro-acoustic pick-up system and a rich body of music. Expect minutiae and the macro view through musical, acoustic and metaphoric lenses.

Mark Dresser (1952) is an internationally acclaimed bass player, improviser, composer, and interdisciplinary collaborator. He is documented in over one hundred recordings including nearly thirty CDs as a soloist, band-leader or collaborator including his recent solo CD, UNVEIL, and the cooperative, TRIO M with Myra Melford and Matt Wilson, and Air Walkers duo with trombonist Roswell Rudd. A major focus of his work has been on extending the sonic and musical possibilities of the double bass through the use of unconventional amplification.

For eighteen years he lived and worked in New York City where he recorded and performed with some of the strongest personalities in contemporary music and jazz including nine years with Anthony Braxton. This group was documented in Graham Locke’s Forces in Motion and numerous recordings. He has also performed and recorded with Ray Anderson, Jane Ira Bloom, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, Satoko Fujii, Gerry Hemingway Bob Ostertag, Joe Lovano, John Zorn, and many others.

Music has been at the vanguard of the creative industries & has impacted upon new technologies. Digitisation and the growth of the Internet have had profound effects on music production, distribution and even the way we listen. Now music and sound are at the forefront of emerging technologies that can make truly immersive, sensorial experiences - akin to the Star Trek ‘holodeck’ - a step closer to reality. What does this ‘Sci-fi Hi-fi’ future hold for the musicians of tomorrow?

Join Martyn Ware who will discuss his ‘future of sound’.

Martyn is best-known as a seminal 80s pop icon and co-founder of The Human League and Heaven 17. As record producer and artist, he has contributed to recordings totaling over 50 million sales worldwide. More recently through the Illustrious Company - his recent creative venture with Vince Clarke of Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure - and his current Arts Council supported art project, the www.futureofsound.org, Martyn has developed a reputation as a convergent media ‘Svengali’ - working with and showcasing some of the latest developments in immersive media and emergent technologies.

The lecture will be chaired by Professor Lizbeth Goodman - Founder & Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute & MAGICGamelab: currently Microsoft Senior Fellow & Chair in Creative Technology Innovation (also a well known performer and author/broadcaster) - who will share a taster of work by SMARTlab artists & SMARTlab/NESTA fellows.

Special SMARTlab Guests:

- New York artist/scholar Daria Dorosh, presenting Patternwoman with soundtrack by Ian Epps with vocals by Galen Brandt, Vox Stream soundtrack by Clilly Castiglia (from the Playing Field), & The Changing Room, with music by Wolfram Tones: based on NKS Rule 30.

- World Sensorium scent sculpture by New York artist/scholar Gayil Nalls also on show/smell.

- Chris Hales’ latest song-activated interactive movie.

- Fiddian Warman’s latest Soda sound/robots (Sodaplay).

- NESTA fellows digital image and sound work in progress…

Following the lecture there will be a drinks reception and social networking/audiovisual lounge with a surround sound DJ set from Martyn and guests utilising The Illustrious Compay’s 3D Audioscape facility. The SMARTlab Pirate Ship/Dance Club in Second Life will also be open for virtual clubbing…

About The Xmas Lecture

This will be the seventh Cybersalon/NMK Xmas Lecture, hosted this year in partnership with the SMARTlab. The lecture was established in 2001 as an opportunity for leading members of the UK new media industry to talk freely about their work and speculate about how media and communications technologies are interacting and impacting on society, economics, politics and culture. Lectures are attended by a mixture of new media professionals, academics, students, journalists and an interested general public.

In previous lectures, James Woudhuysen, Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester, has talked about the cultural barriers to scientific progress; Eva Pascoe has described her experiences in founding Cyberia, the world’s first Internet Café, and how Internet Cafes have continued to evolve and impact on society; Professor Jonathan Briggs has discussed the role of Internet technologies in helping to rebuild war-torn Kosova; journalist Bill Thompson has wondered if big business is destroying the Internet; and Dr Richard Barbrook has pondered the shape of nets to come.

This year’s Xmas Lecture is supported by Sky, SMARTlab, MAGIC (SMARTlab core funders NESTA & Microsoft CSR).

Visiones Sonoras is a festival that aims to create links between artists and students, create new audiences and promote the creation of new work. By organizing the composers meeting, commissioning pieces and the composition prize, Visiones Sonoras intends to support artistic activities that work with technology and sound.