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

The once aimless material waste becomes the nexus of a unique art project that celebrates waste and the odd notion of an enjoyable wasteland through a complex means of processing and image making. The Appearance Machine’s permanent residence is in New York City, the unofficial center of the detritus crisis as home of the largest landfill in the world. The machine itself is housed in a warehouse space that doubles as a factory or lab for audiovisual ‘performances’ set to an orchestra of digitally produced sound.

The Appearance Machine is a production mill of sorts, a system that generates non-narrative audiovisual by-products, relying on a steady stream of incoming refuge to sustain itself. Trash enters a conveyer belt-like system where objects are photographed in a manner not unlike the way a photographer might capture the image of a fashion model. Artificial wind, mechanical impulses, and vibration work in concert to animate the objects to provide them with context, dimension and, to some degree, personality. Multiple camera angles ensure the same quality of perspective and dimension to produce audiovisual works of art in increments that last for about ten or fifteen minutes…” Continue reading Trash Talk: A Review of The Appearance Machine by Willy Le Maitre and Eric Rosenzveig by Natasha Chuk, Furtherfield.org.

Julie Freeman’s work spans visual, audio and digital artforms and explores the relationship between science, nature and how humans interact with it. For the past 12 years her work has focused on using electronic technologies to ‘translate nature’ whether it’s the sound of torrential rain dripping on a giant rhubarb leaf; a pair of concrete speakers that lurk in galleries haranguing passersby with fractured sonic samples; or by providing an interactive platform to chat with dogs in numerous international languages. She is currently Artist in Residence at the Microsystems and Nanotechnology Centre at Cranfield University. For more about the artist see www.juliefreeman.co.uk or click through to see the micro-site for The Lake - which was awarded £96,000 for development by NESTA, where Freeman electronically tagged various freshwater fish species to create animation and soundtrack.

First there was silence…
Then there was data…
But there was no story…
Just images and sounds…

We love it! The Sound of eBay is our affirmative low-tech contribution to the ATOMIC soundtrack of the peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.

“Beautiful project! Especially the scary parts about sensitive data. Very well worded, too. I can’t wait to see some fear trickle through the datasphere…” Douglas Ruskoff

How it really works:

We generate unique songs by using eBay user-data. You simply enter any eBay username (your own or someone else’s), add your email address so we can notify you as soon as the song is ready for downloading. Then click „generate“ and our robots sprawl out into the net to collect data.

After about 2-3 minutes the robots bring back all kind of user-data (creditcard information, bank details, passwords and non-sensitive user-data such as bought and sold items, prices, comments, ratings, etc) to our sc3 supercollider soundgeneration-engine.

Finally, the complex software-machine starts generating a score-file which is then transformed into your unique but uniform song and presented in teletext porn style! We sell out your human needs digitally…

“What is Radio Art? Radio art had a special meaning to those who created it in the US during the Eighties and Nineties. From the most complex hi-tech studio productions to the raw energy of live and interactive broadcasts, these artists were predominantly engaged with subverting media conventions by presenting something other than familiar radio forms.

Thus while the work might use journalistic devices or dramatic conventions, it was neither journalism, nor drama; it wasn’t music either though it might be composed entirely of non-textual sound. American radio art was a vast array of different forms that recognised radio’s distinct means and parameters, and at the same time, its creative possibilities, how it might challenge existing social and cultural norms and create/fashion new ones…” Continue Reading Radio, Art, Life: New Contexts by Helen Thorington, Tate Intermedia Art, May 2008.

The Telephone Game: Oil/Water/Ether is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc…). The students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can they create?; how can they physically control these sounds?; how do they compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do they organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network?

In its first year of PLOrk’s existence, composers and performers from Princeton and elsewhere developed new pieces for this unprecedented ensemble, including Paul Lansky (Professor of Music at Princeton), Brad Garton (Director of the Columbia Computer Music Center), PLOrk co-founders Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, and several graduate students. They have made extensive use of a new music programming language created by Princeton graduate student (now assistant professor at Stanford University|CCRMA) Ge Wang, called ChucK, which allows the performers to develop new code in performance. In their first major performance (April 2006, Richardson Auditorium) we were joined by the renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, legendary accordianist and composer Pauline Oliveros, and the exciting young percussion quartet from New York City, So Percussion. PLOrk was featured in the April issues of the MIT Press Technology Review and Wired Magazine, and performed at the Dartmouth College “Orchestras of Sameness” festival in May 2006.

See movie: http://machinatus.net/tec/tec_240.mov

In the adjoining text, I am tracing the development of aural art in the last century, focusing on the role of the artist working with increasingly mechanized composition methods. From serialism, through chance operations, to recursive grammars and neural networks, the composing subject is progressively removed from local decisions and begins designing processes and systems, developing form in the abstract, playing with intensities, with intuition. Combining ideas from Attali, DeLanda, and Deleuze, I am suggesting that recent non-symbolic approaches to AI are more appropriate in the making of art and perhaps also in the modeling of intelligence. I, furthermore, consider the spatiotemporal specificity of sound, examining the behavior of sound empirically, rather than in abstract theoretical terms, exploring some of the codetermining interplay between sound and architecture.

Software simulation: http://machinatus.net/tec/software_a.html
This simulation was originally developed in order to model the expected behavior of the Ecstasy of Communication physical installation. Although the perfect world of software lost the inherent variability of physical systems, the tool proved quite useful in designing the hardware and software used in the actual installation.

After the completion of the hardware installation, the modelling software became its own end, and a host of new features were introduced. Individual nodes can now move about, drawing functions can be limited, and the sound can be filtered. Both potential and actual network connections are shown, and signals along the connections are visible.

From November 2005 - April 2006, the work was installed at a bus transit stop in Tempe, AZ located on the NW corner of the intersection of two major streets, Priest and Broadway.

MOTIVATING IDEAS: In conceiving this public work we have built upon the idea of the transit network as a metaphorical and practical sonic force. Topographically, the visual arrangement of speaker placement simulates a transit map that moves from a dense urban arrangement on the left, toward a widely spaced arrangement on the right. As sound moves across the wall, we have modeled the notion that transit paths will evolve and perhaps grow more sluggish with use. Thus, sound travels differently through each node of the network over time. This use of the network as a musical and visual presence, is intended to more broadly reference to role of networks in our lives. Transit networks physically link our communities, but networks of social, intellectual, and cultural connection span our world as well.

As this work is situated in the desert southwest, we also considered environmental issues in its conception. The propagation of sound across the surface of the wall simulates the way that the surface of water will ripple and expand when disturbed. In addition, all the electronics in this work are powered by a solar panel mounted above the work. The use of reusable energy is an important aspect of the work.

REALIZATION: At the heart of the piece is a 6′H x 10′W interactive wall that houses a network of sensors and sound producing elements. This wall is comprised of twenty-six modules that have the same basic design and function. There are two types of modules that, like in a real world transit network, serve as hubs or straight paths. Each module contains two proximity sensors, one light sensor, ten piezo speakers, and one microcontroller computer with supporting circuitry. Adjacent modules are connected to one another such that they form a fully connected network across the entire wall that allows sounds to wash across its surface.

This internal wall of sensor/speakers is enclosed on the back by a solid panel that keeps the elements out of sight and reach of the public. The wall is enclosed on the front side by a porous sheet of metal that provides protection and security, while allowing sound to easily emanate from the speakers, and providing visibility to the sensors and resonators embedded on the inner panels. The total depth of the structure is approximately 8 inches.

A large solar panel is mounted above the wall to generate electricity for the installation and provide protection from the elements. A battery is safely housed within the structure and is recharged by the solar panel to provide power to the electronics during the day and night. The structure is rooted in the ground behind the transit stop, facing, and in close proximity to the bench where transit users converge while waiting.

Variations VII is the most recent installment in the Mobius Artists Group’s exploration of John Cage’s eight compositions, titled Variations. Beginning in 1996 with Variations I, in a version for two voices performed by David Miller and Larry Johnson, MAG members and guest artists have studied and performed this series in chronological order. This multiyear project was initiated and is coordinated by David Miller, but each of the projects is essentially collaborative in nature. Working through these radically open-ended compositions, among the most indeterminate of all Cage’s works, has provided the collaborators with an action-research form of insight into one key aspect of Cage’s development.

More important, however, the Mobius realizations of the Variations are aimed at unearthing the potential that these classic “avant-garde” works of the mid-twentieth century have for audiences and artists of our own time. This is especially true for the later works in the series, as they are rarely performed. The first Mobius Artists Group performance of Variations VII, given in March 2007, was the first realization of this work since its original performances in 1966, when it was presented by Experiments in Art and Technology as part of Nine Evenings: Theatre and Engineering.

The Mobius collaborators’ experience in preparing the 2007 performance laid the groundwork for the more fully developed version to be presented this April, including the addition of new team members Alisia Waller and Joshua Jade. The final work in the series, Variations VIII, is projected for performance in 2008-09.

BACKGROUND ON JOHN CAGE’S VARIATIONS VII: In 1966, John Cage and a set of prominent collaborators, including Billy Klüver of Bell Laboratories and David Tudor, presented Variations VII, as part of the series 9 Evenings: Art and Engineering. Performed at the immense New York City Armory under the auspices of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), Variations VII was an experiment in making audible the inaudible and transforming the results via live electronic sound processing. By the “inaudible” was meant sounds from the world beyond the Armory space (for example, a restaurant kitchen, the zoo), sounds available in the space itself but generally inaccessible (sounds of the body), and sounds produced by the transformation of non-aural data (particularly via a Geiger counter).

The team of composers working with Cage and Klüver used the metaphor of “fishing” to create a rich and dense soundscape, originating entirely with real-time sources unintended for performance. The Mobius team is developing a 21st-century presentation of Variations VII which, while taking into account what was done in 1966, aims at something different from a reproduction of the original. The sonic “fishing” activities will use a variety of means, from Web-scanning to processes which use no electronic technology. The group will also be fishing in another dimension, with real-time development of projected visual imagery using found material. Finally, the fishing will take place in a set of simultaneous, widening circles, from the performance space itself, to the surrounding neighborhood, remote physical spaces, and the global Web. See Variations VII: FishNet.

About Mobius: Mobius, founded by Marilyn Arsem in 1977, is known for incorporating a wide range of the visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performance, video, installation and intermedia works. Mobius has produced hundreds of original works that have attained critical acclaim in Boston, nationally and internationally. Works created at Mobius have been presented throughout the North and South America, Europe and Asia.

Mobius has long been committed to creating artist exchange projects bringing artists from different geographic regions to work together. The international exchange projects with artists from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, and Taiwan have focused on site-specific and publicly-sited work. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 30-year history and is recognized as one of the seminal alternative, artist-run organizations in the U.S.

Mobius, Inc is funded by the Tanne Foundation; the Nonsequitur Foundation; the Boston Redevelopment Authority; the LEF Foundation; the Boston Cultural Council, a program of the Mayor’s office on Arts, Tourism, & Special Events; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; the Oedipus Foundation; and generous private support.

imposition emerges from translation, a series of pieces which were developed, in turn, from overboard, our first essay in ambient poetics. imposition uses the same texts and procedures as translation. It continues an investigation of iterative, procedural removal from one text or language to another. During the performance, four passages from the source texts of imposition will be presented in any one of three shifting states: surfacing, floating or sinking. A passage will also be in one of three changing language states: German, French or English. If a passage sinks in one language it may, for example, surface in another.

imposition now distributes these states over the internet in order to enable a networked transliteral and musical performance. imposition’s main display shows the four transliterating passages on a large projection and broadcasts their states via a server on the internet. Anyone with access to a set of twelve distinct QuickTime ‘listener’ movies may download and play them on their computer. While the main movie is running, listener movies will track one of the four passages, but will do so in a single language (as selected at download time by the participant who plays the ‘listener’) while reflecting the ‘buoyancy’ of the passage to which it listens. These movies also play looping musical samples of human vocalizations which harmonize both with the main display and with other linked and listening movies. The selection and triggering of samples also reflect their linked passage’s buoyancy. For performance or installation renditions of imposition, a number of participants with laptop computers may be distributed amongst the audience. These laptops will each play their listening movie networked with the main display by wireless connection over the internet. - John Cayley

The music for imposition is ultimately generated by events arising out of the transformations that occur within the text. These are the chance operations - themselves composed through John’s programmed impositions - which govern how various predetermined features of the audio will ultimately play themselves out. More >>

Credits: John Caley (writing, concepts, text-generation, programming); Giles Perring (composition, sound design, recording, post-production); Melanie Pappenheim (vocals); and Douglas Cape (advice on visual media, additional recording)