LMC’s 16th Annual Festival of Experimental Music :: Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP :: November 29 thru December 1, 2007 :: Tickets: 02072691606 :: Festival Pass: £35/ LMC Members £20 :: Day Pass: £15 / LMC Members£10 / Students £5.

International in its sweep, uncompromising in its substance - Time Out :: Two dozen performers from around the world are given free reign to redefine music. Over three days they coax incredible sounds from all manner of instruments, in every conceivable way. Performers include: The elder statesman of Japanese sound-art Yasunao Tone; mesmeric minimalist legend Charlemagne Palestine; and Norbert Möslang, enigmatic torturer of household electrical goods. Continue reading

Ellen Band - Audible Visions @ Brickbottom’s 20th Open Studios :: November 17-18, 2007; 12 - 6 pm :: Courtyard, B 152, Brickbottom Artists Building, 1 Fitchburg Street, Somerville, Massachusetts.

“This year I am doing something I have wanted to do for a long time - that is - I have wired our large courtyard for sound in order to present two sound installations. One installation is my magnum opus Portal of Prayer, that was commissioned in 2004 by the ICA and was installed at Logan International Airport and the Boston Public Library. If you missed it in 2004 you can hear it now! I will also present a new site-specific work for the courtyard. On Sunday only, I will open my doors to host live music and some of my prerecorded works and sound sculptures.”

Bill Fontana has been creating musical networks and making “sound sculptures” since the early 1970s. His works are usually large in scale and often involve the transmission of sounds from one ‘listening’ location with a network of microphones and/or sensors to another location where the sounds are overlayed onto the local sonic environment. Fontana’s work focuses strongly on the idea of listening as a compositional act - that is, it is driven by the idea that music surrounds us constantly and that the patterns of music are audible if we just take the time to listen. Examples and excerpts of many of Fontana’s works can be heard and seen at his website, resoundings.org.

Bill Fontana will be answering reader’s questions in the comments section below until December 6, 2007. Continue reading

Atom by Robert Henke & Christopher Bauder - Performance for a matrix of 64 gas balloons, lights, and sound. A room is filled with deep, evolving noises from a four-channel sound system. An eight-by-eight array of white, self-illuminated spheres floats in space like the atoms of a complex molecule.

Through variable positioning and illumination of each atom, a dynamic display sculpture comes into being, composed of physical objects, patterns of light, and synchronous rhythmic and textural sonic events. Continue reading

IN[ ]EX is a distributed audio sculpture in which thousands of wooden blocks with embedded technology are released into the city to engage the public as active agents. IN[ ]EX invites audience activity, movement and interaction, as well as engages with the larger urban context as the blocks are dispersed throughout the city and culture in general.

The blocks are distributed through an array of interventions that reference early models of instruction-based participatory works. As the blocks circulate, they transmit data which is collected by mesh networks and processed to create a constantly remixed sound environment in a shipping container. Continue reading

Correspondences in Sound and Vision - An ACID / CCS / Carriageworks performance by Ernest Edmonds and Mark Fell with guests Andrew Brown, Andrew Sorensen, Andrew Johnston, and Benjamin Marks :: September 30, 2007; 6:30-8.30 pm :: Bay 20 - Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, Sydney.

DC_RELEASE is a generative audio-visual performances. Ernest and Mark will be joined by special guests, aa-cell, an Australian-based live coding duo - Andrew Brown and Andrew Sorensen. Their work involves semi-improvised musical performances where they build the software for a piece during performance from a blank slate using the Impromptu environment. The music created by aa-cell includes elements of electroacoustic sound art, minimalism and electronic dance music Continue reading

[Image: dataplex by Ryoji Ikeda] Ryoji Ikeda’s datamatics 2.0 :: October 29, 2007; 8:30 p.m. :: Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR :: Tickets are sold one month in advance.

Ryoji Ikeda is a Japanese sound artist who lives and works in New York City. His work focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. It exploits sound’s physical property, its causality with human perception and mathematical dianoia as music, time and space. Using computer and digital technology to the utmost limit, he has been developing particular “microscopic” methods for sound engineering and composition. Continue reading

SYNTHECYCLETRON by Barry Prophet (an outdoor interactive sound sculpture) can be found just east of the pier on the south side of Centre Island, Toronto Islands. On Barry Prophet’s “Synthecycletron” participants generate power by pedaling which in turn generates sounds. Anyone can perform on this interactive sound sculpture. Synthecylcetron will remain open until October 29th 24/7 FREE. Thanks to the City of Toronto for supporting the presentation.

Chiclet by Ethan Bordeaux, Ben Recht, Noah Vawter and Brian Whitman (the DSPMusic Syndicate) gives life to a song. Instead of a permanent recording on a CD that is reproduced exactly every time you press “play”, the Chiclet player changes the musical composition and keeps it in a constant state of evolution.

Its creators developed it from commodity hardware, an algorithmic music language robust enough to last 30 years, and a synthesis framework capable of composing timeless textures. Starting with initial parameters of tone, texture waves, rhythm and critical duration, the song composes itself by gradually mutating from its base state. Because of this large scale of compositional drift, only time will tell what the music will grow into as it progresses. Concrete Music also has a sculptural Continue reading

The Planetarium Must Be Built!, by Nigel Ayers, is a low-fidelity simulation of one ear of ritual walks on the Bodmin Moor Zodiac. The Zodiac is a mythical ystem which has been created by extensive fieldwork on Bodmin Moor sing technology such as GPS satellite data to empirically verify visualised landscape symbols. It is presented in the form of a geodesic dome, containing multiple CD players, each one playing a recording of a ritual walks. Each CD player is placed in a circle on an aerial photograph which maps both the place and time of the walk. Visitors to the installation experience a unique time-based interaction with recorded material. Visual elements such as a DVD slideshow, a kinetic planetarium sculpture lit in ultraviolet light; and removable elements such as books and maps feature in the installation. Continue reading