Tuesday 22 December 2009

Call for papers: Sound studies konference in Århus, september 2010

Sound as Art - Sound in History, Sound as Culture - Sound in Theory
Conference on sound studies
University of Aarhus, Denmark
September 23–25, 2010

Call for papers

Today, sound studies provide an important framework for furthering cultural research related to a broad range of historical and contemporary issues. Also, sound studies contribute to the understanding of currents in social and global activity increasingly determined by auditory, sonic, and communicative materiality. At the same time, the exploration of auditivity and auditory cultures raises a series of significant aesthetic, medial, historical, cultural, and theoretical questions.

Cultural changes related to globalization and digital media have questioned traditional paradigms of vision containing notions of visual representation, semiotics, and a hermeneutics based on reading. Such changes suggest an auditive paradigm in which modes of interaction, mobile communications, and spatial and geographic fluidity lead to a renewed sense of orality and listening. In research this new paradigm is establishing itself as the interdisciplinary field of sound studies. It draws on disciplines such as musicology, performance studies, art history, anthropology, cultural studies, urban studies, and histories of technology and media while influencing these disciplines with new modes of reflection on and examination of their respective methodologies and subsequent political effects.

The aim of the conference is to profile contemporary sound studies as an interdisciplinary field of studies and to contribute to the discussion and development of the auditive paradigm in general. Key concepts like 'acoustemology', 'acoustic space' or 'sonic environment' might be reflected upon and developed as well, both at a theoretical level and with regard to specific cultural, medial and aesthetic contexts.

The programme of the conference will consist of keynote lectures, plenary roundtables, thematic workshops and individual presentations. Individual presentations and entire workshops may draw inspiration from the following array of questions:
  • What is the experiential framework of listening and auditive culture, and how is the world constituted (identity, locality, sociality, culture etc) through auditive practice?
  • How has musical and technological sound production and perception changed through the last century and how has it contributed to everyday soundscapes, the concert hall, and the media?
  • What can we know, i.e., what types of knowledge, identity and meaning are made possible through acoustic practice – are there any limits to sound taken as an experiential framework and as cognition?
  • What perspectives might arise from current studies of auditory modes of relating to space, of appropriating, expressing and designing social environments?
  • How does sound help define urban environments, and how might issues related to urban planning, architectural design, and noise benefit from a deeper and more complex understanding of sound?
  • What are the correlations between listening and other sensory modalities, the body, sociality, materiality, technology and media (sound viewed as a cognitive paradigm isolated from actual resonating sound).
  • How do auditive practices appear to be conventional or normative? How do auditive practices, in conjunction with other sensory modalities, articulate value, aesthetics, ethics and morals in culture?
  • How do we further the development of academic terminologies for dealing with sound?
  • How can transgressions of traditional distinctions between sound, music and art be understood in a socio-cultural perspective?
  • What do the specific aesthetic aspects of sound art seek to achieve in contrast to the predominance of visuality and modes of seeing within the arts?
  • How is artistic and academic education in sound competence developing?

Proposals for presentations (20/10 mins) or workshops (90 mins) must be submitted to the conference organisers/programme committee by April 1, 2010 as an email attachment (rtf/pdf/doc) to soundstudies@hum.au.dk.

Please include the following information: Paper abstract and title (max. 200 words), name(s), affiliation, e-mail, and technical equipment required (PC/DVD/CD/data projector/over-head projector/etc.).

Notifications of acceptance will be sent no later than May 3, 2010.

Keynote speakers are Dr. Penelope Gouk (University of Manchester), Dr. Jean-Paul Thibaud (CRESSON), and professor Adam Krims (University of Nottingham).

The official language of the conference is English. The conference fee is 1.000 D.Kr/€135. Please contact one of the organisers mentioned below in case you need more information.

The conference is organized by the "National Research Network on Auditive Culture"(http://auditiveculture.ku.dk/), the research project "Audiovisual Culture" (http://www.ak.au.dk/en), and the Nordic Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

Hz #14

Hz #14 December 2009:

Metal and Wind: Bertoia and the Space of Reverie by Michael Filimowicz

"Offering to the Wind, as the Bertoia sound sculpture is now known, offers one possible solution to the problem of soundscape design for the city's places of leisure and reverie...It reverses a certain urban deafness, returning the possibility of silences between sounds, producing a quietude in the midst of the city roar."

Embodiment and Technology: Towards a Utopian Dialectic by Belinda Haikes

"David Rokeby's A Very Nervous System and Steve Mann's Wearable Computer are discussed in this essay as examples of "Utopian quest for technological embodiment... ... that seeks to move beyond the anxiety of new media and to position our culture to examine the space between the ultimate dialectics, that of man and the machine."

Sensory Substitution by judsoN

"There is some debate whether cases of sensory substitution are the results of imaginativeness, psychological effects or neurological (mis-)wiring....We have evidence such substitutions do happen....Whether or not Wagner, Klee or Kandinsky actually had synesthesia, there is a rich history of people equating one type of sensory stimuli for another."

Chong! A Parallel Environment by Joaquin Gasgonia Palencia

"Chong! endeavors to showcase an interfacial encounter between humans and robots, much like human peers meeting for the first time, without the robot having to fulfill a function.... The end purpose of this environmental installation is to give the human a small window into how a robot may perceive humans and how it processes that information."

Artistic Textual and Performative Paths in New Media Correlations: An Interview with Annie Abrahams by Evelin Stermitz

"Evelin Stermitz' interview with net artist Annie Abrahams, whose "works are structured on both digitized hyper and on site realities. She constructs forms of collective writings on the net and reconstructs them into offline perceptions, which leads to creations of net-operas and other web based interventions."

Progressions: Toward a Poetic Improvisation of Listening by Brian Schorn

Brian Schorn's poems here "...are an attempt to create a writing environment parallel to that of musical improvisation...by using the Surrealist technique of automatic writing while listening to a representative number of improvised recordings....Six classifications of improvisation and nine composer/performers were used to generate the writings..."

Hz Net Gallery presents 6 net art works:

Buffalo weekly videos by Alysse Stepanian,

The Natual "High-Times" Sound Shuttle by Rudi Punzo,

Baptize by Aaron Oldenburg,

In His Memory (Starman) by Aaron Higgins,

Keyword Intervention by Owen Mundy and

Radiant Copenhagen by Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

Sunday 6 December 2009

Some upcoming conferences 2010

The second International symposium on ambisonics and spherical acoustics will be held on May 6-7, 2010, at IRCAM, Paris. Read the call for participation for information on how to submit papers and demos. The previous conference was held in Austria 2009. Proceedings are available online.

The 7th Electroacoustic music studies conference will take place in Shanghai, June 21-24, 2010. This year's theme is "Teaching electroacoustic music". Read the call for papers for more information. Proceedings from previous conferences are available.

The 7th Sound and music computing conference, Barcelona, July 21-24, 2010, is open for both paper and music contributions. The concert hall has an octophonic system. Earlier proceedings are searchable online.

The 13th International conference on digital audio effects will be held in Graz, Austria, September 6-10, 2010. For more info, see call for papers; links to previous conferences/proceedings are at the main DAFx web site.

Updated December 6, 2009; originally posted November 23, 2009.

Friday 27 November 2009

New books in EMS' library

  • Bailey, Thomas Bey William: Micro-bionic : radical electronic music and sound art in the 21st century
  • Composers inside electronics : music after David Tudor (Leonardo music journal, vol. 14)
  • Edström, Olle (ed.): Säg det om toner och därtill i ord : musikforskare berättar om 1900-talets musikliv
  • Frisk, Henrik: Improvisation, computers and interaction : rethinking human-computer interaction through music (Doctoral studies and research in fine and performing arts ; 6)
  • Haglund, Magnud (ed.): Musikens plats = The place of music (ArtMonitor : en tidskrift för konstnärlig forskning, no. 7, 2009)
  • Hansen, Tone (ed.): To be heard is to be seen
  • Hedfors, Per: Site soundscapes : landscape architecture in the light of sound : sonotope design strategies
  • Hirst, David: A cognitive framework for the analysis of acousmatic music : analysing Wind chimes by Denis Smalley
  • Holmes, Thom: Electronic and experimental music : technology, music and culture
  • Lundsten, Ralph: Happy earthday : lustbara kåserier : verbala dumheter och sinnliga exkursioner från Sommarprogram 1981, 1984, 1989 och 2004
  • Lundsten, Ralph: En själens vagabond : en personlig levnadshistoria av och om en äventyrare i tid och rum
  • Margulies, Jon: Ableton Live 8 power! : the comprehensive guide
  • Banzi, Massimo: Getting started with Arduino
  • McLean, Priscilla: Hanging off the edge : revelations of a modern troubadour
  • Miller, Paul D. (DJ Spooky): Rhythm science
  • Neuberger, Susanne (ed.): Nam June Paik : Exposition of music, electronic television : revisited
  • Neuhoff, John G. (ed.): Ecological psychoacoustics
  • Smallwood, Scott: Toward sound : the practice of phonography, noise and free improvisation in the Eastern US
  • Ternhag, Gunnar: Vad är det jag hör? : analys av musikspelningar
  • Österling, Fredrik: Komponisterna i Sverige
  • Östersjö, Stefan: Shut up ’n’ play! : negotiating the musical work (Doctoral studies and research in fine and performing arts ; 5)
The following books have been taken over from the library of our mother organisation Concerts Sweden:
  • Adorno, Theodor W.: Philosophie der neuen Musik
  • Bailey, Derek: Improvisation : its nature and practice in music
  • Bartók, Béla: Béla Bartók essays
  • Bucht, Gunnar ; Lundahl, Per Olof & Wallner, Bo: Facetter : av och om Karl-Birger Blomdahl
  • Diagram group, the: Musical instruments of the world : an illustrated encyclopedia
  • Dibelius, Ulrich: Ligeti : eine Monographie in Essays
  • Geiringer, Karl: Instruments in the history of Western music
  • Griffiths, Paul: György Ligeti (The contemporary composers)
  • György Ligeti : Gesamtverzeichnis der veröffentlichen Werke : Stand Januar 1989 = complete list of the published works : up to January 1989
  • Harvey, Jonathan: The music of Stockhausen : an introduction
  • Höjer, Lotta (ed.): Karl-Birger Blomdahl-festival (Konsertnytt Special, november 1990)
  • Johnson, Robert Sherlaw: Messiaen
  • Kolleritsch, Otto (ed.): György Ligeti : Personalstil, Avantgardismus, Popularität (Studien zur Wertungsforschung ; 19)
  • Ligeti, György & Nordwall, Owe: Aventures & Nouvelles aventures : musikalisk-dramatisk handling i fjorton bilder : libretto
  • Ligeti, György: Den stora makabern : Ligeti
  • Ligeti, György: From sketches and unpublished scores 1938-56 : from the collection of Ove Nordwall (Publications / issued by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music ; 15 [i.e. 16])
  • Ligeti, György: György Ligeti in conversation : with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel and himself
  • Manning, Peter: Electronic and computer music
  • Marcuse, Sibyl: A survey of musical instruments
  • Nadel, Myron Howard & Nadel Miller, Constance (ed.): The dance experience : readings in dance appreciation
  • Nordwall, Ove: György Ligeti : eine Monographie
  • Nordwall, Ove: Ligeti-dokument : brev, skizzer, partitur, kommentarer, om musikteater, om musikalisk form, verklistor
  • Nyffeler, Max (ed.): Klaus Huber
  • Peyser, Joan: Boulez : composer, conductor, enigma
  • Sabbe, Herman: György Ligeti : Studien zur kompositorischen Phänomenologie (Musik-Konzepte ; 53)
  • Stacey, Peter F.: Boulez and the modern concept
  • Straviniskij, Igor: Musikalisk poetik
  • Wagner, Gottfried: Weill und Brecht : das musikalische Zeittheater

Monday 23 November 2009

Soundscape: support to health

I've previously mentioned two Swedish research initiatives on soundscapes and acoustic ecology, Urban Sound Institute and The Sound Environment Centre at Lund University.

There is also another somewhat similiar research programme, Soundscape: support to health (Ljudlanskap för bättre hälsa), which has an associated website with an introduction to acoustics, measurement and perception of noise, focused on health aspects. The introduction is in Swedish only, except for a course in engineering acoustics. An interesting twist is that the text is available in three versions: for curious people (nyfikna), for users (användare), i.e. architects, civil servants etc., and for specialists.

Öra för ljud i SvD

A post in Swedish about some sound-related articles in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

SvD har nyligen haft en liten artikelserie om ljud och musik under rubriken Öra för ljud:
  1. Med sikte på musikens minsta beståndsdelar - Erik Bergqvist om Gunnar Buchts Quid est tonus?
  2. På spaning efter de ljud som flytt - Jesper Olsson om ljudinspelning och minne
  3. Upptäcktsfärd bland oönskade surr och klick - Fredrik Stahlénius om ljudtvätt och brus
Det finns mer information och länkar till äldre artiklar i understrecket-bloggen.

EAM in DDM-online

One can find quite a few dissertations on electroacoustic music at Doctoral dissertations in musicology-online. The index is searchable by keyword or classification. It is possible to use * as a wildcard, though only at the end of strings. A search for "electro*" yields 53 items, most of them relevant, while a search for items classified as "71ek*", i.e. twentieth century (7) - historical musicology (1) - electronic music (ek), lists 36 dissertations. ISBN:s are given for published works, and dissertations in progress are listed and asterisked. There are also instructions for submission of your own dissertation or topic.

Sunday 4 October 2009

New books in EMS' library

The following reports have been kindly donated by The Sound Environment Centre at Lund University (thanks to Frans Mossberg!):
  • Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien: Manifest för en bättre ljudmiljö
  • Karlsson, Henrik: Lyssnande Lund : förstudie om ett tvärvetenskapligt ljudmiljöcentrum vid Lunds universitet
  • Buller och hälsa : texter från seminarium den 13 januari 2006 arrangerat av Lyssnande Lund
  • Förföriska ljud : texter från seminarium den 27 januari 2006 arrangerat av Lyssnande Lund
  • Operativa ljud : texter från seminarium den 22 september 2006 arrangerat av Lyssnande Lund
  • Skadliga ljud : texter från seminarium den 20 oktober 2006 arrangerat av Lyssnande Lund
  • Ljud och inlärning : texter från seminarium den 27 april 2007 arrangerat av Lyssnande Lund
  • Mossberg, Frans (ed.): Sounds of history : texts from an interdisciplinary symposium held 27 October 2007 arranged by The Sound Environment Centre at Lund University, Sweden
  • Karlsson, Henrik; Wikström, Owe; Svenbro, Håkan & Geels, Anton: Ljud och tystnad för sinne och själ : texter från seminarium den 28 november 2008 arrangerat av Lyssnande Lund
Other new items:
  • Johansson, Pär: Elektronmusikens ljudlära (2007, rev. 2009)
  • Schaeffer, Pierre ; examples sonore de Guy Reibel assisté de Beatriz Ferreyra: Solfège de l’objet sonore
  • Swedish (hi)stories (World new music magazine no. 19, october 2009)

Hz journal - call for articles and net art

On-line journal Hz (www.hz-journal.org) is looking for articles on New Media, Net Art, Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic Music. We accept earlier published and unpublished articles in English. Please send your submissions to hz-journal(at)telia.com

Hz is also looking for Net Art works to be included in its virtual gallery (www.hz-journal.org/netg). Please send your URL to hz-journal(at)telia.com

Deadline: 1 November, 2009

Hz is published by the non-profit organization Fylkingen in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen has been known for introducing yet-to-be-established art forms throughout its history. Nam June Paik, Stockhausen, Cage, etc. have all been introduced to the Swedish audience through Fylkingen. Its members consist of leading composers, musicians, sound artists, dancers, performance artists and video artists in Sweden. For more information on Fylkingen, please visit http://www.fylkingen.se/about or http://www.hz-journal.org/n4/hultberg.html

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Vilken nytta har vi av ljud? - 4 november 2009

An invitation to a conference, "What use is sound?", of interest to Swedish readers only.

Inbjudan utskickad på BIBLIST, men konferensen verkar vara öppen för alla intresserade.

"Vi i det nybildade nätverket Östgötaljud bjuder in till en dag som syftar till att informera om och diskutera det som idag görs både här i Östergötland och nationellt. Vi vill även blicka framåt och se hur vi tillsammans kan arbeta med ljudet i framtiden.

Nätverket Östgötaljud är en ABM-samverkan i länet.

Målgruppen för denna konferens är arkiv, bibliotek, museer och andra intresserade.

Vi kommer att under dagen diskutera: Vad är ljud? Vem arbetar med att bevara ljud och ljudmiljöer för eftervärlden? Hur gör man för att spara på ljud och kan man återskapa ljud som försvunnit? Hur tar vi idag hand om ljud på våra arkiv, bibliotek och museer och vad kan och vill vi göra? På vilka sätt kan vi tillgängliggöra ljudet och hur kan vi använda det i utställningar och gestaltningar?

Program och anmälan:

http://www.kulturarvostergotland.se/ostgotaljud

Senast 12 oktober vill vi ha din anmälan.

Välkommen!"

3rd International Workshop on Interactive Sonification

April 7, 2010
KTH, School of Computer Science and Communication, Stockholm, Sweden

http://interactive-sonification.org/ISon2010/

The overall number of attendees will be *strictly limited* (to about 40), and priority will be given to attendees that submit and present novel and interesting work on Interactive Sonification.

It would help us to hear very early if you plan to attend or/and to submit work.

This workshop is intended as a forum for newcomers and all those interested in tightly-closed loop human-computer systems involving sonification. Work in progress is also very welcome, if there are relevant novel ideas, new approaches, techniques or applications to report.

Deadline for abstracts: October, 31 2009

Please see the above website for full details, and the call for papers.

Saturday 19 September 2009

New books in EMS' library

  • Mediaröster Stockholm new music 06 : 20 mars 2006
  • Parergon : tidsskrift for samtidsmusikk. No. 3-4, 2006
  • Burlin, Toivo: Det imaginära rummet : inspelningspraxis och produktion av konstmusikfonogram i Sverige 1952-1983
  • Chion, Michel: Film, a sound art
  • Chion, Michel: The voice in cinema
  • Collins, Nicolas: Handmade electronic music : the art of hardware hacking (2nd ed.)
  • Cope, David: Computer models of musical creativity
  • Dean, Roger T. (ed.): The Oxford handbook of computer music
  • Donhauser, Peter: Elektrische Klangmaschinen : die Pionierzeit in Deutschland und Österreich
  • Ekbom, Torsten: En trädgård av ljud : en bok om John Cage och The Cage age
  • Haglund, Magnus: Åke Hodell
  • Hall, Donald E.: Musical acoustics
  • Henriksdotter, Sanna & Ryberg, Linda: Gå över ån : ett konstpedagogiskt pilotprojekt : rapport
  • High heel sisters (Malin Arnell, Line Skywalker Karlström, Anna Linder & Karianne Stensland): HHS : High heel sisters
  • Kelly, Caleb: Cracked media : the sound of malfunction
  • Konstnärsnämnden: Konstnärernas inkomster : en statistisk undersökning av SCB inom alla konstområden 2004-2005
  • Kreidler, Johannes: Loadbang : programming electronic music in Pure data
  • Kuljuntasta, Petri: First wave : a microhistory of early Finnish electronic music
  • Leman, Marc: Embodied music cognition and mediation technology
  • Lund, Kristina: Rätt att rappa : passion och fostran på Fryshuset
  • Meyer, Felix & Zimmerman, Heidy (ed.): Edgard Varèse : composer, sound sculptor, visionary
  • Miller, Paul D. (DJ Spooky) (ed.): Sound unbound : sampling digital music and culture
  • Mockus, Martha: Sounding out : Pauline Oliveros and lesbian musicality
  • Norsk teknisk museum: Musikkmaskiner = Music machines
  • Rudi , Jøran (ed.): Absorpsjon og resonans – lyd og mening = Absorption and resonance - sound and meaning
  • Rumsey, Francis & McCormick, Tim: Sound and recording
  • Saunders, James (ed.): The Ashgate research companion to experimental music
  • Schaub, Mirjam: Janet Cardiff : the walk book
  • Sethares, William A.: Rhythm and transforms
  • Tadday, Ulrich (ed.): Klangkunst (Musik-Konzepte, Neue Folge XI/2008, Sonderband)
  • Utredningen Konstnärerna och trygghetssystemen: Konstnärerna och trygghetssystemen : betänkande
  • Ystad, Sølvi, Kronland-Martinet, Richard & Jensen, Kristoffer (ed.): Computer music modeling and retrieval : genesis of meaning in sound and music : fourth international symposium (CMMR 2008)

Thursday 17 September 2009

Åke Hodell by Magnus Haglund

The following rantings is a personal reflexion in Swedish about Magnus Haglund's new book about the Swedish concrete poet and text-sound artist Åke Hodell.

Jag besökte släppfesten för Magnus Haglunds Hodell-biografi i tisdags. Haglund läste texter och samtalade med flera av de personer ur Hodells bekantskapskrets som nämns i boken. Gubbar allihop faktiskt. Nu är det inte så att jag har något särskilt emot gubbar (förutom som representanter för människosläktet i allmänhet naturligtvis, inbiten misantrop som jag är), men det ledde till en, visserligen småmysig, men ändå lite grabbig dunka-varandra-i-ryggen-stämning. Jag anar att Haglund väldigt gärna skulle velat varit med då, på 1960-talet, då det hände riktigt vassa grejer liksom ... men jag unnar honom gärna denna längtan.

Det behöver nästan inte sägas att boken är välkommen. Men den handlar framförallt om den bild Hodell byggt upp av sig själv. Att han använde sitt liv som material, och att vissa händelser och teman ständigt återkommer i hans verk, är välkänt, men detta gäller ju för de flesta konstnärer, visserligen i mer eller mindre hög grad. Ett minst lika intressant ämne för en biografi hade väl varit det vi inte kan få veta om Hodell genom verken. Det skulle kanske inte ge en sannare bild av Hodell, men en annan. Och även om boken snarare är en introduktion till Hodells konstnärsskap än en vetenskaplig biografi, önskar jag att Haglund hade haft en mer kritisk inställning till sitt källmaterial, och inte låtit sig förföras av Hodells egen mytbildning.

Bokens sista kapitel handlar om Hodells position i dagens konstvärld. Det är många som tagit starka intryck av Hodells verk. Jag hör också till dem. Med en lätt överdrift kan man säga att "Mr. Smith in Rhodesia" gjorde mig till tonsättare, och "Skratta Pajazzo" spelade - tillsammans med Eyvind Johnsons "Strändernas svall" - förmodligen en viktig roll för mitt beslut att vapenvägra.

Men intryck behöver inte medföra, och är inte detsamma som, influens. Det sistnämnda måste utgöra en konkret och påvisbar inverkan på den influerades gärning. Det går säkert att hitta ytliga likheter mellan Hodells verk och de som härstammar från den yngre generationen ljudkonstnärer. Men Hodells gärning bars inte upp av poetisk teknik allena, utan av det slags starka etiska och politiska ställningstagande, som jag har svårt att finna i den svenska samtidskonsten.

Och därför finns det, enligt min mening, heller ingen som kan räkna sig som efterföljare till Hodell. Kanske skall vi inte sörja alltför mycket över detta; precis som Hodell vägrade bli en Ekelöf-epigon, är dagens konstnärer naturligtvis i sin fulla rätt att välja sina egna estetiska och moraliska utgångspunkter.

Nedan följer några recensioner från dagspressen. (Boken är förstås redan inköpt till EMS bibliotek och finns till utlån inom några dagar.)

Monday 7 September 2009

ISEA 2010 call for proposals

ISEA2010 RUHR is the 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, a major biennial conference and exhibition event for art, media and technology, scheduled for August 2010 in the German Ruhr region (Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, a. o.).

We invite proposals for conference papers, artist presentations, exhibition projects, live performances, and art projects in public space. All submissions will be evaluated by an international jury; results and invitations are expected by the end of 2009.

Visual artists, musicians, dancers, designers, engineers, software artists, researchers, theorists, media activists, and hybrids of these, working with recent technologies and exploring the artistic, creative and critical potentials of digital and electronic media, should submit their projects or papers online at www.isea2010ruhr.org/submissions by 15 September 2009.

Thursday 20 August 2009

Record label list updated

I've finally found time to update the record label list. There are about ten more labels, for a total of 52. Additions are of course welcome. Labels must be based in Sweden, and release electronic, electroacoustic, contemporary classical, experimental, free improv and related genres.

Thursday 30 July 2009

Call for papers: EvoMUSART 2010

EvoMUSART 2010
8th European Workshop on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design

7-9 April, 2010, Istanbul, Turkey

http://www.evostar.org

INTRODUCTION

EvoMUSART 2010 is the eight workshop of the EvoNet working group on Evolutionary Music and Art. Following the success of previous events and the growth of interest in the field, the main goal of EvoMUSART 2010 is to bring together researchers who are using biologically inspired techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in this area.

The workshop will be held from 7-9 April, 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey as part of the EvoStar event.

Accepted papers will be presented orally at the workshop and included in the EvoWorkshops proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.

EvoMUSART 2010 important dates are:

Submission deadline: November 4, 2009
Conference: 7-9 April, 2010

TOPICS OF INTEREST

The papers should concern the use of bio-inspired techniques (Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life, Artificial Neural Networks, Swarm Intelligence, etc.) in the scope of the generation, analysis and interpretation of art, music, design, architecture and other artistic fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Generation
o Biologically Inspired Design and Art-Making Systems that create drawings, images, animations, sculptures, poetry, text, objects, designs, webpages, buildings, etc.;
o Biologically Inspired Sound-Generators and Music-Systems that create music, aggregate sound, or simulate instruments, voices, effects, etc;
o Robotic Based Evolutionary Art and Music;
o Other related generative techniques;
- Theory
o Computational Aesthetics, Emotional Response, Surprise, Novelty;
o Representation techniques;
o Comparative analysis and classification;
o Validation methodologies;
o New biologically inspired computation models in art, music and design;
- Computer Aided Creativity
o New ways of integrating users into evolutionary computation art and music frameworks;
o Analysis and evaluation of: the artistic potential of biologically inspired art and music; the artistic processes inherent to these approaches; the resulting artifacts;
o Collaborative distributed artificial art environments;
- Automation
o Techniques for automated fitness assignment;
o Systems that exploit biologically inspired computation to analyze artistic objects and artifacts;

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND SUBMISSION DETAILS

Submit your manuscript, at most 10 A4 pages long, in Springer LNCS format no later than November 4, 2009. Formatting instructions available at:

http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0


The papers will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. Authors will be notified via email on the results of the review by 20 December 2009.

The authors of accepted papers will have to improve their paper on the basis of the reviewers' comments and will be asked to send a camera ready version of their manuscripts, along with text sources and pictures, by 10 January 2010. The accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings, published in Springer LNCS Series, which will be available at the workshop.

Further information, including the Online Submission Details, can be found on the following pages:
Evo*2010: http://www.evostar.org
EvoMUSART2010: http://dces.essex.ac.uk/research/evostar/EvoMUSART.htm

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission: 4 November 2009
Workshop: 7-9 April 2009

Tuesday 30 June 2009

IRCAM call for projects

Call for Projects 2010: Musical Research Residency Program

Ircam (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics and Music) offers a unique experimental environment where composers can expand their musical experience through the concepts found in new technologies. These technologies are developed as a result of challenges posed both by new musical ideas and new domains investigated by scientific teams. At Ircam, this interactive process is called “musical research”.

Ircam is inviting artists to submit projects for the first musical research residency program in 2010. The musical research residency program is open to international artists, regardless of age or nationality, who wish to carry out their musical research using Ircam’s facilities and extensive research environment. Candidates will be nominated through a selection procedure involving international experts, based on research background and musical motivation, as well as the quality of the proposed project through the online call for proposals. Preference is given to new personalities to the Ircam artistic scene. Upon nomination, each candidate will be granted a residency at Ircam during a specific period (three or six months) and in association with a team/project at Ircam. In addition, laureates receive an equivalent of 1200 Euros per month to cover expenses in France.

For the year 2010, we invite projects on (but not limited to) the following research themes:
• Spatial sound composition
• Compositional and high-level control of sound synthesis
• New paradigms for the gestural control of computer music
• Novel compositional approaches to voice processing and/or synthesis
In addition to the proposed themes, we encourage applicants with novel and unexplored research ideas to apply within the “open call” category. We strongly recommend candidates to consult current trends in musical research at Ircam and elsewhere by browsing through Ircam research department websites.

Submission Deadline: July 31, 2009
More Information and submission procedure:
http://www.ircam.fr/875.html?L=1

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Organised sound: Call for submissions

Call for submissions
Organised Sound, Volume 15, Number 3
Issue thematic title: Sound <–> Space: New approaches to multichannel music and audio
Date of Publication: December 2010
Publishers: Cambridge University Press


Issue co-ordinators: Scott Wilson and Jonty Harrison {s.d.wilson.1, d.j.t.harrison}@bham.ac.uk

In recent years the field of multichannel electroacoustic music and audio spatialisation has experienced something of a renaissance. In addition to the development and increased availability of new technologies (higher order ambisonics, vector base amplitude panning, wave field synthesis, various spectral diffusion approaches, etc.) we have seen multichannel presentation of electroacoustic music become standard in a way that it never was in the past. 'Eight channel is the new stereo,' one practitioner is known to have declared. At the bleeding edge of this trend we have seen the extension and development of large-scale multichannel systems for performance and research, such as the ZKM Klangdom, BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre), the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University in Belfast, and the Allosphere at UCSB in California.

Along with the possibilities presented by these techniques and systems come problems and challenges. Issues of accessibility, portability, and practicality arise. Historical problems (e.g. the need to adapt to less than ideal performance spaces, the cost of accessing the space for sufficient preparation and rehearsal time, the sweet spot issue, etc.) remain very much in play.

Issue 15/3 of Organised Sound will explore this growing field of multichannel audio and music in aesthetic and social, as well as technical terms.

Potential subjects include:

1) Aesthetics
- Historically one might roughly divide spatialisation approaches into two broad categories: the virtual (i.e. artificial reality simulation and holophony), and the pragmatic (i.e diffusion and other space and system adaptable and/or specific approaches). What value do these different approaches have in the current context? To what extent are they combinable?
- What are the aesthetic implications of different approaches? Which amongst the possibilities enabled by new systems and technologies are the most 'musically' relevant (in the broadest sense), and are these in any way distinct from those more suited for virtual reality applications?

2) Practicality and Portability
- How can pieces be composed to be adaptable to the growing variety of system configurations (rings of eight with various orientations, domes, spheres, 'horizon' approaches such as WFS, 'acousmoniums' like the GRM, hybrid systems such as BEAST, ad hoc non-symmetrical and/or non-homogenous setups; i.e. sound installations, etc.)?
- Can or should presentation systems be designed with maximum adaptability to existing formats/paradigms (stereo diffusion, quad, 5.1, ring of eight, massively multichannel, etc.) in mind?
- Is a spatial interchange format (e.g. the recent 'SpatDIF' proposals) practical and/or desirable? What are the implications of combining low level (i.e. implementation specific) and high level (i.e. human-meaningful) descriptors in a single format?

3) Techniques and implementations
- What are the current solutions to software control of (especially large-scale) multichannel systems?
- What future developments will be possible and/or desirable?
- What role should performance (in the broadest sense) play in spatialisation, whether for pragmatic or aesthetic reasons?

4) Accessibility
- To what extent do the new large-scale multichannel systems represent a return to the historical accessibility problems of electroacoustic and computer music? Are we seeing a return to the 'institutionalisation' of electroacoustic music and sound art? To what extent (if any) does the availability of relatively inexpensive commodity hardware (powerful computers, MOTU 24I/O interfaces, etc.) help with this problem?

5) Hybridisation
- Historically, different approaches and techniques have exhibited particular strengths and weaknesses, while attracting (sometimes almost religious) communities of advocates, who (perhaps for reasons of technical limitation as much as anything else) made use of these techniques relatively exclusively. Given the current state of the art, what advantages or disadvantages do hybrid approaches present to the user?

As always, submissions related to the theme are encouraged; however, those that fall outside the scope of this theme are always welcome.

Deadline for submissions is 15 January 2010. Submissions may consist of papers, with optional supporting short compositions or excerpts, audio-visual documentation of performances and/or other aspects related to your submission that can be placed onto a DVD and the CUP website for “Organised Sound”. Supporting audio and audio-visual material will be presented as part of the journal's annual DVD-ROM which will appear with issue 15/3 as well on the journal’s website.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15 January 2010

SUBMISSION FORMAT
Notes for Contributors and further details can be obtained from the inside back cover of published issues of Organised Sound or at the following url:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=OSO&type=ifc (and download the pdf)

Properly formatted email submissions and general queries should be sent to: os@dmu.ac.uk, not to the guest editors.

Hard copy of articles and images (only when requested) and other material (e.g., sound and audio-visual files, etc. – normally max. 15’ sound files or 8’ movie files) should be submitted to:

Prof. Leigh Landy
Organised Sound
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.

Editor: Leigh Landy
Associate Editors: Ross Kirk and Richard Orton
Regional Editors: Joel Chadabe, Kenneth Fields, Eduardo Miranda, Jøran Rudi, Barry Truax, Ian Whalley, David Worrall
International Editorial Board: Marc Battier, Hannah Bosma, Alessandro Cipriani, Simon Emmerson, Rajmil Fischman, David Howard, Rosemary Mountain, Tony Myatt, Jean-Claude Risset, Francis Rumsey, Margaret Schedel, Mary Simoni

Architectones II conference 3-5 July 2009

ARCHITECTONES II (3-5 July 2009)
ROYAL SALTWORKS OF ARC ET SENANS, SOUTH EAST FRANCE

In July 2008, the first edition of Architectones brought together a number of leading artists, architects, curators and theorists for a two-day conference on sound art. The conference addressed topics such as sound and architecture, curating sound and the role of sound in contemporary art via presentations and discussions relating essentially to artistic practice. Architectones II will take an in-depth look at the topic that elicited the most interest among participants - the relationship between sound and architecture. It will do so not from the point of view of practice but by examining the theory and thinking underpinning these practices. The event will consist of a day-long discussion on Saturday 5 July designed to stimulate in-depth exchanges between the speakers and the audience. Each speaker will prepare a short text and five questions that will form the basis for the discussion. These will be posted on the Architectones website in the weeks leading up to the event.

The programme will include a sound walk as well as installations and film screenings on the subject of sound and architecture, taking place on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Speakers/moderators: Pascal Broccolichi (France), Gregoire Chelkoff (CRESSON) France, Seth Cluett (USA), Sabine von Fischer (Switzerland), Raviv Ganchrow (The Netherlands), Rahma Khazam (UK France), Claudia Martinho (PT France), Colin Ripley (Canada), Edwin van der Heide (The Netherlands)

Contact: www.architectones.net

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Organised sound - call for submissions

Volume 15, Number 2
Issue thematic title: Organising Electroacoustic Music
Date of Publication: August 2010
Publishers: Cambridge University Press

Issue co-ordinator: Simon Emmerson (s.emmerson@dmu.ac.uk)

It is not possible to define ‘electroacoustic music’ completely - we include all its many genres with their incompatible descriptors – acousmatic, live electronic, interactive, algorithmic, installation, experimental, glitch, post-laptop, live coding – you name it. The range of possibilities for analysis are equally broad (as we see in Stéphane Roy’s L’analyse des musiques electroacoustiques and Leigh Landy’s Understanding the Art of Sound Organization) and more will appear. The field will remain very open. The following four areas are intended not to constrain but to suggest and provoke ideas.

• Who or what organises electroacoustic music?

It might be the composer, the performer, the listener, a ‘system’ (interactive or automatic, software or hardware) – all are potential participants. They may have different roles and relationships.

• How is the music organised?

You might like to examine the creator’s poietic world of intention and realisation, technique, system, method, approach, ‘language’. Or the relation of the creator to the technology, its use, interface, limitations.

You might like to examine a work on its own as an autonomous entity – the sound world, the organisation of its shapes, forms, relationships, functions, processes.

You might like to examine the listener’s reception of the music. The organisation may be imperceptible (why?) or immanent (how?).

Or the relationship of two or more of these, of course (the ‘intention-reception’ issue).

We also accept that a lack of organisation is, after all, a form of organisation. Also that organisation need not necessarily be of human origin.

• How does performance affect organisation?

The music might be affected by where it is composed or performed: a studio, a venue, the internet, a site.

It might be enhanced or (deliberately?) constrained by things mechanical: the instrument, the human-machine interface. Or the performance forces, the instrumentation, sound projection, venue disposition.

It might depend on audience interaction - how is this organised?

• The cultural, philosophical and aesthetic issues of organisation

You may like to question what are we examining. A ‘work’, a process, a performance? Is it fixed or open?

You may wish to discuss languages and models of thinking, either that have been used or that we need to develop, for analytical work in this field.

You may like to tackle the semantic aspects: how and what do sounds in electroacoustic music ‘mean’?

You might like to examine how the social and ecological dimensions of composition and performance influence organisation of the music.

As always, submissions related to the theme are encouraged; however, those that fall outside the scope of this theme are always welcome.

Deadline for submissions for this issue is 1 October 2009. Submissions may consist of papers, with optional supporting short compositions or excerpts, audio-visual documentation of performances and/or other aspects related to your submission that can be placed onto a DVD and the CUP website for “Organised Sound”. Supporting audio and audio-visual material will be presented as part of the journal's annual DVD-ROM which will appear with issue 15/3 as well on the journal’s website.

---

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 1 October 2009

SUBMISSION FORMAT

Notes for Contributors and further details can be obtained from the inside back cover of published issues of Organised Sound or at the following url:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=OSO&type=ifc (and download the pdf)

Properly formatted email submissions and general queries should be sent to: os@dmu.ac.uk (not to the guest editor)

Hard copy of articles and images (only when requested) and other material (e.g., sound and audio-visual files, etc. – normally max. 15’ sound files or 8’ movie files) should be submitted to:

Prof. Leigh Landy
Organised Sound
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.

Editor: Leigh Landy
Associate Editors: Ross Kirk and Richard Orton
Regional Editors: Joel Chadabe, Kenneth Fields, Eduardo Miranda, Jøran Rudi, Barry Truax, Ian Whalley, David Worrall
International Editorial Board: Marc Battier, Hannah Bosma, Alessandro Cipriani, Simon Emmerson, Rajmil Fischman, David Howard, Rosemary Mountain, Tony Myatt, Jean-Claude Risset, Francis Rumsey, Margaret Schedel, Mary Simoni

Sunday 3 May 2009

New books and CDs in EMS' library

New books
  • Midsommar med Stockhausen : 19:e elektronmusikfestivalen i Skinnskatteberg 23-25 juni 2000 : före, under och efter
  • Paletten 1/2009 (special issue on sound art)
  • Cary, Tristram: Tristram Cary : biographical notes and list of works
  • Hanson, Sten: Antediluvianska skrifter
  • Hanson, Sten: Works, oeuvres, Werke, arbeten
  • Hodell, Åke: Galgenfrist
  • Karperyd, Andreas och Eek, Staffan: Typography now : the typographic dance project
  • Kindstrand, Gunilla (red.): Kraftfält : Stiftelsen framtidens kultur 1994-2001
  • Laaban, Ilmar: Palingarderomb
  • Lane, Cathy (red.): Playing with words : the spoken word in artistic practice
  • Laurin, Beth och Millroth, Thomas: Beth Laurin : ett urval verk 1953-2008
  • Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: Det futuristiska manifestet eller "Futurismen" : den nyaste litterära skolan
  • Shapiro, Peter (red.): Modulations : a history of electronic music : throbbing words on sound
  • Strömberg, Mikael: Ljudbiblioteket

New CDs
  • Laurin, Beth: 1984

Thursday 19 March 2009

Online tutorials etc.

I teach an evening class in acoustics and sound synthesis, a part of the EMS two year course in electroacoustic music. I've taught these classes since 1999, and since EMS does not require any formal education for entering the course, the main challenge has always been explaining physical and mathematical concepts in plain language and illustrations. Here are some links to online resources that I've found useful.

Acoustics
DSP
Sound synthesis
Pd
Although we use Max/MSP and not Pd on the course, there are many similarities between them, so these free books could be useful (via Create Digital Music):There is also a free manual at Flossmanuals. (Thanks to Jonas Enqvist for the tip!)

Software
Updated July 25, 2010

Friday 27 February 2009

Master's degree in sound art at DI

EMS and Dramatiska institutet (DI), the Swedish university college of film, radio, television and theatre, offer a two-semester master's programme in sound art (60 credits) for active artists, sound designers, musicians, radio and television professionals etc., starting fall 2009. Last date for application: April, 2. More info in Swedish follows.

Dramatiska institutet
Ljudkonst 60 hp
En ettårig magisterutbildning med start höstterminen 2009.

Utbildningen vänder sig till verksamma inom radio- eller medieområdet, konstnärer, ljuddesigners, ljudtekniker, musiker och andra ljudintresserade som vill utveckla sina uttryckssätt med hjälp av/genom ljudkonst.

Sista ansökningsdag 2 april 2009

Vi undersöker möjligheterna i mötet mellan den experimentella ljudkonsten och berättandet. Vi utforskar också ljudkonstens relation till olika typer av rum, platser och bilder.

Utbildningen drivs i nära samarbete mellan Dramatiska institutet och Elektroakustisk Musik i Sverige (EMS). DI:s starka berättartradition genomsyrar utbildningen och förenas här med EMS tradition av elektronmusik och ljudexperiment.

Saturday 21 February 2009

Temp'óra call for projects

Temp'óra is issuing a call for projects, period 2010-2011. It is aimed at composers and soloists or ensembles involved mainly in contemporary music, permanently residing in Europe within EU or not.

The performing part of the project may incorporate electroacoustics. The pieces may also be of improvisational character.

The project must consist of an exchange between, at least, three different European countries. From these countries each ensemble will commission a piece from a composer of its own country.

The exchange is in form of a collaboration between these countries, so that each ensemble will play a programme including the new commission in the two or more other countries of the collaboration. The programme may be performed in one concert or consist of a tour. This part of the project takes place between 1st of September 2010 and 31st of December 2011.

Application form must be returned by 30th of June 2009.

About Temp'óra

"Temp'óra aims to encourage a better understanding between the cultures of the member states of the European Union by developing and organizing concerts and other musical events of today's music.

Temp'óra proposes to create a central network to bring together actors and sponsors of written and improvised music of the contemporary European music community. The aim is to promote interaction of musicians and composers, and exchange written, visual or audio documents.

[...]

Temp'óra is intent on promoting all the existing websites, institutions, centres and associations devoted to supporting today’s music."

The Experimental Music Studios of the UIUC celebrates 50th anniversary

The Experimental Music Studios of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has released an four CD set in celebration of their 50th anniversary. The music is freely available as mp3s.

There is also a paper on the history of the center by Emanuele Battisti: The Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois, 1958-68: Environment, People, Activities, and one can find more history-related stuff if one looks around the site.

Lejaren Hiller created and directed the studio during its first ten years. He left in 1968 when he was appointed professor of composition at SUNY at Buffalo, and his archive belongs to the SUNY Music Library. The inventory, together with a brief chronology and bibliography, is compiled by Pei-jung Wu (this resource will be added to the EAM meta-bibliography).

Via Synthopia.

Gramophone Archive

All issues of Gramophone magazine are now available online in full text (though one has to register for access to the PDF scans). One can search the archive and narrow the results down by decade and year. There are some 1500 results for electronic music and about 200 for concrete music. However, not all of these are reviews. The term electroacoustic music is only used in reviews from 1990 onwards, and 'acousmatic' not at all.

In the very first review of musique concrète, the reviewer, L.S., concludes: "To the intellectually curious, this disc will be of great interest: whether this is what we look forward to as the music of the future is another matter, not [to] be entered into here." The record reviewed is the Pierre Henry/Pierre Schaeffer Ducretet-Thomson DTL93090, containing Bidule en Ut, Schaeffer's 1955 Etudes, Henry's Le Voile d'Orphée and other works.

The overall tone of the review is a mix of condescension and prejudice: Neither Schaeffer nor Henry is counted amongst "real composers", unlike Boulez or Messiaen, despite the fact that Henry studied both with the latter and Nadia Boulanger, and the review begins with the usual science-fiction reference.

Well, at least something has changed for the better; I daresay reviews like this are more unusual today.

Thanks to InternetBrus for the tip.

Sunday 8 February 2009

DAFx 2009 call for papers

Digital Audio Effects Conference DAFx 2009
http://dafx09.como.polimi.it/

The 2009 edition of the DAFx conference will be held on September 1-4, 2009 in the beautiful city of Como, Italy, at the Conference Area of the Politecnico di Milano's Como Campus. DAFx provides an opportunity for experts and students of audio from all over the world to show their research achievements, present and attend tutorials, and exchange ideas on the most recent developments in the audio world.

Papers are solicited for, but not limited to, the following topics:

- Audio Effects
- Sound Synthesis
- Physical Models and Virtual Musical Instruments
- Virtual Analog Models
- Sound Representation and Sound Modeling
- Time-frequency & Spectral Processing
- Audio Coding
- Audio Analysis and Feature Extraction
- Synthesis, Reproduction and Perception of Spatial Sound
- Perception, Cognition, and Psychoacoustics
- Software and Hardware Implementations
- Audio-Based Music Information Retrieval Systems
- Automatic Transcription and High-level Features
- Space-Time Audio Processing
- Networked Audio and the Internet
- Compositional Issues, Sound Design and Sonic Interaction Design
- Audio in Mobile Applications

Prospective authors are invited to submit full-length papers before April 6, 2009 according to one of the following two papers formats:

- Oral: up to 8 pp. in the Proceedings, 20-min presentation
- Poster: up to 8 pp. in the Proceedings, recommended length 4 pp.

All submissions are subject to peer review. The accepted contributions will be published in the Conference Proceedings, which will be made freely accessible on the conference website.

Important dates

- Full-Paper Submission: April 6, 2009
- Notification of Acceptance: May 22, 2009
- Final Paper Submission: June 19, 2009
- Early-bird registration deadline: July 1, 2009

The event is organized by the Sound and Music Computing Lab of the Politecnico di Milano, Como Campus, and by the Image and Sound Processing Group, with the Help of the Conservatory of Music in Como.

Thursday 29 January 2009

Sound and Music Computing Conference 2009: Call for Music

The 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC) is glad to announce an open call for works. This year's SMC will happen in Porto at Casa da Música, Porto's most recent architectural landmark located in the new center of the city.

There will be five concerts at the conference that include a network performance. Three of the concerts will be at Casa da Música and the other two at a venue to be announced.

We particularly encourage submissions of works of electronic music that have a performance aspect to it, such as works for instrument(s) and electronic music, laptop performances, live electronic music, live coding, circuit bending, interactive installations, audio-visual performance, and interactive dance.

The conference concert programme will be selected by curators (Evan Parker, Nicolas Collins, Pauline Oliveros and Robert Rowe) in coordination with the Music Chairs (Carlos Guedes and Pedro Rebelo). The conference will provide a professional ensemble with soloists in the following instruments: Flute, Clarinet, Saxophones, Double Bass, Piano and Percussion.

All submissions must be made through an online system at http://smc2009.smcnetwork.org/. Please note there is a limit of 100MB per submission (please used compressed formats, e.g. mp3, ogg, mp4). If you wish to send larger files you should mail us a CD/DVDs to the following address:

SMC 09 C/O Carlos Guedes
INESC-Porto
Rua Dr. Roberto Frias 378
4200-465 Porto
Portugal

Call for Student works
The 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference is also glad to announce a call for student works. Undergraduate and Postgraduate students from all European Schools are encouraged to submit works, following the guidelines proposed in the main call for music. When submitting the works for the student call, you have to submit a proof of enrollment at a European School or University.

Important dates for both submissions:
Submission deadline: April 17
Notification of acceptance: May 15

All questions should be addressed to Carlos Guedes cguedes[at]inescporto[dot]pt or to Pedro Rebelo p[dot]rebelo[at]qub[dot]ac[dot]uk.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

New books in EMS' library

  • Baalman, Marije: On wave-field synthesis and electro-acoustic music : with a particular focus on the reproduction of arbitrarily shaped sound sources
  • Edgerton, Michael Edward: The 21st-century voice : contemporary and traditional extra-normal voice
  • Engström, Andreas & Staneviciute, Ruta (ed.): Contemporary lithuaninan music (World new music magazine, no. 18, oktober 2008)
  • Kronland-Martinet, Richard, Ystad, Sølvi & Jensen, Kristoffer (ed.): Computer music modeling and retrieval : sense of sounds : fourth international symposium (CMMR 2007)
  • Larsén, Carlhåkan: Lars-Erik Larsson
  • Rikskonserter i tiden : enkät till Rikskonserters arrangörer och samarbetspartner utskickad 16 maj 2008 : standardrapport 2008-06-02
  • Swedish music past and present

Friday 23 January 2009

The Tone Generation

The tone generation is a series of radio programmes on electroacoustic music etc. by Ian Helliwell. It's available as a podcast.

Thanks to improviser/composer Johannes Bergmark for the tip - although he won't read this note, because he hates blogs and all that other stuff some of you are addicted to ;-)

Call for participation: FTM Workshop at BEK

In March BEK will be hosting a one-week workshop providing an introduction to the Ircam libraries FTM, MnM, Gabor and MnM. This one-week workshop will look into the basics and the advanced use of the FTM&Co extensions for Max/MSP for interactive real-time musical and artistic applications.

The basic idea of FTM is to extend the data types exchanged between the objects in a Max/MSP patch by complex data structures such as matrices, sequences, dictionaries, break point functions, tuples and whatever might seem helpful for the processing of music, sound and motion capture data. It also comprises visualization and editor components, and operators (expressions and externals) on these data structures, together with file import/export (SDIF, MIDI, ...) operators.

As examples of applications in the areas of sound analysis, transformation and synthesis, gesture following, and manipulation of musical scores, we will look at the parts and packages of FTM that allow arbitrary-rate signal processing (Gabor), matrix operations, statistics, machine learning (MnM), corpus-based synthesis (CataRT), sound description data exchange (SDIF), and Jitter support. The presented concepts will be tried and confirmed by applying them to programming exercises of real-time musical applications, and free experimentation.

The workshop is led by Diemo Schwarz.

BIOGRAPHY
Diemo Schwarz is a researcher--developer in real-time applications of computers to music with the aim of improving musical interaction, notably sound analysis--synthesis, and interactive corpus-based concatenative synthesis.

Since 1997 at Ircam (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique-Musique) in Paris, France, he combined his studies of computer science and computational linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, with his interest in music, being an active performer and musician. He holds a PhD in computer science applied to music from the University of Paris, awarded in 2004 for the development of a new method of concatenative musical sound synthesis by unit selection from a large database. This work is continued in the CataRT application for real-time interactive corpus-based concatenative synthesis within Ircam's Real-Time Music Interaction (IMTR) team.

PRACTICAL INFO
The workshop takes place at BEK, Bergen, Norway, March 9-13 2009, and ends with a live event/concert at Landmark on the evening of Friday March 13, featuring Diemo Schwarz, Vicotria Johnson (electric violin) and the South-African sound artist James Webb.

Participation: Please sent a brief e-mail providing motivation and bio to bek[AT]bek[DOT]no by February 5 2009. Participation is free, but participants are expected to cover travel and stay themselves. BEK might be able to help arranging hotel at reduced rate for participants. If this is of intererest, please state so when appliying to participate.

Participants are expected to have prior knowledge of Max.

Links:

http://www.bek.no/

http://imtr.ircam.fr/
http://ftm.ircam.fr/
http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/Gabor
http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/MnM
http://imtr.ircam.fr/index.php/CataRT

http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/schwarz/
http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/schwarz/mtbf/

Call for participation, sound designs, posters, demos: Sonic Interaction Design Workshop

Sonic Interaction Design and its relation to Film and Theatre sound design

SID Workshop at the University of York

Date: 2 April 2009 (followed by SID Management Committee on 3 April 2009)

Registration to the Workshop:
Please send an email by the 15 March 2009 with the subject line Registration York SID Workshop at sp148@york.ac.uk

Introduction
The discipline of Sonic Interaction Design (SID) investigates ways of conveying information, data and object characteristics through sound in interactive contexts. This field of research has become increasingly important and urgent as the technology available has become more powerful and mobile due to the process of miniaturization. Research regarding SID is relatively new, however, the practice of designing sounds to accompany, represent or evoke actions and objects has a longer history since Sound Designers have been creating new sounds for objects in Theatre and Film for many, many years. This knowledge and practical experience is the logical starting point for the new research field of SID.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together practitioners in the fields of Film and Theatre and researchers in Sonic Interaction Design to discuss and exchange knowledge and practice in the field. This is a rare opportunity for a highly interdisciplinary meeting of people who usually work in different contexts, but who are interested in similar issues. We hope that this meeting will stimulate discussion and produce fruitful collaborations.

Workshop Invited Speakers
Prof Mary Luckhurst, Department of Theatre, Film and TV, The University of York
Daniel Hug, Vertiefungsrichtung Interactiondesign, Interaction Design Program | Game Design Program, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Zurich
Annabelle Pangborn, Head of Editing, Sound and Music, National Film and TV School (UK)

Others to be confirmed

Call for Sound Designs

Experimenting with Sonic Interaction Design
A difficult question in Sonic Interaction Design is to identify ways in which design ideas can be sketched, tested, represented and discussed. One possibility is to set a scene or context in which a person interacts with objects. For this scene, a variety of sounds may be appropriate although, this will depend on the particular interactive experience the designer is attempting to create via sound for the person interacting with the objects. Only the people interacting directly with the objects (and perhaps external observers) can then tell the designer if their experience effectively related to the initial intentions of the designer communicated via the sounds.

Following this idea, in this workshop, we have set a small theatrical scene, involving interactions with sounding objects, which is open to different interpretations and performances, and we set out to perform it with different sets of sounds. The designers will have a context, objects and a setting for which to create appropriate sounds, the actor will respond and react to the sounds (and therefore the objects) as a person could do when using those objects in a real situation and finally the audience will be able to observe the scene and then discuss how well the sounds have communicated the intended experience. In this workshop, we will explore this “theatrical” representation of sonic interaction designs with a twofold aim:

- To discuss the effectiveness of the sonic interaction designs proposed in light of the original designer’s intentions and the feedback produced by the actors and the audience;

- To evaluate the advantages and limitations of this “theatrical” method as a tool for testing and evaluating sonic interaction designs.

We invite submissions of originally designed sounds (in .wav or .aiff format) for the actions and objects of the following theatrical scene (download scene text ).

The sound files should be accompanied by:

1) a document clearly stating which sound file corresponds to which action/object in the scene;

2) a second document which should report briefly the sound designer’s interpretation and setting (time and place) of the scene, the designer’s intentions for the design of each sound and the technical strategies used to design each sound.

Actors will perform the scene with the selected sound designs on the day of the workshop. The actors will rehearse the scene a few days in advance but only knowing the setting (time and place) decided by the sound designer for the scene. The performance of the scene will depend upon the response from the actors to the sounds proposed for the scene. The actors will then prepare a document reporting their understanding of the sounds.

After the performance, during the workshop, audience, actors and designers will be given some time to discuss how successfully the sounds were at communicating the initial designer’s intentions, which will be revealed to both the actors (interacting directly with the objects) and the audience (observers of the interaction).

A final discussion will draw conclusions on this “theatrical” method of testing and evaluating sonic interaction designs.

Submission details
Format: see details above.
Submission deadline: 9 February 2009
Acceptance notification: 28 February 2009
Submission of sound files and documents via http://www.mediafire.com/ and email to sp148@york.ac.uk

Call for Posters/Demos
We invite demos and poster presentations on the subject of Sonic Interaction Design that are also of interest in the contexts of theatre, or more generally the performing arts, and cinema.

Submission details
Format: an abstract of max 500 words
Submission deadline: 31 January 2009
Acceptance notification: 28 February 2009
Email submission to: sp148@york.ac.uk

Saturday 17 January 2009

Record label list updated

I've updated, reformatted and translated the Swedish record label list into English.

(Yes, I'm fond of lists - aren't we all? I remember that Umberto Eco once wrote - in an essay on Joyce - that lists were very important to Middle Age thinkers, but that we also can find them in contemporary art.)

EAM meta-bibliography

I've extended and moved the bibliography to here, since it was a bit difficult to read in blog format.

(The EAM meta-bibliography is a bibliography of electroacoustic music bibliographies. It is a spin-off from my master's thesis in library and information science, and covers websites, books and journal articles that list items of interest to EAM composers and researchers.)

Tuesday 13 January 2009

Tuesday 6 January 2009

Hz #13

Hz #13 presents:

[ARTICLES]

"Program" System of Digital Art:"BOOM! Fast and Frozen Permutation" – Taiwan-Australia New Media Art Exhibition
by Yu-Chuan Tseng
Yu-Chuan Tseng reports on Taiwan-Australia New Media Art Exhibition from the perspective: "An important element of digital computer technology ... has digital art features of aesthetic concepts and behavioral structure....'program' is an important factor in constructing the work."

Games: The Art of Making, Bending, and Breaking Rules
by Andrew Yashar Ames
"In interactive art, the observer and the work are constructed by rules that can be bent or broken, but cannot be absent." Andrew Y. Ames examines "Game-based art... [with] implied and explicit rules that artists expose and exploit for aesthetic and ideological purposes."

The Miracles of Feedback
by Mario van Horrik
"This paper deals with my fascination for acoustic feedback... I want to express my doubts, theories, and questions, as well as our motives and enthusiasm for using this medium." Sound artist Mario van Horrik explains his involvement over two decades with acoustic feedback experiments.

Hz vs Church
by Novi_sad
Sound artist/composer Novi_sad's project "'Hz vs Church' aims to use Churches (or other big sized public buildings) as post loudspeakers in order to create, unfold and play live various sounds which appear in the 'aural surface' by using and manipulating in real time different kinds of frequencies."

We Are Not Alone
by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
"Network and information technologies, with a mutagen leap, directly connect the mind of the human being to hyper-contents and to hyper-contexts, creating perspectives that are totally new." Iaconesi/Persico on their projects which emerge as one of the possibilities/directions network technology brings forward.

Intimate Transactions: Close Encounters of Another Kind
by Tony Fry
"Crucially, the interactive intent of the work was to create a means to reflect upon a particular kind of experience – the experience of our being relationally connected as a collective body." Writer/theorist Tony Fry on Keith Armstrong(creative director)'s "Intimate Transactions," and its link to Ecosophy.

[NET ART]

Pollen Soup
by Pierre Proske

Sharedscapes - Points of View on Landscapes
by Grégoire Zabé

Cityscapes
by Myron Turner

Passivitate Imunitass (Activista)
by Poderiu

88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (To Be Played with the Left Hand)
by David Clark

-----------

Hz is an on-line journal published by the non-profit art organization Fylkingen in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen is the oldest forum for experimental music and intermedia art in Sweden. Throughout its history Fylkingen has been known to be a driving force in the Swedish art scene to introduce and promote yet-to-be-established art forms, the examples of which include Bartok, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Electro-Acoustic Music as well as Stelarc in recent years. Our members are leading composers, musicians, dancers, performance artists and visual artists in Sweden. For more information on Fylkingen, please visit http://www.hz-journal.org/n4/hultberg.html.

Sachiko Hayashi/Hz