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.)

• Crister Enander i Helsingborgs dagblad, Ystads allehanda och Tidningen kulturen
• Dan Jönsson i Göteborgsposten
• Mikael Strömberg i Aftonbladet
• Thomas Götselius i Expressen
• Sabina Ögren i Borås tidning
• Tina Persson i Smålandsposten
  
• Tobias Magnusson i Göteborgs Fria
• Johan Jacobsson i Stockholms Fria
• Jan Arnald i Dagens Nyheter

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.

EMS music archive searchable online

Read more in EMS' blog.

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.

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

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

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

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

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