Concert I

Bologna Performing Arts Center

November 12, 2009

8:00 PM

Concert II

Bologna Performing Arts Center

November 13, 2009

11:00 AM

Paper Session I

Whitfield 201

November 13, 2009

2:00 PM

The Origin & Trends of Tape Music with Live Instruments in Contemporary Music               Jeff Weston

The roots of twentieth century music were established by the breakdown of traditional tonality, Eastern-influenced melodic structures, and various redefinitions of musical aesthetics. However, the ability to record sound has had perhaps one of the most significant impacts on contemporary music. The use of recorded sound with live instruments has seen dynamic changes within the past century which has resulted in the birth of tape music.  The compositional technique of combining recorded sound and live instruments has been used by various composers, from Ottorino Respighi and Bruno Maderna to John Cage and Steve Reich.  This presentation will explore the history and influence of tape music in twentieth century music.

Concert III

Whitfield Studio A

November 13, 2009

3:00 PM

Concert IV

Bologna Performing Arts Center

November 13, 2009

4:30 PM

Concert V

Po’ Monkey’s

November 13, 2009

9:00 PM

Electroacoustic Improv with the Dairy Barn Boys, Dave Lisik,

Mark Howell, Mark Snyder and whoever else decides to join in.

Concert VI

Bologna Performing Arts Center

November 14, 2009

11:00 AM

Paper Session II

Whitfield 201

November 14, 2009

2:00 PM

The Thickening of Time: Narrativity and Chronotopes in Electroacoustic Music              Stephen Kilpatrick

“The Thickening of Time[1]: Narrativity and Chronotopes in Electroacoustic Music”

 Musical composition is sometimes described as the act of colouring time, giving form to time, shaping time, etc. Certainly, what is inescapable is the composer’s requirement to deal with sonic materials to create a sense of structure and form that is played out over a given duration.

 Narrative, when described as “the principal way in which our species organises its understanding of time”,[2] appears to suggest a parallel with the way both composer and listener interpret events, both musical and non-musical, in a manner that suggests action, causality, conflict and resolution. Indeed, much of the terminology used in the description of narrative can fairly comfortably be used in the description of music. Why then is the idea of narrative in music such an elusive one? Is the problem that when forced to use language to describe music we instinctively make use of narrative when describing events taking place over time, or is there a narrative core even within abstract music?

 With much electroacoustic music, we are asked to receive recognisable sound objects or mimetic sounds as abstract sonorities, timbres and gestures divorced from their real-world source or inspiration. Yet, many first time listeners of electroacoustic music instinctively ascribe a programme to the sounds they hear in order to develop an understanding of the piece through narrative. Some pieces like Trevor Wishart’s Red Bird actually depend on source recognition and the use of sound as metaphor or metonymic device. Other compositions, such as Natasha Barrett’s Prince Prospero’s Party, are overtly programmatic and deliberately attempt to recreate a literary narrative.

 Drawing on M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, this paper will discuss how the metaphoric, metonymic and figurative treatment of sound objects is used by the electroacoustic composer to create narrative.  This paper also aims to explore how, even when the composer’s intention is abstract, the listener, through the recognisability of sound sources, or the mimetic nature of sounds, can often receive the work as a narrative discourse.

[1] Ibid.

 [2] Abbott, H. Porter, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 3.

Concert VII

Whitfield Studio A

November 14, 2009

3:00 PM

Concert VIII

Bologna Performing Arts Center

November 14, 2009

8:00 PM

Dinner

Warehouse

November 14, 2009

5 PM

Intermission

Installation I

Whitfield Studio B

November 13 & 14, 2009

2:00-4:00 PM

In              Erik Deluca

In is an immersive, spatialized underwater sound collage. The material for the composition was recorded with hydrophones (underwater microphones) in and off the coast of Miami, FL. The work explores natural settings and artificial environments (i.e. tanks.) The latter is useful in sonically magnifying specific animal vocalizations, for example the grunts and high squeals of manatee. The work was realized with the broad goal of making the in audible, audible and to improve our relationship with our allusive and diverse sound world. The collage is an accurate, constructive representation of some of south Florida’s underwater sound phenomena.

Installation II

Whitfield Studio B Lobby

November 13 & 14, 2009

2:00-4:00 PM

Stepping on the Light              Michael Filimowicz

Stepping on the Light was shot with the camcorder feature of a credit-card sized digital camera, and explores two extremes of video display scales, that of pocket video and large scale projection. The protagonist of this video is modeled on the notion of an avatar in a virtual space. The duality of the layered image aims to illustrate this split-subjectivity of real and represented walker/avatar navigating in a not-quite-aimless fashion through the Cartesian grids of the urban matrix, a grid-space also redolent of game environments. The noise in the imagery, an effect of the technology of portable image capture, is reproduced in the soundtrack, which marries noise and video game soundscapes.

Additional project background available in an online presentation format at:

http://piim.newschool.edu/journal/issues/2009/03/

                                                                          

60x60 Video (2009)

Robert Voisey, music director Patrick Liddell, video

60x60 was created in 2003 by Robert Voisey 60x60 - 60 works each 60 seconds to create a one hour art performance.

60x60 isa one-hour multimedia extravaganza featuring an exciting mix of contemporary video and electronic music. Embracing a grass-roots ideology, this 60x60 video collaboration takes 60 one-minute audio works culled from an international pool of emerging and established composers. The resulting collaboration is presented, without interruption, as a continuous one-hour performance synchronized to an on-stage analog clock.

"A minute can be plenty of time to express a whole gamut of imaginative sounds and movements, or it can be a challenge, forcing the artist to isolate what is most important in his/her work,. 60x60's goal is to disseminate a cross-section of aesthetics in an exciting format to a broad spectrum of people."

Eclectic by nature, 60x60 Dance offers an unmatched diversity of styles, making for a fast-speed, electrifying one-of-a-kind performance that never ceases to surprise.

60x60 is a churning wheel of production, performance and dissemination. Representing an aesthetic and geographic diversity of composers, choreographers, and artists, 60x60 is an annual performance project containing 60 works where each piece is 60 seconds in duration. The mission of 60x60, and Vox Novus, is to expose contemporary music, modern dance, experimental video, and other contemporary art forms to the largest audience possible. 60x60 combines grassroots ideology with innovative methods of presentation and distribution. Each year the project grows in artistic and distributive scope, with performances across the globe.