News
New Master’s Program in The
Netherlands
Beginning in September 2011, the Stu-dio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam is partnering with the department of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague to offer a new masters program called Instruments and Interfaces. The new program focuses on in-depth exploration of the issues at stake when building new instruments for electronic music. The program in-cludes a combination of theoretical discussion, practical art-as-research, and formalized coursework between the labs at STEIM and the faculty at Sonology.
Web: www.koncon.nl/public site/ 220/Sononieuw/UK/frameset-uk.html
Musica Electronica Nova in
Poland
The Musica Electronica Nova Fes-tival took place 13–21 May 2011 in Wroclaw, Poland. The festival featured participation from the Wro-claw Philharmonic Orchestra as well as Polish and international guests. French music was highlighted in this year’s festival, and French com-poser Pierre Jodlowski attended as a featured guest. The festival began with an exhibition of Jodlowski’s sound installation Passage, a “dy-namic sound corridor devoted to the world of memory,” in which visi-tors’ passage through a tunnel affects sound and light diffusion. Music pre-sented at the many concerts included sound art, compositions for acoustic instruments and electronics, elec-troacoustic music, electric jazz, and more. Instructional events included a course on electroacoustic music interpretation and a workshop on the Karlax musical controller.
Web: www.musicaelectronicanova .pl/en/program
Linux Audio Conference
The 2011 Linux Audio Conference was held 6–8 May 2011 in Maynooth, Ireland. The conference focused on open-source software for music, sound, and media, with Linux as the main platform. Participants were an international mixture of software designers, musicians, composers, and engineers. The conference included a variety of talks and posters on pro-gramming languages for audio, sound synthesis, and new digital musical instruments, as well as instructional workshops and developer meet-ups. The event also included two concerts featuring electronic music of various genres, as well as a “sound night.” Much of the conference material, in-cluding presentation slides and video as well as code examples, is available on the event Web site and can be downloaded free of charge.
Web: lac.linuxaudio.org/2011
CCMC Tokyo
The Contemporary Computer Music Concert (CCMC) series was held 25–27 February 2011 in Tokyo, Japan. Ten concerts featured electroacoustic works—many with live diffusion—by Japanese composers, and the final concert highlighted the work of French composer Bertrand Dubedout. The event was produced in partner-ship among L’Institut Franco-Japonais de Tokyo et Yokohama [the French-Japanese Institute of Tokyo and Yoko-hama], the French music organization Motus, the French-Japanese contem-porary music organization Atelier de Cr ´eation Sonore et Musicale 116 [Sound Design and Music Workshop 116], and the Japanese organization Soken.
Three prizes were awarded to participating composers. Hiromi Watanabe received the Prix ACSM116 for the composition R ´eminiscences. Takuto Fukuda received the Prix Futura for the composition Satellite. The Prix Motus went to Kyohei Hayashi for Ihozin ga Mahler ni yotte
fukkatsu si, kakeagaru (den-enfukei). Yuki Otsuka received an honorable mention for Antidote.
Web: www.institut.jp/fr/ evenements/10536
FIMPaC 2011
The Forum for Innovation in Music Production and Composition took place 12–13 May 2011 at Leeds Col-lege of Music in Leeds, UK. This annual event was presented in asso-ciation with the Journal for Music,
Technology and Education, and it focused on both research and practice in music production and composi-tion. Leigh Landy, director of the Music, Technology, and Innovation Research Centre at De Montfort University in the UK, gave the first keynote address, titled “The Grateful ‘Live.”’ The musician and writer Bill Drummond gave the second keynote address, titled “The History of Music (part 19) Revisited.” Each day of the conference included talks and poster presentations by researchers from around the UK and Europe. Presenta-tion topics included interdisciplinary collaboration, the creative process, in-teractive performance technologies, ambisonics, and electronic music pedagogy.
Web: www.lcm.ac.uk/research -conference/FIMPaC.htm
Re-Sounding Science and
NeuroArts
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at the
University of Plymouth hosted the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 10–13 February 2011 in Plymouth, UK. According to the event’s Web site, the goal of this year’s event was to “re-evaluate, re-educate and promote artistically science’s role in society, sustainability, and the arts . . . [and to] challenge stereotypes by drawing musical inspiration from the hugely positive part science and technology have to play in our future, both in our everyday routines and our creative life.”
The festival included three days of performances and premieres by a diverse selection of contemporary composers, including Eduardo Mi-randa, Will Dutta, John Matthias, Plaid (a collaboration between Andy Turner and Ed Handley), Nigel Mor-gan, liminal (a collaboration between David Prior and Frances Crow), Alexis Kirke, and Stephen Davis-moon. Alongside the concerts, the festival featured talks, installations, films, and workshops.
The NeuroArts Conference ran parallel to the festival, 10–11 Febru-ary at the University of Plymouth. This conference aimed to provide an introduction to and exploration of the multidisciplinary field of neuroarts, as well as the emerging areas of roaesthetics, neuroethics, and neu-rophilosophy. Speakers included prac-titioners, writers, experimenters, and theoreticians from neuroscience, art, physics, music, and other disciplines.
Web: cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/ event.htm, neuromusic.soc .plymouth.ac.uk/NeuroArts2011 .html
LAbORATORIUM 2011
Held 14–19 March 2011 in Antwerp, Belgium, LAbORATORIUM 2011 was a six-day workshop organized
Figure 1. Hanns Holger Rutz, also known as Sciss, performs his compositionInter-Play/Re-Sound at
the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival. The piece employs a reverberating, derelict piano as an electroacoustic multi-channel amplifier. (Photo: Nayari Castillo.)
by Champ d’Action, deSingel, and the Royal Conservatory at Artesis University College Antwerp. The workshop aimed to immerse music composition and performance stu-dents in contemporary music and contemporary sound art, with a
par-ticular focus on the use of electronics in new music. Participants came mostly from schools around Belgium, with some attendees also coming from The Netherlands and the USA.
The workshop featured the partici-pation of the Dutch-Cypriot composer
and multimedia artist Yannis Kyri-akides and the American composer Mark Applebaum. Composers from Champ d’Action—a Belgian en-semble, production company, and studio—also participated in mentor-ing and teachmentor-ing workshop attendees. The event included concerts, work-shops, sound installations, open rehearsals, and individual lessons.
The event culminated with a final concert on 19 March, when students and Champ d’Action artists presented their work as part of the Ars Musica Antwerp festival. After the concert, Champ d’Action presented three awards to the best student projects. The first award went to Laura Broux and Nico Couck for their performance of Tristan Murail’s
Vampyr; the second award went to Anneleen De Causmaecker, Tania Sikelianou, Sam Pauwels, Jasper Braet, and Jasper Van Paemel for De Causmaecker‘s About Tape; and the third award went to Ilse Stroobant, Eva Vermeiren, and Patricia Mai for
Klank In Beweging.
Web: www.champdaction.be/en/ laboratorium-2011
International Noise Music
Contest
The results of the 2011 International Noise Music Contest “Luigi Russolo – Rossana Maggia” were announced in April 2011. The contest was open to composers under 35 years old, and this year’s theme was “Eros’s Weapons.” The contest was organized by Studio Forum in collaboration with the Luigi Russolo Foundation in Varese, Italy.
The first prize was shared in a tie between Donal Sarsfield for
Gallivantingand Georges Forget for
M ´etal en bouche. Alejandro Casales Navarrete received third prize for
Nen `ufares. Four composers received
Figure 2. Robyn Taylor and Guy Schofield performhumanaquarium
inside a multi-touch enclosure at the CHI 2011 conference, while
audience members are reflected in the glass. (Photo: Jayne Wallace.)
honorable mentions: Hayashi Kyohei for Sonic Lady City, Cendrine Robelin for Un creux en dessous de ton nom, Junya Oikawa for Labile lip, and Victor Hurtado Torres for El Laberint
del Minotaure. Each winner received: (1) the opportunity for his or her work to be released as a record by Monochromevision, (2) performance of the work at the Noise of Snow Festival, and (3) archiving of the work on the Studio Forum Web site.
Web: www.studioforum.net/ concours/2011
CHI 2011
The Association for Computing Machinery’s annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (known as CHI, for “computer–human interaction”) took place 7–12 May 2011 in Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada. This inter-disciplinary, international conference included several paper sessions and other events focused on topics related to computer music. One paper session, titled “Art, Music, and Move-ment,” included three papers related to music pedagogy, mobile music applications, and musical interaction. Two of those papers—one by Yinsheng Zhou and colleagues from the National University of Singapore and Canada, and the other by Megan Halpern and colleagues at Cornell University, Stockholm University, and Johns Hopkins University— received Honorable Mentions, an award that is given to the top 5 percent of papers submitted to the conference. Other paper sessions devoted to the performing arts, gesture, and sound interactions also presented work related to digital music performance, musicology, and auditory display.
The conference also included an “Interactivity” series with two performances showcasing new musi-cal technologies. Robyn Taylor and colleagues from the University of Alberta in Canada and Newcastle University in the UK performed their project humanaquarium, which en-cases two computer music performers within a multi-touch-enabled glass cube. In another performance, vo-calist Marguerite Witvoet performed
What Does A Body Know?, a piece of music by Bob Pritchard with text by Meryn Cadell, in which the per-former sings while simultaneously controlling a digital voice-synthesis system through her gestures.
Web: www.chi2011.org
Brooklyn College Festival
The Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music hosted its annual International Electroacoustic Music Festival 8–10 March 2011 in Brook-lyn, New York. The free festival began with a guest lecture by Pauline Oliv-eros and was followed by three nights of concerts. The first concert pre-sented electroacoustic video works. The second presented Stockhausen’s
Kontakte, performed by Iktus Percus-sion, along with a short film on Stock-hausen’s Helikopter-Streichquartett [Helicopter String Quartet]. The third and final concert, which was devoted to works by “emerging com-posers,” featured compositions by Anthony Allen, Noah Keesecker, Nicholas Nelson, Ian Munro, Ellen O’Meara, Dave Ruder, and Erin Arthur.
Web: www.bcccm.org
Experimental Intermedia
The Experimental Intermedia foun-dation presented “The Twenty-first
Figure 3. Lauren Hayes performs
Socks and Ammo, a composition
written by Hayes and Christos Michalakos, at the Sonorities Festival. The piece explores novel methods of communication between piano, percussion, and live
electronics. (Photo: Craig Jackson.)
Annual Festival with no Fancy Name” in two parts, the first oc-curring 5–21 December 2010 and the second occurring 3–14 March 2011. Both parts took place in New York City. Each of the 16 festival events featured works by one or two com-posers or filmmakers. The focus of the festival was primarily on music and sound art, and concerts included a diverse sampling of electroacoustic music, live electronics, an “impro-vised set based on ‘no input mixing board’ feedback concepts,” and “post-free jazz electronic music,” among other genres.
Web: www.experimentalintermedia .org/concerts
Ars Musica in Belgium
The 23rd edition of the Ars Musica International Contemporary Music Festival was held 3 March–3 April 2011 in Brussels, Antwerp, Li `ege, Bruges, and Mons, Belgium. One three-concert series, held 23 March, was titled “Nuit de l’ ´electro” [Night
of Electronic Music]. That night began with Pierre Schaeffer’s Etude aux
Al-luresand Etude aux Sons Anim ´es and proceeded to showcase acousmatic, electroacoustic, and video works as well as works for acoustic instru-ments and live electronics. Another concert, held 16 March, featured the European Joysticks Orchestra. The Joysticks Orchestra is a joint project of three organizations: Puce Muse in Rungis, France; Tempo Reale in Florence, Italy; and Musiques et Recherches in Ohain, Belgium. For this concert, students from two Mons universities performed works for joystick ensemble that were com-posed by Todor Todoroff and Serge de Laubier.
Web: www.arsmusica.be
Subtropics XXI
Subtropics XXI, a biennial festival of experimental music and sound art, was held 3–20 March 2011 in Miami, Florida, USA. The festival’s concerts featured music by David Behrman,
Alvin Lucier, David Tudor, and David Dunn, as well as by Miami artists. The event opened with a showing of Alvin Lucier’s sound installation Music for
Pure Waves, Bass Drums, and Acous-tic Pendulums. In another concert on 4 March, the Florida International University Laptop and Electronic Arts (FLEA) Ensemble performed an interpretation of David Tudor’s 1973 work Rainforest IV. The festival also included a one-evening “Marathon Subtropicalia” on 12 March, during which over 20 artists performed works whose instrumentation ranged from brain-computer interfaces to
Slovakian fujara and electronics. The festival ended with a concert fea-turing electronic duo El MuCo, who performed using improvised feedback systems, followed by a collective im-provisation by the group The UOM.
Web: subtropics.org/xxi
Sonorities Festival
The Sonorities Festival of Contem-porary Music presented five concerts 8–9 April 2011 at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) of Queen’s University Belfast in Belfast, UK. The
festival concerts were free to the pub-lic and presented fixed-media works exploring the three-dimensional sound field of SARC’s Sonic Lab, performance works combining both composition and improvisation, and works with live electronics. The fes-tival presented over 20 premieres, and the concert selections were cu-rated from over 200 submissions from around the world. The festival also included one concert featur-ing the work of SARC students and graduates.
Web: www.sonorities.org.uk/old/ 2011