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Season's Greetings

This will be the last Diffusion of 2004. 2005 promises promises to be an excellent year for SAN and its members. Keep checking the website for updates.

Happy Christmas and a happy New Year from all at Sonic Arts Network.

Call for Reviewers

Like writing?

Would you like to write for Diffusion?

Want to join our ever-expanding international team of reviewers?

Dozens of the latest CD releases arrive at the SAN office each month for review and we need more people to help us getting information about them to our members. Yes, that’s right you get FREE CDS!

Maybe you would be keen to write a concert or conference review of an event in your local area, or maybe write an article on a sonic art issue or artist that you feel strongly about?

If this makes you think, “Yes, I could do that”, then drop an email to richard@sonicartsnetwork.org

Please include your postal address, a list of your top 5 sonic art related releases to help us pick out something suitable for you and a short, 100 word review of the top one on your list to give us a flavour of your writing style.

For Diffusion we ask that you produce around 500 words for a CD or gig review and 1000 words for an article.

Get to it! International journalistic careers have been launched on far less!

6 – 27 February
IF:05
(festival)
Various Venues, London
IF:05 profiles the joint artistry of Colin Riley and Peter Wiegold exploring contemporary music making from their unique perspective of pioneering work in improvised/devised and electronic and jazz/popular music. The theme of IF:05 is ‘NEW BANDS’ with the programme exploring the relationship between performer and composer and the creative opportunities of improvised, devised and written music. Included in the festival are major new works by both Colin Riley –with theatre director Toby Wilsher, Peter Wiegold - Damn Braces incorporating improvised and composed music - as well as the launch of two new ensembles: Moov and notes in_gales. Also Richard Barrett with the British premier of his new work Blattwerk, new pieces by Martin Butler, Tansy Davies, Morgan Hayes, Homemade Orchestra, Poing.
www.if-festival.co.uk

16-29 December
THE SHOUT: A DAY IN THE LIFE
(concert)
Various venues, UK

Choir presents an alternative Christmas concert with Christmas songs in unusual arrangements. Bristol St George's (16), Totnes Dartington Hall (20), Brighton Komedia (22), London Purcell Room (28-29).

17 December
THE BLANK SPACE
(live performance)
The Red Rose Club, London
A night of sonic and visual improvisation in conjunction with Middlesex University Sonic Arts Society featuring orphansunlight, Vivian Comma, audiowife and more.
020 7263 7265.

18 December
DISTRACTION XMAS ALLDAYER
(club)
The Cluny, Newcastle
Extreme noise and experimental music from Peace Burial At Sea, Mushi Mushi, The Unit Ama, Maximo Park, Kubichek, Pillow, The Emigrants and Nev Clay with the Jazzfinger and Dressed In Wire.
www.distractionrecords.com

15 December
IMPROV AT THE PRINTING HOUSE
(live performance)
The Printing House, Dublin
Tatsuya Nakatani and David Lacey on percussion and electronics and Dennis McNulty on computer.
www.dennismcnulty.com

15 December
NOTES AND SOUNDS
(concert)
Over the Top, Sheffield
Improvising concert. Featuring the Wheatstone Bridge who include Steven Grew on keyboard, John Jasnoch on acoustic strings and Charlie Collins on vibraphone and Martin Archer on saxophones and bass clarinet with Jasnoch and Collins.
www.discusmusic.co.uk

Yasunao Tone & Hecker – Palimpsest

Mego – www.mego.at

Good news for all this Christmas as we learn that the mind springs of conceptual sound artist Yasunao Tone, approaching his 70th birthday early next year, show no sign of drying up. If this in-your-face fixed medium collaboration with Mego stalwart Florian Hecker is anything to go by the man's just hitting his stride.

Some background for younger readers – Tone’s work “marks the beginning of the unbelievable wave of sound installations that we have today”. These are the words of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and they’re not wrong. Tone was a founder member of the Group Ongaku in Tokyo in 1960. During this period the Japanese avant garde was engaged in an Anti-Art struggle against rampant commercial Americanisation and Tone was active in this movement as a musician, composer and writer embracing Dada, Surrealist indeterminacy and conceptual art strategies as expressions of outrage against bourgeois culture.

Nice.

A link to Fluxus and Cage came through Toshi Ichiyanagi, the then husband of Yoko Ono and a regular mover in hip US avant circles. Ichiyanagi and the Ongaku group kick started Tokyo Fluxus in '61 and this lead to a host of experimental music and performance events over the following years. Ono’s influence paved the way for international Tone performances and time spent with Nan June Paik developed his approach to media as integrated with musical performance. He has been incorporating computers into his works from the time of his co-ordination of Japan’s first computer art festival in 1966.

Since 1984 he has achieved critical acclaim for his performance work crippling the, then new, technology of CDs (the media itself being prepared or ‘wounded’ by scratches on the surface with pins of by the sticking on of scotch tape to cause skipping) and his conceptual ‘pure’ electronic music piece Musica Iconologos (1993) described by Craig Kendall as “one of the most extreme and original applications of the current digital recording medium”.

So he’s got the chops but what about Palimpsest? Well, here comes the science bit. Florian Hecker explains thus:

“We spoke for a long time about doing a collaboration, without being sure how to do it. At the time I began experimenting with waveset analysis and synthesis, a technique which analyses a digital sound in terms of it zero crossings, the moment the sound is crossing X axis as seen in a sound editing program. The results get more intense depending on the irregularity of the zero crossings of the sound used. It worked amazingly with Yasunao’s sounds, since their zero crossings appear that irregular, and at the same time, it would restructure the whole sound on a very microscopic level. So we started. Yasunao also introduced the idea of the palimpsest, as a second manual overwriting of the material with the sound pencil function, that allows to draw the waveforms.”

So there you have it. Typically of a Tone piece the work picks up on the threads exposed by previous pieces. In this case the ‘drawing’ with the sound pencil onto the waveform of the 8th centaury Japanese poetic text used as a source of visual to aural translation in Musica Iconologos. This text acts as a Duchampian ‘readymade’ creating a totally predetermined yet seemingly random and volatile result. Listeners are invited to add further scribbles to the waveforms on the CD in their sound editing programs thus leading to an infinite variety of remix possibilities and continuing the palimpsest analogy.

Over 550 words and I haven’t even got onto what it sounds like yet! Well, I don’t know if you remember playing Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum? Even if you don’t you must be able to take a punt at the soundworld. Now imagine playing the game whilst playing the data cassette on your stereo. The volume controls on both your television and stereo are on maximum, of course. The scenario is completed by the fact that a very angry wasp has just become stuck in your inner ear and the coked-up rude boy in the next flat has just returned from a night out and decided to learn to DJ mix using only solo Even Parker records. As a sound experience it’s pretty special.

There are four tracks on the CD, Palimpsest itself that clocks in at a mighty 28’ 31” and three other shorter tracks exploring the same territory and approach. Speed and lateral complexity is the name of the game and some of the sounds are truly hilarious in the way that only hardcore synthesis sounds can be. Often a brutal two channel bifurcation is adopted that reminds me of the work early studio pioneers like Olly Wilson on those Turnabout Electronic Music series records with the insane op-art day-glo covers that slightly scared me as boy. Even for the most hardened manic I would have to say that it’s a fairly tough listen and that going through the whole thing in one sitting may do strange things to you head. The CD was mastered by a guy called Denis Blackham – mental note: avoid this man! You can however dip into it at any point and always discover new things. It’s always the same yet constantly shifting. You’ll never know what’s coming next but more of the same random yet exciting insanity. The last track, untitled, is most stable and opts for an epic Flymo meets death metal drone rock guitar vibe complete with ‘widdly widdly’ moments. The end is abrupt.

The packaging comes with a 20 page interview with the artists conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist and appropriately amusing art direction by Russell Haswell, guaranteed to be repulsive to teenage burglars yet artistically savvy at the same time.

The advertising that violates my urban life tells me that there are ‘new’ Xmas releases by both Billy Joel and Elvis that elderly relatives of your choice might in enjoy this Yuletide. Buy them Tone and Hecker instead and show them what septuagenarians should be up to. They may spit their Xmas dinner in your face but at least you’ll hold the moral high ground.

Reviewed by Richard Whitelaw
Richard is Programme Director of Sonic Arts Network.

THE SOUND MIRRORS PROJECT

SOUND ARTIST RESIDENCY AT ST EDMUNDS SCHOOL, DOVER

The Sound Mirrors Project team are looking for an artist who works with sound to develop new work with pupils in a secondary school in Dover as part of an innovative arts education project funded by Creative Partnerships, Kent.

Experience of working in an educational context is essential.

Fee £1500 (approx 9 days) plus travel and materials
Timescale January – April 2005 (specific times and days negotiable)

Deadline Friday 14 January 2021

To apply please send a CV and supporting letter outlining relevant skills and experience to:

Juliette Buss
Education Co-ordinator
20 Porthall Place
Brighton
BN1 5PN

For more information, or an informal chat please call Juliette Buss on 01273 277699 or email juliette.buss@virgin.net

The Sound Mirror Project: background information

Six years ago the Danish conceptual Artist, Lise Autogena, became interested in the mysterious concrete dishes that line the South East coast of England. Known as Acoustic Mirrors, these were military experiments, designed to protect against an airborne invasion between the two world wars. The Mirrors were operated by trained listeners who would pick up distant noises from the sky.

Lise Autogena’s Sound Mirror Project creates two new Sound Mirrors that will face each other across the English Channel - one in Folkestone, UK and one in Sangatte, France. Making innovative use of new technologies, visitors to the new mirrors will not only be able to listen to the sky - they will also be able to talk to each other across the sea. The project turns a long-forgotten defence technology into a friendly instrument for cross Channel communication, creating a powerful conceptual link between UK and mainland Europe.

The development of this high profile, international project is assisted by a think tank consisting of children from St Edmunds Catholic School in Dover. The children are fully involved in the project, working closely with Lise and relevant artists and professionals to think and learn about the mirrors, and make new work themselves that presents ideas about how they might be used as an inspirational learning tool for others.

The children have undertaken extensive research, which has included museum visits, interviewing curators, scientists and artists, and visits to the sites of the old and the new mirrors. They have engaged with a range of artists who work with sound, and appointed a designer to work closely with them to produce a creative website for their work.

The children have also begun working on the project with other children in France, visiting them at their school in Dunkirk, and exploring ways of setting up opportunities for dialogue and exchange with their peers on the other side of the channel. They are also beginning to consider ways of involving other children and communities closer to home in Dover.

This is an innovative education project. The children have built a unique and mature working relationship with Lise Autogena and a number of other artists, which is enabling them to think differently and independently, empowering them with the creative skills and understanding they need to make informed critical decisions.

Community Radio Projects

Castle Vale Community Radio is planning to expand and may soon be serving around 170,000 people across 3 wards in North Birmingham and Solihull. As well as broadcasting twice a year on the Castle Vale housing estate, our work over the last 10 years has involved many projects with schools, youth clubs, day centres and other community groups and individuals. We have run workshops, research projects, archival work, produced radio plays and collaborated with local artists, writers, radio professionals, students and cultural agencies.

To help us establish a presence in our new expanded broadcast area we are now looking for proposals for all sorts of projects. If you have an idea for a community radio project we may be able to access funding, provide production facilities, link you up with community groups and ultimately broadcast your work across North Birmingham.

Visit http://www.cvcr.co.uk for more info on the station. There is no closing date for proposals. Projects will run on an ongoing basis from late 2005. Please email all proposals, expressions of interest or enquiries to bensemp@yahoo.co.uk

MusicLeader London
MusicLeaser will provide the following for current and aspiring Music Leaders:
Information, advice & guidance services - Development led Networking opportunities - Professional Development and CPD.
Music Leaders - Practitioners and project managers involved in delivering music making for young people.

For MusicLeader London, Sound Connections seeks to commission Research into the following:
1. A Training / Skills needs analysis from Employers / Hirers in the Greater London region.
2. To undertake a Training / Skills needs analysis from Employees / Freelance operators in the Greater London region
3. To Map current providers of Training and Advisory information in participatory Music Making
4. To compare identified needs with availability of provision
5. To present the above in a written report with contact details & information from research

In establishing this new service, MusicLeader London needs to make sure that Existing and effective provision is not duplicated but, wherever possible, embraced. This may also mean that through strong links to other funded /financed initiatives.

Gaps in provision for which there is a proven substantiated need are identified and that any resources which are reserved for commissioning of 'new' provision are efficiently used.
That solutions to identified barriers to participation are offered practical and effective solutions. Timescale - Work to be undertaken in period December '04 - mid / late February '05 with interim reporting taking place

Fee - Up to £7,000 inc VAT and expenses
Deadline for applications - Mon 22 November 2020
For further details and information, please go to:
http://www.sound-connections.org.uk/jobs

Temporary Senior Music Officer
A Senior Music Officer is required who will take responsibility for publicity and marketing for the award winning Leeds International Concert Season.

In addition, candidates will be expected to take on the presentation of a number of concert series. Candidates should possess a music or related degree and have at least three years experience in arts administration.The person appointed will be self-motivated, enthusiastic and committed to the development of music in the City.

For an informal discussion about the post contact: Matthew Sims,Principal Music Officer Tel: 0113 247 8335

Application forms can be obtained from:
Human Resources Section,
Learning and Leisure Department,
8 th Floor West, Merrion House,
110 Merrion Centre,
Leeds LS2 8ET

or telephone Leeds (0113) 247 8382
e-mail: LS.leisure.recruitment@leeds.gov.uk

Music Studio Director
The Premises Studios Ltd is creating a new post of Studio Director to start work in the New Year as a key member of our existing friendly and enthusiastic team of staff. The Premises is a complex of recording and rehearsal studios founded in 1983, based in London's East End. Our client list covers a vast spectrum of music - raw beginners, chart stars, jazz giants, indie bands, world music legends, covers bands, troubled geniuses,gospel choirs etc. The Premises has recently completed the first phase ofan ambitious redevelopment and we are now looking for an experienced person to head up our team of music studio staff and help maximise the potential within the new studio complex.

The skills we require are as follows:

* A confident and skilled communicator able to work face to face with a very diverse and demanding client group, demonstrating friendliness, enthusiasm and professionalism at all times.

* Developed management skills with the ability to motivate and inspire an existing team of committed staff.

* Broad and up to date knowledge of music and the music industry.

* An understanding of audio equipment including computer systems and rehearsal room PA systems and backline.

* Excellent entrepreneurial skills and the ability to be self motivated, flexible and creative in the approach to business and staff management.

* Excellent organisational skills and the ability to work well under pressure in what can be a hectic and demanding environment.

* The ability to build strong connections with an existing network of clients and to build on these and continually bring in new artists and musicians.

* The ability to manage several projects at once, with the support of both existing management and floor staff.

The job might suit someone with a background in touring or artist management, with experience of music performance environments.

Hours of work and pay to be negotiated. Full time post with possible weekend and evening work. Please contact Viv Broughton or Julia Craik on 020 7729 7593 or premisesstudios@btconnect.com for further details and to arrange an interview.

Sound Designer
lalacollective are looking for a Sound Designer to work closely with them in the development of their forthcoming prodction Shuti; a physical performance piece exploring the nature of longing which will be presented as a scratch performance during ROAR '05. As we have no payment to offer this role would suit someone at the beginning of their career, wanting to
work with like minded individuals in the live art arena. We are looking to develop a relationship for the future with an individual who is passionate about sound creation and interested in experimenting within theatre.

All CV's to lala@bahbah.co.uk

EXPO 966: THE ANNUAL SAN EXPOSITION
17-20 JUNE 2005 - In conjunction with University of Hull, Scarborough Campus
Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2021

Expo 966 is an opportunity to showcase the work of the best UK practitioners, to meet, listen and respond. After the success of last year's highly eclectic event in Leicester the focus now shifts northward with a packed weekend of SAN curated action hosted in association with The University of Hull, Scarborough Campus. This weekend of performance, exhibition and presentation will take place across a variety of public venues and spaces in Scarborough including concert halls, bars and nightclubs, each reflecting the unique culture of this northern seaside town. The weekend aims to highlight the broadest possible range of approaches and thinking that surrounds the sonic arts. We welcome submissions of all kinds.

There is no charge for the submission or acceptance of work, and indeed entry to the weekend continues to be free to all members of Sonic Arts Network with most events free to all members of the public. We do ask that selected artists attend the event.

more details here

Call for Composers

Deadline: Thursday 31 March 2021

COMA is inviting composers of any age and nationality to submit works as part of its Open Score Project.

COMA are seeking challenging, yet technically accessible, contemporary music, which is suitable for performance by amateur ensembles. Up to 20 composers will be selected to receive one-to-one tuition with Stephen Montague, and up to eight pieces will then be selected to join commissions from professional composers in the forthcoming Open Score collection. The collection will be published, released on CD and given high-profile performances by COMA ensembles.

Guidelines and the Open Score submission form are available from the COMA website www.coma.org. Or contact the COMA office on 020 7247 7736.

Five anonymous copies of the score should be sent with a completed submission form and fee of £10 (£5 for full time students and COMA friends and members) by Thursday 31 March 2021 to:

COMA Open Score Submissions
Toynbee Studios
28 Commercial Street
London
E1 6LS

Call for Works

OPEN FADER @ Sonorities 2005

The Sonorities Festival in Belfast invites composers and artists working with sound to submit works to be presented during Sonorities 2005. This year’s festival is dedicated to artistic practice that challenges traditional definitions of art, music and technology. We encourage two types of submission:

1. Live Performances involving technology This includes laptop improv, VJ, audio-visual, live-electronics, sound poetry, hacktivism. Please submit the work in a documentary format that reflects the nature of the performance (e.g. video on DVD, audio on CD, software for Mac/PC, photographs).

2. Electroacoustic Music (Stereo or Multi-channel). This includes Stereo works for diffusion, multi-channel works and works with video. All submissions must be on DAT, CD or DA88. Works withvideo must be on DVD.

Selected works will be featured in four special concerts during theFestival. These events will take place in the Sonic Arts Research Centre Sonic Lab performance space. This unique environment for the performance of electroacoustic music includes facilities for sound projection in a full 3D environment through loudspeakers located above and below the audience area. The experimental nature of the space makes it essential that selected composers attend the Festival to perform their pieces.

Please include a title and program notes as well as a short biography with the submission. Contact information should include a phone number, address, and an email address. A stamped, self-addressed envelope is required for the return of all materials. Materials that are not required to be returned will become part of SARC’s media library and may be considered for future events.

Post to works to:

OPEN FADER
Sonorities 2005
Sonic Arts Research Centre
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast
BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland

Important Dates:

Deadline for Submissions: 17th December 2004

Festival Dates: 26 April – 3rd May 2005

http://www.sonorities.co.uk

http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk

Call For Submissions: Disquiet
Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston Ontario Canada
Guest curator: Christof Migone
Submission Deadline: February 1st, 2005

Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre is seeking works investigating the notion of silence as a disturbance.

Silence, as charged rather than neutral. Silence in the context of peril, conflict, disquietude. The relationship between the silencer and the silenced to shut, to mute, to muzzle, to censor. Silence is both a break, a caesura, and a constant, a continuity. Its volume can be louder than words, its infinitude can be both repressive and liberatory. It can be either a product of enforcement or a tactic of resistance. I would prefer not to. It can also be that momentary lull before an outbreak of laughter; the portentous seriousness of silence can be shifted to aspects of play. A quiet state can be both prelude and postscript to a panoply of events: farcical, absurd, traumatic,quotidian, mediatized, global, intimate, sensorial, political, etc.Disquiet is disturbed silence. Silence under tension. Disquiet marks silence as a palpable presence.

Disquiet is initiated by Modern Fuel as part of an entire programming season dedicated to the theme of Silence. This theme enfolds multiple political subtexts-silence as systemic racism, unspoken power over another; conversely, silence conjures up more explicit interpretations such as one-minute-of-silence as remembrance or as speechlessness.Equally, silence speaks to, and of, its antithesis: voice, protest,resistance, song. Silence and speech cannot be catagorized as simply bad and good, respectively or vice-versa, but are located on a dimentional continuum where various degrees of communication are possible. Disquiet fits into and interacts with this contiuum.

Disquiet is open to all disciplines.

Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre facilitates the presentation and interpretation of visual and time-based arts that explore wide-ranging aesthetics and a broad scope of formal and socio-cultural questions. We encourage submissions both from artists residing within the region and outside these boundaries, and program Modern Fuel Gallery according to a 50/50 split. (Our region spans an approximate radius of 100 km around Kingston.)

Submissions must include the following:
1. A cover letter introducing your proposal
2. 10 numbered slides of related work with a slide list OR a 5-min.video in VHS/DVD format OR a CD-ROM

Call For Works for 2005
Ancient Knowledge and The Future: Neolithic Roots in the 21st Century

The Mission of NWEAMO: To forge connections between the composers, performers and lovers of avant garde classical music and the DJs, MCs, guitar-gods, troubadours and gourmets of experimental popular music. When there is no connection, both suffer: When classical music does not connect with popular culture, it becomes a music of experts, unable to reflect and contribute meaningfully in the broad marketplace of developing ideas and cultural experimentation. When popular music has no connection and communication with the classical it becomes naive and superficial, untethered to its historical roots and broad cultural underpinnings. A healthy cultural milieu celebrates both.

We're pleased to announce that we are now accepting submissions for our 2005 festival, with the theme of Ancient Knowledge and The Future: Neolithic Roots in the 21st Century We are looking for electro-acoustic music that explores ancient traditions, rituals, instruments, belief systems, musical styles, philosophies etc.

This year's festival will once again be held in two fine west coast cities, Portland, Oregon and San Diego. As usual, works do not have to strictly adhere to the theme. We are looking for all genres and ideas in the world of electro-acoustic music!

Festival Dates:
• Sep. 30 & Oct. 1, 2005 Portland, OR
• Oct. 7 & 8, 2005 San Diego, CA

Submission Deadline: March 15, 2021

BASIC GUIDELINES: (PLEASE READ!)

• We invite you to participate in our annual celebration of creativity. Please regard this as an opportunity to meet with fellow composers and performers who are dedicated to exploring the edges of aesthetics, cognition and international culture through electro-acoustic music.
• Selected composers must attend the festival.
• Performers must be provided by applicant.
• Generally NWEAMO cannot provide funds for travel, accomodation, performance fees etc. Small honorarioums may be available, depending on the overall costs of the festival, but these will not come close to covering the costs of attending.
• There is a $15 upfront registration fee per work. This goes to support the festival in general. There are no other fees.
• NWEAMO is an all volunteer, not-for-profit, 501(c)3 corporation.

Start your registration now by submitting your audio files, images, and/or digital video files. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

rodrigo@rodrigosigal.com
www.rodrigosigal.com

Call for Audio Submissions
Linux Open Source Sound CD (L.O.S.S.)
[Planned release date - April 2005]
Deadline for submissions: 07-Jan-05

Access Space, Sheffield's lowtech digital arts organisation, is currently calling for submissions for a CD of audio produced with open source software, and the Linux operating system.

There is no specific theme for the curated works, as the concept behind the project is freedom of all elements of music manufacture, encapsulating style, production software and distribution techniques. We hope to receive submissions covering a broad and eclectic range of styles, to represent the dynamic nature of contemporary open source audio culture. Therefore, contributions are invited from musicians of all types, programmers, sound artists or artists who use sound.

The LOSS CD is to be released under a Creative Commons 'Sampling Plus' license, so as well as being produced with free software, the CD will also extend the ethos of the open source movement into its method of distribution. For more information about this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org.

Please do not submit tracks if you are not willing to release your work in this manner.

The LOSS project will develop not only through the CD release, but also through a website, aimed at being an ongoing portal for producers of open source music to showcase their work. This will also offer the works for redistribution under the Creative Commons licensing mentioned above. This website will be online later in the year at http://www.access-space.org/loss.

How to submit your proposal:

[A maximum of 2 tracks per artist, each between 20 seconds and 8 minutes in length.]

Send a DATA CD containing the following files:
- Your audio track(s) in .wav format, 16bit, 44.1khz in either mono or stereo.
- A text document stating your name, contact details (email and mailing address), track title, track length, the software and operating system used for producing the track, and a declaration that your track does not infringe any copyrights or use any unlicensed material.
- An optional screenshot (in .jpg or .png format) of your software setup - which may be used for artwork purposes.

For more information, or to mail your submission:

Linux Open Source Sound CD
Access Space
1a Sidney Street
Sheffield
S1 4RG
0114 2495522
www.access-space.org
loss@access-space.org

Access Space is UK registered charity no: 1103837

Call for Participation ICMC 2005
Free Sound International Computer Music Conference
September 5-9, 2005. Barcelona, Spain
http://www.icmc2005.org/

SUMMARY OF DEADLINES

Music, video, and installations -- February 5, 2021
Papers, posters, and demonstrations -- March 5, 2021
Panels, workshops and special events -- April 5th, 2005
Exhibitors -- June 5th, 2005

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The Phonos Foundation, the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, and the Higher School of Music of Catalonia in conjunction with the International Computer Music Association, is proud to announce ICMC 2005. The conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain, from the 5th to 9th of September 2005, with pre-conference workshops on September 1st and 2nd.

ICMC is the pre-eminent annual gathering of computer music practitioners from around the world. Its unique interleaving of professional paper presentations and concerts of new computer music compositions creates a vital synthesis of science, technology, and the art of music.

By choosing 'free sound' as this year's leitmotif, we aim to emphasise the idea of freeing sound from its current aesthetic, technical and legal confines. We wish to promote an open discussion on the extent to which sound is considered a community asset - an asset that belongs to society and cannot be privatised. Thus, we encourage contributions that emphasise these and related topics.

We invite original contributions in all areas of the computer music field in a number of formats. However, we are also open to any proposal, and encourage all submissions, including those that do not fit the categories below.

We issue the following calls:

* Call for music, video, and installations (deadline February 5, 2021)

We invite submissions of electroacoustic music, video, and installation works that reflect the diversity of the field. Opportunities exist to combine digital resources with a variety of instrumental ensembles. For further details visit
http://www.icmc2005.org/index.php?selectedPage=76

* Call for papers, posters, and demonstrations (deadline March 5, 2021)

We invite submissions for papers, posters, and demonstrations examining the aesthetic, compositional, educational, musicological, scientific, or technological aspects of computer music and digital audio. For further information visit http://www.icmc2005.org/index.php?selectedPage=73

* Call for panels, workshops and special events (deadline April 5th, 2005)

We invite proposals for panel sessions, workshops and special events, especially those with relevance to the conference theme of 'free sound'.

* Call for exhibitors (deadline June 5th, 2005)

The conference will provide a forum for the world's leading music technology companies to showcase their latest product information and for schools and institutions to highlight their educational programs. We invite submissions from interested parties.

To promote the idea of 'free sound', the organisers of ICMC 2005 are setting up the Free Sound Project, a website dedicated to the sharing and usage of copyleft [1] sounds. Thus, we are making a special call for copyleft sounds with no specific deadline. For more information, visit http://www.icmc2005.org/ in the near future.

For detailed information on the conference, and submission formats, visit
http://www.icmc2005.org/

To keep up to date with all of the latest news and information about ICMC 2005 please subscribe to our mailing list by visiting...
http://www.icmc2005.org/index.php?selectedPage=64

Spellewauerynsherde - Akira Rabelais

Samadhi Sound - www.samadhisound.com

In this era of the downloadable mp3, a CD with beautiful packaging seems almost decadently anachronistic. And the packaging for Akira Rabelais’ “Spellewauerynsherde” is indeed lovely.

But visual appeal is not necessarily informative, and we are hard-pressed to discover much about the content from reading the texts provided. Rabelais’ own web site, www.akirarabelais.com, is no help either, but fortunately a trip to the label’s website, www.samadhisound.com, proves more fruitful.

There is a self-conscious obscurity to all the text materials of the CD, particularly the pieces’ titles and subtitles, which appear to require a scholarly knowledge of late medieval history (and beyond) to penetrate their meaning. Initially irritating, this obscurity actually proves very effective in framing the CD as a kind of rediscovered artefact – a notion that resonates perfectly with the source materials.

Those materials, as explained on the Samadhi Sound website, are decades-old field recordings of traditional Icelandic a cappella laments, rediscovered and digitised by Rabelais.

Rabelais is better known in some circles as the author of the idiosyncratic audio-morphing software, Argeïphontes Lyre, than as a composer. But the two worlds of artist and toolmaker are symbiotically and successfully integrated in this body of work.

The result is hypnotic. While this kind of mystically meditative work could all too easily fall off the path of Ambient Electronica directly into the abyss of New Age, Rabelais balances carefully on the precipice.

In the first two movements, voices burdened with worldly fatigue and spiritual longing swirl slowly through the acoustic space, seducing the listener directly into their bittersweet realms. The third section restores equilibrium, with an uncomfortable glimpse into the inferno.

In the fourth, titled (as unhelpfully as the rest) “1483 Caxton Golden Leg. 208b/2”, we are thoroughly immersed in a lingering, floating sonic world of Rabelais’ invention, with the real and unreal, and the known and unknown, constantly merging and separating.

After a brief return to earthly reality through the medium of a starkly beautiful, unaltered song fragment, we set off again into the composer’s inner universe. This time, his territory is more unsettling, with an edginess created by unexpected stops and silences.

Finally, the journey concludes with a darkly sad song, the haunting vocal sandwiched uncomfortably between irritable layers of soft noise and ethereal but robotic choral pads.

It would have been all too easy to decorate these magical Icelandic songs in cheap sentimentality and ready-made technology. Although the work does at times teeter dangerously close to the sentimental, its strength is that the composer ultimately resists being bounded by the beautiful. Instead, he takes us on a slow, sometimes disconcerting, but always rewarding sonic passage through his found vocals – a passage clearly facilitated by technology, but, mercifully, not dictated by it.

Reviewed by Steven Naylor
Steven is a Canadian composer. He is currently completing a PhD with Jonty Harrison in Birmingham, but is easily sidetracked by opportunities to review new CDs

Inteletto d'amore - Paul Wirkus

Quecksilber

Intelleto d'amore is a cornucopia of electronica: clicks, loops, rich synth-like sounds and other samples are all employed to create an eclectic mix of tracks. With individual pieces ranging from near-song format to much less structured sound art, all share a repetitive rhythmic element: a focused and near-minimalist quality. Not all is predictable, however.

Wirkus employs the sort of skipping loops that are prevalent in much of contemporary electronica - varying pulses that coalesce into sustained timbres of pitch and clicks. In the first track, Wlot, these undergo much variation and the edges of other detail emerge: a minimalist meandering that captures the fringes of a larger and unknowable soundworld.

The material in repetition in Physikerin also gradually explores and elaborates on new found discoveries, collaging the blip and bleep material of glitch musics with rich and resonant materials. Blask lingers on a repeating riff, with vocals, and is the track here that comes closest to song format.

The title track, inteletto d'amore, and facsimile both contain elements of analogue synth and lo-fi, resonant string-like sounds sculpted into a insistent pedal, but a foundation that is somehow broken and unstable. The latter also stands out through its incorporation of much more tactile sound material.

I consider Breakfast Dance to be the stand-out track. With a throbbing hi-pitched drone, shifting white noise floating tremulously somewhere in the space, and lots of human and musical/instrumental samples manipulated, an increasingly complex juxtaposition of synthetic and human based soundworlds emerges. Like the electronic radio transmission-like pulsations in Aldrin, there is a technological, even mechanical, backbone to much of the music here, but there is also a very present human voice.

Reviewed by David Berezan
David Berezan is a composer living in Manchester, where he is Lecturer and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios at the University of Manchester.