Category Archives: News

T.R:VOL. 4: ORBITAL RESONANCE

vol4_r

T.R:VOL. 4: ORBITAL RESONANCE

“Thinking of atmospheres also returns us to the breath, to the continuous and necessary exchange between subject and environment, a movement that forms a multiplicity existing within the space necessary for sound to sound, and for Being, in whatever form, to resonate” (Dyson, 2009:17).

A Research-Creation Project by
Margaret Jean Westby and Nikolaos Chandolias
In Collaboration with Anne Goldenberg and Doug Van Nort.

Wednesday, April 23 at 5:00 pm – 7:00pm by invitation only (RSVP)
Thursday, April 24 at 5:00pm– 7:00pm by invitation only (RSVP)
Location: Concordia University, Blackbox 1515 St. Catherine West – Room EV OS3-845/855

[wpsgallery]

Please email mwestby828@gmail.com to confirm attendance with your name and the date you will be coming. The performance is limited to 15 attendants per showing.

Both performances will be followed by an informal discussion in the Blackbox.

Orbital Resonance is an exploration of internal physiological states of the body, outwardly displaced in light and in sound to create an immersive sensual environment. The performers improvise with sound and movement through breathe, voice, and bodily sensors. The larger environment merges the interactions between various elements (audience, performers, light, sound, architecture, sensors) into a unified, existential orbit. The material produced in real-time resonates back into the space. The traces create their own life, interacting upon themselves for new configurations and interpretations to arise among the spectators.

Orbital Resonance will follow current threads in open source projects (software and movement creation) informed by the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos, developing new methods of choreographic creation for sonic performative environments and technological design informed by and for the body. Our divergent backgrounds support a transdisciplinary, collaborative process and provide an opportunity to explore gender discrepancies, with the goal of breaking down gender binaries through skill-sharing and performance.

MARGARET JEAN WESTBY

Margaret Jean Westby is an artist and researcher currently pursuing her PhD at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She has created and collaborated in dance performances, installations, and films throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. Her doctoral research encompasses both a practical and theoretical approach into exploring strategies to remap gender behaviors, engagement, and inequity in the area of technologically augmented dance performance. For more information, please visit mjmwestby.com.

NIKOLAOS CHANDOLIAS

M.Sc in Electrical & Computer Engineering, currently enrolled in M.A., Special Individualized Program (INDI).
During his studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering, he has developed strong skills and knowledge in programming and designing software systems. His experience as a volunteer in various European student organizations made him aware of the cultural diversity and the wealth of different perspectives in research and learning. His participation to several collaborative projects as well as many student and artistic groups cultivated a truly collaborative perspective and the understanding of common interest. His former research experience is in the fields of nature language processing and semantics. He is currently looking at expanding his knowledge in the fields of interactive media art and developing installations at an international multicultural level.

ANNE GOLDENBERG

Anne Goldenberg is interested in the political, epistemic and poetic aspects of collaborative platforms and participative devices. She has a PhD in Communication (UQAM, Montreal) and in Sociology (Unice, Nice) and wrote her thesis on “The Negotiation of Contributions in Public Wikis”. This theoretical work led her to observe the poetics of collective contributions through various forms – multimedia, social sculpture, performance and installation. Inspired by free culture, she mostly explores the relationships between digital material, participative devices, the public and collective action. She facilitates open spaces and booksprints, and likes to make visible, readable and malleable the processes of co-construction of knowledge.

DOUG VAN NORT

Van Nort is an experimental musician and sound artist who explores deep listening, viscerally immersive experiences and the radical sculpting of sonic materials in dialogue with his acoustic environment. He has regularly presents improvised electroacoustic music at various venues/festivals in the north american region and in the world at large; he often performs solo as well as with a wide array of artists across musical styles and artistic media. Regular collaborators include Pauline Oliveros, If, Bwana and the Composers Inside Electronics. His music appears on several labels including Deep Listening, Pogus and Zeromoon

Many thanks to Hexagram CIAM and Concordia, Topological Media Lab, Chris Salter, Sha Xin Wei, Michael Montanaro, Mark Baehr, Elio Bidinost, Lex Milton, Julian Stein, Navid Navab, and Jérôme Delapierre.

The project is supported by Hexagram | CIAM Student Grant

vol4

T.R: VOL. 3: THREADS

vol3_r

T.R: VOL. 3: THREADS

An interactive installation by Oana Suteu Khintirian and Navid Navab.

WHEN : APRIL 16TH, 2014
WHERE: 1515 ST. CATHERINE WEST, EV 4.502, Matrabox,
TIME: 5:00 PM

[wpsgallery]

Direction: http://matralab.hexagram.ca/find-us/

Threads is exploring new haptic ways of engaging with paper. Dwelling with the mnemonic dimension of the written word, it puts under the magnifying glass the acts of reading and writing in an intricate play of sensorial relations.

Drop-spindles suspended in mid-air hold threads made out of hand-written paper coming from a century old correspondence. When touched, they produce gesturally modulated sounds that combine to create a mesmerizing environment. On a desk one can find a letter size paper sheet and is invited to reconsider the act of writing, by the use of inkless pen and sonified paper.

OANA SUTEU KHINTIRIAN

Oana’s work encompasses films, multi-channel video installations, media scenography and, more recently, interactivity. It focuses on movement as well as on the human body and its correlation with the environmental elements, structures and dynamics. Threads is part of a developing a body of work that deals with the relationship between paper and memory in the digital era.

Oana’s films have screened in international film festivals around the world and she participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Montreal, Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt and Image Forum, Tokyo, among others.

A professional filmmaker and editor for over two decades, she lives and works between Montreal and Paris.

khintirian.com

NAVID NAVAB

Navid Navab is a Montreal-based Alkemist, composer/improvisor, and media artist. Interested in the poetics of gesture, materiality, and embodiment, his work explores the social lives of objects and the enrichment of their inherent performative qualities. Navid uses gestures, rhythms and vibrations from everyday life as basis for real-time sound generation, resulting in augmented acoustical-poetry that enchants improvisational and pedestrian movements.

His works, which range from gestural sound compositions to responsive architecture, site specific interventions, theatrical interactive installations, interactive scenographies, and improv-based performances, have been presented at various museums, festivals, and events worldwide.

navidnavab.net

vol3

 

T.R: VOL.2 : SWEET ON THE SPOT

vol2_i

T.R: VOL.2 : SWEET ON THE SPOT

Physical spaces for music concerts, installation and multimedia work invite to work with the available air volume in the space by surrounding it with sound sources, ie. loudspeakers, thus filling the void with moving air molecules, hence sound. Advanced sound rendering techniques also seem to allow the placement of virtual sound sources everywhere in the space thus spanned. Still the perception of arbitrary and freely moving sound sources is not often encountered, may it be in gallery spaces, movie theaters, concert venues and even acoustic research laboratories. In this talk I would like to propose another approach to the way the spatial dimension of sound can be conceived and shaped. Taking the room and its architectural acoustics back into the equation and actively exploiting the responsiveness of the room and its boundary layers places the moving air molecules into a sensible context and back into relation with the actual physical space we create artworks for.

WHEN : MARCH 26TH, 2014
WHERE: 1515 ST. CATHERINE WEST EV 7.725
TIME: 5:00 PM, PWYC

PETER PLESSAS

Trained in Violin and Guitar, Peter developed a strong interest in sound direction, electroacoustic composition and improvisation. He considers the electronic studio a musical instrument, and has worked in sound design, instrument building and performance of music with live electronics. He received a honorary mention of the Prix Ars Electronica and regularly performs in the contemporary music world. Peter was a visiting researcher to UC Berkeley and graduated in sound engineering from the University of Music and Performing Arts and the University of Technology Graz. He persued his work as a researcher and lecturer at the Graz Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) and is currently researching novel ways of interpretation of music with live electronics as visiting researcher to CIRMMT/McGill in Montréal.

vol.2

T.R: VOL.1: HMMM by Kathy Kennedy

vol1_r

T.R: VOL.1: HMMM by Kathy Kennedy

The HMMM is an ongoing workshop in vocal exploration for beginners as well as advanced vocalists.

February 12, 2014
Starts: 7:00 pm
Ends: February 12, 2014 – 9:00 pm

[wpsgallery]

Kathy Kennedy and founding members have devised and tested a body of exercises to improve the individual’s listening abilities, and expand their vocal possibilities. The workshop also uses imitation and mirroring in order to get a clearer “sonic” image of one’s own voice, as wellas exercise to sharpen one’s improvisation abilities.

More infos : http://www.kathykennedy.ca/instruction/i_hmmm-workshops.html

 

 

T.I : VOL. 4 : SINGING IN PLACE

vol4_i copy

T.I : VOL. 4 : SINGING IN PLACE

Singing In Place is a live performance. Improvised singing – with and without electronic processing – is used to convey the memory of walks taken. The voice is often combined with field recordings and texts.

When : April 2th, 2014

Where: 1515 St. Catherine West EV 7.725

Starts: 7:30 PM PWYC

[wpsgallery]

Viv Corringham

Viv Corringham is a British vocalist, sound artist and composer, currently based in New York , who has worked internationally since the early 1980s. Her work includes audio installations, music performances and soundwalks. She is a 2012 and 2006 McKnight Composer Fellow through American Composer Forum and has received many grants and awards. She has an MA Sonic Art from Middlesex University, London, England and is certified to teach Deep Listening by composer Pauline Oliveros. Recent work has been presented at Sound Out Festival, Melbourne Australia; Around Sound Festival, Hong Kong; Tempo Reale Festival, Florence, Italy; Soundworks, ICA, London, UK; Her Noise Festival, Tate Modern, London, UK, Abrons Arts Center, New York and Deep Listening Institute, Kingston, NY, USA 2012. Articles about her work have appeared in magazines and books: In the Field (UK), Art of Immersive Soundscapes (Canada), Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), Playing With Words (UK) and For Those Who Have Ears (Ireland).She has performed with Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Gino Robair, Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nicols, Eddie Prevost, Didier Petit, Andrea Parkins, Monique Buzzarte, Al Margolis, Lawrence Casserley and Charles Hayward among others, Her music appears on several labels including Innova, Deep Listening, Emanem and ARC. www.vivcorringham.org

Kathy Kennedy

She is a sound artist with formal training in visual art as well as classical singing. Her art practice generally involves the voice and issues of interface with technology, often using telephony or radio transmission. She is also involved in community art, and is a founder of the digital media center for women in Canada, Studio XX, as well as the innovative choral group for women, Choeur Maha. Her large scale sonic installation/performances for over 100 singers and radio, called “sonic choreographies,” have been performed internationally, most notably an ongoing piece called HMMM. Ms. Kennedy currently teaches electroacoustics at Concordia University. She frequently gives lectures and workshops on listening skills, acoustic ecology and vocal improvisation.

vol4

back to the Topological Improvisations page >>

T.I : VOL. 3: QUARTETTO TELEMATICO

6

Improvised Telematic Performance with Pauline Oliveros (Birmingham, UK), Chris Chafe (CCRMA, Stanford), Doug Van Nort (Hexagram Black Box, Montreal), Jonas Braasch (CCC center, EMPAC). part of Frontiers Festival. Followed by local performance (Van Nort + guests) at the Hexagram site inside a 16-Channel overhead/under-foot haptic/sound system.

When : April 1th, 2014

Where: 1515 St. Catherine St. West, EV OS3-845/855

Starts: 2:00 PM PWYC

[wpsgallery]

Doug Van Nort

Van Nort is an experimental musician and sound artist who explores deep listening, viscerally immersive experiences and the radical sculpting of sonic materials in dialogue with his acoustic environment. He has regularly presents improvised electroacoustic music at various venues/festivals in the north american region and in the world at large; he often performs solo as well as with a wide array of artists across musical styles and artistic media. Regular collaborators include Pauline Oliveros, If, Bwana and the Composers Inside Electronics. His music appears on several labels including Deep Listening, Pogus and Zeromoon

Jonas Braasch

Dr. Braasch received a Master’s Degree in Physics from the Technical University of Dortmund in 1998, and two doctoral degrees from the University of Bochum in Electrical Engineering and Information Sciences in 2001 and Musicology in 2004. Afterwards, he worked as Assistant Professor in McGill University’s Sound Recording Program before joining Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006, where he is now Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Director of the Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture.

Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros (born May 30, 1932, Houston, Texas) is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She has taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros has written books, formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of “Deep Listening” and “sonic awareness”.

vol3

 

 

 

T.I : VOL.2 : TRANSMISSIONS & RESONANCE

vol2_i

T.I : VOL.2 : TRANSMISSIONS & RESONANCE

A set of improvised sonic explorations, transmission to/from the boundaries of the space. Meditations on the continuity and connectedness of resonance.

WHEN : MARCH 27TH.

WHERE: TML

TIME: 7:30, PWYC

[wpsgallery]

JULIEN OTTAVI

http://www.apo33.org/noise/doku.php
Julien Ottavi is part of a generation of audio artists to emerge in the 90\`s that indicated some of the directions that music and soundart is taking. While at art school, he organized a series of concerts, bringing international artists from the experimental scene to Nantes, drawing touring musicians to movements happening outside of Paris. This became not just a destination but a nexus for collaborations. This resulted for example in the group Formanex to perform graphical scores of electro-acoustic music, and in Apo33, an artists collective to facilitate, nurture, and disseminate creative audio practice. In this way, Julien represents the energy and initiative of a present day artist – activist through practice, organizing as performance, publishing as networking, open source and open aesthetic. This fluidity of working across boundaries of style and role are seen in his music, physical with computer, performative and reflective.

ERIN SEXTON

http://erinsexton.com/
Montreal-based artist Erin Sexton explores matter, energy, space, and time through sound, performance, installation, and video. Playing between theoretical (meta)physics and experimental (al)chemistry, her raw post-minimalist approach embodies immanence through an active vulnerability. With analog electronics, crystal oscillations, electromagnetic fields, and electro-chemical improvisation she creates direct links between lived experience and the processes of nature, drawing us into contact with the micro-macro cosmos. Sexton has presented her performance and installation work in festivals and galleries across North America and Europe, released several albums, and is featured on multiple compilations. She is a member of the Perte-de-Signal artist collective, nocinema.org, FÜNF, Ænth, and often collaborates in improvisation contexts.

DOUG VAN NORT

http://dvntsea.com
Doug Van Nort’s work explores deep listening, the noise of the world, time consciousness, viscerally immersive experiences and the radical sculpting of sonic materials in dialogue with his acoustic environment. These explorations manifest as composition, installation, workshops, happenings and as improvised electroacoustic performances, in recent years at venues/festivals across North America and Europe; he often performs solo as well as with a wide array of artists spanning musical styles and artistic media. Regular collaborators include Pauline Oliveros, If, Bwana and the Composers Inside Electronics. His music appears on several labels (e.g. Pogus, Deep Listening, Zeromoon) and his writings on sound/performance/electroacoustics have been published by a number of outlets (e.g. MIT and Cambridge U. Press).

vol2

Improvisational Environments

 

news1

15 February – 8 March 2014 Matthews Center iStage, Synthesis Center
School of Arts, Media + Engineering
Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA

Purpose

The main scientific goal of this Residency is to gain insight into (1) temporal texture via simple relational (vs ego-centered) productions of correlated patterns over time, and (2) transitions in continuous, multivalent states and embodied agency.

The artful (and artfully precise) conditioning of experience is a means but not the end of this particular Synthesis residency.

The practical goals are to
(1) bring together some ensembles* that have advanced techniques to share with other experts, and
(2) carry out an experiment in improvisation using your apparatus while resident in the AME iStage blackbox which is being renovated.

The strategic goal and value for the Synthesis Center and the School of Arts, Media + Engineering is to host the building of an apparatus, which means not only equipment and software, but also people — students + faculty + technical staff — knowing how to keep using it in creation research beyond the workshop. (Participants from the Topological Media Lab will bear the main practical responsibility for leaving behind a working apparatus as a sibling to the Ozone responsive environments apparatus at Concordia, in order to facilitate subsequent research collaborations.)

Experts in the art and science of responsive environments will teach each other how to use some of the essential parts of our systems.
* An ensemble is a set of technology, people, and techniques : e.g. software frameworks, instruments, devices, plus practitioners, makers, researchers, employing techniques and approaches, all co-refined together working over several projects under a family of related artistic expressions, conceptual questions or philosophical investigations.

More infos : http://improvisationalenvironments.weebly.com/

Play As Inquiry

[instant_gallery]

This fall the Topological Media Lab participated to the Play as Inquiry event hosted at the Gray Center for Arts of the University of Chicago.

Play as Inquiry asks how artists & scholars might construe their practices as play. This 3-day practicum hosted by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry featured distinct and experimental approached to research and production in various fields including game design, transmedia installation, public health, choreography, political science, experimental writing, and anthropology.

It was an experimental practicum organized by PATRICK JAGODA game design & theory, U of C & SHA XIN WEI experimental phenomenology, Montreal, and featuring:

TOPOLOGICAL MEDIA LAB research Atelier-Lab at Concordia University, Montreal

ALKEMIE ATELIER multidisciplinary creative collaborative, Montreal

Michael Montanaro:choreographer/media artist, Montreal

Navid Navab: Media Artist, Interactive Sound Installations

Julian Stein: Media Artist, Sound and Light Installations

Adam Basanta: Media Artist, Sound and Light Installations

SETH BRODSKY musicologist, UofC

MICHAEL DAWSON political scientist, UofC

KEN EKLUND game designer/writer, CA

MELISSA GILLIAM game changer chicago design lab, UofC Medicine

GEORGE LEWIScomposer/scholar, Columbia U, NY

MICHAEL TAUSSIG anthropologist, Columbia U, NY

SARA THACHER experience designer, CA

MCKENZIE WARK media/critical theorist, New School, NY

 

About Play as Inquiry

Play as Inquiry was organized by Patrick Jagoda (faculty member in the Department of English and co-founder of Game Changer Chicago Design Lab at the University of Chicago), and Sha Xin Wei (Canada Research Chair in New Media, Associate Professor of Design & Computation Arts, and Research Director of the Topological Media Lab at Concordia University, Montreal) in association with Alkemie Atelier, a Montreal-based multidisciplinary creative collaborative. It served as culmination of their year-long Mellon Fellowship for Arts Practice & Scholarship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.

 

Schedule

Frid Nov 1

7-10:30p / play as inquiry: welcome event w/ Patrick Jagoda, Dr. Melissa Gilliam and the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab

Performance Penthouse Rm 901, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Chicago

Sat Nov 2

10–11a / speed-ideating w/ Sara Thacher

Gray Center Lab, 929 E. 60th St. (in Midway Studios next door to Logan Center)

11a-12p / playing with the future: collaborative narrative in authentic fiction w/ Ken Eklund Gray Center Lab, 929 E. 60th St. (in Midway Studios next door to Logan Center)12:15-1:30p / experimental writing workshop w/ McKenzie WarkGray Center Lab, 929 E. 60th St. (in Midway Studios next door to Logan Center)1:30-2:30p / lunchcan be purchased at the Logan Center Cafe

2:30–4p / foundings: a constitution building game w/ Michael Dawson
Performance Hall Stage, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Chicago

4:15-5:30p / listening + collaborating = improvising w/ George Lewis featuring even in arcadia, there i am, a sound installation by Seth Brodsky
Performance Hall Stage & North Stairwell, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Chicago

5:30-7:30p / dinner break

7:30–8:30p / go slow party, a reading by and w/ Michael Taussig

Gray Center Lab, 929 E. 60th St. (in Midway Studios next door to Logan Center)

8:30–10p / ice time candle time water time tissue time time alkemie & music for lamps, a performance installation by Sha Xin Wei & Alkemie Atelier
Gray Center Lab, 929 E. 60th St. (in Midway Studios next door to Logan Center)

Sun Nov 3

12-3:30p / REPLAY: an afternoon of responses via planned and spontaneous revelations of play inside research & production practices w/ Michael Montanaro & dancers Madeleine Krenek & Melinda Myers, University of Chicago faculty, independent artists, & practitioners of all kinds
Gray Center Lab, 929 E. 60th St. (in Midway Studios next door to Logan Center)

Time Forms: The temporalities of aesthetic experience

[instant_gallery]

When : September 19-21, 2013
Where: McGill University

This three day research-creation workshop explores the “when” of art, forms in time, and the ways time forms experience. For this event, we plan to contribute a few installations designed to poetically transmute your sense of dynamic, change, rhythm: an Umbrella quivering under a block of ice, a Candle whose flicker modulates the electric lamps around it, and time-conditioning instruments.

For more info about the schedule : http://timefor.ms/2013/

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/85376816[/vimeo]