Category Archives: Re-Mediations series

T.R.: VOL. 6: RADIUS

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T.R.: VOL. 6: RADIUS

When : April 29th, 2014

Where: 1515 St. Catherine West EV 7.725

Starts: 6 pm

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Jeff Kolar will discuss his ongoing curatorial project Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA. Radius features a new project monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The lecture will focus on two of Radius’ series: RANGE (2012) and GRIDS (2014).

RANGE

Local, Distant, Fringe is a three-part, location-based series of radio transmissions that explores the phenomenon of signal strength. The series seeks to break, bend, and highlight the economic, political, and technical dimensions of the electromagnetic spectrum. RANGE seeks to challenge these issues of signal accessibility, and question radio’s role as a distribution tool. Commissioned artists include Emilie Mouchous & Andrea-Jane Cornell, Damon Loren Baker, and Rob Ray.

GRIDS

Grids consists of four mobile commissioned radio broadcasts at four different Chicago geographical locations throughout the 2014 calendar year. The transmissions occur at either working or now defunct electrical production or distribution centers. GRIDS is interested in how energy is propagated, what the distance of that propagation is, and what it means to be a node in the networked grid. Commissioned artists include Radio Aktiv, Ethan Rose, Kristen Roos, and Amanda Gutiérrez.

 

JEFF KOLAR

Jeff Kolar is a sound artist and curator working in Chicago, USA. His work, described as “speaker-shredding” (Half Letter Press) and “wonderfully strange” (John Corbett), includes cross-platform collaboration, low-powered radio, and live performance. His work often activates sound in unconventional, temporary, and ephemeral ways using appropriation and remix as a critical practice. Jeff is a free103point9 Transmission Artist, and also the director ofRadius, an experimental radio broadcast platform.
His work has been released on Panospria (CA), HAK Lo-Fi Record (FR), free103point9 (US), and has appeared in compilations by Furthernoise.org (AU), iFAR (UK), and Sonic Circuits (US). His video work was published in the DVD journal ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art. He presents work at festivals, radio programs, exhibitions, and performance venues which recently include the New Museum, CTM Festival for Adventurous Music, KUNSTRADIO, and The Kitchen.

T.R: VOL. 5: MOTHER OF BALLOON MUSIC

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T.R: VOL. 5: MOTHER OF BALLOON MUSIC

When : April 25th, 2014
Where: 1515 St. Catherine West EV 7.725
Starts: 6 pm

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Latex balloons have been Judy Dunawayʼs primary musical instrument and her primary compositional focus for over twenty years. At Topological Media Lab, she will give a lecture/demonstration about the amazing ways that balloons function as sound makers, as well as providing some history of the balloon in experimental music. This will be followed by an audience performance of her “Balloon Symphony No. 2.” (All balloons and materials will be provided for free.)

Judy Dunaway

Judy Dunaway has centered much of her creative practice around the latex balloon as a musical instrument. She has created numerous compositions for balloons as well as making this her primary instrument for improvisation. She has toured performing on her balloon instruments throughout the U.S. and Europe at many important venues, festivals, museums and galleries including the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Germany), Alternative Museum (NYC), Bang on a Can Festival (NYC), Everson Art Museum (Syracuse), Frau Musica Nova Festival (Germany), the Guelph Jazz Festival (Canada), Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors (NYC), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), Podewil (Berlin), Roulette (NYC), the CEAIT Festival (Los Angeles), Seltsame Musik Festival (Austria), the SoHo Arts Festival (NYC) and STEIM (Netherlands). Her discography includes CDs on the CRI and Innova labels. Her awards/grants/residencies include the New York State Music Fund, the Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant, the American Composers Forum’s Composers Commissioning Fund, Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), Harvestworks, the National Endowment for the Arts performance fund and several Meet the Composer composer-participation grants. She has a Ph.D. in music composition from Stony Brook University, and an M.A. with emphasis in experimental music composition from Wesleyan University (where she studied with Alvin Lucier). She has been a Visiting Lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art and Design since 2005.

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T.R:VOL. 4: ORBITAL RESONANCE

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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

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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

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T.R: VOL. 3: THREADS

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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

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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

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

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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.

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

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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

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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