In fall 2013, New Music USA will open a new chapter in public advocacy for new music. The organization will reconfigure five current grantmaking programs into a unified channel of support for a wide range of new music projects. Awarded applications will be promoted on newmusicusa.org and offer a new way for the public to connect with artists.

Ed Harsh, president of New Music USA, explains: “We believe that the best advocates for new music are artists and their work. By reimagining our support for artists as an act of curation, New Music USA will create a powerful engine for advancing the public role of new music.”

Curation for the Public:

As new music reaches into new spaces, styles, and media, New Music USA has a vital role to play as a uniquely positioned public curator and advocate.

Each project awarded funding through the new program will be featured on a dedicated, media-rich page on www.newmusicusa.org, allowing site visitors to experience the development of creative work firsthand. Throughout the term of the funded projects, artists will be able to add media and updates to their project’s pages, which will be immediately emailed to their newmusicusa.org followers. Exploring, listening to, and connecting with compelling music makers—and sharing those discoveries with friends—will be easier than ever.

Benefit for Artists:

This new approach to grantmaking is driven by two core convictions. First, that the best way to serve new music is to ask practitioners what they need rather than tell them what they should want. Second, that the process for requesting financial support should be simple and should help artists connect with audiences, not just funders.

Applicants will be asked to present their projects using the same language and media they would use to build public support for their work. The goal is to make grantmaking less about grant writing, and focus instead on how artists present their work to the public. Lowering the barriers to application is a key feature of this program and will invite applications from an expanded range of creative musicians. New Music USA is making it easier than ever for artists to apply for funding and secure the support they need to realize their visions.

New Music USA will be able to offer a meaningful adjunct benefit to the grants themselves: access to New Music USA’s public network. By promoting awarded projects through social media, email, and its deep connections within the field, New Music USA will build a community around its projects, while supporting awarded artists as they develop their work.

For more information: https://www.newmusicusa.org/

New York — National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced today that New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) is one of 817 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive NEA Art Works grants. NRPA is recommended for two grants totaling $47,000 to support commissioning new work for Turbulence.org and for continuing to archive Turbulence.org at the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media, Cornell University.

Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all contribute to vibrant communities and memorable opportunities for the public to engage with the arts.”

In August 2012, the NEA received 1,547 eligible applications for Art Works grants requesting more than $80 million in funding. Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. The 817 recommended NEA grants total $26.3 million and span 13 artistic disciplines and fields. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.

For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA website at arts.gov.

5:00 - Artists talks: Eric Leonardson: 20 Years of Acoustic Ecology: Reflections and New Challenges; Tom Plsek: Hear We Are
6:30 – reception
7:00 – concert: members of the the New England Forum for Acoustic Ecology – Michael Bullock, Ernst Karel, Tom Plsek, and Jed Speare - Eric Leonardson – solo with Springboard

Audio artist, composer, performer, instrument inventor, radio artist, sound designer, visual artist, curator, and educator for over 30 years; Eric Leonardson devotes a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and microtones. As a practicing artist and educator Leonardson has an interest in the elusive lines that separate art media and disciplines; the promise of technology to enable new possibilities in art, discovering connections between physical action, sound, images, and ideas through artistic collaborations and research. He is President of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, founder of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, Executive Director of the World Listening Project, and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Amherst College as a Copeland Fellow. http://ericleonardson.org/whatsnew/

The Springboard is an experimental instrument built in 1994 to explore the sonic potential of coil springs and other readily available materials. The inaudible vibrations of these materials are amplified by one very affordable piezo disc contact microphone. When played with cello bows and homemade friction mallets, Leonardson produces extraordinary sounds that belie the humble origin of these materials.

Trombone explorer Tom Plsek has been stretching trombones and our concepts of them for years. His compositions include pieces for ensembles and solo trombone often incorporate improvisation, technology, and performance art. Tom has performed with such artists as Jerry Hunt, Malcolm Goldstein, Phill Niblock, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Joe Morris, Marjorie Morgan, and with the Outsider Quartet. He has performed at New Music American in 1983 and 1986. He is a member of the Mobius Artists Group and Chair of the Brass Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston where he also teaches a course on acoustics. He is a member of the Acoustical Society of America for which he has given many presentations mostly about the use of technology with brass instruments. He is featured on several recording including “Firehouse Futurities,” 1999: Rastascan Records (BRD038) and Tautology (005); and “Jump or Die; 21 Braxton Compositions 1992,” Music and Arts (CD-843). The CD “MVP LSD” with Joe Morris, guitar and John Voigt, bass was released in 2009 and has received numerous positive reviews.

The New England Forum for Acoustic Ecology (NEFAE) is a regional chapter of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology (ASAE).

The ASAE is a membership organization dedicated to exploring the role of sound in natural habitats and human societies and promoting public dialogue concerning the identification, preservation, and restoration of natural and cultural sound environments. Further information about the ASAE can be found at: http://acousticecology.us/

Since 1984 the Museum of Sculpture Glaskasten Marl has hosted the Video Art Award, and since 2002 the Sound Art Award, which will be further developed to the EUROPEAN SOUNDART AWARD.

The Museum in Marl has shaped the unique profile of the Marl Media Awards not only through its orientation as a sculpture museum, but also on the strength of its placement in the modernist architecture of the Town Hall, completed in 1966. Because sculpture is a genus to which multifocality and spatial reference are crucial, the video art competition was for the first time launched with a specific substantive focus—for all artists whose video works address questions of spatiality. The works submitted for the Video Art Award must relate thematically, formally or in its presentation to the specific (museum) space. The same idea applies to the parallel competition in sound art. The national restriction has also been dropped, and the new competitions are announced internationally.

The closing date for submissions for both competitions is 17 May 2013.

Two international prize-juries for video art and sound art will select the winners of the Marler Media Art Awards 2013, whose works will be exhibited in the Museum of Sculpture Glaskasten Marl.

The awards ceremony of the Marler Media Art Awards 2013 and the exhibition opening will take place on 20 October 2013 in the Museum of Sculpture Glaskasten Marl.

Marler Video Art Award 2013
The works submitted for the Video Art Award 2013 must relate thematically, formally or in its presentation to the specific (museum) space. Therefore its ideal presentation location should not be a cinema space. The spatial reference here also means avoiding linear narrative structures while featuring a different, non-linear temporal structure, such as a loop, which is ideal for presentation in a museum. While classic, single-channel videos on a monitor or projected on a screen remain acceptable, preference is given to multi-channel installations and installations extended through use of additional materials.

Works submitted must have been produced after January 2010. Twenty works will be selected by the jury for the exhibition in the museum and will be presented together with the projects selected for the Sound Art Award 2013.

From the German Klangkunst-Preis to the EUROPEAN SOUNDART AWARD
Since its inception in 2002, the German Klangkunst-Preis has been awarded to artistic works focusing specifically on fostering the creative use of space and sound. In addition to the intrinsic artistic quality, acoustic assurance and sculptural certainty are above all the criteria for assessment and evaluation. Beginning in 2014, the EUROPEAN SOUNDART AWARD will expand the German Klangkunst-Preis onto a Europe-wide platform and include the entire genre of acoustic art.

The 2013 competition already incorporates the European orientation, while remaining true to the constituting principles of the German Klangkunst-Preis. Thus, the title: From the German Klangkunst-Preis to the EUROPEAN SOUNDART AWARD. This year’s competition marks the founders’ conclusion of the decade-long phase of the German Klangkunst-Preis.

For the Klangkunst-Preis 2013, existing artworks based on spatially influenced sound creations should be entered. A jury of experts will select works for an exhibition in the Glaskasten Marl Museum of Sculpture, to open 20 October 2013. Additionally, the same jury members will also invite a number of competing artists to Marl in the summer of 2013 to develop a concept for the creative design of the city centre. One of these concepts will be selected for completion.

The Klangkunst-Preis 2013 is to be awarded by the Museum of Sculpture Glaskasten Marl, Culture Radio wdr 3 and the Initiative Hören.

Further information on Marler Media Art Awards 2013 and application forms can be found at www.marl.de/medienkunstpreise.

“Aomori Water is a sound collage piece made in 1998, in Aomori Japan. I was in a residency with other artists. A Japanese sculptor was making a round house and wanted a sound piece to play in it. I recorded some very gentle waves lapping the beach, for the first part. And a very small mountain stream, flowing, for the second part. I layered 8 tracks. This was the first work that I did in ProTools.” — Phill Niblock

Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60′s he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York -www.experimentalintermedia.org - where he has been an artist/member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. Phill Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode and Touch labels. A DVD of films and music is available on the Extreme label. He is a retired professor at The College of Staten Island, the City University of NewYork.

This book tells the remarkable story behind the pioneering experiments in audio synthesis and graphical sound that were being conducted in the early years of the Soviet Union by composer-theorists Arseny Avraamov, Boris Yankovsky and many others.

This publication offers an introduction to Russia’€™s contribution to the birth of electronic music, sound synthesis and audio technology in the early 20th Century. It is a story of politics and power, of the institution and the avant-garde, of collaboration and personal achievement, of ambition, opportunity and oppression. It is a story of remarkable personalities, curious inventions, astonishing performances, radical ideas, complex mathematics, pioneering electronics, engineering, design and experimentation. It is also a story of patents and funding applications, of success and failure, support and rejection, optimism and disillusionment, hunger and poverty.

It is a story of which only fragments are known, not only in the West but also within Russia itself. Increased interest in this area in the past two decades and€“ not least in the life and work of Leon Theremin, €“has seen more scholarly research in the field. Sound in Z makes a valuable contribution to this revival of interest and is intended as a catalyst for further academic research. Consequently, much visual and textual material featured here has rarely€“ if ever been seen either in print or in English before.

The book was produced in partnership with Sound & Music, London and Verlag de Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Cologne; Editor: Matt Price; Sub-editor: William Lambie; Design: Modern Activity, London
Publishing and European distribution by: Verlag de Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Cologne

FLAT EARTH SOCIETY from art of failure on Vimeo.

“Can we hear the Earth? Not the sounds occurring upon it but the Earth on a geophysical scale? […] The hill-and-dale technique was used in Edison’s phonograph, recording sound with a stylus that vertically cut a minute landscape into the grooves of the cylinder.
[…] Flat earth society takes readings from the stylus of topographic radar, cuts them into vinyl and then plays them back with a stylus. Phonographic hills-and-dales grow into the Alps, Andes, Himalayas, Grand Canyon, Great Steppe, Great Rift Valley, Great Outback and the Lesser Antilles. Where Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba once sang one hears the Baja Peninsula, Antarctic Peninsula, and the bathymetric pauses of the Red Sea and Baffin Bay. […] Peaks and valleys, spikes and wells, spires and troughs, aspirations and depressions, all have their gradations in mythical and actual landscapes.” (Douglas Kahn - 2011)

* Full text: http://issuu.com/artoffailure/docs/t0p0l0g1es
* Video stills: http://issuu.com/artoffailure/docs/flat-earth-society
* Website: http://artoffailure.org
* Video: http://vimeo.com/63471942

You are at a helm of a submarine navigating the depths of the ocean. At each strata, you see and hear different organisms. In the sunny epipelagic zone, watch the fast and massive tuna swim by in schools. Or catch a glimpse of the rare sea pig in the darkness of the abyssopelagic. Each of these organisms contributes a spatialized motif to the evolving soundscape.

Submersible is a 2013 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funds from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHIES

Yotam Mann makes music with technology. His work ranges from an endless Bach choral generator to an interactive web-based EP. He currently freelances in NYC doing music and sound for interactive media.

Niv (”neeev”) Bavarsky is an artist/ illustrator/ person living in CA’s Bay Area. His creative output includes editorial illustration, album covers, posters, comics, clothing graphics & patterns, collaborative drawing & painting, and music. His favorite kind of logic is dream-logic.

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Full Program (4pm to midnight ($20, $10 student)
4pm: Living Earth Show
5pm: The Weird Weeds
6pm: Austin Soundwaves
7pm: Convergence
8pm: Francois Minaux + Ryan Cronk
9pm: Meehan/Perkins Duo + Tristan Perich
10pm: Sqwonk
11pm: Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

The Studio Museum in Harlem presents “American Cypher”, an installation by conceptual artists Mendi + Keith Obadike. This site-specific work is a suite of projects that respond to American stories about race and DNA. The project includes an 8 channel sound & video installation with a series of letterpress prints and a book.

In this work the artists reflect on the role of DNA in contemporary American culture through five stories that hinge on deciphering genetic code. These stories include the racial politics of genetic researcher James Watson, the ancestry of Oprah Winfrey, the use of DNA in the criminal justice system, and the lineage of president Barack Obama. At the center of the project is the story of Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore several children by President Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson and Hemings had been rumored (by political rivals and Hemings’ own children) since the early 1800s to have had some kind of an affair. In 1998 DNA evidence linked Hemings’ offspring to the Jefferson family, proving centuries-old rumors, controversial scholarship, and oral history about their relationship to be true. The artists made original recordings of Hemings’ last remaining possession, a small bell given to her by Martha Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson’s wife and Hemings’ half sister) that is on exhibit today at Jefferson’s Monticello plantation in Virginia. From these digitally altered recordings they created a soundscape that is currently playing at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The artists use the genetic code of the Hemings and Jefferson family lines as a musical score to generate the soundscape.

Mendi + Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists whose music, performance works and conceptual media artworks have been exhibited internationally. Their work generated much discussion online and offline when they offered Keith’s “blackness” for sale on eBay in 2001 as an Internet performance. Their works have been exhibited at The Whitney’s Artport, The New Museum and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Their opera-masquerade “Four Electric Ghosts” was developed at Toni Morrison’s Atelier at Princeton University in and commissioned by the Kitchen in New York. They were awarded the Pick Laudati Digital Art Award from Northwestern University for Big House / Disclosure, a 200-hour sound installation commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade. Other awards include a Rockefeller Fellowship for New Media Art, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize for Mendi’s book of poetry Armor and Flesh.

This exhibition opened March 28th and closes June 30th.