Longplayer combines an interactive sculpture and a systems-theory experiment in the service of a 1,000-year-long musical composition. An ambitious project for anyone who ever wondered about humanity’s ability to pursue trans-generational art, Longplayer was launched in 1999 by composer (and Pogues member) Jem Finer and an advisory board that included Brian Eno. In 2000, the project was turned over to the Longplayer Trust, a compendium of experts dedicated to its preservation until the 2999 completion of its first cycle.

Survival strategies for the project, including schematics for analog (i.e. human) performances featuring hundreds of Tibetan singing bowls, self-adjusting computer software, and a global radio signal are illustrated at the website. Continue reading

New York Electronic Art Festival launches a month-long celebration of cutting-edge Electronic Art :: September 29 - October 28, 2009 :: multiple venues (see below).

Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center announces the 2009 New York Electronic Art Festival, a month-long series of concerts, workshops, and exhibitions centered on the cutting-edge work being done at the intersection of art and technology. The festival will feature the highest quality work in the evolving field of art and technology. Presentations will include New York City resident artists as well as the most exciting work from around the globe. Continue reading

Quartet Without Pyramid Scheme — Jordan Topiel Paul, Reed Evan Rosenberg, Eric Laska, Richard F. Kamerman :: September 5-26, 2009; 2:00 - 8:00 pm :: Diapason Gallery, 882 Third Avenue, 10th Floor (between 32 & 33 Sts.), Industry City, Brooklyn, NY.

Quartet without Pyramid Scheme is a collaborative sound installation inhabiting the gallery and lounge spaces at Diapason. Its sound is the sum of a rotating collection of sound samples which loop continuously in unpredictable variations. Through its duration, the four artists successively alter this sound by recording and integrating new samples to be looped, some of which replace old ones. The sound content heard at any point in the piece will be the product of this collaboration. Continue reading

Harvestworks: The Van Lier Residency :: Deadline: November 2, 2009.

Artists working in digital media and the electronic arts, whose work would benefit from significant studio time and expert engineering assistance, are encouraged to apply for a Van Lier Residency at Harvestworks.

The fellowships are open to young, post-graduate New York-based artists from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the electronic arts. The one-year residencies help advance Van Lier fellows’ professional development and promote diversity, equity and access in the arts. Continue reading

Freesound by Rob Myers, Furtherfield.org: “The Freesound Project web site is a Free Culture sound repository similar to OpenClipArt for illustration, Project Gutenberg for text or the Prelinger Archive for film. Launched in May 2005 in Barcelona by the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University, it quickly attracted contributors and an audience from around the world.

Freesound is a sound repository rather than a music or audio repository. It contains samples of noises rather than of music or spoken word recordings. If you do want music there are several excellent music sites elsewhere on the Internet, from an artistic point of view notably Sal Randolph’s OpSound. But these focus on completed tracks rather than raw sound materials, and are limited to music. Freesound has no such limitation. Continue reading

Plateaux Festival :: November 19 - 22, 2009 :: Poland.

A 4-day festival presenting the world’s leading groundbreaking multimedia artists, praised and prize-winning audiovisual and VJ art, experimental films, and live electronic and electroacoustic music. A fully interactive event, Plateaux will be spread across Poland’s two adjacent and culturally rich cities of Toruń and Bydgoszcz, combining a number of different venues to create the widest possible range of multimedia and audiovisual performances.

Plateaux is committed to providing an extra depth of experience beyond simple spectatorship. For this reason, artists performing during the festival will also act as guide and teachers in workshops, lectures and discussions, addressing the theoretical, practical and technical aspects of audiovisual domain. Continue reading

SquareTangle virtual art performance company launches with an open source plug-in for artists and sound designers.

Renowned Australian virtual artists John McCormick and Adam Nash today announced the formation of SquareTangle, a virtual/art/performance company, as a milestone in their Australia Council Inter-Arts Connections Residency at Hidden Cove Solutions.

They have released the first results of this productive collaborative residency, in the form of a plug-in that allows the FMOD sound designer to be used within the Unity game development environment. Continue reading

Celebrate John Cage and Merce Cunningham — A John Cage Birthday Event :: September 5, 2009; 7:30 - 9:30 p.m. :: St Mark’s Church, Parish Hall, 10 Street and 2nd Avenue, New York City :: admission is free; arrive early to get a seat (no reservations).

Kevin Hufnagel will be playing ambient prepared guitar music and Nurit Tilles will perform 4’33,” after which the feature video (95 minutes long) Cage/Cunningham will be shown and Elliot Caplan, filmmaker, will be on hand to discuss it afterwards.

Cage was born on Sept. 5, 1912, and died on Aug. 12, 1992. Hufnagel was the first of 22 artists performing in the 16th annual celebration at St. Mark’s Church Parish Hall, in New York City.

For more information, contact: gwendeely [at] aol.com Continue reading

Carl Stone will perform at the Eighth Veil, 7174 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA :: September 12, 2009; 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. :: free

Carl will perform as part of Into Infinity, a collaboration between dublab and Creative Commons, which builds on audio loops and circular canvases that are available online to the public for sharing, remixing, and resubmission.

This event is itself part of Mapping sound: the SASSAS 10th Anniversary Concert, a daylong celebration of the tenth anniversary of the sound. concert series. Continue reading

An unusual solo performance by Chris Brown :: August 27, 2009; 6:00 - 7:00 pm :: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco, CA :: Tickets here.

Chris will be playing piano solo with interactive electronics — first an improvisation with live signal processing, like an “alap”, without pulse, then a newly restored old rhythm piece called “invention#7 — branches”, in which he interacts with his “ritmos” polyrhythm software.

It’s part of YBCA’s “new frequencies” series — Chris will be playing in the galleries in front of pieces that are part of their “wallworks” show. Continue reading