Workshop: Neuro Reality Check (Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) Performance: GenComp Collective Berlin & Book Launch: Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience :: December 2, 2011, 10:00 pm :: N.K., Elsenstr. 52/2, Hinterhaus Etage 2, 12059 Berlin :: Open to the public (register for the workshop here).

GenComp Collective Berlin: Chaotic, cybernetic, and hybrid systems — Neurological and cybernetic research techniques have been adopted by many experimental music protagonists, such as Louis and Bebe Barron, Alvin Lucier, David Tudor and others. Continue reading

Re-Viewing Black Mountain College 3: 3rd Annual Conference: John Cage’s Circle of Influence :: October 7 – 9, 2011 :: UNC and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, NC :: Weekend cost for the conference is $30; daily admission is $20; free for UNC Asheville faculty, students and staff ::

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in partnership with UNC Asheville and the John Cage Trust is pleased to announce ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 3 to be held October 7 – 9, 2011, a weekend gathering of scholars, performers and artists coming to Asheville to present ideas and perform works related to avant-garde composer John Cage. The program for the weekend will include music, performances, installations, exhibitions, films and scholarly presentations, all touching on some aspect of Cage’s life, work and genius…his Circle of Influence. Continue reading

The Emotion Organ by Amanda Steggell — Curated by Michelle Teran :: June 12 – July 10, 2010 :: Opening Reception: June 17; 7:00 – 9:00 pm (Live Performances by Eve Egoyan, Gordon Monahan, Martin Arnold and Toddler Body) :: Women’s Art Resource Centre (WARC), 401 Richmond St. Suite #122, Toronto, ON. Presented in conjunction with the Independent Media Arts Conference and Festival: ON.Fire .

Why would anyone want to merely bang out music, when you could have euphoria? Why be satisfied with an ordinary spinet when you could have The Emotion Organ? Developed over a rigorous three-year period in a small studio in Norway, Amanda Steggell’s The Emotion Organ is a synaesthetic, simulacrum machine that takes its public on a phenomenological journey through the physical senses. With the organ, you can hear colors and smell sounds. Continue reading

Curve by composer Peter Traub is an installation for four speakers and a long curved wall. It was also the final work of his five-piece dissertation series exploring physical, virtual, and hybrid spaces as compositional tools. The balcony walkway at the rear of University of Virginia’s Old Cabell Hall is bounded by a curved wall creating an intense, prolonged, and stunning echo that varies dramatically as one moves along the space. Curve played with this pronounced artifact along the wall’s 150 foot length.

Using four speakers placed along the wall, the piece created an enveloping sound environment that varied as listeners walked from one end of the balcony to the other. In combining the unique sonic properties of the space with precisely tuned pitches, timbres, and rhythms, the installation made audible both the dramatic ricocheting echo and the effect of sound taking 135 milliseconds to travel from one end to the other–a perceptible and musically useful delay. The installation’s swells, drones, pops, pitches, and silences transformed the less-visited rear of the hall into a large immersive instrument.

See a slide show of Curve here.

Peter Traub: Passages and Recesses — for solo flute and hybrid space with flutist Wayla Chambo + Eric Montgomery: Sound Across Grounds with pianist Benjamin Yobp :: April 7, 2010; 12:50 pm :: Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville ::

On April 7th, 2010, Peter Traub will premiere a new work performed by flutist Wayla Chambo – Passages and Recesses for solo flute and hybrid space. This is the fourth piece in his dissertation series and is the result of a technical collaboration with Eric Montgomery, a recent graduate in computer science and music from UVA. Eric will also premiere a new piece for solo piano and hybrid space, called Sound Across Grounds, performed by pianist Benjamin Yobp. Continue reading

Performa is delighted to present Music For 16 Futurist Noise Intoners :: November 12, 2009; 8:00 p.m. :: Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY :: $30 Orchestra / $25 Balcony, available here.

Music For 16 Futurist Noise Intoners is an evening-length concert of original scores and newly commissioned compositions for the intonarumori, or “noise-intoners.” An incredible group of musicians and composers from the experimental music world — including Einstuerzende Neubauten frontman and Nick Cave collaborator Blixa Bargeld, avant-garde saxophonist John Butcher, Deep Listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros, Faith No More and Mr. Bungle vocalist Mike Patton, sound and text-based performer Anat Pick, avant-garde musician Elliott Sharp, and Continue reading

Listening To History: Some Proposals for Reclaiming the Practice of Live Music by Jon Rose. Written for Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 18, 2008. This article is available for free download from the MIT Press website.

ABSTRACT: The author explores the vibrant, but often hidden, unorthodox musical culture of Australia, recounting little known movements, events, dates, personalities and Aboriginal traditions. He urges the listener to investigate and value this unique and fecund musical history, and in so doing, find models that are relevant to solving the dilemmas of a declining contemporary music practice. Continue reading

Thursday Club: Artemis Papageorgiou: Wii/nd Chime + Ryan Jordan: Sensory Response Systems :: January 15, 2009; 6 -8 pm :: Seminar Rooms, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, South East London.

Artemis Papageorgiou will discuss Wii/nd Chime’s collaborative development as an instrument of reminiscence. Wii/nd Chime signifies a shift from the physical realm to the virtual and the simulated. The sonic languages of both wind chimes and the 8-bit video-game sounds are combined into a system of interaction, which invites people to discover the potential of this new, hybrid object. Continue reading

[Image: Graphic Music Sequencer – Caleb Coppock (top) & Untitled #06 – André Gonçalves] Algomantra recently posted on a project by Caleb Coppock, which allows the composition of music by directly drawing onto paper discs. Since the kind of graphite marks made by ordinary pencils conduct electricity it provides a system for drafting a visual score in sectored patterns on paper discs. The Graphic Music Sequencer uses wire brushes that contact a paper disc as it spins on a standard record player. When the wire sensors move across the conductive graphite a tone is generated, the pitch of the tone is further regulated by the thickness of the pencil line. It’s interesting that in nearly all musical scores, including those of experimental layout, there needs to be some system of decoding and mediation to translate mark into sound. Continue reading

Ajay Kapur – Electronic Sitars, Robotic Tablas, and Sarawati’s ElectroMagic :: April 3, 2008; 5 – 7 pm :: Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA.

TABLACENTRIC is thrilled to present Ajay Kapur, whose work revolves around one queston: “How do you make a computer improvise with a human?” Using the rules set forth by the north Indian classical tradition, Ajay strives to build new interfaces for musical expression by modifying the tabla, dholak and sitar with added microchips and sensor systems, while building robotic musical instruments which can be programmed to perform along with the human performer. Continue reading