Musical Chambers :: Imagine a musical house where the floorboards work like keys on an organ, a drumbeat plays to your heartbeat, and the walls sing. This is what famed street artist Swoon and her team of musicians and builders are in the middle of dreaming up: a fantastical, interactive, musical house in the middle of New Orleans — a beautiful gift to the city, built from an old Creole cottage, and open to the public.

BIORHYTHM: Music and the Body :: June 2, 2011 – August 6, 2011 :: Opening Reception: June 3; 6:00 – 9:00 pm :: Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, 540 W. 21st Street, New York, NY.

Why does a minor chord sound sad? Is there a formula for the perfect hit? Whistling, dancing, finger-snapping, and toe-tapping — what makes us do it? Find out when music and science join forces in an interactive bazaar of beats, sounds, and rhythm in the exhibition BIORHYTHM, created by the Science Gallery and presented at Eyebeam as part of the World Science Festival. Learn what drives sound manipulation and discover how different types of music evoke different emotions. Trace the power of an impactful pop hook in a song, measuring the way our brains and bodies react, down to the responses in our fingertips. Continue reading

From The New Materiality by Nathaniel Stern, Furtherfield.org; a review of the exhibition The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft:

“Soundw(e)ave, (Christy Matson’s) piece on show, is a self-referential textile, where the actual sounds of computerized Jacquard looms were used to create woven compositions. Her noisy sound waves were turned into three patterned pieces of fabric, made by hand-operated, computer-assisted and fully automated (Jacquard) looms, respectively – each weave growing progressively denser with the more advanced technologies used in their production. The piece, says Matson, was a huge turning point in her practice; it pointed her towards a kind of digital craftsmanship, where she was better able to place value on the ideas, materials and skillfulness needed to be an artisan across contemporary digital, craft and art domains. Continue reading

Brunel Electronic and Analogue Music (BEAM) Festival is a high-tech weekender. The festival takes place June 24- 26, 2011 at Brunel University in Uxbridge, London and features a programme of international artists working in music, sound and technology.

BEAM is now looking for submissions to the festival OPEN SPACE; a platform for artists to exhibit or perform their own work at the festival.We are offering a free weekend pass and accommodation on site to 10 selected OPEN SPACE artists. The deadline for all calls is 14th May 2011

BEAM OPEN SPACE submissions should refer to the broad themes of music & technology, interactivity, electronic music, music produced through unusual interfaces (including sonic robots!) and homemade instruments. Continue reading

Nancy Garcia :: April 9 – June 9, 2011 :: Opening: April 9; 7:00 – 10:00 pm :: Bas Fisher Invitational, 180 NE 39th Street, Suite 210, Miami, Florida.

Nancy Garcia’s interdisciplinary practice incorporates choreography, music/sound, video, performance, image making, and new media. Often slinging the viewer to the edges of performative events, Garcia draws attention to the exultant body, considering it as a site as well as a vehicle for sound and movement. For her first solo exhibition in Miami, Garcia shows a new body of work incorporating photography, a new video entitled Power Trio, and a concept audio compilation, Lover’s Alarm Clock, for which she asked artist friends to “create a sound you want your lover/s to wake up to.” Each track will be downloadable and sharable as a smartphone ringtone at www.loversalarmclock.com, and be available for listening in the gallery. Continue reading

Scale is a bio-art collaboration with neurobiologist/ engineer Malcolm MacIver, visual/ conceptual artist Marlena Novak, and composer/ sound designer Jay Alan Yim. It is being presented at STRP Festival, Eindhoven, Netherlands.

This audience-interactive installation involves electric fish from the Amazon River Basin. Twelve different species of these fish comprise a ‘choir’ whose sonified electrical fields provide the source tones for an immersive audiovisual environment. The interface for Scale incorporates custom-designed software, a hacked Wiimote ‘conductor’s baton’ that participants can use to ‘cue’ individual fish so their unadulterated tones (as well as digitally processed versions) can be heard through the audio system, a touchscreen panel to allow for changes in volume, and arrays of LEDs under each tank to provide visual feedback to visitors. Continue reading

Instrument For Unsent Letters | Audio Palimpsest :: Rebecca Adorno and Anis Haron :: Friday to Sunday, October 22 – 24, 2010 from noon to 6:00 p.m. :: Opening Reception: Friday, October 22, 2010 from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. :: at Harvestworks, 596 Broadway, #602, New York, NY 10012 :: Free

In Rebecca Adorno’s Instrument for Unsent Letters, letters from strangers are collected through a blog where people write entries dedicated to someone in an anonymous way. They are then published in the form of audio clips as part of the installation. The random-automatized plucking of custom-made string instruments, by servomotors, controls the play back of the narrations. Continue reading

Pamela Z: Baggage Allowance :: September 16-18, 2010; 8:00 pm :: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York, NY.

San Francisco-based artist Pamela Z presents her latest solo performance for voice, electronics, and interactive video that considers “baggage” in all its literal and metaphorical permutations. She is best-known for her signature style of experimental performance works that meld sampling technologies and live electronic processing with operatic bel canto and extended vocal techniques.

Drawing from her own extensive traveling as well as other travelers’ experiences, this new work contends with the ball-and-chain-ness of dragging one’s belongings all over the world. Through manipulation of layers of visual and sonic material through various custom controls and devices live on stage, Baggage Allowance scans and inventories the objects (and memories) we all cart around with us.

Scaffolding by Frozen Music l NWM2010 Afterhours:: Thursday, September 16, 2010 from 6-9 p.m. :: at the Miami Art Museum, 101 West Flagler Street, Miami :: members $5; non-members $15 :: For more information contact: RSVP@miamiartmuseum.org or 305.375.1704 ::

Scaffolding is a new three-hour long piece by Frozen Music created for Miami Art Museum in celebration of the exhibit New Work Miami 2010. In typical FM fashion, Scaffolding is designed to interact with aspects of the museum’s architecture to uncloak acoustical phenomena mostly hidden to the naked ear. This is achieved through sound projections emanating from a fifteen feet tall quadraphonic sound wall aimed at the building.

The word quadraphonic refers to four-speaker setups in a horizontal plane surrounding the listener. With Scaffolding, the members of FM reconfigure the quadraphonic-listening perspective by defining a vertical plane that can be experienced more like a tall movie screen (when listeners face it), or as projections from the building (when listeners face the museum). Continue reading

Moldover’s Controllerism Workshop :: September 29, 2010 – 6:00 p..m – 10:00 p..m, 18:00-22:00 :: NK Elsen str 52 2HH Neukoelln 12059 Berlin :: Participation is limited to 25 participants :: Pre-registration is required and can be done by sending an email to info@nkprojekt.de :: Fee: 25€

Hailed by 800,000 YouTube viewers as “The Godfather of Controllerism”, Moldover is the inspiration for a new generation of music makers. In this extensive 4-hour interactive workshop, Moldover will present all his knowledge and techniques related to controllerism and live electronic music performance.

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