Lucid Possession, the uncanny manifestation of a virtual multiple personality, combines music, text, dimensional robotic screens and projections to create a character, like an instrument, that speaks, sings, and dances. On-stage performers Toni Dove and composer, Mari Kimura control the entity’s physical and virtual movements, singing and speaking databases, in a form like cinematic bunraku. This short demo is a trio for two humans and one virtual entity. Lucid Possession is Winner of The Eugene McDermott Award, M.I.T.

Jan 15: Shared program with Alchemy of Light with Ruth Sergel and Peter von Salis. Jan 16: Showcase followed by Interactive Lecture Demonstration with Toni Dove and Mari Kimura.

Composer / guitarist Bryce Dessner, lead guitarist in The National and The Clogs, and acclaimed visual artist Matthew Ritchie join forces for two events that blur the lines between indie rock, ambient music, contemporary classical music, and installation art. They will be joined by sound designer David Sheppard, guitarist Aaron Dessner, composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, and student musicians from MIT and Wellesley College.

On January 28 Dessner & Ritchie will present Darkness Visible, a lecture/performance concerning their recent collaboration, The Morning Line. Commissioned by Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary, this massive installation, an outdoor ‘anti-pavilion’ laced with 58 sound speakers, was the sensation of the 2008 Venice Architecture Bienalle and Seville Biennale and will continue traveling the world in 2009-2010. Ritchie describes the piece as “an anti-pavilion, not an enclosure, but an opening of space, a conversion of place into language.” For the Seville Biennale, Dessner, Sheppard and Ziporyn created Propolis, a 25-minute spatial work for live and pre-recorded bass clarinet and real-time sound processing. On January 28, Darkness Visible will include a live performance of Propolis, slides and footage of Morning Line, and a chance to interact with the artists in extended dialogue and question-and-answer period.

A concert of Dessner’s music will take place the following evening, January 29, at 8 pm. This will include the Boston-area premiere of Dessner & Ritchie’s Raphael, a multi-media work featuring video by Ritchie, and live music performed by fellow National guitarist Aaron Dessner and a chamber orchestra of MIT & Wellesley students, performing on electric guitars and amplified strings. The concert will also include Dessner’s Blind Willy for electric guitar and string quartet, as well as duos by the Dessner brothers and live sound processing by David Sheppard.

Bryce Dessner, primarily known for his work in indie rock, is a classically trained guitarist and composer whose work has been featured in film, installation art, and new music venues including the Kitchen and the New York Guitar Festival. An avid promoter of boundary-crossing musical innovation, he is founder and artistic director of Cincinnati’s Music Now Festival, where he has brought together such diverse artists as Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors, the Bang on a Can All-stars, Benjamin Verdery and Grizzly Bear. As co-founder of Brassland Records, he has provided a haven for such artists as Doveman, Nico Muhly, and Erik Friedlander. Equally at home in concert halls and rock clubs, equally adept at performing complex musical scores and rocking out, he represents the new breed of American musician in the 21st century.

Matthew Ritchie exploded onto the art scene at the 1997 Whitney Biennial: the Boston Globe describes his work as ‘mind-bending.” His work has been featured at the Houston Contemporary and MassMOCA, and his Games of Chance and Skill,’ commissioned by MIT’s Percent-for-Art program, is a permanent work at MIT’s Zesiger Center. Evan Ziporyn is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars and Artistic Director of Gamelan Galak Tika. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT.

This residency is sponsored by MIT Music and Theater Arts, with additional support from MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. For more information, please write info [at] beelinefestival.com or call 617-452-2302.

Werwolf is an exhibition that includes drawings after Heiner Müller’s texts naïvely depicting werewolves. A noise performance, working tremblings and vibrations, will open the exhibition. Treated voices coming from the German radio in 1943, from some recordings found at the Deutsche Rundfunkarchiv of Frankfurt am Main will be used. Werwolf is also a contribution to Art’s Birthday 2009, the performance will be live-streaming from Naples to the international projects website. “Art’s Birthday” is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.

LargoBaracche is an artistic laboratory gallery situated in the heart of the Spanish Quarters, a free, dynamic space, that it half employs the true and fundamental art like of territorial development, using the folklore like a fort point of reference, in order to transform it in work, that also it is produced cultural, exportable and recognizable, to national and international levels.

Werwolf (German for “Werewolf”, the spelling “Wehrwolf” is incorrect) was the name given to a last-ditch Nazi plan, developed during the closing months of the Second World War, to create a German commando force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through the territory of Germany itself.

The world “Werwolf” also reminds to “Wehrwolf”, “Wehr” meaning “defense” in german (all the german military forces were called “Wehrmacht”, which means “defense force”).

At the beginning, Werwolf had 5000 members from the SS (Schutzstaffel) and from H (Hitler Jugend). Those recruits was prepared especially on guerrilla tactics. At one point Operation Werwolf turned in a terroristic organization, and during the last weeks of the war it was completely broke up by Heinrich Himmler and Wilhelm Keitel. On march 23, 1945 Joseph Goebbels gave a speech - known as the “Werwolf Speech” - in which he urged every German to fight to the death.

The partial dismantling of the organised Werwolf, combined with the effects of the “Werwolf” speech, caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were actually carried out by Werwolf members, as opposed to solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS.

From August 18 to September 6, 1997, Australia’s The Listening Room presented Sensorium Connect / Body Morph, a generative composition by Andrew Garton and comprised of sounds sampled from performances by Stelarc. Sensorium Connect was the first Listening Room project entirely produced for online and was streamed for its entire six week duration.

On January 11, KunstRadio broadcasts an entirely new version of this work. Sensorium Re-Connected commemorates the work of The Listening Room and the contribution this piece made to furthering radio and sound art online in Australia.

Sensorium Re-Connected is both composition and process. The composition is comprised of sounds created by the artist, Stelarc, in collaboration with Rainer Linz, in performances of Ping BodyAmplified Body from the series. The sounds include brain waves, heartbeat and blood flow. The sounds of Stelarc’s third mechanical hand are also amplified.

Sensorium Re-Connected also includes sampled sounds triggered from an angle transducer that measures the bending angle of the legs and a sensor that monitors CO2 in the breathing. “These variations make it a much less predictable signal and a much more beautiful resulting sound. The sounds that are indicative of the physiological function of the body, and the mechanical operation of the third hand are rendered neutral in their associations so that they don’t sound like a musical instrument or natural sound or some kind of other technological object that we know and identify with”. (Stelarc, 1996)

Acoustically what’s happening in Stelarc’s performances is a kind of aura is generated around the body. “When internal body signals are amplified they are, in a sense, emptied from the body into the room within which the body is performing. The humanoid shape of the body that originally contains the sound now becomes the cuboid space of the room”. (Stelarc, 1996)

In Sensorium Re-Connected, these sounds are further emptied into the radio broadcast spectrum and further, into what may be referred to as the suspended ever-evolving space of the Internet: an acoustical landscape translating from humanoid form to cuboid space to space as instrument.

Generative music is algorithmically driven to produce variation, ongoing evolution and development of sounds. The process of creation, performance and distribution of music is changing. The Internet is an amorphous infrastructure for the liberation of creative ideas and is no doubt influencing the work of artists the world over. It is a time of enriching exploration and discovery that is akin to the period during which Francesco Pierro was to discover perspective and the body’s relationship to space. — Andrew Garton 1997

For more information including the paper Breaking The Loop: Music is Dead, see the wiki.

Andrew Garton lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is a composer, performer, and Internet artist with an extensive background in experimental electronic composition and the performing and digital arts. He has a strong interest in public communications, with many years’ experience working on public access computer network projects in Australia, Southeast Asia and Indochina. In recent years Garton has merged his Internet activities with his interest in computer-based music systems and has been commissioned to create numerous networked sound pieces and installations, both streaming and generative compositions. Garton is co-founder of the Web production house, Toy Satellite, principal artist of Secession Records, and a director of Community Communications Online (c2o), a member of the UN-affiliated Association for Progressive Communications. Recent work explores the reclamation of public space via generative sound-scapes and the Internet as theatre of suspended space. Garton performs solo and collaborative works under the names, “lost_time_accident”, “Fierce Throat” and the “Electro Pathological Consort”.

Telematic Skip, instigated by Dan Godston (CHICAGO - Brown Rice), involves performers who are in remote locations with a live audio and video feed between those locations. The initial plan is to use Skype but this could change to another live medium for communication depending on the circumstances — stay tuned. Telematic Skip will be broadcast live, at live.

BOSTON at Mobius: Bob Raymond, video; Lewis Gesner, toothpicks; Tom Plsek, trombone; Jane Wang, double bass and toys, possible guest: Grant Smith, toys.

TAIWAN at Taipei Artist Village: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, vocals; Hui-Chun Lin, cello; Elita Lin, dance.

CHICAGO at Brown Rice: Brent Gutzeit, electronics, guitar; Dan Godston, trumpet, small instruments; Steve Maxwell Jr., drums; Patrick Dinnen, upright bass, with tech support by Chad Clark.

Mills College celebrates 80 years of musical innovation as it reopens the historic Mills Concert Hall after an extensive 18-month renovation with a music festival featuring some of the world’s leading contemporary musicians. The six-concert series, Giving Free Play to the Imagination, will include musical innovators such as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Joan Jeanrenaud, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, the Arditti Quartet, and Fred Frith, among many others, and will celebrate Mills College’s leadership in defining contemporary music.

At the heart of the aesthetic and educational mission of music at Mills is a tradition of experimentalism. Breaking free from preconceived notions about music, Mills composers and performers embrace new sounds and musical forms while pursuing creative, exploratory, and individual approaches to music. It is this unique approach that has made Mills College the destination for sonic pioneers. And it is why some of the top names in contemporary music—Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, Joëlle Léandre, Phil Lesh, John Cage, Anthony Braxton, and Pauline Oliveros, to name just a few—have been part of the faculty and student population at Mills.

“Because of our long history of support for an experimentalist tradition across barriers of genre, cultural identity, or perceived hierarchy, Mills is uniquely placed to cultivate, appreciate, and celebrate musical pioneers,” said Fred Frith, head of the Music Department and internationally known composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser.

Mills music faculty, students, and visiting artists from varied musical traditions come from as far away as Argentina, China, France, and Turkey to study musical forms from electronic music to classical performance to jazz improvisation.

“Ever since renowned French classical composer and Mills’ professor Darius Milhaud encouraged soon-to-be-renowned jazz pianist composer and Mills’ student Dave Brubeck to ‘be himself,’ our students have been discovering how to ‘be themselves’ with single-handed determination,” said Frith. “As a Music Department that encourages experimentation while respecting tradition, we are second to none.”

“We are continually inspired by the influence and impact of our music graduates in their artistic pursuits,” said Janet L. Holmgren, president of Mills College. “Whether they are composers, performers, professors, or music producers or whether they are working in the film, video game, or music industries, or in leading technology and digital media companies, our graduates reflect the College’s mission to encourage creativity and experimentation, all within a global context.”

Giving Free Play to the Imagination also marks the completion of the $11 million renovation of the Mills College Concert Hall, to be renamed for well-known Bay Area philanthropist and Mills alumna Jeannik Méquet Littlefield. Designed by noted California architect Walter Ratcliff Jr., the Mills Music Building has received widespread acclaim since its opening in 1928.

Improvements to the Concert Hall include new acoustic panels for enhanced sound quality, an expanded stage area for larger performances, installation of a dedicated mixing station, soundproofing for performance and recording quality, new seating and improved layout for a better audience experience. The multicolored frescoes and murals created by California painter Raymond Boynton were restored by two teams of art conservators to return them to their original vibrant colors.

The festival’s name, in fact, derives from Boynton’s vision for his murals, “to produce a scheme of decoration that would give free play to the imagination.”

Robert Griffin Byron is a multimedia sound and visual artist, currently studying for his Ph.D. in Brown University’s MEME program. In 2006, he earned his M.M. in Computer Music Composition from Indiana University while on a Fulbright Fellowship. In 2000, he was Composer-in-Residence at the Peggy Glanville-Hick’s House, and he earned his B.Mus. in Composition from Edith Cowan University in 1997. More >>

Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska will discuss Quartet (aka Absolut Quartet which was commissioned by the Absolut Visionaries project in 2007). Awarded a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Interactive Art in 2008, Quartet is installed at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria until December 2009. More >>

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. It is one of 32 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo at turbulence dot org.

In Memory Like Water, which revisits the idea of water as a metaphor for memory, the voices of people recounting their earliest memories are used to shape the sounds of water in motion. In each of eight loudspeakers, an individual is paired with a watery location (streams, rivers and lakes recorded in Ontario, Vermont and New York State). The streams of sound are continuous; for the most part the original voice recordings are submerged, and used to shape the water by imposing on it their frequency content, rather than being heard directly. Whispers of the voices occasionally become directly audible, however, especially when listening to one speaker at close range.

Matt Rogalsky’s work as a media artist often focuses on exploration of abject, invisible/inaudible, or ignored streams of information. Since 1985 his performances and installations have been seen and heard around North America and Europe. Most recently he presented the installation When he was in high school in Texas, Eric Ryan Mims used a similar arrangement to detect underground nuclear tests in Nevada, in a 2006 solo show at the Agnes Etherington Art Center in Kingston Ontario. A double CD documenting the past ten years of live performances, also entitled Memory Like Water, is available imminently on XI Records.

In 1963 the French Fluxus artist, Robert Filliou, declared January 17 to be the 1,000,000th birthday of art which for some decades now has been celebrated worldwide. As in the previous years, in 2009 artists all over the world will organise a networked birthday party for art.

Kunstradio is collaborating with Experimental Studio of Slovensky Rozhlas, IMA (Institute of Media Archaeology) and Tilos Radio Budapest for a two-day-happy-birthday-event, as usual online, on site and on air. The “Fête Permanente” will take place at the exhibition Magical Soundmachines at the Kulturfabrik Hainburg on the shore of the Danube, close to Vienna and even closer to Bratislava. “Magical Soundmachines” presents a range of unique historical sound generators, recorders and transmitters – and they are here to be played.

TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures. This all-analog set is performed entirely live without the use of computers, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface and audience display. In this way, TONEWHEELS aims to open up the “black box” of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see.

In this workshop, participants will learn about different optoelectronic components (photodiodes, photoresistors, phototransistors and photoelectric cells) and how they can be used to create sound from natural or electronic light sources in our everyday world, as well as from lasers and other modulated light sources. Circuits to drive motors in order to create hand-drawn spinning “tonewheels” will also be shown.

xxxxx_micro_research [Berlin] is an independent research centre focusing on the expanded construction and experience of free software and open hardware.

About the instructor: Derek Holzer [USA 1972] is a sound artist who has performed live audiovisual sets using laptops and the Pure Data programming language since 2001. Becoming frustrated with the performance limitations of the computer, he began new experiments with all-analog, light-driven systems in the summer of 2007 which led to the TONEWHEELS live performance. Since then, TONEWHEELS has been performed in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Estonia, Poland and Belgium.