Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice invites you to the following seminar exploring Aspects of Current Research
into Improvisation and Performance; a short performance by the Ecosonic Ensemble featuring the Ouija Board will be followed by a discussion lead by the specially invited guest speaker Taina Riikonen, Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Sibelius Academy in Finland :: March 18, 2009; 4:00 pm :: Performance Laboratory, M108, Media Block, London College of Communication, Elephant and Castle.

The discussions will explore some of the following areas: the roles of instruments (acoustic/ electronic/ mixed) as cultural and material producers of musical interaction; the sonic and verbal definition processes of authorities in the improvisation; the different fine-textured nuances of embodied communication in rehearsal/ performance processes; embodiment, collective authorities and electronics. Continue reading

Playable Media: A New Research Focus at UC Santa Cruz Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA Program; under the direction of Noah Wardrip-Fruin :: Applications Due February 15 for Fall 2009 Admission.

UC Santa Cruz is pleased to announce an MFA for artists working with computer games, software toys, interactive fictions, rhetorical simulations, and related playable forms. The university’s Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA program has added Playable Media as a research focus for its collaborative faculty-student projects. Applications to the DANM MFA program for Fall 2009 are being accepted through February 15, and are encouraged from the broad diversity of artists who create work that invites and structures play. Continue reading

Rust Belt / Bayou by Julia Christensen [Needs Flash Player and Speakers] - Rust Belt / Bayou is an aural exploration of two cities: Cleveland, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana. For the past several years, Christensen’s artistic practice has been based in extensive travel throughout the United States, surveying the ways in which communities are changing in the shadow of corporate real estate development.

During these travels, she has often been struck by the similarities between Cleveland, a city of the Rust Belt, and New Orleans, a city of the bayou. Both cities dwell on the shores of bodies of water with global reach: Cleveland on Lake Erie, New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Continue reading

[From a photo by Robert Scoble who also took the tour] Erica Naone visited Microsoft’s anechoic chamber while touring their new research building in Redmond, WA. The chamber “a room… built to suppress echoes” is used in microphone and loudspeaker research. She writes about her visit in Technology Review.

From Naone’s article: “This is a room that simulates the absence of a room,’ said Ivan Tashev, a software architect in the speech technology group at Microsoft Research. I walked in through two sets of doors, walking precariously in heels over a mesh suspended above the floor, which is covered by the same alabaster-colored triangular cushions that fill the wall and ceiling. Tashev’s voice seemed to come from far away as he went on explaining that the triangular shapes trap and dampen echoes before they can reflect from one of the surfaces in the room.” Continue reading