Music IS Rapid Transportation …from the Beatles to Xenakis :: Available November 30, 2010 ::
Editor and Concept: Daniel Kernohan :: by Lawrence Joseph, Dan Lander, Donal McGraith, Bill Smith, Alan Stanbridge, Scott Thomson & Vern Weber :: photos by Gordon Bowbrick, Herb Greenslade & Bill Smith :: Publisher: Charivari Press ::

A truly alternative look at music lists, not one that merely includes the obvious but shows the connections of popular music to the avant garde, the obscure, the experimental, the quirky, and the adventurous. Herein you will find a list of 500 artists from the familiar to the unknown. A list and a guide to musical pleasure sometimes close at hand and sometimes far afield. The book includes biographical essays of the eight contributors describing their musical journeys of discovery and the joy they derived from that exploration. Continue reading

Sneak preview of COMPOSING WITH PROCESS 2. 1, the second episode of the series on generative music :: by Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore :: Very soon available online. PDF: http://bit.ly/csDGIk

Summary
The second episode in the series looks at the use of formal systems in the composition and performance of musical works. It explains the diversity of approaches to musical systems using a range of technologies and processes. The episode asks how we might distinguish systems based procedures in music to other musical activities, and makes reference to technological development and implementation, structural complexity, and relationships to other musical traditions. We compare three tape-based approaches to composition that explore sound as a temporal and spatial phenomenon and refer to theoretical positions offered by notable artists working in this field. Continue reading

Modern Art Oxford has published a limited edition book, documenting Susan Philipsz: “You Are Not Alone”, commissioned for the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, and nominated for the 2010 Turner Prize.

Taking the original function of the building as her starting point, Philipsz developed a new sound work that engaged with the uniqueness of this historical site. Built in the 18th century, the Radcliffe Observatory was modelled on the first-century BC Tower of the Winds in Athens.

In her work, Philipsz recalls Guglielmo Marconi’s suggestion that sounds, once generated, never die; they fade but continue to reverberate as sound waves around the universe. Continue reading

Contemporary Music Review :: Volume 29, Issue 1 :: Special Issue: Virtual Scores and Real-Time Playing :: Arthur Clay and Jason Freeman, editors ::

Abstract:
Over the last decade, a growing number of composers have begun to use what is known as real-time notation in their work, and many have developed systems to facilitate its use in all types of performative situations. Although a community of practice around real-time notation is slowly emerging, there are few readily available tools for its creation, and little has been previously published about the technical, musical and design issues associated with its use.

We consider real-time music notation to be any notation, either traditional or graphic, which is created or transformed during an actual musical performance. However, the term has not been standardized, and various articles in this issue refer to real-time music notation using other terms, such as dynamic music notation, live scoring, virtual scoring, and reactive notation. Continue reading

evomusart 2011, 9th European Event on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design :: April 27 - 29, 2011 :: Torino, Italy :: Call for Papers: Deadline - November 22, 2010.

The use of biologically inspired techniques for the development of artistic systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as: visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound synthesis; architecture; video; poetry; and design.

evomusart 2011 is the ninth european event on Evolutionary Music and Art. Following the success of previous events and the growth of interest in the field, the main goal of evomusart 2011 is to bring together researchers who are using biologically inspired techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area. Continue reading

Organised Sound: An International Journal of Music and Technology: Volume 17, Number 1: Networked Electroacoustic Music :: Date of Publication: April 2012 :: Publishers: Cambridge University Press :: Issue co-ordinators: Ian Whalley (musik [at] waikato.ac.nz), Ken Fields (kfields [at] ucalgary.ca) :: Call for Submissions — Deadline: June 15, 2011.

Organised Sound has regularly covered networked music in the past, including a themed issue (vol. 10/3, 2005). The proliferation of Internet2 has resulted in a sustained practice of sonic and multimedia experimentation over high-speed research networks. This current themed issue aims to explore and document current work, practices and innovation in this new musical space. Are there new issues in aesthetics to be addressed in electroacoustic music as mediated by networks? What continuing practices and roles are being transformed and/or reinterpreted as a consequence? Continue reading

Read | Write Remix and the Rouelles of Media Production by Mette Birk, Mark Cantwell, Owen Gallagher, Eli Horwatt, Martin Leduc, Eduardo Navas, Tara Zepel — in Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art):

ABSTRACT: Remix and the Rouelles of Media Production explores concepts of remixing not only in content and form, but also in process. The aim of the collaboration is to evaluate how the creative process functions as a type of remix itself in a period when production keeps moving toward a collective approach in all facets of culture. The emphasis on video remixing is the result of a collaborative rewriting activity among the contributors, who each wrote independent paragraphs that went through constant revisions once combined as a single text. Continue reading

From a review of Chris Salter’s: Entangled and the Transformation of Performance :: Performance, All Over the Map: On Chris Salter’s “Entangled” by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] in Rhizome:

…Through the framing of an expanded and diverse range of practices as performative, Salter seeks to shift our understanding of what constitutes performance practice today. Indeed, in the first paragraph of his introduction, Salter goes on to claim that “everything has become performative” (p. xxi). And it is, I think, this proposition that is one of this book’s most important contributions to contemporary thinking and praxis. Salter points at a shift in the zeitgeist that occurred at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, when the euphoria of the virtual was replaced with a reconsideration and re-foregrounding of the physical body and, with it, “embodiment, situatedness, presence, and materiality.” (ibid) Continue reading

Researchers create sounds of animated things breaking by Bill Steele:

A delicate wine glass shatters on the floor. A rock is thrown through a window. A child smashes his piggy bank. Dramatic moments like these in an animated movie or video game or some future virtual reality won’t seem realistic unless the sound matches the action.

Read more: here.

[Image: Sound Art by Alan Licht] American Quarterly: Special Issue on Sound; Kara Keeling and Josh Kun, Guest Editors :: Call for Papers — Deadline: August 1, 2010.

The field of American studies has long been a familiar home to scholars interested in the social and cultural worlds of sound. Yet while visual culture has had a more visible presence on the pages of American Quarterly, sound has been heard in sporadic bursts, forceful whispers, and sudden critical noises. We propose a special issue of American Quarterly that highlights the key role of sound in the formation of central themes and areas of inquiry within contemporary American studies.

While the study of sound has gained momentum in the last three decades across a variety of disciplines, much remains to be gleaned from a rigorously interdisciplinary focus on sound in its cultural, political, technological, economic, socio-historical, spatial, temporal, affective, and formal contexts. Continue reading