Juergen Staack – Transcription – Image — Radio Exhibition :: December 20-21, 2009; 6:00 pm – 11:00 am :: Kanal 103, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.

A Sound Image by Juergen Staack will be broadcast approximately on every 30 minutes during the radio program!

The sound-files are descriptions of images that were destroyed after they were transcribed. The descriptions are in different languages (Amharic, Akan-Twi, Sorbic, Catalan, Chinese, Hindu, Japanese, Thai, Estonian, German, …) The most abstract description is in Ainu (7 native speakers left). The descriptions are between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, and there are about 30 different Images/ Description/ Languages. Continue reading

A “speaking piano” reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at World Venice Forum 2009.

Breakthrough — an experimental 12 hour event distributed across Berlin locations, inter-network and radio space :: June 27, 2009; 12 noon – midnight.

The term breakthrough describes a sudden shift in understanding or technologies, and, finally, a clearing (Lichtung), an entry into unknown and unmapped territories. An enclosure is breached allowing access to another, totally unforeseen state or space. Communication is thus implied, a new form of exchange, perhaps between two otherwise unconnected domains, between the living and the dead, between many worlds. What does the sheer possibility of a breakthrough imply for communication between the past and the future?

Breakthrough, as event, signals a change in direction, a pointing towards new ways of actively describing and creating the world. Continue reading

Making Music with the Java Programming Language – panel discussion with Nick Didkovsky, Andrew Brown, Frank Greco, Robert Keller, Matt Warman :: June 5, 2009; 1:30 – 2:30 pm :: JavaOne, Moscone Center, North Hall 124, San Francisco.

The above will be participating in a session called “Making Music with the Java Programming Language” and demonstrating Java Music Specification Language (algomusic.com). You can see the full content catalog for Java One here.

“… As a musician/ composer I am studying new digital forms of notation and especially the replacement of oral instructions and oral transmissions by what I call “encapsulated traditions” which can be likened to software manuals.

Notations are interesting entities, because they usually are not artworks themselves but invite actions that produce artworks.

Usually, throughout different musical cultures, notations constitute that part of a performative action that someone (author, cultural environment etc.) considers non-contingent on the performance context i.e. the essence of the work. E.g. western music notation has struggled over centuries to define pitch (vulgo: melody) and durations (vulgo: rhythm) in notationally unambiguous ways, where chinese music notation was more concentrated on pitch and timbre (e.g. how to play a note). Continue reading

Music, Language, Thought :: February 28, 2009; 10:00 am -5:00 pm :: New York University, Silver Center of Arts and Science, 100 Washington Square East, Department of Music, Room 220, 2nd Floor (Enter at Washington Place Doors).

Music, Language, Thought is a new interdisciplinary event series organized by graduate students within New York University’s Music and Comparative Literature Departments. Broadly speaking, the series focuses on the relationship between music and language, and our speakers will examine its theoretical ramifications for politics, aesthetics and historiography. The project stems from ongoing conversation and collaboration between graduate students within these two departments, and will continue on an annual basis. Continue reading

[Image: Garrett Phelan] Garrett Phelan works and lives in Dublin, Ireland. In recent years Phelan has focussed his practice on extensive explorations into the formation of opinion and the absolute present, particularly manifested through independent FM radio transmission projects, drawing, video, photography and web based projects in both gallery and non gallery environments.

At what point will common sense prevail, 26 sound works to be presented for a 5 year period, was commissioned by the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and curated by René Zechlin. It marks the second phase of a series of projects exploring the formation of opinion; it deals with how cognition occurs in conversation, discussion or debate. Continue reading

imposition – a language-driven sound installationa – by John Caley and Giles Perring :: April 17, 5:00-6:30 pm (EDT) :: Rockefeller Library, Brown University, Second Floor Computer Cluster (and elsewhere in the building) :: BRING YOUR LAPTOP :: part of Transforming the Student’s Experience as Scholar.

imposition emerges from translation, a series of pieces which were developed, in turn, from overboard, our first essay in ambient poetics. imposition uses the same texts and procedures as translation. It continues an investigation of iterative, procedural removal from one text or language to another. Continue reading

Diapason gallery for sound and intermedia presents Alessandro Bosetti and Christian Kesten’s Mask/Mirror, a performance :: March 29, 2008; 8:00 pm :: Diapason, 882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street), 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY.

A few months ago I wrote a note to myself: “Try to create a mask that that doesn’t have anything to do with anything” and kept wondering what that could mean until I started to imagine Mask/Mirror. Mask/Mirror a sampler to process recordings of spoken language in real time… The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and in formulating utterances. Continue reading

voiceoverhead – A project by Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal featuring Casper Cordes, Harun Farocki, William Furlong, Sharon Hayes :: until March 1, 2008 :: February 29, 2008: An evening of live-performances – Casper Cordes & Ellen Ugelvik; Discoteca Flaming Star; Will Holder; Guy-Marc Hinant – subrosa; Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal :: SMART Project Space, Arie Biemondstraat 105-113, Amsterdam.

In their collaborative practice Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal deal with audio-acoustics and storage media used for acoustic material. Their core interests are audio-recordings, particularly of language, spoken word and speech, original footage taken from radio-broadcastings or other archives. Continue reading