Sound and Music Computing Conference 2009: Call for Music

The 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC) is glad to announce an open call for works. This year’s SMC will happen in Porto at Casa da Música, Porto’s most recent architectural landmark located in the new center of the city.

There will be five concerts at the conference that include a network performance. Three of the concerts will be at Casa da Música and the other two at a venue to be announced.

We particularly encourage submissions of works of electronic music that have a performance aspect to it, such as works for instrument(s) and electronic music, laptop performances, live electronic music, live coding, circuit bending, interactive installations, audio-visual performance, and interactive dance.

The conference concert programme will be selected by curators (Evan Parker, Nicolas Collins, Pauline Oliveros and Robert Rowe) in coordination with the Music Chairs (Carlos Guedes and Pedro Rebelo). The conference will provide a professional ensemble with soloists in the following instruments: Flute, Clarinet, Saxophones, Double Bass, Piano and Percussion.

All submissions must be made through an online system at http://smc2009.smcnetwork.org/. Please note there is a limit of 100MB per submission (please used compressed formats, e.g. mp3, ogg, mp4). If you wish to send larger files you should mail us a CD/DVDs to the following address:

SMC 09 C/O Carlos Guedes
INESC-Porto
Rua Dr. Roberto Frias 378
4200-465 Porto
Portugal

Call for Student works
The 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference is also glad to announce a call for student works. Undergraduate and Postgraduate students from all European Schools are encouraged to submit works, following the guidelines proposed in the main call for music. When submitting the works for the student call, you have to submit a proof of enrollment at a European School or University.

Important dates for both submissions:
Submission deadline: April 17
Notification of acceptance: May 15

All questions should be addressed to Carlos Guedes cguedes[at]inescporto[dot]pt or to Pedro Rebelo p[dot]rebelo[at]qub[dot]ac[dot]uk.

Call for participation: FTM Workshop at BEK

In March BEK will be hosting a one-week workshop providing an introduction to the Ircam libraries FTM, MnM, Gabor and MnM. This one-week workshop will look into the basics and the advanced use of the FTM&Co extensions for Max/MSP for interactive real-time musical and artistic applications.

The basic idea of FTM is to extend the data types exchanged between the objects in a Max/MSP patch by complex data structures such as matrices, sequences, dictionaries, break point functions, tuples and whatever might seem helpful for the processing of music, sound and motion capture data. It also comprises visualization and editor components, and operators (expressions and externals) on these data structures, together with file import/export (SDIF, MIDI, …) operators.

As examples of applications in the areas of sound analysis, transformation and synthesis, gesture following, and manipulation of musical scores, we will look at the parts and packages of FTM that allow arbitrary-rate signal processing (Gabor), matrix operations, statistics, machine learning (MnM), corpus-based synthesis (CataRT), sound description data exchange (SDIF), and Jitter support. The presented concepts will be tried and confirmed by applying them to programming exercises of real-time musical applications, and free experimentation.

The workshop is led by Diemo Schwarz.

BIOGRAPHY
Diemo Schwarz is a researcher–developer in real-time applications of computers to music with the aim of improving musical interaction, notably sound analysis–synthesis, and interactive corpus-based concatenative synthesis.

Since 1997 at Ircam (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique-Musique) in Paris, France, he combined his studies of computer science and computational linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, with his interest in music, being an active performer and musician. He holds a PhD in computer science applied to music from the University of Paris, awarded in 2004 for the development of a new method of concatenative musical sound synthesis by unit selection from a large database. This work is continued in the CataRT application for real-time interactive corpus-based concatenative synthesis within Ircam’s Real-Time Music Interaction (IMTR) team.

PRACTICAL INFO
The workshop takes place at BEK, Bergen, Norway, March 9-13 2009, and ends with a live event/concert at Landmark on the evening of Friday March 13, featuring Diemo Schwarz, Vicotria Johnson (electric violin) and the South-African sound artist James Webb.

Participation: Please sent a brief e-mail providing motivation and bio to bek[AT]bek[DOT]no by February 5 2009. Participation is free, but participants are expected to cover travel and stay themselves. BEK might be able to help arranging hotel at reduced rate for participants. If this is of intererest, please state so when appliying to participate.

Participants are expected to have prior knowledge of Max.

Links:

http://www.bek.no/

http://imtr.ircam.fr/
http://ftm.ircam.fr/
http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/Gabor
http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/MnM
http://imtr.ircam.fr/index.php/CataRT

http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/schwarz/
http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/schwarz/mtbf/

Call for participation, sound designs, posters, demos: Sonic Interaction Design Workshop

Sonic Interaction Design and its relation to Film and Theatre sound design

SID Workshop at the University of York

Date: 2 April 2009 (followed by SID Management Committee on 3 April 2009)

Registration to the Workshop:
Please send an email by the 15 March 2009 with the subject line Registration York SID Workshop at sp148@york.ac.uk

Introduction
The discipline of Sonic Interaction Design (SID) investigates ways of conveying information, data and object characteristics through sound in interactive contexts. This field of research has become increasingly important and urgent as the technology available has become more powerful and mobile due to the process of miniaturization. Research regarding SID is relatively new, however, the practice of designing sounds to accompany, represent or evoke actions and objects has a longer history since Sound Designers have been creating new sounds for objects in Theatre and Film for many, many years. This knowledge and practical experience is the logical starting point for the new research field of SID.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together practitioners in the fields of Film and Theatre and researchers in Sonic Interaction Design to discuss and exchange knowledge and practice in the field. This is a rare opportunity for a highly interdisciplinary meeting of people who usually work in different contexts, but who are interested in similar issues. We hope that this meeting will stimulate discussion and produce fruitful collaborations.

Workshop Invited Speakers
Prof Mary Luckhurst, Department of Theatre, Film and TV, The University of York
Daniel Hug, Vertiefungsrichtung Interactiondesign, Interaction Design Program | Game Design Program, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Zurich
Annabelle Pangborn, Head of Editing, Sound and Music, National Film and TV School (UK)

Others to be confirmed

Call for Sound Designs

Experimenting with Sonic Interaction Design
A difficult question in Sonic Interaction Design is to identify ways in which design ideas can be sketched, tested, represented and discussed. One possibility is to set a scene or context in which a person interacts with objects. For this scene, a variety of sounds may be appropriate although, this will depend on the particular interactive experience the designer is attempting to create via sound for the person interacting with the objects. Only the people interacting directly with the objects (and perhaps external observers) can then tell the designer if their experience effectively related to the initial intentions of the designer communicated via the sounds.

Following this idea, in this workshop, we have set a small theatrical scene, involving interactions with sounding objects, which is open to different interpretations and performances, and we set out to perform it with different sets of sounds. The designers will have a context, objects and a setting for which to create appropriate sounds, the actor will respond and react to the sounds (and therefore the objects) as a person could do when using those objects in a real situation and finally the audience will be able to observe the scene and then discuss how well the sounds have communicated the intended experience. In this workshop, we will explore this “theatrical” representation of sonic interaction designs with a twofold aim:

– To discuss the effectiveness of the sonic interaction designs proposed in light of the original designer’s intentions and the feedback produced by the actors and the audience;

– To evaluate the advantages and limitations of this “theatrical” method as a tool for testing and evaluating sonic interaction designs.

We invite submissions of originally designed sounds (in .wav or .aiff format) for the actions and objects of the following theatrical scene (download scene text ).

The sound files should be accompanied by:

1) a document clearly stating which sound file corresponds to which action/object in the scene;

2) a second document which should report briefly the sound designer’s interpretation and setting (time and place) of the scene, the designer’s intentions for the design of each sound and the technical strategies used to design each sound.

Actors will perform the scene with the selected sound designs on the day of the workshop. The actors will rehearse the scene a few days in advance but only knowing the setting (time and place) decided by the sound designer for the scene. The performance of the scene will depend upon the response from the actors to the sounds proposed for the scene. The actors will then prepare a document reporting their understanding of the sounds.

After the performance, during the workshop, audience, actors and designers will be given some time to discuss how successfully the sounds were at communicating the initial designer’s intentions, which will be revealed to both the actors (interacting directly with the objects) and the audience (observers of the interaction).

A final discussion will draw conclusions on this “theatrical” method of testing and evaluating sonic interaction designs.

Submission details
Format: see details above.
Submission deadline: 9 February 2009
Acceptance notification: 28 February 2009
Submission of sound files and documents via http://www.mediafire.com/ and email to sp148@york.ac.uk

Call for Posters/Demos
We invite demos and poster presentations on the subject of Sonic Interaction Design that are also of interest in the contexts of theatre, or more generally the performing arts, and cinema.

Submission details
Format: an abstract of max 500 words
Submission deadline: 31 January 2009
Acceptance notification: 28 February 2009
Email submission to: sp148@york.ac.uk

EAM meta-bibliography

I’ve extended and moved the bibliography to here, since it was a bit difficult to read in blog format.

(The EAM meta-bibliography is a bibliography of electroacoustic music bibliographies. It is a spin-off from my master’s thesis in library and information science, and covers websites, books and journal articles that list items of interest to EAM composers and researchers.)

Hz #13

Hz #13 presents:

[ARTICLES]

“Program” System of Digital Art:”BOOM! Fast and Frozen Permutation” – Taiwan-Australia New Media Art Exhibition
by Yu-Chuan Tseng
Yu-Chuan Tseng reports on Taiwan-Australia New Media Art Exhibition from the perspective: “An important element of digital computer technology … has digital art features of aesthetic concepts and behavioral structure….’program’ is an important factor in constructing the work.”

Games: The Art of Making, Bending, and Breaking Rules
by Andrew Yashar Ames
“In interactive art, the observer and the work are constructed by rules that can be bent or broken, but cannot be absent.” Andrew Y. Ames examines “Game-based art… [with] implied and explicit rules that artists expose and exploit for aesthetic and ideological purposes.”

The Miracles of Feedback
by Mario van Horrik
“This paper deals with my fascination for acoustic feedback… I want to express my doubts, theories, and questions, as well as our motives and enthusiasm for using this medium.” Sound artist Mario van Horrik explains his involvement over two decades with acoustic feedback experiments.

Hz vs Church
by Novi_sad
Sound artist/composer Novi_sad’s project “‘Hz vs Church’ aims to use Churches (or other big sized public buildings) as post loudspeakers in order to create, unfold and play live various sounds which appear in the ‘aural surface’ by using and manipulating in real time different kinds of frequencies.”

We Are Not Alone
by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
“Network and information technologies, with a mutagen leap, directly connect the mind of the human being to hyper-contents and to hyper-contexts, creating perspectives that are totally new.” Iaconesi/Persico on their projects which emerge as one of the possibilities/directions network technology brings forward.

Intimate Transactions: Close Encounters of Another Kind
by Tony Fry
“Crucially, the interactive intent of the work was to create a means to reflect upon a particular kind of experience – the experience of our being relationally connected as a collective body.” Writer/theorist Tony Fry on Keith Armstrong(creative director)’s “Intimate Transactions,” and its link to Ecosophy.

[NET ART]

Pollen Soup
by Pierre Proske

Sharedscapes – Points of View on Landscapes
by Grégoire Zabé

Cityscapes
by Myron Turner

Passivitate Imunitass (Activista)
by Poderiu

88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (To Be Played with the Left Hand)
by David Clark

———–

Hz is an on-line journal published by the non-profit art organization Fylkingen in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen is the oldest forum for experimental music and intermedia art in Sweden. Throughout its history Fylkingen has been known to be a driving force in the Swedish art scene to introduce and promote yet-to-be-established art forms, the examples of which include Bartok, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Electro-Acoustic Music as well as Stelarc in recent years. Our members are leading composers, musicians, dancers, performance artists and visual artists in Sweden. For more information on Fylkingen, please visit http://www.hz-journal.org/n4/hultberg.html.

Sachiko Hayashi/Hz