Category: Concert

KISS2011: Exploring Sound Space

Can sound define a space? In sound, is there a Point-of-View or culturally-influenced focus of attention? Sound designers, musicians, audio engineers, composers, acousticians and others interested in “sound space” are invited to discuss these and other questions during the third annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2011), scheduled for 15-18 September 2011 in Porto, Portugal. Inspired by Portugal’s proud history of navigators who set out to explore beyond the known and visible horizon, the theme of this year’s symposium is “Explorando o espaço do som” (“Exploring Sound Space”) and will celebrate the sound designers, composers, and researchers who are exploring beyond the familiar horizons in sound and music.

 

Set in the nautically-inspired Casa Da Musica, architect Rem Koolhaas’ dramatic new music venue in Porto, the symposium promises four intensive days of workshops, keynotes, technical talks, films and live performances.

To cite just a few highlights:

  • A mathematician and co-editor of a new book on the Sonic Spaces of Music (Spazi sonori della musica) will discuss the public space defining and defined by the sounds of the Trevi Fountain in Rome;
  • Kyma practitioners will have opportunities to attend master classes, participate in interactive workshops and consulting sessions, and most importantly, to make connections with and to learn from fellow Kyma practitioners;
  • The author of a new text for teaching and learning Kyma (published in both English and Chinese) will describe his search for the SumOfSines disco club;
  • Plus there will be an abundance of technical talks on a wide range of topics including how to use the spectrum of a sound as a sequencer; techniques for data sonification; using sound to help people confront pain; how to create a dynamic sonic ecology; using context-free-grammars to simultaneously generate dance movements and trajectories through abstract timbre space; techniques for spectral modification & morphing; and more.

Evening performances are to include a screening of the very first science fiction film accompanied by a live-improvised electronic sound track generated by Kyma reconstructions of Luigi Russolo’s intonorumori instruments; a portion of an audio documentary on Holocaust survivor Ksenija Drobac; and a live-generated audio/video film about Galileo that uses Kyma to control VJ software via Open Sound Control (OSC). Other live musical performances will create sound spaces controlled by (among other things) dancers, RFID cards held by the audience, iPads, Wacom tablets, video position trackers, Continuum fingerboards, SoftStep pedal-boards, OSC, acoustic instruments, the acoustics of the room itself, and even a sensor-enhanced Teddy Bear!

For more details on the program, please see the preliminary program and join the mailing list to be kept up to date on future enhancements and additions.

Registration

Registration is open to all. You can register at any time, but there is a discount for those who register prior to 1 August: you can participate in all 4 days (with lunch included) for €120 (€40 for students). Casa da Musica has strictly enforced occupancy limits, so please register as soon as possible in order to reserve your spot: http://kiss2011.symbolicsound.com/registration

Online discussion

You are cordially invited to join in the pre-symposium discussion on the theme of Exploring Sound Space: http://www.pphilosophyofsound.org

Porto

Known as A Cidade Invicta (the unvanquished city), in honor of its citizens’ successful resistance of Napoleon’s attempted invasion, Porto’s history can be traced back at least as far as Roman times, with evidence of even earlier habitation by the Celts, Proto-Celts and even Phoenicians.

The ukulele has its origins in Portugal; Portuguese immigrants brought the cavaquinho, braguinha and the rajão, small guitar-like instruments with them to Hawaii where they were re-invented as the ukulele. Portuguese luthiers Cordoba Guitars and Antonio Pinto Carvalho (in Braga about an hour north of Porto) continue the tradition today. In Porto, you can audition a Portuguese 12-string guitar or a cavaquinho at Toni Das Violas, a music shop in the historic center.

Porto is also the official source of Port wine, a special red wine in which the fermentation process is interrupted by the addition of distilled grape spirits known as aguardente (roughly translated as fire water with teeth), leaving a higher sugar and a higher alcohol content. The resulting fortified wine is then aged in wood barrels prior to bottling.

Visiting Conímbriga, a well-preserved ancient Roman city and attached museum about an hour south of Porto, is practically like traveling to ancient Rome in the Tardis.

There are several historic cathedrals and monasteries in Porto which is also home to a vibrant Marranos community, the so-called crypto- or Sephardic Jews who continued to practice their religion even in the face of the forced-conversions during the Inquisition (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/priests-hunch-finally-uncovers-portos-hidden-holy-scrolls-520387.html)

Something about Porto seems to inspire artists who work with space. Not only is it the home of Casa da Musica, it’s also the birthplace of two Pritzker-prize-winning architects: Álvaro Siza who designed the central square in Porto, the Faculty of Architecture campus, and the contemporary art museum; and Eduardo Souto Moura whose award-winning work includes Estádio Municipal de Braga, the Burgo Tower in Porto and the Paula Rego Museum in Cascais among others.

Summary

What: The Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS 2011), an annual conclave of current and potential Kyma practitioners who come together to learn, to share, to meet, to discuss, and to enjoy a lively exchange of ideas, sounds, and music! This year’s theme is “Exploring Sound Space”

Presenters: Experts from the fields of music, sound art, sound design, mathematics, philosophy & audio engineering who use Kyma in their work.

Participants: Sound designers, musicians, audio engineers, composers, acousticians and others interested in “sound space” and the Kyma sound design language

When: 15-18 September 2011

Where: Porto, Portugal

Venue: Casa da Musica / Avenida da Boavista, 604-610 / 4149-071 Porto / Portugal

Cost: € 120, students € 40

Organizers: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto & Symbolic Sound Corporation with support from Casa da Musica & UT Austin|Portugal International Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies

Deadline: 1 August 2011 for early registration discount; registration open through 15 September 2011

More info: http://kiss2011.symbolicsound.com

Minibus Pimps’ Debut

John Paul Jones and Helge Sten (Deathprod) are the Minibus Pimps, a newly formed experimental electronic duo scheduled to debut at the Punkt Festival in Norway on 3 September, closely followed by an EU debut in Porto Portugal on 16 September at KISS2011.

Inspired by their recent collaboration in Supersilent, Jones and Sten employ electronics, samplers, processors, instruments, iPads and two Kyma systems to create instrumental improvisations ranging from the intricate to the ferocious!

This July, JPJ joined forces with Supersilent for an experimental electronics set at the Moldejazz Festival:

Minibus Pimps’ premiere performance is on 3 September Saturday evening at 22:00 at Punkt preceded by a lecture/demonstration seminar on how they are utilizing Kyma at noon at the University of Agder.

Summer Academy of Electronic Music at Future Music Oregon

Each year, Future Music Oregon hosts the Summer Academy of Electronic Music directed by Professor Jeffrey Stolet, this year assisted by his graduate teaching fellows Chi Wang and Simon Hutchinson.

This year’s course, for students from the Central Conservatory of Music, Peking University, and Shenyang Conservatory of Music,  ran from 17-31 July 2011 and covered the gamut from recording techniques to the basics of synthesis, and included a final concert of student compositions realized using Kyma.  Plans are already underway for Summer Academy of Electronic Music in the summer of 2012.

So, NU

Glen Hall and his electroacoustic improvising group So, NU will be performing at Studio 105 (105 Clarence Street) in London, Ontario on Friday, July 29 at 8:30 p.m.

So, NU is Bruce Cassidy – EVI (electronic valve instrument); Eugene Martynec – laptop and MIDIax; Glen Hall – saxophones, flutes, bass clarinet, WWII wind controller and Kyma).



Scot Solida Live @ KC.EM.FEST

 

Scot Solida is scheduled to be performing Kyma live with Christus and the Cosmonaughts as part of he 3rd Annual Kansas City Electro-music Festival 2011, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday July 22, 23, & 24, 2011. Streaming live at http://radio.electro-music.com, KC.EM.FEST will feature live performances, DIY workshops, improvisational collaborations, and more.

In addition to his live performance on Saturday night (July 23), Scot is going to be presenting a Kyma demo at 1 pm, Friday July 22.

The KC.EM.FEST is intended to promote experimental electronic music and musicians in the region and throughout the country and create a stronger network between these artists and the public and the entire event is free!

John Paul Jones & Supersilent

John Paul Jones will once again join forces with Helge Sten and Supersilent, this time for a performance at the Molde International Jazz Festival in Norway on 19 July 2011.

JPJ’s Kyma-enhanced bass is a fitting addition to Supersilent’s signature use of synthesis, looping, theremins, and Helge Sten’s own Kyma sound designs.  Jones’ first collaboration with Supersilent was at last year’s Punkt Festival, prompting John Kelman to write in All About Jazz:

…this was no conventional bass solo, as Jones began with relatively normal textures, but gradually moved to greater extremes, using ring modulation to create oblique harmonies, overdrive to create dense textures, and assorted other effects to create a piece that ebbed and flowed, building to periodic climaxes only to settle and begin the climb once again. Beautiful chords gave way to angular expressionism, as Jones delivered a short set that, for those unfamiliar with his post-Zep work, must have been a shock to the system, but set a clear context for the collaboration with Supersilent to follow.

One World 1

Composer Joel Chadabe‘s One World 1, a fixed media piece realized entirely in Kyma, will be performed as part of World Listening Day in New York City on Monday July 18 2011.  The piece, based on simultaneously projected images and sounds from New York and New Delhi expresses the essential unity of human hopes and aspirations, no matter the cultural or geographical context.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chadabe writes:

The primary concept behind One World is that we all, whatever the specifics of our different cultures and beliefs, share the same world through a common human bond.

“At the same time, it seems clear at this moment in history that the idea of sharing one world through a common human bond is a utopian goal rather than a current reality. It is one of the major problems of our age that inundated with information, much of it disturbing, we view the world today as a complex, turbulent and chaotic system of different nationalities, religions, cultures, and politics, as if the world were one large crowded city overwhelmed by urban noise. We all face the same dilemma. How do we interact with this world? How do we extract humanity from the chaos to focus on individual lives?

Listening to the World

On Monday July 18, Richard Lainhart is performing his Electronic Music Foundation-commissioned work Threshold for electric guitar, Kyma, and New York environmental sounds as part of the World Listening Day celebrations at New York University, Steinhardt Education Building, 35 West 4th Street, 6th Floor, NY, NY 10012. In collaboration with the Electronic Music Foundation and the New York Society of Acoustic Ecology, NYU’s Music Technology Program will present a program of compositions and field recordings based on the sounds of New York City, in honor of world renowned composer and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Shafer‘s 78th birthday. The NYU events will take place from 4:15PM to 9PM. More information