Lu Minjie & Han Yanmin at Sichuan Conservatory of Music

On May 24, 2012, Sichuan Conservatory electronic music professors Lu Minjie, Bai Xiaomo, and Han Yanmin presented the first in what is to be a series of seminars on “intermedia music”.  Hosted by Professor Yao Qi , the lecture was attended by the Electronic Music Department staff and students as well as many Electronic Music representatives in China.

Lu Minjie gave an overview of the development of new media art and described the creative process employed in her four-channel electronic music composition The Watching Tuvas. Bai Xiaomo described some new installation works created by the New Media Art group at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, the Audio-Visual Interactive Installation at Sichuan Conservatory of Music Gallery. He also presented his intermedia music composition for Symbolic Sound Kyma and Kinect Silent Room. Han Yanmin described his own methods for creating electro-acoustic music and presented his composition Echoes of Qiang Flute as an example. In the second half of the lecture, the three faculty members described their experience at the University of North Texas, College of Music where they had presented an electronic music lecture and concert in February of this year. They also analyzed some of the technical challenges that one might encounter while giving lecture and concert in another city.


Choreographic pianist

Choreographic pianist Eleonor Sandresky is performing music for piano and live Kyma processing at the Greenwich House Music School in New York on Sunday, March 11, 2012. In her performances, Sandresky is interested in how motion translates to emotion; she goes beyond merely composing the music to literally choreographing the entire performance. Recently, this interest has taken on a cyborghian element as she dons a new Perceptual Expansion Space/Suit (designed by Semiotech) to enhance the conversation with light and sound in her performances. Contact Electronic Music Foundation for an invitation.

Kyma International Sound Symposium 2012

The Kyma International Sound Symposium is  four inspiring days and nights filled with sound design, ideas, discussions, and music, and it offers a wide range of opportunities to increase your Kyma mastery: from introductory master classes, to hands-on question-and-answer sessions; from thought-provoking presentations, to inspiring concerts and after-hours discussions with new-found friends and colleagues.

This year’s symposium KISS2012 will be on banks of the mighty Mississippi River, September 13-16, organized by St. Cloud State University School of the Arts and Symbolic Sound. The KISS2012 theme, reel time || real time, puts the spotlight on reel time (sound for picture), real time (live performance), and all timescales between, including sound design for games, live cinema, live improvisation ensembles, live performances from a score, sound design for live theatre, live signal generation for speech and hearing research, interactive data sonification, interactive sound art, and more!

Tonsalon

According to Wikipedia:

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation.

Composer Bruno Liberda is your inspiring host for a modern day Tonsalon to be held in Vienna on Wednesday evening, 7 December 2011. Focusing primarily on one work, through repeated “Readings”  (Listening, Looking, Learning, Asking questions = Pausing), time is accumulated in all dimensions; several episodes of individual perceptions merge into a star cluster of the now-plurality: a new piece of music systematically enters the consciousness of the guests.

Program

 Introduction:   Die Schläfer 2002, fixed Media, 5’14
 
 Main work:     Self portrait without self, 2011, Zither, Voice, Kyma, ca. 13′
 
 The composer speaks… and plays…the guests question (perhaps)
 
Coda: Echoes in people’s minds: everyone speaks with everyone else!
 
 

 When: Wednesday, 7 December at 20h (Doors open at 19h40, ending at 22h)

Where:1060, Linke Wienzeile 36/5a

Beletage (1. Stock, Reichmayer)
Vienna, Austria 

Anterior/Interior in London

Composer Scott Miller will be in London working with the ensemble rarescale for their concert at Shoreditch Church on Wednesday, November 23, which is to feature the premiere of his new work, Anterior/Interior, written for rarescale flutist Carla Rees.

Anterior/Interior is for 1/4-tone alto flute and Kyma and is an exploration of microtonal multiphonics that are isolated, dissected, and exploded into relief against the beautiful, complex timbre of the flute. The concert will also include other interactive and improvisational Kyma works by Miller, performed by Carla Rees, including Lovely Little Monster and haiku, interrupted.  Composer and rarescale member Michael Oliva has also invited Miller to do a presentation on his use of Kyma in interactive, improvisational music at the Royal College of Music.

Kyma Meeting in New York

Electronic Music Foundation is organizing a series of open meetings at Greenwich House Music School, starting with a free Kyma demo/concert/discussion in New York this Sunday, November 13, from 2-5 pm.

If you’d like to come by for a demonstration of Kyma, listen to some compositions, join the discussion, and try things out, please send email to EMF (it is free, but a reservation is required). Followup studio sessions are planned for November 17 and December 1 and 8 for becoming a Kyma professional.

 

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.

SoundProof

The SoundProof performance ensemble (Patricia Strange, violin; Stephen Ruppenthal, trumpet & flugelhorn; Brian Belet, bass & viola) embarks on its ‘Sasquatch Tour 2011’ with concerts, master classes, and lecture/demos in Oregon and Washington:

  • ‘Future Music Oregon’ concert (8 pm, April 30)
  • Kyma master classes (10 am & 11 am, May 2) University of Oregon, Eugene
  • May 3 concert (12 noon) and lecture/demo (2 pm) Portland State University
  • May 7 lecture/demo (12 noon) and concert (2 pm) Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival

The concerts feature interactive computer music composed for the ensemble by Larry Austin, Brian Belet, Elainie Lillios (world premiere), Bonnie Miksch, Jeffrey Stolet, and Allen Strange. The concert performances are run entirely within Kyma.