Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2008

Paper and Concert Schedule

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Several of the papers presented at TES 2008 have been published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II.

DAY ZERO: Thursday 7 August 2008

18:00–19:30 OPENING RECEPTION

Venue: Canadian Music Centre. Chalmers House, 20 St. Joseph Street.

The Canadian Music Centre, an organization nearly 50 years old, pushes the envelope of new technologies to connect Canadian composers with the international music community. Since 1949, the CMC has been an integral instrument in directly confronting the challenges to Canadian contemporary music. The CMC acts as a national archive for its 742 Associate Composers, a music publisher, library, educator and much more. The Canadian Music Centre is a proud sponsor of the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium. Please join us for a wine and cheese reception, and overview of the many services this diverse arts organization provides.

21:00 (onwards) CONCERT: Open-mic Night

Venue: Somewhere There, 340 Dufferin Street.

Directions: 340 Dufferin is a massive building on the corner of Dufferin Street and Melbourne Avenue. To find Somewhere There, go to the building’s sole door on Melbourne Avenue. You can get to Somewhere There on transit by taking (a) the Queen street car to Dufferin and walking south to Melbourne Avenue (b) the King street car to Dufferin and walking north to Melbourne Avenue or (c) the Dufferin bus to Melbourne Avenue.

Symposium attendees and the general public are invited to bring sounds, sound-makers and all of their friends to the open-mic night at Toronto’s Somewhere There space for creative music, hosted by the angelusnovus.net group and New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA). A BEAST-style diffusion configuration will be available to those artists wishing to diffuse stereo tape compositions.

The winning pieces from the CEC’s 2008 JTTP project will be diffused by the winners and/or members of angelusnovus.net. The hosts will make every effort to accomodate any and all other audio configurations.

Please help us coordinate by emailing your ideas about what you want to do at the open-mic night to angelusnovus.net member Chris Thornborrow!

DAY ONE: Friday 8 August 2008

Venue: Rm. 330, Edward Johnson Building, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. 80 Queen’s Park Crescent, Toronto.

Directions: Exit the Museum subway station on the west-side of Queen’s Park Crescent. The Faculty of Music is behind the planetarium, south of the Royal Ontario Museum (towards the park).

08:30–09:00 Welcome Coffee

09:00–10:30 SESSION 1: The State of the Art

Chair: Micheline Roi (Musicworks Magazine)

Composition vs. Documentation by Tae Hong Park [abstract]

This paper addresses the fine line that exists between musical composition and documentation. The issue of musical composition vs. documentation is especially an interesting topic for electroacoustic music works that focus on soundscapes and narrative strategies.

[Full article published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II]

The Ghettoblaster Ensemble by Jørgen Teller [abstract]

Each of the eight members of the ensemble plays a separate ghettoblaster and part. Due to the mobility and flexibility of the ensemble, concerts can take place anywhere: in concert halls, music clubs, streets, squares and parks.

Aural Training for EA by Eldad Tsabary [abstract]

Like all musicians, the electroacoustic (EA) music composer/performer must be aurally skilled in order to produce and perform high quality artistic work, yet a very small number of EA-related programs worldwide provide a specialized aural training for EA.

[Full article published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II]

11:00–12:00 KEYNOTE LECTURE 1

Send and Receive: Performing bodies, technology, and the social by Ellen Waterman [abstract]

An exploration of questions of presence and absence of the body in its relationship to technology; the performative role of technology itself; and the ontology of “liveness” in electroacoustic music.

12:00–13:00 Lunch

Catered courtesy of the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.

13:00–14:00 SESSION 2: Personal Reflections

Chair: Hilary Martin (New Adventures in Sound Art, Toronto)

The Works of “Songs of the New Erotics” by William A. Davison [abstract]

A brief overview of the Songs of the New Erotics project (since 1991) with accompanying audio, video, and photographic documentation. The lecture will be largely informal and will focus on presenting various performance documents with the artist's commentary.

Unfolding: Reconciling Strangers in Music For Keyboard and Electronics by John Kameel Farah [abstract]

An outline of the materials, structures, concepts and inspirations behind recent compositions, and discussion of the difficulty and advantages of finding venues and platforms for hybrid arts.

14:15–15:15 SESSION 3: The Electroacoustic Voice

Chair: Eldad Tsabary (CEC/Concordia University)

Functional Electroacoustics in Three Recent Operas by David Ogborn [abstract]

In 2007–08 the greater part of my own artistic efforts went into three distinct opera projects, each of which involved electronic sound as an integral element but which took shape within the social and technical environment of the older tradition.

Mobile Gesture-Controlled Speech Synthesis for Performance by Bob Pritchard and Sidney Fels [abstract]

By reconstructing and reconfiguring the original Glove-TalkII and GRASSP speech synthesis systems to be portable and wearable, the performer can now move about to enhance the performance.

[Full article published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II]

15:30–16:30 SESSION 4: Soundscapes / Installations

Chair: Monica Clorey (University of Toronto)

Sympathetic Vibration (Prolongation of Sound by Reflection) by Markus Jones [abstract]

One of the fundamental aims of the project employing recordings of microscopic sound is to assist both staff and students who are visually impaired, aiding them by using sound to identify their location.

[Full article published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II]

Wildurban: a Multi-channel Sound Installation as Public Art by Charles Fox [abstract]

Artworks in the Aneco project specifically responded to concerns about the ecology and social dynamics, with the intension of creating awareness and dialogue about the interactions between natural and constructed environments.

16:30 Dinner and Travel to Islands for evening Sound Travels events

19:00–20:00 SOUND TRAVELS EVENT: Outdoor Guerilla Sound Art Performances
Ellen Waterman — Improvising Space: Improvising Identity

Venue: Outdoors on Toronto Island. Admission free.

Four improvisers (using flute, percussion, and voice) will play a series of solos, duos, and trios on Toronto Island. Each performance is a sensitive articulation of the micro-ecology of that specific moment in time/space. Building on the sensitivity to environment and sound fostered by such composer/philosophers as Pauline Oliveros and R. Murray Schafer, our musical interventions seek to cause a tiny disturbance — a startled recognition — an acute sense of aliveness.

20:00 SOUND TRAVELS CONCERT
Robert Normandeau Portrait Concert

Venue: Church of St. Andrew-by-the-Lake, Toronto Islands. Admission $10.

Sound Travels renders a portrait of celebrated Quebec acousmatic artist Robert Normandeau through a concert hosted by David Ogborn featuring Normandeau’s works Rumeurs (Place de Ransbeck), Mémoires Vives, Spleen, StrinGDberg, and Hamlet-Machine with actors.

DAY TWO: Saturday 9 August 2008

Venue: Church of St. Andrew-by-the-Lake, Toronto Islands.

13:00–15:00 SESSION 5: Systems and Techniques

Chair: Dennis Patrick (University of Toronto)

Demonstration: The Transformation Engine by Bruno Degazio [abstract]

A software program which extends and enhances the abilities of instrumental music composers of motivic and thematic composition, and allows non-composers to experiment with sophisticated musical techniques that would otherwise be beyond their capabilities.

Wind Space Architecture and 64-Channel Sound by Steve Heimbecker [abstract]

The Wind Array Cascade Machine (2003), a field-like digital sensor network that can data record the wave patterns of the wind, and the recent creation and operation of his 64-channel sound diffusion system, the Turbulence Sound Matrix (2008).

Real-time Spectral Analysis and Dispersion by Martin Ritter [abstract]

A new approach to real-time extraction of spectral information from a given sound and the dispersion of its spectral components using the Max/MSP programming environment is described. This is being developed for use in realtime performance processing.

[Full article published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II]

Multi-channel Presentation of Wildurban by Charles Fox

See Session 4 for details.

15:30–16:30 KEYNOTE LECTURE 2

Timbre Spatialization by Robert Normandeau [abstract]

What is unique to the acousmatic medium is the possibility to fragment the spectra in the space: the whole spectrum is found only virtually in the space of the concert hall. Each point represents only a part of the ensemble.

[An interview with Normandeau related to TES08 is published in eContact! 11.2 — Figures canadiennes II / Canadian Figures II]

19:00–20:00 SOUND TRAVELS EVENT: Outdoor Guerilla Sound Art Performances
Ellen Waterman — Improvising Space: Improvising Identity

Venue: Outdoors on Toronto Island. Admission free.

See 8 August for information.

20:00 SOUND TRAVELS CONCERT
A Multitude of Portraits

Venue: Church of St. Andrew-by-the-Lake, Toronto Islands. Admission $10.

Saturday evening’s concert will include performances by flutist Ellen Waterman in James Harley’s wild fruits 2, works by David Ogborn and Herve Berolini as well as the best of the soundportraits by Jørgen Teller alongside works by Sound Travels emerging artists.

Sunday 10 August 2008

13:00–14:00 SOUND TRAVELS EVENT: Outdoor Guerilla Sound Art Performances
Ellen Waterman — Improvising Space: Improvising Identity

Venue: Outdoors on Toronto Island. Admission free.

See 8 August for information.

14:00 SOUND TRAVELS CONCERT
Wende Bartley — Ariadne Calling (Site-Specific performance for labyrinth)

Venue: Church of St. Andrew-by-the-Lake, Toronto Islands. Admission $10.

Ariadne Calling (for choir and electroacoustics) is based on vocal improvisations made while walking the land at the Avebury complex in southwestern England. As the sounds unfold while walking the labyrinth, the memories of the land are awakened, the earth is regenerated, the Cretan Lady of the Labrys is invoked.