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Sonic Circuits Electronic Music Festival

Toronto
October 21 - November 3, 1996

 Index:

Musical introduction - installation

A Few Things They Didn't Teach Us in Plumbing School  — Rob Cruickshank

Introduction to the Sonic Circuits Festival

"Sonic Circuits Electronic Music Festival is an international forum for the presentation and discussion of music that involves technology, which takes place at various locations around the world. This year it took place in New York, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, , Perth Australia, and in Toronto. Tonight's show is about Sonic Circuits in Toronto."
"Sonic Circuits is produced in each international venue in a context reflecting the music scene of that locality. The festival takes the form of a pool of works, from which approximately 5 concerts and 20 radio shows are presented throughout the year. Thanks to the portable nature of music on tape, festival programs can easily travel to venues within North America and overseas. In this way the festival acts as a traveling curated show, analogous to those in the visual art world. It's the only music festival with this format."
"Sonic Circuits in Toronto took place at many locations: there were several broadcasts on CIUT radio; there were concerts at the Music Gallery (which is a contemporary music space); Inter Access, an artist's run center, had several concerts and workshops; and the Rivoli had one concert during the festival. Tonight's show will include some radio works and also some concert works from the Rivoli show."

Introduction to Campbell Foster

"The first piece we are going to play is by Campbell Foster. Campbell is an acoustician, studio designer, composer and instrument inventor. Since inventing the electroacoustic sheet metal feedback phone, the instrument has been used in several performances, and is on three CDs including Composers and Chaos which has received world wide distribution."

Campbell Foster explains the Electroacoustic Sheet Metal Feedback Phone:

"This instrument was invented by myself for a John Cage piece, at the Cage wake, which was a wake for John Cage and one of the pieces I performed was Produce Feedback Twice. That was his piece. It was like a theatre piece, that's the score, so I figured that I could produce feedback twice. Actually, I was sitting in front of my fireplace and this was sitting in front of it, for the sparks on the rug, and I figured that if I could make an instrument out of it I could produce as much feedback as I wanted.
"The instrument works on a feedback principle, so it's basically electronics. There is a speaker here and a speaker there bolted onto the sheet metal and anyone who's has ever had a PA system feedback on them knows that its based on servo-mechanical feedback technology/philosophy on a very crude level.
"So in lieu of that I am just going to play Memories of Sound to Light Conversion, a work in progress. Thank you."

Memories of Sound to Light Conversion — Campbell Foster

A Ridge of High Pressure — Chris Devonshire

Introduction to Chris Devonshire

"A Ridge of High Pressure, by Chris Devonshire, was one of many works that were selected for the Short Circuits Radio Art Festival, a sub-Festival of the Sonic Circuits Music Festival of Toronto.
"A Ridge of High Pressure grew from two ideas, that high frequencies are beneficial for physical well being, and that high frequencies can be equated with high pressure in the air. Many specially tuned pitches were used to create the piece. Most of them being far higher than those used in conventional music.
"Chris Devonshire is a composer, audio artist, and radio broadcaster living in Toronto, Canada. He has been working with electroacoustics since 1979.
"That work which we just heard a short excerpt from was, as I said, one of 65 works that were selected for the Short Circuits Festival."

Introduction to Short Circuits

"Short Circuits sort of grew from out of an idea that we can have a shorter radio festival with a broader range of audio art and electroacoustic music that could appear as part of the Sonic Circuits Music Festival."

Introduction to Seth Monger

"Seth Monger, an American composer from Eugene Oregon submitted a piece called Tune for Balloon. Tune for Balloon uses nothing but electronically mutilated balloon samples. Latex has an incredible sonic potential."

Tune for Balloon — Seth Monger

Dust That Collects — Ron McFarlan

Introduction to Ron McFarlan

"Dust That Collects is the solo project of Ron McFarlan. It was part of a concert at the Music Gallery in the Sonic Circuits Festival. With roots in the post-industrial facet of cassette culture he has released 10 cassettes documenting his experiments in sound exploration. The basic elements of his work include found sounds, analog and digital synthesis, and guitar, all of which become subject to manipulation and layering."

"Hidden Passage is a taped piece, composed to accompany slides taken in the Middle East. The title refers to an imaginary journey, whereby one could enter a tomb in Mediane Soleil, Saudi Arabia, emerge from a cave in Petra, Jordan, and wander the strange landscape of Turkey's Cabadocia region. The work was inspired by the enchanting and mysterious nature shared by each of these areas."

Hidden Passage — Ron McFarlan

Contrapuntus IV — Bruno Degazio

Speaker — Annette Larson

Introduction to Annette Larson

"Annette Larson, a recent immigrant from Sweden to Toronto, produced a work called Speaker in March of 1996 which was an audio installation which dealt with her immigration from Sweden to Canada. And in this piece which she has done is using stories of her grandmother and her family juxtaposed against sounds that symbolize her growing up in Sweden and her coming across to Canada later in life, she put together this work called Speaker.
"The speakers are mounted at various levels on the wall and are connected with blue speaker wire resembling veins that descend to the floor into a chaotic tangle. Speaker addresses issues of migration, cultural continuity, and discontinuality, rupture and connectedness.
"Annette Larson appeared as part of the Short Circuits portion of the Sonic Circuits Music Festival in Toronto, as well as many other artists."

Introduction to Bruno Degazio

"The piece that you heard prior to Annette Larson's was performed by Bruno Degazio and Adel Armin. Composer Bruno Degazio's recent work includes the special effects sound design for the Oscar nominated documentary film The Fires of Kuwait, and music for the all digital six channel sound tracks of the IMAX films Titanica and Flight of the Aquanaute. His many concert works for traditional electronics and mixed media have been performed throughout North America and Europe. As a researcher in the field of algorithmic composition he has presented papers and musical works at leading international conferences including festivals in London, The Hague, Koln, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He is a founding member of the Toronto new music ensemble Sound Pressure and of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community.
"Adel Armin is well known to Toronto audiences having performed in the Classical and Contemporary fields for several decades. She performs both on her old Italian master violin and on her recently invented RAD electric violin. Presently Adel is playing with Hemispheres, and with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as well as appearing as a soloist."

Drone Machine part 1 — Joel Silver and Craig McNaughton

Drone Machine part 2 — Joel Silver and Craig McNaughton

Introduction to the Drone Machine

"So imagine this, you're sitting at an electroacoustic concert and in front of you there is a large trunk. It's open and inside you can see material, velvet, little pictures, large plastic keys, a joy stick, and a CB microphone. This is the Drone Machine which is produced by Joel Silver and Craig McNaughton, and this is what they say about it:
"The Drone Machine is about bridging the gap between sound and user. Using fun, easy to control interfaces such as joy sticks, brightly colored keys and stuffed animals, the audience member can become a participant and influence the direction of the music. Originating at York University it has had two successful performances, one at the fourth year electronic media showcase and the other at the visual arts and sculpture open house. The Drone Machine uses a whole whack of MIDI gear, OP Code's MAX, Pavo's 64 key custom instrument MIDI tools computer, and a whole bunch of low tech active surplus gear.
"So listen to some more of the Drone Machine."

Drone Machine part 3 — Joel Silver and Craig McNaughton

Drone Machine part 4 — Joel Silver and Craig McNaughton

Cosmetic — Alex Keller

Southern Fried Style — Joelle Ciona with Jean Routhier

"Starting off back from where we began. We didn't mention this before but this is actually the live, acoustic recording of Rob Cruickshank's installation which was part of the Sonic Circuits Music Festival. The title of the work was called A Few Things They Didn't Teach Us in Plumbing School using ABS piping and electromagnetics, and this is on view in the lobby of the Music Gallery during concert hours.
"We heard two more of the audio works that were part of the Short Circuits sub-festival of Sonic Circuits, we heard Joelle Ciona's Southern Fried Style and Alex Keller. Alex Keller's work is from a sound track to a film he produced a year ago. Before all of that we heard a bit more of the Drone Machine.
"Tonight's program was a representation of the Sonic Circuits Music Festival of Toronto.
"CEC Radio is co-produced by both Andra McCartney and Neil Wiernik, and is presented by the Canadian Electroacoustic Community.

"Thank you , and good night." Animateurs: Andra McCartney et Neil Wiernik  Hosted by Andra McCartney and Neil Wiernik

Produced and hosted by:

Andra McCartney
http://www.finearts.yorku.ca/andra/

&

Neil Wiernik.

Web editors: Yves Gigon & Jef Chippewa

Transcription: Ian Chuprun.
Translation: Yves Charuest

Sonic Circuits at Toronto - http://www.interlog.com/~speeb/sonic.htm

The Artists:

© Productions electro Productions (*PeP*) 1997

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