eFlash! 2008-10

Assemblée générale annuelle 2008 /
Annual General Meeting 2008

Mot du Président / Word from the President

It is often the case that each new year for the CEC is busier than the one which preceded it, as we maintain and extend an increasingly diverse array of community efforts, old and new. 2007–08 has been no exception in this respect, and has seen the CEC provide support and guidance to initiatives spanning the range from vital archival work to conferences, festivals and competitions.

CEC Board

There are a number of changes to Board positions this year. Longtime CEC president Ian Stewart stepped down after making many invaluable contributions in the course of six years serving the community via the board. I wish to extend a huge personal thank-you to Ian for this — and invite you all to do the same! In happier news, Montréal’s Eldad Tsabary (very involved with the recent Canadian 60x60 initiative, among other things) has joined the board. Welcome Eldad!

The proposed board for the coming year is outlined below. Interestingly, at this year’s Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2008, no less than four members of the board were present and the event was thus a welcome chance for the board (which meets and discusses the organization’s issues on a daily basis via email) to interact in a more enjoyable and “personal” setting!

President: David Ogborn (Regina/Toronto) | current term 2006–09
Vice–President: Laurie Radford (Calgary) | 2008–10
Secretary: Jean Routhier (Vancouver) | 2007–09
Treasurer: Eldad Tsabary (Montréal) | 2008–10
Members at Large: Kevin Austin (Montréal) | 2006–09; Shawn Pinchbeck (Edmonton) | 2008–10

eContact!

The CEC’s online journal eContact! continues to gain a wider audience at the same time as benefitting from a number of creative and editorial innovations, the work of eContact! editor (and CEC co-Administrator) jef chippewa in collaboration with writers from across the electroacoustic community. The journal has recently incorporated a series of regular columns (Community Reports and Rediscovered Treasures), a development that we will follow with great interest.

eContact! 10.2 focused on interviews with a very wide range of electroacoustic practitioners. With over 115 interviews, it is the largest issue ever and will no doubt quickly become an important point of reference. eContact! 10.3 featured the proceedings of the first annual Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2007 (more about the symposium below) and eContact! 10.4 features a number of video and audio materials related to live electronics and improvisation, taking full advantage of the potential of an entirely internet-based journal. eContact! 10.x will be a special 10th anniversary edition featuring the Concordia Archival Project (more below) as well as material related to electroacoustic archiving projects in general.

JTTP 2008

This year a total of 35 composers contributed their work to the CEC’s annual Jeu de temps / Times Play (JTTP) competition — rapidly becoming recognized as a gold standard in the sphere of artistic competitions, with a large and international jury, the provision of feedback to participants, the efficient use of administrative resources, as well as the general prestige associated with the project.

Following extensive discussion prior to the competition, the CEC board decided on an important change to the contest rules, removing the previous time limit of eight minutes so as to ensure that diverse aesthetic approaches potentially requiring longer spans of time for their full development were not excluded. This year also saw an important increase in the number and breadth of JTTP partners (prize donors, radio and concert performances of the works).

The jury commented on the overall strength of this year’s submissions and our congratulations are owed to all of the JTTP participants. Our special congratulations are owed to the top five placing composers: Nick Storring, Jean-François Blouin, Félix-Antoine Morin, Thierry Gauthier and Mathieu Arsenault. The 2008 JTTP project is documented (with all submissions, program notes and biographies) in eContact! 11.1 and the top works will be released in the next installment of the Cache CD series.

Mastering Workshops

A new and highly successful initiative was the series of workshops on mastering in electroacoustics that were presented by Dominique Bassal and Jean-Luc Louradour in eight locations across Canada: Montréal (Concordia University, Université de Montréal and McGill University), Calgary (University of Calgary), The Banff Centre, Winnipeg (University of Manitoba), Toronto (Ontario College of Art and Design) and Halifax (Dalhousie University). The workshops covered issues of monitoring and exportability, the mixing process, and the qualitative analysis of audio materials.

The 2008 workshops were made possible by virtue of the generous financial support of the SOCAN Foundation, with additional contributions from Sennheiser Canada as well as from the host institutions. Discussions regarding a 2009 edition indicate much interest and we are presently looking into the financial and institutional resources that could make this happen.

Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium (TES) 2008

The second edition of the annual Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium took place August 7–9, a co-production of the CEC, Toronto’s New Adventures in Sound Art, and the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. The 2008 symposium featured keynote lectures by Sound Travels guest artists Robert Normandeau and Ellen Waterman, as well as presentations by electroacoustic artists from Toronto, across Canada and the United States, and from the United Kingdom.

The proceedings from the 2008 symposium have been collected and are currently being edited for appearance in a forthcoming issue of eContact!. A special thanks to Dennis Patrick at the University of Toronto, and to Darren Copeland and Nadene Thériault-Copeland of New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) for their continued collaboration with the CEC on this important community initative!

Concordia Archival Project (CAP)

The Concordia Archival Project (CAP) is the largest single project ever undertaken by the CEC and also the beneficiary of the largest single grant ever managed by the CEC (a grant from Heritage Canada (Patrimoine Canada).

At this date, the transfer of archival tapes has been completed while final work continues on the eLearning and eContact! elements of the project (including a special 10-year anniversary issue of eContact!). The project will have its public launch later this Fall. There have been some delays due to the coordination of different project elements on this most ambitious project. Heritage Canada has kindly allowed us an extension on the project in order to bring it to the necessary level of quality. It is commendable that a project of this size and complexity is still completely on budget.

Funding

I am pleased to report that the CEC’s funding sources continue to be healthy, with some high profile initatives made possible by a number of significant one-time grants. Funding from the SOCAN Foundation Core Funding program has been stable over recent years, with a 20% increase in 2008 relative to 2007. The Canada Council’s Writing and Publishing program provided important funding for eContact! volumes 10 (2007–08) and 11 (2008–09). We are enthusiastic that increased financial support could be available for volume 12.

As mentioned above, the October-November 2007 mastering workshops were made possible by significant funding from the SOCAN Foundation through the Creator’s Assistance grant. The Concordia Archival Project is supported entirely by a large grant from Heritage Canada / Patrimoine Canada. The Canada Council’s Supplementary Operating Funds Initiative (a one-time programme) allowed the CEC to undertake an advertising campaign for eContact!, taking out ads in various Canadian and international journals as well as in a few select concert programmes during the period from April 2008 to May 2009.

There continues to be a slow but steady growth in membership, which (among other things) helps to fund the CEC’s core administrative responsibilities. We intend to dramatically increase our membership building efforts throughout this Fall-Winter and would benefit greatly from the participation of the community in this effort: please encourage your colleagues, collaborators and students to join and support our community!

Yours most truly,
David Ogborn
President of the CEC Board
Thursday, 2 October 2008.