eFlash! 2022-09

2022 AGM — Annual General Meeting / AGA 2022 — Assemblée générale annuelle

President’s Report / Rapport de la présidente

Index & Agenda | Treasurer’s Report

I am pleased to offer CEC members an update on what has been going on at the CEC since our last AGM. 1[1. The President’s Report starts at 23:45 in the video documentation of the AGM.]

But first, I would like to recognize the contributions of Julie Matson and Teresa Connors (Board members since 2018 and 2020, respectively), who will be stepping down from the Board. We wish them continued success in their professional and personal pursuits, and thank them for their ongoing commitment to the broader Canadian electroacoustic community and their support of its members. Merci à vous deux!

We are pleased to welcome Darsha Hewitt to the Board and are very eager to work with her. Darsha’s experiences as a new media and sound artist experimenting with obsolete technologies and handmade electronics enhance the makeup of the Board, and the representation of the CEC. Welcome, Darsha!

I would like to thank the continuing, outgoing and new CEC Board members for their contributions to a healthy electroacoustic community across Canada and abroad, and for their involvement in the association.

And now, some information about the CEC’s activities.

Core Projects

JTTP — Jeu de temps / Times Play

Collaboration. The CEC invited CMMAS — Centro Mexicano por la Música y las Artes Sonoras (Morelia, Mexico) to collaborate on JTTP 2022, the 23^rd edition coordinated by the CEC. Submissions from young and/or emerging electroacoustic artists from or living in Latin America were eligible this year, in addition to those from or living in Canada. A total of 73 works by 77 electroacoustic artists were received, with 19 videomusic works among the submissions — and prizewinners! — to this edition.

Prizes and Awards. All eligible works were considered by an international jury; 1^st to 5^th prizes are awarded to Canadian and Latin American submissions. Additionally, the participants themselves indicate their interest to have their submission considered for one or more of the four thematic awards established in 2021. The jury has designated the following prizewinners and thematic awards recipients. On behalf of the CEC, I would like to congratulate the following artists, some of whom have joined us today for the AGM!

JTTP Prizes — Canada

1. Joseph Sims and Katie Finn — e (mi) (2022 / 7:11) [videomusic]
2. Diego Bermudez Chamberland — Manic (2021 / 13:17)
3. Jérémie Martineau — Distractions, Horizons (2022 / 5:34) [videomusic]
4. Véro Marengère — Hydra (2022 / 6:00) [videomusic]
5. Steven Webb — iSAD v.1.0 (2021 / 13:51) [videomusic]

JTTP Prizes — Latin America

1. Elliot Yair Hernández López — Ritual (2021 / 5:25)
2. matias sanchez — alquimia, magia, sueños (2020 / 10:05)
3. Juan Cáceres Avitia — Entendre la sensation (2021 / 6:42)
4. Guillermo Eisner Sagüés — Esculturas temporales (2022 / 7:53)
5. Oscar Andres Chaves Morales — The Garden on the Other Side of the Fence (2021 / 8:28)

Thematic Awards

The Hildegard Westerkamp Award for soundscape and sound installation
  Alejandro Brianza — Kowloon (2022 / 5:51)

The Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux Award for self-identified female or non-binary electroacoustic artists
  Véro Marengère — Hydra (2022 / 6:00) [videomusic]

The Jean Piché Award for videomusic, new media and creative coding
  Joseph Sims and Katie Finn — e (mi) (2022 / 7:11) [videomusic]

The Martin Gotfrit and Martin Bartlett Award for live electroacoustic practices
  Diego Bermudez Chamberland — Manic (2021 / 13:17)

Prize Packages. The JTTP 2022 winners receive prize packages of contributions by Canadian and international Project Partners; cash prizes are also awarded to the first-, second- and third-place winners, as well as to the award recipients. The webpages featuring all submissions, programme notes, composer bios and information about upcoming JTTP 2022 events, as well as names of the jury members and Project Partners will be announced shortly.

Concert Partners. As they have done since 2014, Akousma has programmed this year’s First Prize JTTP work in their annual festival. We hope you will join us on the evening of 13 October 2022 at Usine C (Montréal) to hear Joseph and Katie’s work alongside works by Philippe-Aubert Gauthier. And just last week, the prizewinning works from JTTP 2019 were presented at SIAL Sound Studios (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia). The event was a great success and featured a binaural stream for those who could not make it in person. Thanks so much to SIAL Director Lawrence Harvey, who managed to keep the project on the table and make it happen despite too many pandemic lockdowns and hindrances!!!

Residency Partners. Thanks to another new project component launched in 2021, JTTP prizewinners and award recipients can submit a proposal for a residency offered by a partnering organization. Colin Frank, recipient of the 2021 Hildegard Westerkamp Award was invited to do a residency at Sporobole, an artist-run centre in Sherbrooke QC. In fact, his two-week residency starts today! Exceptionally in 2022 (to celebrate the CMMAS collaboration) there will be two residencies in Canada offered to two Latin American artists and two in Latin America to Canadian artists. We will post details on these in the coming months.

On behalf of the CEC, I would like to thank all our JTTP partners and donors for their amazing support of young and/or emerging electroacoustic artists!

Sonus.ca

Launched in 2003, this online jukebox is the largest freely accessible database of electroacoustic works in the world. Earlier this year, 130 works from the Concordia Archival Project (CAP) were added to Sonus and presented in the Spotlight. Currently the Sonus Spotlight features the work of Canadian composer Paul Dolden, who submitted a massive trove of his remastered works to the library. Check out that collection now through the end of September before it moves to the Sonus projects archive! Starting in October the Spotlight will feature the results from JTTP 2022.

eContact!

This year we updated the very first issue of the CEC’s online journal for electroacoustic practices, eContact! 1.1 — Women in EA (1), and reissued it on 8 March, International Women’s Day. The issue was dedicated to Andra McCartney, who passed in 2019, and features a new Foreword by Hanna Bosma.

The 80^th issue of the journal was published in May 2022. eContact! 21.1 — Out of the Studio and Onto the Stage explores live coding practices, and laptop ensemble and orchestra (LOrk) configurations, which have all been central to a reorientation of stage-based electroacoustic performance in the past two decades. The people performing in parallel to today’s AGM — Shelly Knotts, Melandri Laubscher, Mynah Marie and Kate Sicchio — are also authors in that engaging issue, and I invite you to check out their contributions, if you haven’t already!

The next issue of eContact! will focus on Conceptual Approaches to Sound-Based Artistic Practices — there are still four weeks before the submission deadline! Also make sure to keep an eye on the Call for Contributions page for upcoming deadlines such as Sound Art, Alternative Presentation Formats for Electroacoustic Practices and Sound Installation.

Strategic Plan 2020–2024

As we enter the second half of its four-year span, I am happy to report positive progress with the CEC’s current Strategic Plan. After two years of online-only AGMs, this year we are finally able to hold an in-person meeting again and this provides the perfect context in which to inaugurate our Enhanced AGMs initiative, with the 2022 AGM being interwoven with live coding. The planned Collaboration with CMMAS on JTTP 2022 is well under way as is the new Residencies component of JTTP. Early planning and discussions have taken place for the 25^th Anniversary of JTTP (in 2024) under the CEC’s coordination. The Public Outreach Project is being reworked following an unsuccessful grant application, and I hope to be able to give more concrete news on that in the October edition of eFlash!, the member’s newsletter. Finally, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) plans have been moving forward in the background and over the course of this year we aim to articulate and share more on some of these developments. With the other five Operating Plans in place or getting in place, we will now shift our focus and energies to this broad and complex initiative.

Closing Remarks

Thanks to all for joining us here and online for the CEC’s 2022 AGM. And many thanks to the live coders Shelly Knotts, Melandri Laubscher, Mynah Marie and Kate Sicchio for their artistic contribution today — they will continue performing for a little while after the AGM so please stay with us after the meeting is adjourned!

I would now like to invite Shawn Pinchbeck to present his Treasurer’s Report for the 2021–22 fiscal year.

Myriam Boucher
President of the CEC Board
Montréal, Monday, 19 September 2022