News

Please join us for a reception at the Henry to celebrate the opening of Sanctum on Friday, May 24, 7:00-9:00 PM.

SANCTUM (www.sanctum.io)

James Coupe and Juan Pampin

Henry Art Gallery

University of Washington

Seattle, Washington May 5, 2013 - November 5, 2015

Photo Credit: R.J. Sanchez

Sanctum is a public art work that uses the persistent flow of people around the Henry Art Gallery as input, extracting narratives from the demographics of passers-by and the patterns of their movement. The flow of people is used as a physical analogue to another type of crowd, the virtual inhabitants of social networks such as Facebook. 

As a person approaches the gallery, they are tracked, analyzed and recorded by video cameras programmed to identify people according to their age and gender. They hear a cacophony of voices, all telling stories. As they get closer to the gallery, the voices become clearer, gradually becoming a single voice that matches their age and gender, and telling a story composed from demographically-appropriate Facebook status updates. A grid of 18 large video monitors on the façade of the gallery picks their face out of the crowd, automatically integrating footage of them with a variety of live and pre-recorded footage from around the gallery façade. 

The installation aims to create a locus of complex and intense social networking activity, reaching out of the gallery to embed the passer by. As unexpected flâneurs, people passing by the Henry are assaulted by a multitude of voices, videos and text, of which, as they approach the façade, they will eventually become the focal point.

Join the Sanctum Facebook application [here]. By joining, your Facebook status updates will become content for Sanctum's narrative system. All posts that you make to Facebook will remain anonymous - they will be tagged with age and gender, but no other personal data will be used. If you visit Sanctum at the Henry Art Gallery, you can potentially see your status updates used as parts of the stories that are generated.

[http://www.sanctum.io]

LA BIBLIOTECA CIEGA by Nicolás Varchausky was awarded a Honorary Mention in the Digital Musics & Sound Art Category at Prix Ars Electronica 2013.

About the piece

In 1955, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was appointed Director of the National Library at the same time he was losing his sight completely. In his “Poem of the Gifts”, he reflects on the magnificent irony of being given at once “the books and the night”. Nicolás Varchausky´s La Biblioteca Ciega (the Blind Library) is a site-specific sound art performance composed for the very reading room of the library where Borges stood sightless surrounded by books.

The piece uses a series of custom made instruments that turn light into sound. Mechatronic optical turntables, sonic backlights and bars of light were designed and built by the artist and then played by members of the Banda Sinfónica de Ciegos, an orchestra of blind musicians.

The bars of light turn on and off in chaotic patterns controlled by the performer, generating complex waveforms.

The turntables use a belt and pulley system activated by a hand crank that gets an acrylic disc to spin. Each of the discs has a different sound wave form carved out by a laser cutter. The performer plays the disc by spinning it and bringing a small flashlight closer to the perforated groove. Underneath it, a light sensor reads the fluctuations of light as it passes through the cutouts. An electronic circuit takes these fluctuations and turns them into voltage differences, in other words, into an analog sound signal.

A computer transforms these analog signals in real time using the SuperCollider software and spatializes them through an 8-channel Ambisonic array that surrounds the audience, creating an immersive sonic experience.

What the audience hears is the interaction of the waveform on the disc, the digital processes and the actions of the performers, who can modify dynamic envelope and duration, as well as volume by moving the light closer or farther from the disc, and pitch by spinning the disc faster or slower.

The backlights produce sound in a similar way, but the waveform cutouts are linear and performers manipulate sensors instead of lights.

By experimenting with alternative methods of sound inscription, La Biblioteca Ciega becomes a sonic speculation on reading and writing.

In Borges’s darkened library, blind musicians read to us a passage written in light and shadow, a language that can only be heard through the interaction between humans and machines.

What

DXARTS BFA Exhibition

When

BFA opening 
Tuesday, May 14 at 4pm
Graduation ceremony at 6pm

Where

Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Art Bldg (room 132), UW, Seattle, WA (map)

Directions: http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/2013_bfa_show/DIRECTIONS.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/515533168504693/
 

Description

An exhibition of work by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Center of Digital and Experimental Arts (DXARTS). Fusing contemporary artistic practice with experimental technologies, the graduating artists explore time, space, perception, memory , and the sublime using video, stereoscopy, sound, installation and performance.

These immersive works play between the boundaries of physical and virtual realms, creating new art experiences that are both technically and  conceptually innovative.

This show presents the work of eleven seniors and marks the completion of their Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees through the DXARTS program and the culmination of their artistic inquiry at the University of Washington.

Exhibiting Artists:
SARAH ARNEGARD
DANIEL CHESNEY
ANNA HAYDEN
MARTIN JARMICK
REED JUENGER
JULIANA MEIRA DO VALLE
COLLIN SCHUPMAN
EVANGELINE SPRACKLIN
BENNETT SCHATZ
KENDRA STOUT
JENN SWANSON

For more information visit: 

http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/2013_bfa_show/ABOUT.html

 The University of Washington School of Music and The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) co-sponsor this series featuring groundbreaking new works and modern classics by faculty and guest composers. This concert features an evening of improvised experimental music by School of Music faculty members Luke Bergman (bass), Richard Karpen (piano), Juan Pampin (electronics), and Cuong Vu (trumpet), with special guests Matt Ingalls (clarinet) and Greg Sinibaldi (saxophone). 

Date/Time
Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 7:30 PM
 
Location
Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, UW Campus
 
Tickets
$20 general, $12 student/senior
Advance purchase: http://www.meany.org/tickets/?prod=5736 or 206.543.4880

SANCTUM (www.sanctum.io)

James Coupe and Juan Pampin

Henry Art Gallery

University of Washington

Seattle, Washington May 5, 2013 - November 5, 2015

Photo Credit: R.J. Sanchez

Sanctum is a public art work that uses the persistent flow of people around the Henry Art Gallery as input, extracting narratives from the demographics of passers-by and the patterns of their movement. The flow of people is used as a physical analogue to another type of crowd, the virtual inhabitants of social networks such as Facebook. 

As a person approaches the gallery, they are tracked, analyzed and recorded by video cameras programmed to identify people according to their age and gender. They hear a cacophony of voices, all telling stories. As they get closer to the gallery, the voices become clearer, gradually becoming a single voice that matches their age and gender, and telling a story composed from demographically-appropriate Facebook status updates. A grid of 18 large video monitors on the façade of the gallery picks their face out of the crowd, automatically integrating footage of them with a variety of live and pre-recorded footage from around the gallery façade. 

The installation aims to create a locus of complex and intense social networking activity, reaching out of the gallery to embed the passer by. As unexpected flâneurs, people passing by the Henry are assaulted by a multitude of voices, videos and text, of which, as they approach the façade, they will eventually become the focal point.

Join the Sanctum Facebook application [here]. By joining, your Facebook status updates will become content for Sanctum's narrative system. All posts that you make to Facebook will remain anonymous - they will be tagged with age and gender, but no other personal data will be used. If you visit Sanctum at the Henry Art Gallery, you can potentially see your status updates used as parts of the stories that are generated.

[http://www.sanctum.io]

Argentina’s National Fund for the Arts (FNA) has awarded Nicolás Varchausky a grant to continue working on his cycle of 3D sound pieces called Resonances, Turbulences & Explosions, based on recordings of single phonemes. With FNA grant support, Varchausky will developed three new pieces using the recordings of the letters /t/, /a/ and /n/. The pieces are expected to be completed and premiered by May 2014. The first three pieces (/f/, /S/ and /k/) were commissioned by Secretaría de Cultura de La Nación Argentina and premiered on December of 2011.

Resonances, Turbulences and Explosions is a series of short acousmatic pieces for 3D sound that explore the inner soundscapes of each letter of the alphabet. Using analysis and re-synthesis techniques within an algorithmic composition environment, each piece takes the recording of a single phoneme to turn it inside out, unfolding in the process their latent acoustic beauty. The series takes its name from the basic acoustic properties of speech: when we speak, we filter turbulent streams of air, resonate in our heads periodic interruptions of those streams and release abruptly built up pressure under the glottis.

This long-term project represents the continuation of Varchausky's decade-long artistic research on the tensions between sound and meaning within spoken word, and its possibilities as a musical material. Evolving from his early pieces that explored the poetic resonances of everyday speech using field recordings and collage techniques, the current series reaches an utmost abstraction point on his research. By immersing ourselves in the hidden soundscapes within the smallest sonic units capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, the series becomes a search for language’s ultimate acoustic matter and meaning.

'What is the current that makes machinery', a new composition by Stelios Manousakis for voice and surround live electronics will be premiering at the 'Dag in de Branding' contemporary music festival in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Saturday March 9th as part of a tribute to singer Cathy Berberian.

About the piece
Stelios Manousakis: composition, live electronics
Stephanie Pan: voice

‘What is the current that makes machinery’ is a cycle of short pieces for female voice and live electronics, written for vocalist Stephanie Pan and her unique capabilities in extended vocal techniques. The pieces are based on texts from the first section of Gertrude Stein’s ‘Tender Buttons: objects; food; rooms’, a collection of short prose-poems written in 1912. In these modernist texts, often characterized as ‘verbal cubism’ or ‘language art’, Stein composes with language not for the world it represents, but with its first matter - signs, sounds, rhythm, syntax and semantic fragments - treating it as a rediscovered aesthetic object that alludes to new worlds on the listener’s mind. The piece uses the voice and electronic processing to best reveal and amplify the complex multi-dimensional beauty of the texts and their inherent sonic, structural, and poetic musicality in a live setting.

About the festival
'Dag in de Branding' is the Hague's festival for contemporary music. In its 27th edition, 'Dag in de Branding' pushes borders. With Cathy Berberian, Peter Adriaansz, Greg Haines, Stelios Manousakis and Stephanie Pan.

For more information on the festival: http://www.dagindebranding.nl/

Acknowledgments
The piece makes extensive use of technology that Stelios begun developing in the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) during a research seminar with composers/researchers Juan Pampin and Joseph Anderson. It also uses technologies developed in DXARTS by Joshua Parmenter, Richard Karpen and Juan Pampin.

Juan Pampin's article Ghostly presence: Notes on the composition of OID was published in the German contemporary music journal MusikTexte #136.

http://www.musiktexte.de/

Panoptic Panorama #2: Five People in a Room

Exhibited at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, 
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons The New School for Design, 
2 West 13th St, New York City.
Part of The Public Private February 7 – April 17, 2013

Video cameras, monitors, computers

In this installation, a ring of five cameras is configured to continuously monitor a 360-degree field of view. The resulting panorama is then displayed on five screens on a wall. Software filters the video captured by the cameras to show only one person’s face on each screen. The footage of each person loops, only being replaced once a new person stands in front of one of the cameras.

The software demographically profiles these five people according to their age and gender and adds subtitles from corresponding Facebook status updates. For example, a 25-year-old male in the gallery is conjoined with text from a 25-year-old male on Facebook. The status updates function independently for each individual person, yet also work together as a narrative of five chunks of text representing the five demographics shown on the screens. Each time a new person enters the picture, the narrative is reconfigured without compromising the narrative across the five screens. Hence viewers find themselves in spatial and narrative dialogue/contact with four other previous occupants of the gallery, unable to remove themselves from scrutiny until somebody else puts themselves on display.

Panoptic Panorama #2 juxtaposes the oppressive qualities of centralized control—from surveillance to profiling—with the persistent urge to broadcast oneself through status updates, and explores the resulting narrative (im)possibilities.

- See more at: http://jamescoupe.com/?p=1480

Date/Time
Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at 7:30 PM

PROGRAM DETAIL

Transfigured Etudes (Huck Hodge) (solo piano)

La Mandragore (Tristan Murail) (solo piano)

Tombeau de Messiaen (Jonathan Harvey) (piano + CD playback)

Mechanics of Escapement (Nathan Davis) (amplified toy piano and chimes)

A Little Music (Richard Karpen) (for 2 pianos), a duo performance by Cristina Valdes and Richard Karpen

ARTIST BIO

Cristina Valdes, piano

Pianist Cristina Valdes has performed across four continents. Committed to both contemporary and standard music, she is known for presenting innovative concerts with repertoire ranging from Bach to Xenakis. Her passionate interest in new music has led to collaborations with such renowned composers as Terry Riley, Joan Tower, Ezra Laderman, and Ned Rorem. She has also premiered the works of such younger composers as Evan Ziporyn, Orlando Garcia, and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez.

An avid chamber musician, Ms. Valdes has toured extensively with the Bang on a Can All-Stars and has performed with the Seattle Chamber Players, the Mabou Mines Theater Company, and the Parsons Dance Company. From 1998-2001, she was a member of the award-winning chamber music group Antares.

She has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including an Arts International Grant, the Thayer Award for the Arts, an Artist Trust GAP grant, an American Composers Forum Encore grant, the W. Burghardt Turner Fellowship, first prize in the Ruth Slenczynska Solo Piano Competition, the Silver Medal in the Osaka International Chamber Music Festa, and an Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music.

Ms. Valdes lives in Seattle, where she is the founder and director of the SLAM Festival, serves as Vice-President of the Board of the Washington Composers Forum, and is a Jack Straw artist-in-residence.

The Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marek Moś, premiered ANC'L'SUNR for orchestra and ambisonics by Ewa Trębacz at the W. Lutosławski Concert Studio S1 in Warsaw. 

The concert was a part of Generations XVI - an annual event, organized by the Polish Radio, the Polish Composers Union and the Polish Society of Authors and Composers  ZAIKS. This year it featured works by 4 composers: Paweł Buczyński, Krzysztof Meyer, Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz and Ewa Trębacz. The concert was broadcast live on the Polish Radio Programme II.

Ewa Trębacz's project was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland within the programme "Collections" - the priority "Composers' Commissions" implemented by the Institute of Music and Dance.

About the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra:

http://www.polskieradio.pl/79/1250/Artykul/393625,The-Polish-Radio-Symphony-Orchestra

"Shadow Inverted" is an interactive video installation that uses video mapping to explore inverted space, where shadows are illuminated and serve as gateways into an inverted world. The piece is exhibited at the Microsoft Research Gallery until March 4th 2013. 

Juan Pampin's  piece "On Space" for percussion sextet and 3D electronic sounds has been released as part of Les Percussions de Strasbourg 50th Anniversary Edition 15-CD box. This box –released by Universal France and recently acquired by the UW Libraries– includes hirstorical recordings of pieces by Messiaen, Varese, Xenakis, Boulez, Cage, Serocki, etc., as well as more recent unpublished recordings by the group. The published on-location recording of On Space was entirely produced at DXARTS by Juan Pampin and Joseph Anderson.

Booklet Information

Composer and researcher Joseph Anderson is in residency at DXARTS in the Winter quarter 2013. During his residency at DXARTS Joseph will lecture at the DXARTS 567 seminar Sound in Space and continue the development of the the Ambisonics Toolkit (ATK). Joseph will also collaborate with the tuning of DXARTS' newly remodeled 3D Audio Lab.

Commissioned for the 12th Seoul International New Media Festival, Unexpected Guests/Returning Ghosts No.2 continues a series of projects that explores immediate physical space, the internal space of memory, and the virtual spaces of digital media.  While the first version of the installation collected an array of live Internet radio feeds from around the globe, No.2 uses an archive of sounds recorded locally throughout Seoul.  As light is reflected off a pair of slowly moving mirrored windows, sounds are triggered by an array of light sensors organized throughout the gallery.

Rice's project was made possible with the support of the following:

The Center For Digital Arts and Experimental Media, The Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, The Fulbright Program, & The Korean-American Educational Commission.

During the month of December the Royal Gallery, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is presenting an exhibition of computer-generated prints by DXARTS grad student Hector Bravo Benard. 

http://www.amsterdamroyalgallery.com/

The University of Washington School of Music and The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) co-sponsor this series featuring groundbreaking new works and modern classics by faculty and guest composers. In this concert, New Jersey-based Newband, directed by Dean Drummond, performs three masterworks by Harry Partch as well as pieces by Dean Drummond and Mathew Rosenblum. Program selections include Harry Partch: Castor and Pollux, Eleven Intrusions, and Barstow; Dean Drummond: Congressional Record or Before the Last Laugh; and Mathew Rosenblum: Yonah's Dream.

Date/Time
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 at 7:30 PM

Newband

Newband was founded in 1977 by composer Dean Drummond and flutist Stefani Starin, who continue as Artistic Directors.  With Drummond's invention of the 31-tone zoomoozophone in 1978, Newband began to explore music using microtonality and alternative tuning systems.  In 1990, Newband received custodianship of the original Harry Partch Instrument Collection and has since been involved with resurrecting Partch’s great works while commissioning new works for what is now perhaps the most unique instrument collection in the world.

Newband has performed throughout North America and Europe including at The Library of Congress, Barbican Hall, The Walker Arts Center, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Avery Fisher Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen and The Knitting Factory.  Newband has premiered works by Muhal Richard Abrams, Elizabeth Brown, John Cage, Dean Drummond, Joan La Barbara, Anne LeBaron, Harry Partch, Mathew Rosenblum, Ezra Sims, Lasse Thoresen, Lois V Vierk, Julia Wolfe and John Zorn, among numerous others. Newband has produced five CD’s, two on Mode, and one each on Music and Arts, Innova and Wergo; and performed on CD’s of music by Julia Wolfe (on Point) and Lasse Thoresen (on Aurora).

Newband currently consists of a core of nine virtuosic multi-instrumentalists and two singers, equally at home in concert performances and in productions involving theater, dance and film. Newband productions have included major works by Harry Partch: The Wayward (directed by Tom O’Horgan), Oedipus (directed by Bob McGrath),  Daphne of the Dunes (choreographed by Alice Farley), Delusion of the Fury (directed by John  Jesurun); and by Dean Drummond: a live soundtrack by for F.W. Murnau’s landmark silent film The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann), the chamber opera Café Buffé, and The Golden Bird for narrator, microtonal soloists and orchestra. Newband has pursued many educational projects, including in-school residencies and the creation of a new music children's show.

The Harry Partch Instrument Collection is the largest component of the Newband Instrumentarium, including all of the instruments built by the composer-inventor during the period 1930-1974, as well as several instruments replicated by the Harry Partch Foundation and Newband since 1974.  Other instruments in the Newband Instrumentarium are the zoomoozophone and juststrokerods, both invented by Dean Drummond, microtonally programmed synthesizer, and a large collection of exotic percussion instruments. Newband performs on the Instrumentarium as well as standard Western instruments - flute, cello and percussion regularly - voices, clarinet, brass and strings as repertoire demands. Since 1999, Newband has been Artist Ensemble in Residence, with the Harry Partch Instrument Collection, at Montclair State University.

Dean Drummond

Dean Drummond is a composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist, music instrument inventor, co-director of  Newband, and Associate Professor and Director of the Harry Partch  Institute in the John J Cali School of Music, at Montclair State University.

His music has been performed internationally in venues ranging from The Knitting Factory and The Kitchen to Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Barbican Center; has been recorded on five CD’s, and has received numerous awards and commissions including a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts and The Library of Congress.  

Drummond received degrees in music composition from the University of Southern California and California Institute of the Arts. While a student, he worked as musician for and assistant to Harry Partch, performing in the premieres of some of Partch’s greatest works as well as on both Columbia Masterworks recordings of Partch’s music made during the late 1960's. Recent compositions include: Café Buffé (2006), a microtonal chamber opera; and The Golden Bird (2009), for narrator, microtonal soloists and orchestra and Round (2010), an electric guitar quartet.

As Co-director of Newband, Drummond has been Music Director of Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury at Japan Society, Oedipus at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Montclair State University, and The Wayward at The Bang on a Can Festival.

Drummond is inventor of the zoomoozophone and juststrokerods.

Mathew Rosenblum

Mathew Rosenblum's music explores how seemingly independent musical voices and traditions may be woven together into a newly expressive whole. Using a variety of tuning systems, his work does not live within traditional boundaries, creating a compelling fresh landscape.

His works have been performed throughout the world. A wide array of groups have commissioned and performed and recorded his music, such as The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Harry Partch Institute, The American Composers Orchestra, the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, the Chicago Contemporary Players, the Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Sequitur.

His honors include four Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Music Fellowship Grants, a Heinz Endowments Creative Heights Award, two Fromm  Foundation Commissions, a National Endowment for the Arts Music Fellowship Grant, a Barlow Endowment Commission, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship Grant.

Rosenblum is Professor of composition and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also co-directs the Music on the Edge new music series.

Stelios Manousakis will perform "Fantasia on a Single Number" on November 2nd and 3rd at the Rewire festival in the Hague, the Netherlands.

Stelios Manousakis’ solo live electronics project is a sonic exploration of the intrinsic nature of digital technology through the merging of vocabularies and approaches from different ­‐ often seemingly clashing ­‐ realms of electronic music: noise, no­‐input music and glitch, with electroacoustic composition, with improvisation, with the most vibrant underground hardcore tekno (with a 'k').

About the festival

REWIRE is a small-scale, intimate festival for visual arts, new music and related arts.
The festival is being held in a fascinating transformational neighbourhood, around the power station in the Regentesse District of the Hague. Old and striking buildings, such as the former Seventh-day Adventist church and the old power plant warehouse will be temporarily transformed into intimate locations for concerts, an exhibition, performances, screenings and talks.



REWIRE includes both a daytime and a night-time programme. During the day, artist talks, tours and screenings will be held. The central exhibition is open to visitors all day, until midnight. At night, a range of innovative concerts and performances will take place.

The Clusters of Schat

2012-10-14, 11.00 hours | Small hall - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam

Tapestry, a composition by DXARTS Ph.D. student Hector Bravo Benard for the 31-tone per octave Fokker organ, controlled by a computer, will be performed again in Amsterdam on October 14, as part of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation series of microtonal music concerts. The program also includes pieces by Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979), Peter Schat (1935-2003), and Felipe Waller (1971) ao.

http://www.huygens-fokker.org/activities/concerts/2012-10-14.html

Music of Today / DXARTS: New Digital Music by the Next Generation

The University of Washington School of Music and The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) co-sponsor the new Music of Today concert series featuring groundbreaking modern classics and new works by faculty, students and guest composers. This concert features works by graduate Composition and DXARTS students Shih-Wei Lo, Hector Bravo-Benard, Marcin Pączkowski, Anthony Vine, Stelios Manousakis, and Ivan Arteaga. 

Program:

Shih-Wei Lo, "Things Hoped For Things Unseen", for harp, live electronics and video. Valerie Muzzolini Gordon, Harp. Video by Martin Jarmick.

Hector Bravo Benard, "Abismo Interno", for multichannel tape.

Marcin Pączkowski, "Study 2012: There", for bass clarinet and electronics. Ivan Arteaga, bass clarinet.

Anthony Vine, "Things Fall Apart", for snare drum and live electronics. Evan Woodle, percussion.

Stelios Manousakis, "Megas Diakosmos", for stereo tape.

Ivan Arteaga, "Bark", for sax and live electronics.

DXARTS presents the first of two exhibitions of work by current PhD students, at their Fremont Warehouse space. This first exhibition features two incoming students, Inmi Lee and Joel Ong:

Inmi Lee (http://www.inmilee.net/) is an artist, researcher and educator interested in cultural analysis. Through sculptures, videos, installation, interactive art, and performance art, her work provokes awareness of capacity and limits of culture and forces the viewer to question how and why we assign value and meaning to culture.

Joel Ong (http://www.arkfrequencies.com/) is a media artist working at the intersections of sound, science and experimental media.  He has recently completed a Masters degree at SymbioticA majoring in Biological Arts and has an undergraduate degree in the life sciences.

The work will be presented to the general public from 6-8pm, Thursday 11 October. The Fremont Warehouse is located at 102 1/2 N. 36th St, Seattle 98103. Directions can be found here: 

http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/facilities_and_equipment/fremont-fab-lab/map-and-directions

Abby Aresty's site-specific installation Paths II: The Music of Trees is now up and running in Seattle's Washington Park Arboretum (WPA).  This is Abby's DMA dissertation piece and has been produced at DXARTS. To read more about the piece you can vist the project website, you can also read this article on the Seattle Times, the one on UWToday, or even check out NPR's coverage of the piece online.

If you live in the Seattle area, you can visit the piece Wednesdays 3-6 pm and Saturdays/Sundays from 10:30 am - 1:30 pm through the month of October.  Abby will be giving public tours on October 13 and 14 at 10:30 am and 12 pm.  

Moratorium on Undergraduate Admissions

The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media has instituted a moratorium on undergraduate admissions to its BFA program. We will not be taking new students in the 2012-2013 academic year.

Note: this does not affect degree progress for current DXARTS majors who can expect to continue and complete their BFA degrees in a timely manner.

DXARTS grads, undergrads, and alumni Meghan Trainor, Robert Twomey, Martin Jarmick, Josh Peterson, Daniel Chesney, Gaelen Sayres, Andrew Theisen, and Pete Moss are showing work at the Push Arts New Media Festival in South Lake Union. 

The event runs from 7pm - 3am, Friday August 24, 2012, and is free and open to the public. 

Talks and performances start at 7pm at 415 Westlake for the Kickoff Party. 

The gallery opens at 9pm at EM Fine Art. 

Details past the link: http://www.pusharts.org/venues/

News:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlearts/2012/08/12/push-arts-new-media-festival-friday-august-24-7-pm-%E2%80%93-3-am-one-night-all-night-free-contemporary-art/

http://southlakeunion.komonews.com/news/arts-culture/777013-friday-festival-brings-community-new-media-and-artists-together

ARCADE ZERO

A new article by Ewa Trebacz, titled "Depth Modulation: Composing Motion in Immersive Audiovisual Spaces", has been published in Organised Sound 17.2 (2012).

The article focuses on applications of immersive audiovisual media to experimental art, in particular in the context of so-called Visual Music. 

• Trebacz, Ewa. "Depth Modulation: Composing Motion in Immersive Audiovisual Spaces". Organised Sound 17.2 (2012): 156-162.

ORGANISED SOUND

An International Journal of Music and Technology

Organised Sound is an international peer-reviewed journal which focuses on the rapidly developing methods and issues arising from the use of technology in music today. It concentrates upon the impact which the application of technology is having upon music in a variety of genres, including multimedia, performance art, sound sculpture and music ranging from popular idioms to experimental electroacoustic composition. It provides a unique forum for anyone interested in electroacoustic music studies, its creation and related developments to share the results of their research as they affect musical issues. 

Source: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=OSO

Cornish College of the Arts is proud to present the 2012 Neddy at Cornish Exhibition. This show marks the inaugural year of the Neddy at Cornish program, celebrating the work of a selection of artists from the region who embody the spirit of the Neddy Award. Over the last 16 years, the Neddy Award has celebrated and propelled the careers of artists who have demonstrated outstanding artistic achievement while maintaining a lively connection to their community. This exhibition features the work of all eight nominees, from both the original painting category and the new "open medium" category, now annually including artists who work in any combination of visually-based media. 

From the traditional to the cutting-edge, Gala Bent, Cynthia Camlin, James Coupe, Eirik Johnson (Neddy Recipient in Open Medium), Lead Pencil Studio, Susie J. Lee, Jeremy Mangan, and Stacey Rozich (Neddy Recipient in Painting) employ a diverse range of techniques and themes. Climate change, surveillance monitoring, migrant work camps, personal mythologies, and the dynamic relationships between technology, architecture, and the body represent a few of the ideas explored in the exhibition. The 2012 Neddy at Cornish Exhibition is both a celebration and affirmation of the accomplishments of all eight artists and the distinct creative sensibilities from our region.

Additionally celebrating the arrival of the Neddy Award at Cornish, we are featuring a concurrent exhibition of paintings by the award's namesake, Ned Behnke. Curated by Peggy Weiss, Reflections will bring together a selection of paintings from multiple bodies of work, over the course of Behnke's life.

Neddy in Painting
Gala Bent
Cynthia Camlin
Jeremy Mangan
Stacey Rozich (Neddy Awardee)

Neddy in Open Medium
James Coupe
Eirik Johnson (Neddy Awardee)
Lead Pencil Studio
Susie J. Lee

Opening Reception
June 6, 5 - 9 pm
Main Gallery 
1000 Lenora Street, Floor 1

Gallery Hours
Tuesday - Friday, 12-5 pm
Saturday, 2-4pm
First Thursday, 12-7pm

www.cornish.edu/neddy

Stelios Manousakis is presenting a paper titled 'WLAN trilateration for musical echolocation in the installation ‘The Network Is A Blind Space’' at this year's New Interfaces for Musical Expression International Conference (NIME 2012), in Ann Arbor, Michigan (21-23 May 2012).

Paper abstract
This paper presents the system and technology developed for the distributed, micro-telematic, interactive sound art installation, The Network Is A Blind Space. The piece uses sound to explore the physical yet invisible electromagnetic spaces created by Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). To this end, the author created a framework for indoor WiFi localization, providing a variety of control data for various types of ‘musical echolocation’. This data, generated mostly by visitors exploring the installation while holding WiFi-enabled devices, is used to convey the hidden properties of wireless networks as dynamic spaces through an artistic experience.

About the conference
The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) is an annual interdisciplinary conference discussing contemporary topics in electronic musical interface design, research and practice. The NIME conference started out as a workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in 2001, and has grown into one of the largest and most vital international conferences within the field of music technology.
The NIME conference brings together researchers and practitioners from a range of academic fields including computer science, electrical engineering, human-computer interaction, musicology, electro-acoustic music, dance and composition, and has routinely attracted interest from electronic music industry as well.

More information and conference program here
 

Critically acclaimed New York new music group, the JACK Quartet presents a program of works by UW composers Joel-François Durand, Huck Hodge, Richard Karpen, and Juan Pampin in this performance capping off a weeklong residency at the UW.

Music: Cognition, Technology, Society conference presents an electroacoustic concert, with works by Nicholas Cline, Nathan Davis, Peter Van Zandt Lane, Nicola Monopoli, Stelios Manousakis, and Chris Stark.

Date/Time
Saturday, May 12 2012 at 8PM
Electroacoustic music concert

Location
Barnes Hall, Auditorium 129 Ho Plaza
Cornell University: Ithaca, NY
14853, USA

About the conference

Technology plays a crucial role across a broad spectrum of sonic activity, offering new cognitive frameworks and reshaping social networks in ways that challenge the conventional binary of the individual subject versus the collective. It mediates performance and listening, provides new modes of analysis, and inspires musical creation. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the nexus of social, cultural, and political issues in and around music, cognition, and technology.

Keynotes will be given by Eric Clarke (University of Oxford), Ichiro Fujinaga (McGill University) and Robert Gjerdingen (Northwestern University). The guest composer will be Tod Machover (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

More information about the conference here

More on Megas Diakosmos by Stelios Manousakis here

Southern Exchange:  An evening of 3D Digital Music by Argentine composers Oscar Pablo Di Liscia, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano and Juan Pampin.

In conjunction with the College’s 150^th anniversary, DXARTS undergraduate, Gaelen Sayres, was nominated and selected to receive a “Future Timeless Award.”

The College will be honoring 150 distinguished alumni and graduating seniors at the first-ever Timeless Awards Gala. Awardees include recipients of the College’s Distinguished Alumnus and UWAA’s Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus awards (“Past” awardees); alumni who are being honored for the first time (“Present” awardees); as well as graduating seniors and graduate students (“Future” awardees).

Gaelen was one of 20 graduating seniors and graduate students to receive this honor.

Maja Petrić will be presenting her work that focuses on changing the perception of space in function of art.

Address: 2915 4th Ave S. Seattle (Washington) Wa
Location: Lighting Design Lab
Date: 02/16/2012
Starting at: 12:00 pm
Cost: $ 25.00
Cost for members: $ 20.00
Cost for students: $ 15.00

Link: http://www.iespugetsound.org/event/58.php

Commissioned by Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA

Exhibited as part of Undercover January 27 - March 11, 2012

more details

Jacob Lawrence Gallery

Works by DXARTS PhD students Robert Twomey, Meghan Trainor, Ha Na Lee and Annabel Castro.

Opening 2/7/2012, 4-7pm
Exhibition 2/7 - 2/24
Gallery Hours Wednesday - Saturday, 12-4pm

Art Building, Room 132, Stevens Way
University of Washington, (206) 685-1805

Composer and researcher Joseph Anderson is in residency at DXARTS in the Winter quarter 2012. During his residency at DXARTS Joseph is working with Josh Parmenter on the Supercollider release of the Ambisonics Toolkit (ATK) and with Juan Pampin doing research on 3D audio spatial up-sampling and High Order Ambisonics (HOA).

"La biblioteca ciega", a site-specific sound art performance by Nicolas Varchausky has been nominated by one of this year's jury members for Prix Ars Electronica 2012, in the Interactive Art category. The piece was commissioned by Secretaría de Cultura de La Nación Argentina for the old reading room of the former National Library, once ran by Borges, and uses a series of instruments that turn light into sound. Mechanical photo-sensitive turntables, sonic backlights and bars of light are manipulated by members of the National Orchestra of Blind Musicians and expanded through live electronics into a 3D surround sound space.

• WHEN: February 1, 2012 - 7:00pm

• WHERE:

See map: Google Maps

• WHAT:

Stelios Manousakis - The sound of the network: WLAN echolocation for art

Stelios has developed a method of network echolocation to explore the physical yet invisible electromagnetic spaces created by Wireless Local Area Networks for his sound art installation 'The Network Is A Blind Space' (on exhibit at the Jack Straw New Media Gallery until 2/3/12). He will be talking about the technology behind the piece.

Project link:
http://modularbrains.net/TheNetworkIsABlindSpace.html

Maja Petrić -Transforming the poetic experience of space with light

Maja will be presenting on her work that focuses on changing the perception of space in function of art. Therefore, the subjects of my work are perception, space and, art. To change perception, I study sensation, experience, and phenomenology. To create spatial situations, I practice designing spaces, fabricating structures, manipulating materials, and integrating lighting and audiovisual systems.

The San Fransisco Tape Music Festival
January 20-22, 2012
ODC Theater
3153 17th
San Francisco

America's only festival devoted to the performance of audio works projected in three-dimensional space, with three distinct evenings of classic audio art and new fixed media compositions by 25 local and international composers. Hear members of the SF Tape Music Collective, along with guest composers, shape the sound live over a pristine surround system consisting of 16+ high-end loudspeakers while the audience is seated in complete darkness. It's a unique opportunity to experience music forming - literally - around you.

More information about the festival here.

Megas Diakosmos ('Μέγας Διάκοσμος', roughly translating to ‘The Great Order of the Universe') takes its name from a lost cosmological treatise written by Leukippos, an ancient Greek natural philosopher of the 5th century BCE. In this treatise, Leukippos introduced for the first time an Atomic Theory of cosmology, surprisingly comparable to contemporary cosmological theories. Very little is known about the work, but according to remarks of other ancient writers, Leukippos postulated that the universe consists of tiny, invisible, indestructible, unchangeable and indivisible 'Atoms' (the 'Being') differing only in size and shape, and of 'Void' (the 'Non-being'), that exists in-between atoms and has also material properties, although different (anti-matter?). This infinitely expanding and contracting void allows atoms to move and collide eternally, creating and destroying matter, new bodies, and our world, but also a vast number of other worlds in the universe, some inhabited some not.
Leukippos' atomic theory and turbulent cosmogonic vision form the conceptual and experiential starting points for the composition, its sonorities and their development throughout the piece, as well as for the system and sound synthesis methods used. The system is a cybernetic model based on digital feedback and implemented as a sonic complex dynamical system – mathematically similar to a cosmological entity or universe in motion. This sonic universe is defined by the sample-by-sample interactions of a single binary digit (One, or ‘Being’) moving incessantly within a world of Void (Zeros, or ‘Non-being’). This digit floats and collides, is fused and split from delayed copies of itself, thus creating countless sonic bodies in states of equilibrium, oscillation, chaotic behavior, noise and silence.
Although Megas Diakosmos is a fixed medium piece, all the different ‘worlds’ (layers and sections) were performed in real-time using a hands-on, live electronics version of the system to maintain an aspect of ‘in-time’ timelessness, and to accentuate the primal and visceral character of the composition.

The Network Is a Blind Space Stelios Manousakis December 9, 2011 - January 27, 2012 Artist Talk: Friday, January 20, 7pm Jack Straw New Media Gallery 4261 Roosevelt Way NE Seattle 98105

The Network Is a Blind Space is a distributed, micro-telematic, site-specific sound installation that explores the physical yet invisible electromagnetic spaces created by Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Two computers installed in opposite parts of Jack Straw, one in the gallery and another in the main studio, create an electromagnetic line-space that can be transversed and examined – perhaps broken. The piece spreads out from the gallery space, extending as far as the installation’s WLAN can reach. Sound is generated and modified in real time by visitors logging into the network with ordinary, wifi-enabled, mobile electronic devices (smartphones, iPods, tablets, laptops, etc).

Wireless network spaces co-exist with physical spaces but follow their own rules, which are not always intuitive from the point of view of physical experience. To explore and navigate them a new sense is needed, as vision falls short. In nature, many animals that inhabit environments where vision is not a sufficient navigational tool – such as bats and dolphins – have developed echolocation, transmitting sound and listening to the echoes of the space. The Network Is a Blind Space creates a type of musical echolocation to explore this hidden dimension within the particular spatial configuration of Jack Straw. Devices joining the network become part of the space as active nodes and resonant objects; each can be heard individually as its sound is played from a dome of speakers hanging from the ceiling of the gallery. The state of the system, from the point of view of each of its two computers, can also be listened to via two speakers located on the gallery floor – where the architectural plan of Jack Straw is marked out with tape – each at the respective spot of the computer it represents. Additionally, iPods and iPhones can be used as sound-making echolocation sonars after installing an application.

The Henry welcomes media artist, Maja Petrić (PhD candidate, DXARTS), choreographer, Jennifer Salk (Associate Professor, Dance), and over 15 dancers for a 40-minute dance/mixed media installation that delves into the complex nature of tenderness.

http://www.henryart.org/exhibitions/show/1159

This cross-departmental collaboration explores concepts of tenderness and fragility with a multi-sensory journey allowing viewers to experience the entire museum in unexpected ways. Upon entering the Henry viewers move through the interstitial spaces — hallways, stairwells, elevators, ramps — experiencing sound, light, and dance. These small environments create places of vulnerability, playfulness, intimacy, fragility and cruelty among a tightly knit group, choreographed by Salk.

Using light and projection technology, Petrić’s installations will appear in distinct locations in the Henry where the dancers interact. In the Stroum gallery, a large wall provides the backdrop to the main dance; it slowly “cracks” and discloses an illusion of a realm behind the wall.

*Performances are on January 26, 27, and February 2, 3 at 7:30PM and January 28, 29, and February 4 at 2:00PM. All performances are non-ticketed and free with museum admission.

*Petrić’s mixed media installation can be viewed from January 26 until February 4, 2012.

Funding for Eyes of the Skin is provided by the University of Washington Donald E. Petersen Endowment for Excellence.

Embedding Absence works by Robert Twomey, Meghan Trainor, Annabel Castro, and Ha Na Lee. Opening show is 2/7/12 at 4-7pm. Exhibit runs through 2/7-2/24. Location: Art Building, Room 132, Stevens Way, University of Washington. Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 12-4pm

Juan Pampin and Mike McCrea travelled to Taipei to present a DXARTS concert as part of the 2011 International Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (WOCMAT) in Taipei, Taiwan. Juan will give a keynote presentation on his work called Sound and Space: from the Auditory to the Corporeal.

http://archive.music.ntnu.edu.tw/wocmat2011/

2011 International Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (WOCMAT 2011) welcomes Music and Paper Submissions which correspond to the computer music or audio technology related subjects. WOCMAT, established in 2005 at National Taiwan University, has been hosted annually by music, computer science or engineering departments/schools at various universities in Taiwan, and has gathered international researchers, scholars and renowned guests from both the music and technology domains.  WOCMAT 2011 will be organized by the Music Digital Archives Center and the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan Normal University on December 2-4.

WOCMAT 2011 will invite world-renowned scholars to present their recent findings in music and research; the guests include Cort Lippe from the University of Buffalo, Marc Battier from the Paris Sorbonne University, Arshia Cont and Benoit Meudic from the IRCAM, Juan Pampin from the DXARTS at University of Washington, etc. The Workshop will consist of music performance, paper presentation, guest lecture and forum, and especially this year, it will collaborate with the Asian Composers League Music Festival and the Taiwan-France Orchid Project.

Music and Paper Submissions will go through a rigorous reviewing process supervised by both the Music and Technical Program Committee

AXIAL: A Sound Installation by Hugo Solis, Dec. 8th, 9th, & 10th open 4:18-11pm, Artist Talk, Friday Dec. 9, 2011 at 7PM at the Center for Urban Horticulture, UW Botanic Gardens, 3501 NE 41st St, Seattle, WA 98195

Nicolas Varchausky will be performing in Buenos Aires at the premiere of "LA BIBLIOTECA CIEGA, an acoustic exploration of the alphabet and three photo-sensitive volumes", on Sunday December 4th, 8PM at Centro Nacional de la Música (Mexico 564). The piece was commissioned by Secretaría de Cultura de La Nación Argentina for the old reading room of the former Argentine National Library, once ran by B...orges, and it's composed in two chapters: 1. Resonances, Turbulences and Explosions, and 2. Photo-Sensitive Volumes I-III. In the first one, three electronic pieces are presented in complete darkness and surround sound, each one realized out of the recording of a different consonant. These recordings were analyzed and re-synthesized revealing through algorithmic processing their inner soundscape. In the second one, members of the Banda Sinfónica de Ciegos (an orchestra of blind musicians) manipulate live a series of instruments that turn light into sound. Mechanical photo-sensitive turntables, sonic backlights and bars of light will be expanded through live electronics to create three performatic sound pieces.

MEDIA RELEASE

http://henryart.org/mediathing/upload/1473/Media_Release_Henry_Announces_New_Commission_--_Sanctum_by_James_Coupe_and_Juan_Pampin.pdf

Stelios Manousakis will perform "Fantasia on a Single Number" at the Audio Art Festival, in Krakow, Poland

Audio Art is an experimental and postmodernist art of the close of XX century and the beginning of the XXI century. Audio Art is an integration of sound and visual arts. Presentation of Audio Art appears in form of the concert, performance and installation. Audio Art creates new concept of sound source: as an object and musical instrument in certain space and time. Audio Art is a "one person art": designer, composer, sound artist and performer unify the whole process of art creation. Audio Art uses low and high technology. Audio Art Festival presents premiere projects from all over the world.

Premiere and screenings of Jeanette Groenendaal's film Reformation (2011, 82'), with music composed by Stelios Manousakis and Stephanie Pan; Reformation is an official selection of the International Documentary Film Festival 2011 (IDFA) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, under the category 'Paradocs',

IDFA is one of the world's leading documentary film festivals, held annually in Amsterdam since 1988. 'Paradocs' is a program in which the "periphery" of the documentary genre takes center stage. It showcases what is going on beyond the frame of traditional documentary filmmaking, on the borders between film and art, truth and fiction and narrative and design.

Digital Music presented by the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) and the University of Washington, Seattle. This concert will be given in a full 3D sound presentation using DXARTS' 12.6 audio system. The concert will feature works by graduate students Daniel Peterson, Abby Aresty, Stelios Manousakis, and Nicolás Varchausky, as well as the world premiere of "A Line (Part I, IDA)" by School of Music composition faculty and DXARTS Director, Juan Pampin.

Date/Time: Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 7:30 PM

Location: Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, UW Campus

Tickets: $15 general, $10 student / senior

Advance purchase: http://www.meany.org/tickets/ or 206.543.4880

Program:

A paper written by Nicolás Varchausky, Scott Carver and Michael McCrea on the Tertulia Project (a collaboration with artist Eduardo Molinari) will be presented in Seoul at the Korean Electro Acoustic Music Society (KEAMS). The event is part of the Seoul International Computer Music Festival (SICMF 2011)

The paper focuses on the sound component of the installation, reviewing its sonic ideas on form and content as well as the computer framework developed for the project.

The Tertulia Project was originally produced by the Eurokaz Festival in Croatia.

Based on her doctoral dissertation research, Ewa Trebacz will present "Depth Modulation: Visual Music in Immersive Media Environments" at the 2011 Understanding Visual Music Conference in Montreal.

Assistant Professor James Coupe, Heather Raikes (PhD 2011),  and current PhD student, Maja Petric, will present at the 2011 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Istanbul.

Coupe's paper, titled "Surveillance Art as Panacea", posits that "surveillance is the inevitable result of a search for a cure to a variety of 21st Century ailments.."

Raikes will present her doctoral research in "Corpus Corvus: Exploring Contemporary Mythos Through Immersive Media Poetics>"

Petric, in "Pursuing the Unknowable through Transformative Spaces,"  investigates the sublime as the core to her artistic research and practice.

Thousands of students, faculty, staff, and visitors walk past the Henry’s entrance every day.  To better engage these passersby and make the public face of the Henry more dynamic, the Henry Art Gallery initiated the Façade Window Project. In late 2010 the museum issued an international open call to artists soliciting proposals for a site-specific, large-scale media project that would transform the façade of the museum’s main entrance. The goal of the Project is to create a site-specific installation that is visually striking and attention-grabbing, arousing interest in and curiosity about the Henry and presenting a unique and captivating artistic vision. This new art installation will serve as a beacon for the museum and as an invitation to the campus and larger community to come participate in the art and dialogue happening at the Henry. 

Sarah and Richard Barton (Barton Family Foundation) and Linden Rhoads, Vice Provost of UW Tech Transfer, in an exemplary display ofleadership and commitment, funded the initiative with significant lead gifts.  Both Linden and Sarah have been longtime friends and supporters of the Henry Art Gallery;  both have served multiple terms on the Henry Gallery Association Board of Trustees.

Submissions were received from ninety-one artists, architects, and art-making teams. The selection committee that juried proposals comprised:

Sylvia Wolf, Director of the Henry Art Gallery

Elizabeth Brown, Henry Chief Curator

Sara Krajewski, Henry Curator

Christiane Paul, Whitney Museum Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts
and Director of the Media Studies Graduate Program at The New School

Daniel Friedman, Dean of the University of Washington’s College of the Built Environment

Bill True, Henry Board of Trustees Chairman

Linden Rhoads, Vice Provost of UW Tech Transfer

Sarah Barton, MD, and Richard Barton, co-founder of expedia.com, zillow.com, and pozit.com

After careful debate the jury has selected three finalists, who will each be given a $5,000 stipend to further develop their concepts before the final commission is awarded. The finalists will be asked to complete a site visit before making their final presentations to the jury in November. The commission of $45,000 with an additional $15,000 artist honorarium will be awarded in December and construction willbegin shortly thereafter. The completed project will be unveiled in spring or summer 2012.

The finalists:

Nataly Gattegno and Jason Kelly Johnson are the design principles of Future City Labs, an experimental art, design, and research office based in San Francisco, California and Athens, Greece.  Both hold a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University. Gattegno also holds a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University, St. Johns College, UK; Johnson received his BS from the University of Virginia. Their work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Most recently Gattegno and Johnson were the 2008-09 Muschenheim and Oberdick Fellows at the University of Michigan; the 2009 New York Prize Fellows at the Van Alen Institute in New York City; and haveexhibited work at the 2009-10 Hong Kong / Shenzhen Biennale, the Extension Gallery in Chicago, and the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.

James Coupe and Juan Pampin are Associate Professors at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington.  James Coupe received his PhD in Digital Art and Experimental Media from the University of Washington and an MA in Creative Technology from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK. His recent works (re)collector and Surveillance Suite use computer vision software to extract demographic and behavioral information that he recontextualizes into narratives. Juan Pampin is an Argentine composer and sound artist with a Master of Arts in Computer Music from the Conservatoire National in Lyon, France and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition from Stanford University. His work explores the territory delineated by the concepts of site, memory, and materiality, considering listening as an active process of self reflection.

Ed Purver is a New York-based artist whose practice includes participatory, interactive, and site-specific installations with an orientation towards public art. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University and a Master of Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He recently completed In Residence, a site-specific video installation commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial. He held a 2010 Fellowship in Video from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has collaborated with and consulted for leading companies in the fields of lighting, theatre and architecture.

"Fantasia on a Single Number" by Stelios Manousakis and Nicolas Varchausky 's "Speaker Performance Kiosk"  will be performed at ICMC 2011.

The 2011 International Computer Music Conference will be hosted by CeReNeM, the Centre for Research in New Music, at the University of Huddersfield, England.

The International Computer Music Association is an international affiliation of individuals and institutions involved in the technical, creative, and performance aspects of computer music. It serves composers, engineers, researchers and musicians who are interested in the integration of music and technology.

Non-majors are encouraged to apply to enroll in year-long, in-depth explorations of experimental art. No prerequisites.

Check out the application links below.

Video  

Mechatronics

To subscribe, visit this site.

Open enrollment --- anyone can take classes during the summer, choosing from over 2,000 courses in 100 fields of study, including the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media.

Courses offered Summer 2011:

DXARTS 450 - Digital Video Foundations

DXARTS 460 - Digital Sound

DXARTS 470 - Sensing and Control Systems for Digital Arts

DXARTS 490 - Special Topics in Digital Arts: Film Production

No prerequisites.

Registration informaton for non-UW students

Undergraduate DXARTS major, Matthew Kaplan, is the recipient of the 2011 BFA Thesis Award.

Matthew's work was noted as "a great example of the risk-taking, experimental spirit of DXARTS".

In conjunction with the exhibition The Talent Show , on view from May 7, 2011 through August 21, The Henry Art Gallery invites you to join artist James Coupe for a screening and discussion of the artist’s recent work with ‘surveillance cinema’ in (re)collector,Surveillance Suite, and the web-based work Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days.

James Coupe is an artist whose work focuses on emergent systems, aesthetic machines, autonomy, and networks. His recent work with ‘surveillance cinema’ explores the witting and un-witting relationship between the artist/participant and the viewer/participant. This method of ‘surveillance cinema’ utilizes computer vision software to extract demographic and behavioral information from video footage from a variety of sources including YouTube clips, studio footage, and surveillance camera feeds. The footage is then algorithmically reorganized and recontextualized into narratives, often using cinematic ‘templates’ such as Antonioni’s classic film Blow-Up.

James Coupe has exhibited both nationally and internationally, receiving awards from the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Board Innovation Award, Creative Capital and Artist’s Trust.

The Talent Show is organized by Peter Eleey for the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and is made possible by generous support from the David Tieger Foundation and Ann M. Hatch. Presentation at the Henry is supported by ArtsFund and the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Special thanks to media sponsor Seattle Weekly.

Saturday, June 4, 2011, 2:00 - 3:00 pm

Henry Auditorium

Students and Henry Members FREE | General Public $5

Heather Raikes, who completes her PhD in DXARTS this quarter, has been awarded the inaugural Arts & Sciences Dean's Graduate Medal in the Arts. She will be acknowledged at the 2011 University of Washington Commencement Exercises on June 11.

Composer John Chowning is considered one of the pioneers of Computer Music. His contributions to this field, such as the invention of FM Digital Synthesis, had a strong cultural impact in the worlds of both classical and popular music. His invention allowed the production of one of the most popular digital synthesizers, the Yamaha DX7, which sold millions of units in the 1980s and was used by virtually every rock band from that era. Revenues from the licensing of this technology to Yamaha Corporation allowed Chowning to create the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, one of the most important Computer Music research centers in the world.

Chowning's most important contribution to the world of music, however, can be found in his compositions, all considered master pieces of Computer Music: Sabelithe (1971), Turenas (1972), Stria (1977), and Phoné (1981). Several of these pieces will be played during DXARTS' concert in Meany Hall over a state-of-the art surround sound system. The program will also include a more recent piece by Chowning, Voices (2005), for soprano and live electronics, performed by soprano Maureen Chowning.


DATE & TIME: 

Wednesday, April 27, 2011
7:30 p.m.

LOCATION:

Meany Theater

TICKETS:

$10 ($5 students/seniors)
206-543-4880
www.music.washington.edu



GUEST ARTIST BIO: JOHN CHOWNING

John Chowning was born in Salem, New Jersey, in 1934. Following military service he studied music at Wittenberg University where he concentrated on composition and received his degree in 1959. He then studied composition in Paris for three years with Nadia Boulanger. In 1966 he received the doctorate in composition from Stanford University, where he studied with Leland Smith.

With the help of Max Mathews of Bell Telephone Laboratories and David Poole of Stanford, in 1964 he set up a computer music program using the computer system of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This was the first implementation of an on-line computer music system ever.

Beginning in 1964 he began the research leading to the first generalized sound localization algorithm implemented in a quad format in 1966. In 1967, John Chowning discovered the frequency modulation (FM) algorithm in which both the carrier frequency and the modulating frequency are within the audio band. This breakthrough in the synthesis of timbres allowed a very simple yet elegant way of creating and controlling time-varying spectra. Over the next six years he worked toward turning this discovery into a system of musical importance. In 1973, he and Stanford University began a relationship with Yamaha in Japan, which led to the most successful synthesizer technology in the history of electronic musical instruments, known as FM synthesis.

John Chowning has received fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and was artist-in-residence with the Kunstlerprogramm des Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdiensts for the City of Berlin in 1974, and guest artist in IRCAM, Paris in 1978, in 1981, and in 1985. His compositions have been recorded on compact disc, WERGO 2012-50. In 1983 he was honored for his contributions to the field of computer music at the International Computer Music Conference in Rochester, New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988.

In 1992 he was given The Osgood Hooker Professorship of Fine Arts by the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. The French Ministry of Culture awarded him the Diplôme d'Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1995 and he was given the Doctorat Honoris Causa December 2002 by the Université de la Méditerranée. Chowning taught computer-sound synthesis and composition at Stanford University's Department of Music and was founder and director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), one of the leading centers for computer music and related research.

Beginning in Autumn 2012 the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board will fund one year of research in affiliation with Seoul's prestigious Hongik University.  During this period abroad, Rice will study the work of pioneering video artist Nam Jun Paik, while creating a new series of inter-media artworks in preparation for his DXARTS dissertation project.  

http://fulbright.state.gov/

UK-based artists working in digital media were invited to submit work which celebrates innovative and creative use of new media technology. Each of the artists embraces technology in very different ways, from live networked installations through to moving image and sound. They have all exhibited internationally and are well respected within this field of work. Read more.

The School of Music and the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) present a special appearance by Europe’s leading percussion ensemble, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, as part of their 50th anniversary North American tour. The program will include Tempus ex Machina by Gérard Grisey and Persephassa, by Iannis Xenakis—two master pieces commissioned by the group that require the players to perform surrounding the audience. The program will also include a performance of On Space, a work for percussion sextet and 3D sound composed for the group by School of Music professor Juan Pampin.

Please Note: Due to the stage set-up for this concert, seating is extremely limited. Advanced ticket purchase is recommended.

DATE & TIME Saturday, February 19, 2011 :: 7:30 p.m.
LOCATION Meany Theater, UW Campus
TICKETS $15 ($10 students and seniors)

Purchase Tickets Online
www.music.washington.edu
206.543.4880

View a video of a performance of Gérard Grisey's "Tempus ex Machina"

Download Press Release

PROGRAM DETAIL
Gérard Grisey: Tempus ex Machina
Juan Pampin: On Space
Iannis Xenakis: Persephassa

PROGRAM NOTES
Tempus Ex Machina (1979) –– Gérard Grisey
Tempus Ex Machina is essentially a study of time. The pitch of the skins, woods and metals, extremely schematized and quickly detected by the ear, allow an acute concentration on the temporal structure. The piece is a blueprint from which color is reduced to the strictly necessary: only the form emerges, and the least error is fatal.

Like in most of my other works, the material is almost sublimated into a pure sound flux. Thus, the rhythms of the initial sequence are not to be taken as a cell, but rather as a vehicle of time: periodicity, acceleration and deceleration are only three poles between which the discourse oscillates, cutting a path between the similar and the different, towards the interior of sound.

This slow journey from the macrophony towards the microphony determines the form of Tempus Ex Machina, truly a time-dialation machine, in which the zoom effect lets us perceive the grain of sound, and therefore the sound matter in itself.

Thus, the last perceived sounds of the piece are the same strokes of
the Bass Drums and Log Drums from the beginning of the score, but
dilated in extreme, allowing us to capture the inaudible: transients,
partials, beatings… the body of sound.

After much meandering, we reached the end of the journey: the other side of the mirror.
–– Gérard Grisey

Persephassa (1969) - Iannis Xenakis
Persephassa is a piece for six percussionists composed by Iannis Xenakis in 1969. The piece was commissioned for the first-ever Shiraz Festival (organized by the Empress of Iran), held at the historic desert site of Persepolis. The title refers to the goddess Persephone, "the personification of telluric forces and of transmutations of life."

Persephassa gains much of its effect from having the six percussionists distributed around the audience. The treatment of space as a musical parameter is one of the most important preoccupations of Xenakis’ music, particularly in his works of the mid-to-late 1960’s. The dramatic impact of utilizing the performance space in this manner is evident in many passages throughout the piece in which accents or imitative rhythms are passed around the ensemble.

The percussionists use a wide range of instruments and sound effects during the piece, including sirens, maracas, and pebbles, along with an arsenal of drums, wood blocks, cymbals, and gongs.



On Space (2000/2005) –– Juan Pampin
"The pleasure of space: This cannot be put into
words, it is unspoken. Approximately: it is a form of
experience --the "presence of absence"; exhilarating
differences between the plane and the cavern, between
the street and your living-room; the symmetries and
dissymmetries emphasizing the spatial properties of my
body: right and left, up and down. Taken to its extreme,
the pleasure of space leans toward the poetics of the
unconscious, to the edge of madness."

--Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction

On Space was commissioned by the French percussion ensemble Les
Percussions de Strasbourg and GRAME (Centre National de Création Artistique), it was premiered on March 7, 2000, at the opening concert of the Musiques en Scène festival in Lyon, France. On Space closes Pampin's Percussion Cycle, a cycle of four pieces exploring the materiality of different percussion instrumental families; the other pieces of the cycle are Métal Hurlant (metal), Toco Madera (wood), and Skin Heads (skins). On Space uses sound materials created in those three works to shape space as continuous matter, capable of inflections and dramatic changes; both the sextet of performers and the electronic sources surround the audience supporting this purpose. The 3D sound system is used to locate sounds dynamically in space and to create a sound environment in which the audience is immersed. The electronic part of On Space acts also as a link between the different families of percussion instruments; the electronic sounds present spectral characteristics analogous to the instruments helping them blend or morph into each other over time. Divided in four continuous sections (named North, West, East and South), the form of On Space is freely modeled after Jorge Luis Borges' short story Death and the Compass. Some of the ideas behind the spatial design and layering of the piece could be traced back to concepts presented by Bernard Tschumi in his book Architecture and Disjunction.

A large revision of On Space (in particular of the West and South sections) was completed in 2005, right before the surround recording of the entire Percussion Cycle by Les Percussions de Strasbourg in January 2006.

COMPOSER BIO: Juan Pampin
Juan Pampin is Associate Professor of Composition at the School of Music of the University of Washington and Associate Director of the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS). Pampin received an MA in Composition from Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, France and a DMA in Composition from Stanford University, where he studied with composer Jonathan Harvey. Juan Pampin’s music explores a territory outlined by the concepts of space, memory, and material; algorithmic composition and signal processing tools of his own development assist him in this artistic quest. His compositions, including works for instrumental, digital, and mixed media, have been performed around the world by world-class soloists and ensembles such as Melia Watras, Susana Kasakoff, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Arditti String Quartet, Sinfonia 21, and many others.

ARTIST BIO: Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Formed in 1962, Les Percussions de Strasbourg has earned a strong reputation over its 50- year history as a pioneering force for the creation and performance of new music. Since its foundation, the group has presented world premieres of more than 250 works, including pieces by emblematic modern composers such as Iannis Xenakis and Gérard Grisey. The group’s commitment to new compositions continues to inspire composers and audiences alike with a sense of urgency in the quest for innovative forms of musical expression. Les Percussions de Strasbourg reinvents the very form of the percussion recital in order to renew the spirit, discourse, and aesthetics of artistic performance.

Media contact: Joanne De Pue (jdepue@u.washington.edu, 206-543-1186)

EVENT
The University of Washington School of Music presents an evening of new works performed by internationally renowned visiting artists Garth Knox (France), Stefan Östersjö (Sweden), Nguyen Thanh Thuy, and Ho Hoai Anh (Vietnam). Works on the program include the premiere of a music-only version of Idioms, a piece of experimental musical theater combining experimental Western music and traditional Vietnamese music, created by School of Music composer Richard Karpen in dialogue with the musicians of the Six Tones (Swedish guitarist Stefan Östersjö and Vietnamese musicians Nguyen Thanh Thuy and Ho Hoai Anh) and programmer Josh Parmenter from the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. For the second half of the concert, Garth Knox joins the Six Tones, Karpen and Parmenter to perform collaboratively composed and improvised music for viola d'amore, dan trahn, dan bau, guitars, and live electronics.


DATE & TIME
Tuesday, February 14, 2011
7:30 p.m.

LOCATION
Meany Theater

TICKETS
$10 all tickets.
206-543-4880
www.music.washington.edu

NOTE: Violist Garth Knox also leads a free master class with students of Melia Watras, Friday, February 11, 1:30 p.m. in Brechemin Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public.


PROGRAM DETAIL
Background on Idioms
Idioms is a piece of experimental music theatre with three actors and the three musicians in The Six Tones. The text in the piece is in English, Swedish and Vietnamese and can be understood as a deconstruction of three classic stories of impossible love across cultures and social barriers: Marguerite Duras: The Lover, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and the Vietnamese tale of My Chau and Trong Thuy. The different traditions that the actors represent provide a range of expression in a wide span between spoken theatre and opera. The music, which in a similar way weaves traditional Vietnamese music together with experimental Western music, is produced by Richard Karpen in dialogue with the The Six Tones and Josh Parmenter from DXARTS.


The Sonat Series
SONAT is a series of experimental music-dramatic projects by Teatr Weimar and Ensemble Ars Nova. The point of departure is the form and aesthetics of the hörspiel transformed into scenic formation. The hörspiel has it’s strongest traditions in Germany and is the German term for radio drama. It is in other words one of the most recent dramatic and musical forms, directly linked to a technical achieve-ment that still today has an important role in our culture; the radio. The hörspiel brings together radio documentary, soundscape, acoustic and electroacoustic music with the semiotics of the theatre. Since 2008, we have cooperated in order to find new forms for experimental music theatre. The core of this activity is the production of new works, merging the aesthetics of the hörspiel with the theatre’s modes of expressions. So far, we have produced seven works, five of these were world premieres and two had their first Swedish performances. Our overarching ambition is to build an artistic competence and methodology for finding new forms of expressions for musical drama. An important part of this project is to create a European network of scenes for new and experimental musical drama.

Transitions
IDIOMS brings the collaboration between Teatr Weimar and Ars Nova in connection with Transitions, a project launched by Ensemble Ars Nova in 2006. Transitions wishes to enable contemporary art music to face the challenge of the multicultural society of today by means of creating meeting points where sound artists, composers and performers from any possible cultural background can come together in a context of mutual learning. Central issues to the project are aspects of cultural identity and heritage and how these can be kept alive and brought into creative use in the Western multicultural situation. An important figure of thought is how the transmission of a tradition always involves an element of transformation. One may say that it is this transformation that is in focus, in the artistic projects as well as in the research.

Working methods: Intercultural dialogue between traditional and experimental arts.
In the meeting between performance traditions of traditional Vietnamese Music and contemporary Western art music, the door is also opened to traditional Vietnamese Tuong drama. With the Western actors, also experimental modes of theatrical expression are added to the artistic framework. The project brings traditional cultures in dialogue with state of the art audio technology. The production of the electronics for the performances is done in collaboration with DXARTS at University of Washington.

Workshops with the musicians and actors
The fundamental building block of the artistic methodology is that of mutual learning. Also, the piece is to be developed jointly by all the participators, the composer and writer functioning as ’artistic directors’ of a process in which all performers can contribute material to the piece. This open process is intended to result in a piece that is built on the merging of different traditions of improvisation but eventually leading to a theatrical work which has a fixed identity and structure.

Introductory workshops
Two workshops in 2010 constitute a pilot project part of the production. The first sessions took place in Seattle in May 2010. In these sessions, only the musicians of The Six Tones met with Richard Karpen, the programmer Joshua Parmenter and writer Jörgen Dahlqvist. These sessions solidified the main ideas of how to develop the piece in a workshop format. The second series of sessions took place in October 2010 in Hanoi. The main objective with these sessions was to find an actor from the traditional Vietnamese theatre who might want to join the project and to continue developing the material in sessions also with the three musicians.

ARTIST BIOS:
Garth Knox, viola d’amore
Garth Knox was born in Ireland and grew up in Scotland. Being the youngest of four children who all played string instruments, he was encouraged to take up the viola, and he quickly decided to make this his career. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Fredrick Riddle, where he won several prizes for viola and for chamber music. Thereafter he played with most of the leading groups in London in a mixture of all repertoires, from baroque to contemporary music. In 1983 he was invited by Pierre Boulez to become a member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, where he had the chance to do much solo playing (including concertos directed by Pierre Boulez) and chamber music, touring widely and playing in international festivals.

In 1990 Garth Knox joined the Arditti String Quartet, playing in all the major concert halls of the world, working closely with and giving fi rst performances of pieces by most of today’s leading composers including Ligeti, Kurtag, Berio, Xenakis, Lachenmann, Cage, Feldman and Stockhausen (the famous «Helicopter Quartet»). Since leaving the quartet in 1998, Garth Knox has given premieres by Henze (the Viola Sonata is dedicated to him), Ligeti, Schnittke, Ferneyhough, James Dillon, George Benjamin and many others. He also collaborates regularly in theatre and dance projects and has written and performed shows for children and young audiences.

Improvisation is also an important part of his musical activity, and he has performed with George Lewis, Steve Lacy, Joel Léandre, Dominique Pifarély, Bruno Chevillon, Benat Achiary, Scanner and many others. He appears on the Frode Haltli CD Passing Images. In the past decade he has begun to write his own music, and is much in demand for theatre, dance and fi lm scores as well as concert pieces and instrumental works.

Garth Knox has recently begun to explore the possibilities of the viola d’’amore in new music, with and without electronics, and is in the process of creating a new repertoire for this instrument. His CD D’Amore (EMI New Series 1925) features old and new music for the viola d’amore.

Garth Knox now lives in Paris playing recitals, concertos and chamber music concerts all over Europe, the USA and Japan. His solo CD with works from Ligeti, Dusapin, Berio, Kurtág and others (MO 782082) won the coveted Deutsche Schallplaten Preis in Germany.

Nguyen Thanh Thuy, dan tranh
Nguyen Thanh Thuy studied at the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music where she received her diploma in 1998, followed by a Master of Arts at the Institute of Vietnamese Folklore in 2002. Since 2000 she holds a teaching position at the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music. She has performed at the Roskildefestivalen in Denmark, Guzheng Melody in Indonesia, in Singapore, Ryssland, Kina and at numerous festivals in Vietnam. She has received many distinctions, in 1992 First Prize in the Contest of Traditional Instrument Performance on Television and Radio, Vietnam, as well as in 1998 First Prize and the Best Traditional Music Performer Prize in the National Competition of Zither Talents, 1998, Vietnam. Thuy has recorded several CD’s as soloist with orchestra: Nhung danh cam dan toc tre (Young musician Talents) – 1998, Giai dieu bon mua (Four Seasons’ Melodies) – 1998, Loi ru que huong (Lullaby of the Native Land) – 2001 and a solo CD: Doc tau dan tranh Nguyen Thanh Thuy Vol.1 (Solo dan tranh Nguyen Thanh Thuy Vol.1) – 2005

Ho Hoai Anh: dan bau
Ho Hoai Anh graduated from the University of Traditional Music at the Vietnam National Academy of Music in 2003. In 2009 he was awarded the Musician of the Year award – voted by community of Vietnamese Press. He also Performed in various countries around the world, along with orchestras in Europe, Japan, and Americ. In 2010, he was voted ‘Best Musician‘ by FM audiences.

Stefan Östersjö: ten-stringed guitar and ty bau
Stefan Östersjö is one of the most prominent soloists within new music in Sweden. Since his debut CD (Swedish Grammy in 1997) he has recorded extensively and toured Europe, the US and Asia. He writes articles on contemporary music and is frequently invited to give lectures and master classes at universities, festivals and academic conferences. His special fields of interest are the interaction with electronics, and experimental work with different kinds of stringed instruments other than the classical guitar. His great interest in chamber music has resulted in the founding of flute, viola and guitar-trio HOT 3 and collaboration with most chamber ensembles and important soloists in Scandinavia such as Jonny Axelsson, Geir Draugsvoll, KammarensembleN, Ensemble Gageego and Ensemble Ars Nova. He is continuously working with composers both in Sweden and abroad on the task of extending the repertory of solo works and chamber music with guitar. As a soloist he has cooperated with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, Peter Eötvös, Pierre André Valade, Mario Venzago, Franck Ollu and Tuomas Ollila. He has recorded extensively for the Swedish National Radio and also for Swedish TV as well as in many other countries.

Dr. Stefan Östersjö studied with Gunnar Spjuth and Prof Per-Olof Johnsson at the Malmö Academy of Music (1987-1992) and also with Peder Riis and Magnus Andersson in Stockholm and Darmstadt. He continued his studies with a PhD project within the field of artistic research, carried out in 2002-2008. His thesis SHUT UP ‘N’ PLAY! Negotiating the Musical Work is published by Lund University. He is at present engaged in artistic research on improvisation in different cultural contexts at the Malmö Academy of Music.

In 1995 he made his CD debut as soloist on Ensemble Ars Nova's second CD (nominated to a Swedish "Grammy -96" for best classical album). - His first soloCD, with works by E Carter, J Dillon, F Donatoni and T Murail, recieved a Swedish "Grammy Award" in the category of "Best Classical Album" in 1998. - In summer -99 he recorded Kent Olofsson's "Il Liuto d'Orfeo", a recording which is released by GMEB in Bourges and by dB Productions (Sweden). - His second soloCD, Impossible Guitar Parts, with works by Swedish composers, was released in spring 2001 on dB Productions, Sweden - Portrait CD with the music of “Fredrik Ed”, soloist in ’Leash’, dB Productions, Malmö - He recorded the lute works of JS Bach on the 11-stringed alto guitar, released on dB Productions (Sweden) in 2003. - In 2003 “Trio con Forza”, a constellation of Swedish works for flute, viola and guitar, with HOT 3 was released on Phono Suecia. - His fourth solo CD on dB Productions, “Play Time” with works for guitar and electronics was released in 2004. - In 2005 “Rhizome”, a portrait CD with works for guitar and chamber ensemble by Swedish composer Christer Lindwall was released on Phono Suecia (Sweden). Portrait CD with the music of Johannes Johansson, recordings with HOT 3 and Ensemble Ars Nova), dB Productions, Malmö - His recording of Kent Olofsson’s Guitar Concerto “Corde” with the Gothenburg Symphony and Mario Venzago was released on Phono Suecia in 2008. - He has also recorded the complete guitar works by Danish composer Per Nørgård, released on Caprice records in autumn 2008.

Richard Karpen, composer
Richard Karpen (b. 1957) is one of the leading composers and researchers of electroacoustic music internationally. He is known not only for his pioneering compositions for live and electronic media, but also for developing computer applications for composition, live/interactive performance, and sound design.

Karpen is currently Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington after previously serving at the UW as Founding Director of the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) and Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is also a Professor of Music Composition. He has been the recipient of many awards, grants and prizes including those from the National Endowment for the Arts, the ASCAP Foundation, the Bourges Contest in France, and the Luigi Russolo Foundation in Italy. Fellowships and grants for work outside of the U.S. include a Fulbright to Italy, a residency at IRCAM in France, and a Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship to the United Kingdom. He received his doctorate in composition from Stanford University, where he also worked at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Karpen is a native of New York, where he studied composition with Charles Dodge and Gheorghe Costinescu.

Karpen's works are widely performed in the U.S. and internationally. While he is primarily known for his work in electronic media, Karpen has also composed symphonic and chamber works for a wide variety of ensembles. Furthermore, he has composed works for many leading international soloists such as soprano Judith Bettina, violist Garth Knox, trombonist Stuart Dempster, flutists Laura Chislett and Jos Zwaanenberg, guitarist, Stefan Östersjö, and oboist Alex Klein. Along with numerous concert and radio performances, his works have been set to dance by groups such as the Royal Danish Ballet and the Guandong Dance Company of China. Karpen's compositions have been recorded on a variety of labels including Wergo, Centaur, Neuma, Le Chant du Monde, and DIFFUSION i MeDIA, and Capstone.

Joshua Parmenter, programmer
Joshua Parmenter is currently a research artist in Computer Music and Composition at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington, Seattle.  He completed his D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Washington in 2005, where he studied with Prof. Richard Karpen. He received his Master of Music in Composition in 2002 from the University of Washington. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Edwin Dugger and Jorge Liderman. He is currently a Research Artist at the University of Washington at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media.
Parmenter's music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe. He specializes in both acoustic and electro-acoustic music, especially music that combines performers with real-time electronics. An important part of his research has been in the development of real-time synthesis software as part of the SuperCollider open source project. He also uses the CSound and Common Music synthesis programs.  Currently, his research is focused on extending the real-time analysis and performance tools in the SuperCollider programming language, as well as a suite of Ambisonic Unit Generators for sound spatialization.
Parmenter's piece Organon Sostenuto for flute, bassoon, cello, double bass and live electronics was awarded the prize for outstanding composition from the Americas at ICMC 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2008, he completed his "Musical Changes", a set of four pieces that explore crescendo, decrescendo, accelerando and ritardando The first piece "Cadence (III. Decrescendo) received its premiere in November 2005, and Concerto for Bass and Computer-realized Sound (II. Accelerando) was commissioned and performed in March, 2006 by bassist Kristjan Sigurleifsson.




UPCOMING EVENTS IN THIS SERIES:

MAY 25 (Wed)
UW Contemporary Group
Student ensembles, under the direction of Jonathan Pasternack, perform new music selections.

Meany Studio Theater   
7:30 pm   
$10
206.543.4880
www.music.washington.edu



 

Saturday, January 15, 2011 | 7:30 – 9:30pm

Location: Great Hall, enter on 8th Avenue

The composer collective Deep Listening Band—Seattle trombonist Stuart Dempster, keyboardist David Gamper, and accordionist Pauline Oliveros—elevates improvisational music with a passion (and reputation) for site-specific pieces that use space and resonance as inspiration. Celebrating more than 20 years together, the acclaimed group has honed its instrumental-electronic-experimental niche in a 2-million-gallon cistern, an old limestone quarry, and a lava cave. Now, after a weeklong residency absorbing Town Hall’s unique aural and tonal qualities, DLB presents a surround-sound concert featuring the premieres of Great Howl and Town Haul, enhanced by the Expanded Instrument System tonal “time machine” and state-of-the-art sound from the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. Presented by the University of Washington School of Music, DXARTS, and Town Hall.

Tickets are $15/$5 Town Hall Members, seniors & students at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006.

Since the establishment of the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (Ogaki, Japan), artists have been selected for the Residency Program by open application. Individuals chosen are those who actively produce experimental works that are nonconformist to genre frameworks and existing art. The artist's creative activities are supported for a six-month period at IAMAS. Students observe creations onsite, and through contact with talented artists they are able to learn about the practice of production.

By connecting with the culture and school environment of IAMAS, the artists also gain a great stimulation and combines this with his/her research and production. Many works created during artists' stays at IAMAS have also received international prizes. Thus far IAMAS has invited a total of 22 artists, including Toshio Iwai, Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau and Luc-Courchesne.

Wan and Kang will be involved in a team project that will be exhibited at the Ogaki Biennale in September.

Allison Kudla's work, "capacity for (urban eden, human error," was selected for honorable mention in the Hybrid Art category at Prix Ars Electronica 2010.

3,083 projects from 70 countries were submitted for prize consideration to the 2010 Prix Ars Electronica. The u19 – freestyle computing category tallied the most entries (657), followed by Digital Musics (615), Interactive Art (562) and Computer Animation (494). The 34 jurors took three and a half days to evaluate all submissions and to select this year’s prizewinners. The official awards ceremony will be part of the Ars Electronica Gala set for September 3, 2010 at an exciting new venue: a former production facility on the grounds of Linz’s Tobacco Factory.

The Prix Ars Electronica, initiated in 1987, has earned a reputation as the definitive barometer of trends in the international media art scene. Juries composed of leading experts in their respective fields convene annually to select the most outstanding contemporary works and to honor their creators with Golden Nicas, the “Oscars of media art.” Seven competition categories reflect the diversity of today’s media art: HYBRID ART, COMPUTER ANIMATION / FILM / VFX, INTERACTIVE ART, DIGITAL MUSICS, DIGITAL COMMUNITIES, [THE NEXT IDEA] voestalpine ART AND TECHNOLOGY GRANT, and the u19 – freestyle computing category for Austrian young people.

Heather S. Raikes, a PhD student in the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), has been selected as a finalist in the Nebraska Digital Workshop sponsored by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The goal of the Workshop is to enable the best early-career scholars (pre-tenure faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students) in the field of digital humanities to present their work in a forum where it can be critically evaluated, improved, and showcased.
Ms. Raikes’ project is entitled Corpus Corvus: Exploring Contemporary Mythos through Immersive Media Poetics.

Four scholars were selected to present their work in digital humanities this year. Other finalists are:
• Amy Earhart, Texas A & M University, 19th Century Concord Digital Archive.
• Angel David Nieves, Hamilton College, The Soweto ’76 Archive.
• Matt Wilkens, Rice University, Revolutions and Large Text Corpora, or What is a Period?

Under the auspices of the CDRH faculty and staff, the Nebraska Digital Workshop endeavors to foster a network of digital scholars who will come together across disciplinary boundaries to advance humanities computing. For information about the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, see http://cdrh.unl.edu. 

Among the award winners at the 47th Ann Arbor Film Festival was DXARTS senior Alexis Eggertsen. Ms. Eggertsen received the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Experimental Video Artist for "Cataract."

"Cataract" is described as a meditation on the the origins of behavior and of transformation in which the viewer is submerged in the silver sea of the psyche. The milky blindness of the visual cataract surges into a mythic foaming surf, a dormant birthplace for a new way of sensing and knowing. Facing departure and seeking metamorphosis, this film sensually dips its filmic toes into the synesthetic undertows of the unknown.

This short video first premiered at the Henry Art Gallery in May 2008.

The CARTAH book/CD project, A Zapotec Natural History, The University of Arizona Press, by Gene Hunn has won the Association of American Publishers 2008 PROSE Award in Book Subject Categories: Social Sciences - Archaeology & Anthropology.

For more info: A Zapotec Natural History

Creative Capital, the national organization that supports individual artists, announces Assistant Professor James Coupe as one of the recipients of its 2009 grants. Initial awards of $10,000 have been made to 41 projects in emerging fields, innovative literature and performing arts. These projects represent 61 artists across the country working individually and in collaboration. Each project becomes eligible for additional funds of as much as $50,000 over the course of the organization’s multi-year commitment.

Coupe's project, Surveillance Suite, is a digital surveillance project and video that appropriates the identities of gallery visitors and staff into fictional narratives, over which the participants themselves have no control. Coupe is working with a team of screenwriters on short films that feature the gallery space and staff where Surveillance Suite is presented. He will then create software that recognizes visitors’ ages, genders, and ethnic characteristics, and then appropriates the visitors into the films themselves in real time. The videos that result will be played on monitors throughout the gallery.

University of Washington

http://www.washington.edu/dxarts

The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington in Seattle is seeking strong applications for its path-breaking PhD. program. DXARTS is an autonomous degree granting Center in the College of Arts and Sciences at the UW. The new PhD. program embraces an expansive range of digital and experimental arts practice and research across multiple disciplines. Faculty and students in DXARTS work both in established areas of experimental arts such as Digital Video, Physical Computing, Mechatronics, Computer Music and Sound Art, Computer Animation, Telematics, etc., as well as pursue innovative areas of arts research and creative context that have no media allegiance or historical precedent. Creative work underway in DXARTS draws from all combination of arts and sciences, and actively seeks the invention of completely new domains of arts practice.

The deadline for receipt of complete applications for the PhD. program is February 9th, for Fall 2009 admission. Though DXARTS highly encourages applications from all interdisciplinary fields of experimental arts practice, special attention will be focused this application cycle to artists whose backgrounds include interests and strong skill sets in, 3-D modeling and animation, spatial imaging, experimental video, computer music, computer programming, CNC machining, rapid prototyping, robotics and networked
environments. International students should apply as soon as possible due to the extra administrative time needed to process these applications.

Computer Aided Breathing wil premiere their brand new composition, Navigation, commissioned by Orgelpark and presented at the opening concert of 'Orgelpark Research: Improvisation Festival'. The piece is a 45-minute open-form composition centered around improvisation and composed specifically for the space of the Orgelpark and its many instruments. The score of the piece will be published by Orgelpark.

Navigation world premiere
Computer Aided Breathing (Kirstin Gramlich, Stelios Manousakis - DXARTS, Stephanie Pan)
Friday, 7 November 2008, 20:15h
Orgelpark, Amsterdam

Computer Aided Breathing is a trio devoted to live improvisation, formed by Kirstin Gramlich (organ and keyboards), Stelios Manousakis (programming and live electronics) and Stephanie Pan (voice and sampler) in 2006. The singer and organist are used as live inputs for processing, which consist of a granular engine controlled manually and with the aid of stochastic functions and biology-inspired algorithms, such as L-systems, Cellular Automata and Genetic Algorithms. Their improvisations focus on mood, ambiance, texture and gesture. A fundamental aspect is that sonic elements flow from instrument to instrument and migrate from one perceptual quality to the other. The performers are considered to be part of one sonic environment, playing the same collective instrument. There are no solos; everyone is allowed to introduce a new element or elaborate on an existing one. The trio made their first cd release, Fukuoka Method, on SevenInchRecordings in March 2007. 

"The Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair is the University of Washington's most prestigious appointment in the Arts. When Mr. Jones set up the Chair, he stipulated that it should rotate between all the Arts units. The first holder of the Jones Chair, Professor Thomas Lynch of the School of Drama, is an internationally famous stage designer whose work has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Seattle Opera, and other major theaters in America and abroad.

Succeeding Professor Lynch, the new holder of the Jones Chair is Professor Shawn Brixey, Director of our pathbreaking program in Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) and an internationally prominent visual artist whose exhibitions and commissions have appeared at Documenta, The Deutscher Kunstlerbund, Karlsruhe, The Cranbrook Art Museum, The MIT Museum, The Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, The Chicago Art Institute, The 1998 Winter Olympics, The first American Design and Architecture Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, The Henry Art Gallery, and the Berkeley Art Museum. Shawn Brixey creates stunning experimental art environments and interactive electronic installations that are inspired and enabled by the extraordinary developments taking place on the frontiers of contemporary physics, materials science, and electrical engineering. As such, his work epitomizes all the reasons why the arts belong center stage at a top-flight research university such as the University of Washington. Like all great art, Shawn's work allows us to see worlds we have never seen before, and that would not exist without the artist's creative reshaping of the natural phenomena that surround us. In this respect, Professor Brixey's highly contemporary art participates in an artistic tradition that reaches back to the Italian Renaissance, by using technology to render visible the otherwise invisible beauty of the natural world."

Bob Stacey
Divisional Dean of Arts & Humanities
University of Washington

Tre Marie is an improvised interactive audio-visual dance performance. The system in progress is an innovation of RF-ID (radio-frequency identification) technology for dance performance, which allows performers to improvise live visuals on stage. The performance is a reconstructed architecture of spaces and encodes the spatial aesthetics of the interaction between human, theatrical space and cinematic space. Tre Marie is a collaboration between Annie On Ni Wan, Hiroki Nishino & Pamela Pietro. Tre Marie premiered at a DXARTS Fall concert and was performed at the ACM Conference 2006, UCSB, Santa Barbara.

ASIAGRAPH is an organization that involves cooperation between people, government, corporations and universities in Asia, as well as an exhibition event for the purpose of reaching a more prosperous human life by elements from Asian culture together with IT technology.