News

2012 DXARTS BFA Exhibition

May 29 2012

 

The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) announces the DXARTS 2012 BFA Art Exhibition. The exhibit will be at the DXARTS Fremont Fab Lab, located at 102 1/2 NW 36th St in Seattle, WA. New video, systems, and sculpture works produced by graduating seniors will be featured. An opening reception will be held June 8th, 2012. The exhibit will be free and open to the public until June 10th, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM.
 
Fusing contemporary artistic practice with experimental technologies, the DXARTS 2012 BFA Art Exhibition explores space, perception, and memory using video, stereoscopy, and installation. This show presents the work of fourteen seniors and marks both 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. These immersive works are interrogations of physical, psychological, and virtual spaces, making use of a variety of innovative techniques and technologies.
 
Artists featured in this year's exhibition are:
 
David Heflin
Vin Hill
Mary Kawamura
Matthew Lord
Eva Malpaya
Chad McCurry
Mario Nima
Josh Peterson
Ashley Prescott
Hannah Sayre
Gaelen Sayres
Evan Swope
Jonathan Torone
Andrew Theisen
 
Date/Time
 
Opening Reception: Friday, June 8, 2012 at 6:00 PM.
Exhibition: June 8 - 10, 12PM to 6PM.
 
Location
 
DXARTS Fremont Fab Lab
 
Admission
 
Free
 
Website
 
 
Founded in 2001, the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) is an interdisciplinary degree program at the University of Washington designed to support the emergence of a new generation of hybrid artists. DXARTS fosters the invention of new forms by synthesizing expanded studio research with pioneering advances in digital computing, information technologies, performance, science, and engineering. For more information about DXARTS, feel free to contact us via email at dxarts@u.washington.edu or visit our website at http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/.

Stelios Manousakis presents paper at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression international conference (NIME 2012)

May 19 2012

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
 

JACK Quartet Concert, Friday, May 18, 7:30 pm, Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse Theater

May 16 2012

 

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.

DATE & TIME
Friday, May 18, 2012
7:30 p.m.
 
LOCATION
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
4045 University Way NE
 
TICKETS
$20 ($12 students/seniors) 
206.543.4880
 
PROGRAM
 
Huck Hodge
re[(f)use] 
 
Joël-François Durand
String Quartet (2005)
 
Juan Pampin
Interstices (for amplified string quartet and live electronics)
 
Richard Karpen
Aperture II (for amplified string quartet and live electronics)
 
 
ARTIST BIO: JACK Quartet
The JACK Quartet electrifies audiences worldwide with "explosive virtuosity" (Boston Globe) and "viscerally exciting performances" (New York Times). David Patrick Stearns (Philadelphia Inquirer) proclaimed their performance as being "among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience." The Washington Post commented, "The string quartet may be a 250-year-old contraption, but young, brilliant groups like the JACK Quartet are keeping it thrillingly vital." Alex Ross (New Yorker) hailed their performance of Iannis Xenakis' complete string quartets as being "exceptional" and "beautifully harsh," and Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times) called their sold-out performances of Georg Friedrich Haas' String Quartet No. 3 In iij. Noct. "mind-blowingly good."
 
Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is focused on the commissioning and performance of new works, leading them to work closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, James Dillon, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, Elliott Sharp, Beat Furrer, Caleb Burhans, and Aaron Cassidy. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Jason Eckardt, Zeena Parkins, Simon Steen-Anderson, Walter Zimmermann, Matthias Pintscher, Bent Sørensen, and Toby Twining.
 
The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music, and they have since studied with the Arditti Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Muir String Quartet, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
 
The quartet has performed to critical acclaim at Wigmore Hall (London), Les Flâneries Musicales de Reims (France), Ultraschall Festival für Neue Musik (Germany), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (Netherlands), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), Library of Congress, Kimmel Center, La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), and Carnegie Hall.
 
JACK has recent and upcoming performances at the SONiC Festival as hosts of the Extended Play Marathon at Miller Theatre, Vancouver New Music (Canada), Strathmore Hall, cresc...Biennale für Moderne Musik (Germany), National Gallery of Art, Newman Center for the Performing Arts, Le Poisson Rouge performing with pianist Ursula Oppens, Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts performing with composer/guitarist Steven Mackey, Carnegie Hall Choral Institute performing with the Young People's Chorus of New York City, the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik (Germany) performing string octets with the Arditti Quartet, and the Athelas New Music Festival (Denmark).
 
Throughout 2012-2014, JACK will join legendary pianist Maurizio Pollini as a part of his Perspectives series with performances at the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Suntory Hall (Japan), Cité de la Musique (France), Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Germany), and Teatro alla Scala (Italy). Additionally this year, JACK will be the featured ensemble for the 2012 Finale® National Composition Contest in partnership with MakeMusic and the American Composers Forum.
 
JACK has led workshops with young composers at Princeton University, Yale University, the American String Teachers Association of New Jersey, University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), New York University, Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Eastman School of Music, University at Buffalo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, University of Huddersfield (United Kingdom), University of Washington, University of Victoria (Canada), and Manhattan School of Music. In addition to working with composers and performers, JACK seeks to broaden and diversify the potential audience for new music through educational presentations designed for a variety of ages, backgrounds, and levels of musical experience.

Vu-Karpen Project in concert, May 12, 2012 - 7:30 PM, Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre, UW

May 05 2012

 

Improvised Music Project Festival Event
IMPfest IV: Vu-Karpen Project
May 12, 2012 - 7:30 PM
Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre
Suggested donation
 
EVENT
The Improvised Music Project (IMP) presents the Vu-Karpen Project in the final evening of IMPfest IV. Seattle group Chemical Clock, featuring students from the UW Jazz Studies Program, is also on the bill. Details at www.improvisedmusicproject.com.
 
Vu-Karpen Project
The Vu-Karpen Project is a highly experimental ensemble, formed to explore and invent new methods of creating works of complex, instinctive, and dramatic new music. The project, which also includes live computer interaction, seeks to make some important discoveries while developing an exciting concert-length work built on the foundations and traditions of Jazz and Western Classical Art Music.
The project is led by two University of Washington School of Music faculty, both internationally renowned for their innovative music making: Cuong Vu, a trail-blazing Jazz trumpeter/band leader/composer, and Richard Karpen, a leading composer and computer music pioneer who also plays piano in the ensemble. The Project also includes Ted Poor on drums and Luke Bergman on electric bass. Ted Poor is rapidly becoming widely admired and sought after internationally for his powerful, virtuosic, and intellectually intense drumming. Luke Bergman is a rising star in the Jazz scene and a graduate of the UW Jazz Studies Program.
 
Chemical Clock
Cameron Sharif, Ray Larsen, Evan Woodle and Mark Hunter are Chemical Clock. Finding themselves together within the darkened recesses of the University of Washington's music building, these four undergraduates united in their common desire to experiment in new musical territories — the bleeding-edge kind of stuff they’d never learn about in jazz college.
Under the influence of professor Cuong Vu, who fervently supported their artistic explorations, Chemical Clock has taken to it in earnest since the early days of 2009. Of their sound: this quartet is decidedly more "dance club" than "jazz club." Combining elements of electronica and rock with jazz-informed improvisational sensibilities, it’s no straightforward task to adequately describe the Chemical Clock canon.
To behold, their live thing is a heavy-hitting, beat-laden, thrash-and-bash spectacle. You’d sooner envision yourself bobbing and flailing amid the crowd along to the Clock’s jams before you’d consider taking a seat for a polite listening session at some genteel supper joint (you know, maybe over an exorbitantly-priced hummus platter or something). With effected and reverberant trumpeting, bit-crushed keys, explosive drum-setsmanship and ironclad bass-work, Chemical Clock pilots their way through nigh-unnavigable passages of composition, deftly maneuvering through sinewy melodic channels with studied fluency. In tandem, the ensemble whiplashes to and fro betwixt convulsive improvisation and calculated musical constructions with a coherency that often seems telepathic.

Megas Diakosmos by Stelios Manousakis performed at the Music: Cognition, Technology, Society interdisciplinary conference

May 02 2012

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