[Event] Stelarc: the human body is obsolete (seminar)

Seminar with Stelarc and Henk Oosterling (Erasmus University).

25 October 2013
14.00 – 17.00
Auditorium
Het Nieuwe Instituut
Museumpark, Rotterdam

 

“In a time of Circulating Flesh, Fractal Flesh and Phantom Flesh organs are extracted and exchanged, bodies and bits of bodies remotely generate recurring patterns of interactivity and haptic technologies generate potent physical presences of virtual flesh. Bodies are hacked, genes are mapped, prosthetics are attached and chimeras are engineered in labs. The trans-species, the trans-gendered and even the trans-human proliferate.” Stelarc

This seminar follows a presentation by Stelarc on the 24th October.

Visit V2_ for further information.

Call for Works: Music, Embodiment and the Body

Colchester New Music (in collaboration with the Sonic Arts Forum) have put out a call for works that respond to the theme ‘Music, Embodiment and the Body.’

Works should be submitted by 30th September 2013. Selected works will be shown in Colchester on 2-3rd November 2013. Click on the image to see further details.

[Event] Resonant Bodies: Landscapes of Acoustic Tension

ICI Berlin
13-15 June 2013

 

When a solid body meets its natural resonant frequency, it violently vibrates and breaks into pieces. What happens when the human body meets its resonant frequencies? Mostly a combination of soft tissue and water, the human body is not one solid object. It includes a variety of molecules each of which has a different resonant frequency. Yet the soft tissue and water do not allow these molecules to be completely destroyed. Instead, the human body’s liquidity and elasticity perpetuate the fundamental principle of acoustic resonance: holding a multitude of similar frequencies neither as precisely same nor as perfectly different. For the very same reason perhaps, the human body is involved in a constant reciprocity with its sonic environment. Knowingly or unknowingly, it vibrates with multiple other bodies. Without any necessary physical contact, it matches its resonant frequencies from a distance. Acoustic resonance draws a particular proximity between one’s physical location and his/her phenomenal extension to another.

Consider this proximity acoustic tension, a case of mental distance despite the physical closeness, and equally, a case of mental closeness despite the physical distance. Then picture acoustic resonance as a landscape of acoustic tension, a horizontal spectrum of multiple modalities of sounds, which do coincide with one another but which do not necessarily become one. The very act of hearing holds the acoustic tension. When we hear a sound, we are simultaneously moved to and positioned in a place. What happens if acoustic tension is heightened, if we pay close attention to the intensity and volume of sound? What would be the material effects of such sonic embodiment in everyday life? What kind of subjectivity does it enact? What kind of an epistemology does acoustic tension evoke, mirror and transform? And how do our resonant bodies function in understanding the self’s relation to its external world? The symposium will explore these questions by marking three landscapes of acoustic tension: sensory ecologies of hearing, materiality of voice, language and speech, and affective states of sound.

The conference is organised by Zeynep Bulut (ICI Berlin), Claudia Peppel (ICI Berlin), and Brandon LaBelle (Bergen Academy of Art and Design).

Immaterial and Sonic Bodies

A few hours after writing yesterday’s post, in which I mentioned Lisa Blackman’s book Immaterial Bodies, I chanced across a video of her talking about some of the ideas she writes about. It’s a happy find because I wasn’t searching for anything particularly related to the book (I was looking for a video of Philip Glass’s music on Sesame Street, if you must know!). What makes it even better is that Blackman is joined by Julian Henriques, author of Sonic Bodies.

 

“This talk explores two examples of immaterial communication. One is sound waves, as the energetic disturbance of a medium. The other is automaticity as the sense a person has of being directed by someone or something else, human or non-human. Popular conceptions of the immaterial suggest that the imperceptible, the invisible and the ethereal are often aligned to the occult, supernatural and haunting. Ideas about sound are associated on the one hand with embodied affects, drives, entrainment, rhythmic compulsion, as well as on the other the sublime and the ethereal. The session is presented as a dialogue between Julian Henriques’ work on sonic bodies (2011) which draws on the ways of knowing of the Jamaican reggae sound system engineers, and Lisa Blackman’s work on voice hearing, suggestion, and telepathy (2001; 2012) which draws on imaginary media such as telepathy and hypnotism at the start of the 20th century. In line with the turn to affect, the talk will purpose the idea of the immaterial for a discussion of voicing, hauntings, the virtual, atmpospheres, the subliminal, or even transliminal.”

[CFP] Gender and Ability, Technology and Sound

This cross-disciplinary symposium examines the intersections of listening and ability as it relates to issues of gender and technology. Devoted to the dissemination of new unpublished research and exciting interdisciplinary encounters, the symposium will bring together leading scholars from the sciences and humanities as well as community activists to discuss political, cultural, and historical issues at the nexus of listening and ability.

The symposium will consist of invited keynote lectures, seminars, and papers sessions by leading scholars in the fields of psychology, science and technology studies (STS), and the humanities. Dr. Sandra Trehub and Dr. Mara Mills will present keynote lectures on their work in psychology and ability-technology studies, with follow up discussions planned throughout the conference. Dr. Carol Stabile will chair a panel on the challenges faced by women in the sciences and STS. There will also be a series of paper presentations with respondents from among University of Oregon’s leading faculty in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.We welcome research from a broad range of perspectives, including neurobiology, developmental psychology, music therapy, ethnomusicology, linguistics, anthropology, music perception and cognition, language acquisition, cognitive neuroscience. We interpret these fields widely, and invite scholars who engage in dialog with these fields – regardless of the discipline with which they self-identify.

Scholars of deafness like Mara Mills argue that hearing and voicing have functioned as key modes for defining and discriminating human sociality in such a way that leaves Deaf and hearing-impaired individuals on the margins of the social world. Doubtlessly, technology has played a central role both in re-inscribing and ameliorating this audist and phonocentric world. This conference invites researchers, scholars, and/or activists to participate in a conversation regarding how we think about deaf/Deaf issues historically, technologically, and futuristically. Further, we invite engaged intellectuals to combine the issues of ability and sound with other paradigms of activism and theory, such as anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and/or feminist issues.

Papers are invited that report empirical and theoretical research addressing these topics and expanding our knowledge of these intersecting fields. Researchers interested in presenting a paper should submit a 500 word abstract by  February 11, 2013 detailing 1) the main findings or argument of their papers, and b) their potential to contribute to broad conversations in the sciences and humanities around gender, technology, listening, and ability (please visit the symposium website for more details). Abstracts should be submitted to jmendoz4 .AT. uoregon.edu

Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by symposium organizers Jenny Mendoza and Bryce Peake in consultation with leading scholars in their fields. Selected papers from this event will also be submitted as part of a proposed issue on gender, sound, technology, and ability for Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. In its first issue, Ada received over 30,000 downloads, and we look forward to expanding the exciting conversations regarding gender, new media, and technology occurring there.

[CFP] Journeys Across Media: The Body and The Digital

Postgraduate Conference
Friday 19 April 2013
University of Reading

2013 will mark the 11th anniversary of the annual Journeys Across Media (JAM) Conference for postgraduate students, organised by postgraduates working in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. JAM 2013 seeks to focus on and foster current research relating to the Body and the Digital, as today they are interactive and interdependent facets in the media of film, theatre and television; and more widely, in the areas of performance and art. It is a relationship which continues to develop and redefine cinematic, televisual and theatrical practices.

This is a call for postgraduates engaging in contemporary discourses and practices relating to the Body and the Digital, to submit papers or practice-based research for the JAM 2013 Conference. Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

• Interactivity between Digital languages and the Body
• Sonic Representations of the Body in Digital Performance
• The Digitized Body in Performance
• The Role of the Body in Digital Games and Virtual Performance
• Post-Colonial Bodies in the Contemporary Moment
• Preparing the Body for Performance
• Notions of Embodiment (i.e. Violent, Disabled, Explicit)
• Traditions of Corporeally focused Film, Theatre and Television
• Embodied Spectatorship or Audiences, and Physicality
• Phenomenology of the Lived, Performed and Screened Body
• The Haunted Body
• Politics of the Body
• Unconventional and Other Bodies

The body, its presence, perceptions and experience, are becoming increasingly underpinned and influenced by the digital age.  JAM 2013 will endeavour to open a dialogue about the relationship between the body and digital in contemporary scholarship and practice, posing many questions including: How does the body encounter digital media and how do digital media frames position the body – both in mainstream iterations, social media contexts and in art/installation/performance contexts? Furthermore, it will also be worth considering how digital technology has affected the way that humans approach unfamiliar body movement traditions, beyond regional and national borders?

JAM 2013 will provide a discussion forum for current and developing research in film, theatre, television and new media. Previous delegates have welcomed this opportunity to gain experience of presenting their work at different stages of their development, while having the opportunity to meet and form contacts with fellow postgraduate students. Furthermore, participants at JAM 2013 have the possibility of being published in the Journal of Media Practice.

Non-Presenting delegates are also very welcome to attend this conference.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS deadline: 1st February 2013
Please send a 250-word abstract for a fifteen minute paper and a 50-word biographical note to Johnmichael Rossi, Gary Cassidy, Edina Husanovic, Shelly Quirk, Matthew McFrederick at jam2013@pgr.reading.ac.uk .

CALL FOR PRACTICE-BASED WORK deadline: 1st February 2013
Continuing from the success of last year’s JAM 2012 Conference: Time Tells, which experimented with conference structure to include live performances, film screenings and installations taking place throughout the day, we invite artists working in various mediums to propose presentations of their work, relevant to the conference theme. Please send a 250-word outline describing the piece you are proposing to present, as well as duration and any specific technical/space requirements, and a 50-word biographical note. Relevant images and links to your work would also be helpful. As outlined above please e-mail the Conference organisers at jam2013@pgr.reading.ac.uk .

We would appreciate the distribution of this call for papers and wider promotion of this conference through your networks. Journeys Across Media is supported by the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at Reading and the Standing Conference of University Drama Departments.

For further details check out the event’s web page.

[Publication] Cries from the Guts

Volume 1 / Experiments and Intensities
Winchester, November 2012.
ISBN 978-1-906113-05-6

Edited / curated by Yvon Bonenfant, Will Edmondes & Micah Silver.

Cries from the Guts, the first volume of the Experiments and Intensities series, explores the ways – sometimes gentle and whimsical, sometimes gurgling and grotesque, sometimes elegant and fine, and sometimes chaotic and unrelenting – that a diverse selection of artists engage with the viscerality of sound – from literal, comical and metaphorical perspectives.

Contents: Curatorial-Editorial Statement and Introduction / Yvon Bonenfant // Semiotic Stomach / Ali Cocks // Eating Pipe / Mikael Eriksson // Glis Glis / Laura Maes // Guts / Takahashi’s Shellfish Concern // Music for Flesh II / Marco Donarumma // MCVox / Melanie Chilianis // VUST! / Lawrence Upton & Benedict Taylor // The Hagia Sofia / Sirpa Jokinen.

Hear it here.

[CFP] Sounding Bodies – University of Toronto

 

A Graduate Conference in Music

March 15-6, 2013

Faculty of Music, University of Toronto

Though our musicking (or paper-writing) bodies may appear to be merely a conduit between an idea and its realization, they also delimit fields of possibilities in our various musicking and sounding endeavors. In recent years an increasing attention to the body is reflected in the growth of literature ranging from how social constructs are embodied through singing, to embodied modes of listening; from epistemologies of sound that challenges the mind/body split, to performance practices that prioritize healthy bodily mechanics over notions of technical correctness; from sound as torture, to sound as a way of healing. We seek to put these ideas, many of which transcend boundaries between sub-fields within music, in conversation with one another in this trans-disciplinary conference. How are bodies articulated through various sounding practices? How, on the other hand, do bodies shape our sounding, listening, andmusicking subjectivities? These are some of the questions that guide our thinking towards this conference.

We invite critical engagements, theorizations, ruminations, or performances* (not necessarily musical) on the intersections between sound, music, and bodies from current graduate students in all disciplines. Twenty-minute conference paper presentations (with 10-minute Q and A), or 30-minute performances are welcomed.

Topics include but are by no means limited to:

– Embodied sounding, listening, and musicking practices
– Bodies in performances
– Resonating/ resonant bodies
– Bodies defined, constituted, challenged, articulated, constructed,
or enacted in, by, or through sound
– Gestures and movement in sounding practices
– Embodied musical knowledge and the transmissions thereof
– Bodies healed or destroyed through sound and music
– Any other intersections of sound and body

Submissions for papers or performances, in the form of 300-word abstracts, should be emailed to utgradmusicon13@gmail.com, no later than 23:59 on January 15th, 2013. Please include in the email a  100-word biography of all presenter(s) and audio/video equipment  requests. Decisions will be announced by February 1st, 2013. Further  details can be found here.

Bodytok Quintet | The Human Instrument Archive

a sonicsfromscratch production
11 August – 25 November 2012
Level 1, Otago Museum, New Zealand

Bodytok Quintet at TeManawa Gallery 2012

“Based on a project initiated in 2005 by Auckland based artist and musician Phil Dadson, Bodytok Quintet explores non-verbal expression through sound with a collection of on-screen performances. Engage with each performer through five interactive screens that showcase the quirky and original noises produced by the individuals involved in the Bodytok project. Each screen responds to your approach, initiating an intriguing performance of body-noise!”

Further information is available on the Otago Museum website. If, like me, you’re a long way from New Zealand then there are some fab little video clips here.

[Event] Bob Ostertag Masterclass and Concert

Masterclass
July 13 & 14
Fee: 25 euros (including concert)
STEIM: Achtergracht 19, 1017WL Amsterdam, NL

Concert
3 Solo Sets by: Bob Ostertag, Jaap Blonk, Jonathan Reus
July 14
Charge: 5 euros
Start: 20:30
Address: STEIM: Utrechtsedwaarsstraat 134, 1017WK Amsterdam, NL

 

 

Composer, performer, historian, instrument builder, journalist, activist, kayak instructor, Bob Ostertag’s work cannot easily be summarized or pigeon-holed. He has published 21 CDs of music, two movies, two DVDs, and three books. His writings on contemporary politics have been published on every continent and in many languages. Electronic instruments of his own design are at the cutting edge of both music and video performance technology.

The 2 day program will feature a series of lectures and intimate discussion sessions between Ostertag and the participants. On the evening of July 14, there will be a special concert by Bob, and brand new work by Jaap Blonk and Jonathan Reus.

More info is available on the STEIM website.