Tag: media

MCA recap: Our Sonic Playground

  At the beginning of the evening, on Tuesday, October 25th, visitors gathered under the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)’s Kern Terrace for a short introduction to the program titled Our Sonic Playground. Eric Leonardson spoke elegantly of the relationship, mediated through sound, between living 

The Global Composition Conference, July 25 — 28, 2012

The Global Composition Conference on Sound, Media, and Environment convenes at the Hochschule Darmstadt in Dieburg, Germany.

In the program, Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology members Jay Needham and Eric Leonardson perform Chronography: Animal on Friday, July 27, in the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD), at 603qm Alexanderstr. 264283 Darmstadt (Atelier Elektronik).

This event happens within the Soundscape Composition program featuring Hildegard Westerkamp, and is organized in cooperation with the 46. Internationale Ferienkurse fà¼r Neue Musik Darmstadt 2012 (46th International Summer Course for New Music 2012) and The Global Composition: Conference on Sound, Media, and Environment.

Chronography: animal is a live electro-acoustic work based on field recordings that Jay Needham gathered in Antarctica in 2009. For this work, antique gramophone horns have been re-purposed and are now used as amplified instruments, percussive bells that resonate, clang and chime. It is the traveling of these sound machines into the wilds that initially fascinated Needham and eventually lead him to create sound sculptures that often times blur the line between musical instruments and scientific apparatus. For listeners, the work is intended as an audible exploration, a pseudo—scientific demonstration where the sounds of ship propellers, penguin colonies and ice fractures gather to express an epistemology of field recordings and the role that sound technologies have played in exploration and musical performance. Chronography: animal is conceived of as a bridge to connect practices of improvised music and sound art that evokes a sense of place.

The program

Hildegard Westerkamp: Kits Beach Soundwalk

Jay Needham: Chronography: animal (Urauffà¼hrung)
A live sound art work for re-purposed gramophone horns and Antarctic field recordings
Performers: Eric Leonardson, Jay Needham

Hildegard Westerkamp: Gently Penetrating beneath the sounding surfaces of another place

Hildegard Westerkamp: Attending to Sacred Matters

The Global Composition conference runs from the 25th through the 28th of July. Conference chairs are Claudia Sà¶ller-Eckert and ASAE member, Sabine Breitsameter. The full conference program is posted at http://www.the-global-composition-2012.org/programme.html