New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) is a non-profit organization, formerly based in Toronto but now in South River ON, that presents performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. NAISA operates the NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, a short distance from Algonquin Park.
The NAISA North Media Arts Centre includes an exhibition/performance space, a café, and a community access space. The café offers fresh baked goodies by local baker Lois McLaren, homemade soup by Nadene Thériault-Copeland and serves Muskoka coffee by Muskoka Roastery Coffee Company.
NAISA’s annual events include: the Deep Wireless festival of Radio & Transmission Art, the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art, the SOUNDplay festival and Springscapes.
The objectives of NAISA are to foster awareness and understanding locally, as well as nationally and internationally, in the cultural vitality of experimental sound art in its myriad forms of expression. This objective is achieved through the exploration of new sound technologies in conjunction with the creation of cultural events and artifacts.
Upcoming Events
Bodily Listening in Place
By Ellen Waterman
June 19 and 26 at 4 pm EDT plus Listening Event on July 17 at 4 pm EDT.
Online Meeting Location issued after Advance Registration
Optional Admission fee of $10 for each workshop
What does it mean to listen with your whole body? Music engages all our senses. Bodily Listening in Place is an instructional score that invites Hearing and Deaf musicians to improvise in response to their environment. Ellen Waterman will guide participants in up to 2 preparatory workshops with improvisation and intersensory exercises leading to a July 17 World Listening Day presentation. Workshops and presentation will include closed captioning and ASL interpretation.
By Ellen Waterman
June 19 and 26 at 4 pm EDT plus Listening Event on July 17 at 4 pm EDT.
Online Meeting Location issued after Advance Registration
Optional Admission fee of $10 for each workshop
What does it mean to listen with your whole body? Music engages all our senses. Bodily Listening in Place is an instructional score that invites Hearing and Deaf musicians to improvise in response to their environment. Ellen Waterman will guide participants in up to 2 preparatory workshops with improvisation and intersensory exercises leading to a July 17 World Listening Day presentation. Workshops and presentation will include closed captioning and ASL interpretation.
Gong Show
By Jesse Stewart
June 23 to September 26, 2022. Open 10 am to 4 pm everyday except Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
Pay by Donation
Gong Show is an outdoor sound installation at the NAISA North Media Arts Centre. It consists of a series of motion-controlled mechanically-activated aluminum disc gongs suspended in the support beams on front of the NAISA building. The gongs are activated by solenoid strikers triggered by an iPad running motion-tracking software. As people move within the iPad’s field of view, the software detects their movement and activates the solenoid strikers.
By Jesse Stewart
June 23 to September 26, 2022. Open 10 am to 4 pm everyday except Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
Pay by Donation
Gong Show is an outdoor sound installation at the NAISA North Media Arts Centre. It consists of a series of motion-controlled mechanically-activated aluminum disc gongs suspended in the support beams on front of the NAISA building. The gongs are activated by solenoid strikers triggered by an iPad running motion-tracking software. As people move within the iPad’s field of view, the software detects their movement and activates the solenoid strikers.
Orbits
By Mixed Metaphors
June 23 to September 26, 2022. Open 10 am to 4 pm everyday except Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
Pay by Donation
This outdoor installation created by Jesse Stewart and Matt Edwards features an interactive circular ball machine. Visitors are invited to turn a wheel on the side of the unit, which releases steel ball bearings that orbit its interior concave surface before disappearing down a central hole. The addition of contact microphones on the underside of the unit and signal processing enhances the sonic dimension of the piece.
By Mixed Metaphors
June 23 to September 26, 2022. Open 10 am to 4 pm everyday except Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
Pay by Donation
This outdoor installation created by Jesse Stewart and Matt Edwards features an interactive circular ball machine. Visitors are invited to turn a wheel on the side of the unit, which releases steel ball bearings that orbit its interior concave surface before disappearing down a central hole. The addition of contact microphones on the underside of the unit and signal processing enhances the sonic dimension of the piece.
World Listening Day 2022
Presentation of Score Realizations for Bodily Listening in Place
July 17, 2022, 4:00 pm
Online Meeting Location issued after Advance Registration.
Optional Admission Fee of $100
This World Listening Day online event showcases audio and audio-visual realizations made by Hearing and Deaf musicians for the text score Bodily Listening in Place. ASL and closed captioning included.
Presentation of Score Realizations for Bodily Listening in Place
July 17, 2022, 4:00 pm
Online Meeting Location issued after Advance Registration.
Optional Admission Fee of $100
This World Listening Day online event showcases audio and audio-visual realizations made by Hearing and Deaf musicians for the text score Bodily Listening in Place. ASL and closed captioning included.
NAISA 2022 Call For Submissions
Deadline: July 31, 2022 [Extended!]
Deadline: July 31, 2022 [Extended!]
New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) invites artists of all ages and nationalities to submit works on the theme Remote Connections for consideration in New Adventures in Sound Art’s programming. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was strongly evident in the ways that people connected or lost connections across long distances, whether to local or distant soundscapes, or between people near or far. NAISA would like to consider works that draw attention to remote connections. Applicants this year will receive consideration for two new awards named in honour of James Bailey and Andra McCartney.
Soundportraits
By Jørgen Teller
August 4 to 6 for One-on-One interactions at TBA locations in South River-Machar area. Online artist talk on August 6 at 7 pm.
General $10, Students FREE, Click Here to Register for Online Presentation
From August 4 to 6, Jørgen Teller of Copenhagen Denmark will pitch his mobile sound tent in various locations around South River and Machar to make Soundportraits. These are one-on-one sonic explorations between Teller and local residents and visitors to South River and Machar. Visit him for your sound portrait or join him online at 7 pm on August 6 to listen to the sounds of people from NAISA's local community.
By Jørgen Teller
August 4 to 6 for One-on-One interactions at TBA locations in South River-Machar area. Online artist talk on August 6 at 7 pm.
General $10, Students FREE, Click Here to Register for Online Presentation
From August 4 to 6, Jørgen Teller of Copenhagen Denmark will pitch his mobile sound tent in various locations around South River and Machar to make Soundportraits. These are one-on-one sonic explorations between Teller and local residents and visitors to South River and Machar. Visit him for your sound portrait or join him online at 7 pm on August 6 to listen to the sounds of people from NAISA's local community.
Kindness in Ashes
By Emilie Cecilia LeBel
By Emilie Cecilia LeBel
Learn more
“With the junctQín keyboard collective having explored the expansion of keyboard playing in the realm of electroacoustic music, Emilie Cecilia LeBel extended that interest in her composition by having the three keyboard players consider the role of their breath in their playing. In the context of this piece being performed in their ‘un-piano’ recital, which occured at the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in 2014, she adapted a Palestrina 5-part motet for 3 melodicas, 3 air mattress pumps, live electronics and 16-channel spatialization. The creation of this work was supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Music Commissioning program. In creating this work, LeBel was inspired by the book from which the piece takes its title.
“Mesmerized by the movement that repeats itself endlessly, I fix my gaze on the waves gently breaking against the dock. Fifty years seem compressed into this moment of sweet spring afternoon, and the notion of linear time seems artificial, invented to explain the passing of life. After all, the seasons are cyclical, and life is Now…” – from Kindness in the Ashes, Üstün B. Reinart”
The video of this performance is part of a 20th anniversary video collection of performances and other events produced by New Adventures in Sound Art – https://www.naisa.ca/
“The performance was recorded August 15, 2014 at Theatre Direct’s Wychwood Theatre in Toronto, Canada by Stefan Rose. The video was edited by David Arthur and directed by Darren Copeland.
The Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in 2014 was supported in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Department of Canadian Heritage and The SOCAN Foundation.”
“With the junctQín keyboard collective having explored the expansion of keyboard playing in the realm of electroacoustic music, Emilie Cecilia LeBel extended that interest in her composition by having the three keyboard players consider the role of their breath in their playing. In the context of this piece being performed in their ‘un-piano’ recital, which occured at the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in 2014, she adapted a Palestrina 5-part motet for 3 melodicas, 3 air mattress pumps, live electronics and 16-channel spatialization. The creation of this work was supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Music Commissioning program. In creating this work, LeBel was inspired by the book from which the piece takes its title.
“Mesmerized by the movement that repeats itself endlessly, I fix my gaze on the waves gently breaking against the dock. Fifty years seem compressed into this moment of sweet spring afternoon, and the notion of linear time seems artificial, invented to explain the passing of life. After all, the seasons are cyclical, and life is Now…” – from Kindness in the Ashes, Üstün B. Reinart”
The video of this performance is part of a 20th anniversary video collection of performances and other events produced by New Adventures in Sound Art – https://www.naisa.ca/
“The performance was recorded August 15, 2014 at Theatre Direct’s Wychwood Theatre in Toronto, Canada by Stefan Rose. The video was edited by David Arthur and directed by Darren Copeland.
The Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in 2014 was supported in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Department of Canadian Heritage and The SOCAN Foundation.”
Lunar Cycle
By Stephanie Moore
By Stephanie Moore
Learn more
“Lunar Cycle” is a set of three pieces by Stephanie Moore which each explore a different aspect of our relationship as humans to the moon. It features Adam Scime on double bass in two of its movements, and the third – a purely acousmatic movement – uses a substantial amount of sound material recorded from the double bass.
It was part of the Sound Travels Festival in August 2015 in Toronto. “Lunar Cycle” was part of a performance entitled “Revealing Origins” that also included a new work Wendalyn Bartley. Both pieces are included in this 20th anniversary video collection of performances and other events produced by New Adventures in Sound Art – https://www.naisa.ca/
The first movement of the cycle, Pleine lune for double bass and fixed media, explores the notion of transformation inspired by the full moon, and more specifically lycanthropy, or werewolfism. The bass is lead through a journey of metamorphosis by an altered version of itself (the fixed media part).
In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon, for double bass and fixed media, uses the text of the children’s story “Goodnight Moon” (by Margaret Wise Brown) to explore the psychological effect of nighttime, and the dual sense of security/insecurity that we first experience as children.
The final purely acousmatic movement of theLCROSS 2009-10-09 was inspired by the exploding of two rockets into the moon’s Cabeus crater by the U.S. government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 9, 2009. It highlights our modern scientific and political attitudes towards the moon, recounting the event and imagining a sonic equivalent to the strangely poetic visual descriptions of it (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/oct/HQ_10-271_LCROSS_LRO.html).”
The Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in 2015 was supported in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Department of Canadian Heritage and The SOCAN Foundation.
Composition and Spatialization Performance: Stephanie Moore
Artistic Direction: Darren Copeland
Video Camera: Stefan Rose
Video Editing: David Arthur
Audio Recording: Darren Copeland and Stephanie Moore
Lighting/Stage Technician: Kai Masaoka
Recorded August 22, 2015 at Theatre Direct’s Wychwood Studio, Toronto for the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art.
Special Thanks to the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and Canadian Music Centre.
“Lunar Cycle” is a set of three pieces by Stephanie Moore which each explore a different aspect of our relationship as humans to the moon. It features Adam Scime on double bass in two of its movements, and the third – a purely acousmatic movement – uses a substantial amount of sound material recorded from the double bass.
It was part of the Sound Travels Festival in August 2015 in Toronto. “Lunar Cycle” was part of a performance entitled “Revealing Origins” that also included a new work Wendalyn Bartley. Both pieces are included in this 20th anniversary video collection of performances and other events produced by New Adventures in Sound Art – https://www.naisa.ca/
The first movement of the cycle, Pleine lune for double bass and fixed media, explores the notion of transformation inspired by the full moon, and more specifically lycanthropy, or werewolfism. The bass is lead through a journey of metamorphosis by an altered version of itself (the fixed media part).
In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon, for double bass and fixed media, uses the text of the children’s story “Goodnight Moon” (by Margaret Wise Brown) to explore the psychological effect of nighttime, and the dual sense of security/insecurity that we first experience as children.
The final purely acousmatic movement of theLCROSS 2009-10-09 was inspired by the exploding of two rockets into the moon’s Cabeus crater by the U.S. government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 9, 2009. It highlights our modern scientific and political attitudes towards the moon, recounting the event and imagining a sonic equivalent to the strangely poetic visual descriptions of it (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/oct/HQ_10-271_LCROSS_LRO.html).”
The Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art in 2015 was supported in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Department of Canadian Heritage and The SOCAN Foundation.
Composition and Spatialization Performance: Stephanie Moore
Artistic Direction: Darren Copeland
Video Camera: Stefan Rose
Video Editing: David Arthur
Audio Recording: Darren Copeland and Stephanie Moore
Lighting/Stage Technician: Kai Masaoka
Recorded August 22, 2015 at Theatre Direct’s Wychwood Studio, Toronto for the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art.
Special Thanks to the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and Canadian Music Centre.