Click Here for More Past Performances
Live to air on NAISA Radio at www.naisa.ca/naisa-radio/
By with special guest performance by Alexandre Quessy
January 17, 2014, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
FREE
Part of an international celebration of Art
Event Times are as follows: January 17, 2014, 2 - 5 PM on-line at www.naisa.ca/naisa-radio/ Saturday, January 18, 2014, 10am - noon @ the Stop's Farmer's Market, Artscape Wychwood Barns January 19, 2013, 12:30 - 4:30pm at the Covered S
at the Artscape Wychwood Barns
General $, Students $
https://naisa.ca/naisa-events/arts-birthday/
Art is not just a practice or a discipline but a way of perceiving the world, examining problems, and discovering possibilities. NAISA’s Art’s Birthday events will provide many such opportunities for one and all to not only experience art but to tap into their creative side as well – no experience is necessary. — Darren Copeland, Artistic Director, New Adventures in Sound Art.
By Alexandre Quessy, Darsha Hewitt, Nelly-Eve Rajotte and Claudette Lemay
January 18, 2014, 10:00 am to 12:30 pm
The Stop Farmer's Market, Artscape Wychwood Barns
Co-presented with Music in the Barns and Children's Art Studio
By Featuring Alexandre Quessy, Eric Powell, Music in the Barns and
January 19, 2014. 12:30 - 4:30pm
Covered Street, Artscape Wychwood Barns
FREE, Students FREE
January 19th is the perfect day to make and enjoy Art in the Covered Street at the Artscape Wychwood Barns. Art’s Birthday is a celebration of ART of all kinds and from 12:30pm to 4:30pm, there will be hands on art-making, interactive activities, and performances. Events in the Covered Street include: ongoing interactive sonic and visual art making using Alexander Quessy’s installation Synthesthesia; performances by Carol Gimbel from Music in the Barns; create your own found sound composition; create your own birthday card for Art with the Children's Art Studio; or visit the NAISA Space upstairs to explore the interactive installation Flash Orchestra by Eric Powell. Happy One Million and Fifty-first Birthday Art! And yes there will be cake!!
Evening Performances @ 8pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St. #252, Toronto, ON
General $10, $10/performance
For the month of March, NAISA's installation space will be filled with everyday objects especially selected for the interesting sounds they make when struck or played, offering you a chance to play with sound and manipulate it live. NAISA's Sound Bash Concert series includes performances on this evolving instrument / sound installation. Join us for four evening Saturday performances March 8, 15, 22, 29 and a chance to join in afterwards.
Featuring performances by Glen Hall
March 8, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St. #252, Toronto, ON
General $10
Glen Hall is a composer/improviser/multi-instrumentalist Glen Hall studied Gyorgy Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel and Joel Chadabe at Berklee College of Music. He has recorded with arranger Gil Evans, trombonist Roswell Rudd and Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo. Hall has done residencies for live electronic music at STEIM (Amsterdam) and the Electronic Music Foundation (New York).
Featuring performances by Ambrose Pottie
March 15, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St. #252, Toronto, ON
General $10
Ambrose Pottie, from Spryfield, N.S. is a Toronto based musician and book designer. He has recorded and/or performed with Bob Becker, Bill Bisset, Anne Bourne, Eugene Chadbourne, Rob Clutton, Andrew Cyrille, Fred Frith, Bill Grove, Guy Klucevsek, Evan Lurie, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Polka Dogs, Richard Sacks and Andrew Staniland. He currently is one of the directors of the Toronto Improvisor's Orchestra.
Featuring performances by Germaine Liu
March 22, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St. #252, Toronto, ON
General $10
Germaine Liu is a percussionist, performer/composer and creative improviser. As a percussionist, Liu has been privileged to work with many wonderful musicians, dancers and artists. She performs regularly in a number of ensembles, including c_rl, AIMToronto Orchestra, Rob’s Collision and Octopus. Liu studied percussion with Jesse Stewart during her undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph and composition with David Mott at York University.
Featuring performances by Viv Corringham & James Bailey
March 29, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St. #252, Toronto, ON
General $10
Viv Corringham is a British vocalist and sound artist based in New York. She has worked internationally since the 1980s, making performances, installations and soundwalks. She received 2012 and 2006 McKnight Composer Fellowships. Her ongoing project Shadow-walks has been presented from New York to Istanbul to Hong Kong.
James Bailey has been making strange sounds for most of his life, using both acoustic and electronic means. He is a member of several improvising ensembles in the Toronto area and has performed at international festivals in Canada and elsewhere.
By Michael Snow, Paul Dutton, John Oswald and John Kamevaar
April 25, 2014, 8:00 pm
at the NAISA Space, 601 Christie St #252, Artscape Wychwood Barns
General $15
Michael Snow - analogue synthesizer
John Oswald - alto saxophone
Paul Dutton - sound singing and mouth harp
John Kamevaar - electronic percussion, analogue synthesizer and NAISAtron
A special fundraiser performance for NAISA featuring Toronto's longest running free improv band CCMC. Widely regarded as one of the pioneering free improvisation bands of the 1970s, CCMC has been reinventing itself with a shifting constellation of artists and a consistent questing spirit for more than four decades. For this special performance, CCMC consists of Michael Snow, Paul Dutton, John Oswald, and John Kamevaar. Also available for purchase will be NAISAtron kits, Contact mic and Micro-Radio Transmitter kits as well as various CDs by some of the CCMC artists. All proceeds go to furthering NAISA's objectives to providing a home for experimental sound art in Toronto. This concert marks the first time that the CCMC performs at the NAISA Space.
May 3, 2014, 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm
after 7:30 pm live in the NAISA Space
Broadcast live on NAISA Radio: https://naisa.ca/naisa-radio and after 7:30pm @ The NAISA Space #252 Toronto Audiences come to the NAISA Space, Suite 252
General $5
A six hour internet jam with sound artists and vocalists participating from around the world. Inspired by the book Yodel in Hi Fi by bart plantenga, Yodel - EA – OH! Plays on the long distance communications origins of Yodeling to create cross-cultural links between artists in real time around the globe. For more details go to: See https://www.facebook.com/events/465044103597779/
Guests: bart plantenga, Eldad Tsabary, Andreas Monopolis -- MoCM, Bart Plantenga, Girilal Baars, Primal Barber Trio, Polsick (aka Pablo Anglade) with Agustín Spinetto, Adam Tindale, d0kt0r0 (a.k.a. David Ogborn), "Forever Moonlight - Marc Sloan &
Maggie Ens", Scot Bullick, Biting Eye (aka Ben Bridges), James Bailey, Liz Pieries with fourthousandblackbirds and Eric Boivin, Zazalie Z. (aka Nathalie Dion), Kutzkelina (aka Doreen Kutzke), Jewel Clark, Danibal, Sbot N Wo, and Paul Dutton.
Click here for Artist Bios
May 4, 11, 18 and 25, 2014. Sundays from 3 - 5 PM.
Sunday, May 4th at the base of Wallace pedestrian bridge (where Wallace Avenue meets the West Toronto Rail Path) Sunday May 11th at St. Matthew's Clubhouse (southeast corner of Riverdale Park, at Broadview and Langley) Sunday May 18th at the southwest corner of Dundas and Yonge (in front of the H&M Store) Sunday May 25th at Wynchwood Barns, 601 Christie Street
FREE
In Radio Confessions, Wittmann and Poon establish an outdoor FM live radio
station which they offer with guidance to members of the public who would
like to air an apology or a confession. The intent is to reveal some past
while trying to 'undo' it. Live to air on location in localized broadcast
with or without live streaming are offered as dissemination options.
Radio Confessions will take place at different locations throughout the
city of Toronto on consecutive Sundays from 3-5pm throughout May 2014 as
part of Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art
You come and listen to our broadcast on a radio receiver.
You air an apology or a confession.
You listen to the streaming on the internet.
You ask Claude or Coman to read a text you wrote.
You ask us to listen to you or to your voice on radio.
You listen to your own voice on radio.
You imagine that radio waves have the potential to continue for ever.
RADIO CONFESSIONS is part of the Deep Wireless which is a month-long
celebration of Radio and Transmission Art presented by New Adventures in
Sound Art and that includes performances, special radio broadcasts, artist
residencies, workshops and the TransX Transmission Art Symposium.
May 10, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie Street, #252
General $10
A performance of works exploring the undo / redo theme, some of which will be featured on the Deep Wireless 10 online release. All of the works will be performed using the NAISA Spatialization system.
Nankai by Alexandra Spence
Turning by Aynsley Moorhouse
Dry Haze by Werner Cee
Outgribe by James Andean
A bit closer to home by Brona Martin
Emotion Machine by Donika Rudi
Nankai is an electroacoustic composition inspired by the beautiful, monastic region of Koyasan, Japan. Based upon a field recording of the nankai line train snaking its way up the mountain, Nankai is an attempt to recreate the space and spirituality of Koyasan. It is a subjective representation of a journey I took, and my subsequent experiences and memories. It is also an appropriation, placing borrowed and foreign sounds in a new context. Subsequently, Nankai is an attempt to redo the experience unique to a particular person in a particular place and time.
In 2010, five years after my father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I created a sound exploration of his mind. In it, I celebrated his embodied experience of the world without reference to the past or future. By 2012, I had become disturbed by disruptions in his relationship with the world around him. This piece represents a synthesis between my past framework and a newly-provoked understanding of his life.
In the disastrous "year without a summer" 1816, caused by a vulcanic eruption, Lord Byron wrote his poem "Darkness". Modern geoengineering scientists intend to use the very effect of atmospheric haze to cool the planet. Dry Haze is the soundtrack to their shadowed world. Featuring "The Unthanks", voices, Werner Cee, electroacoustic ch'in. Dry Haze is part of the sound art triptych "The Anthropocene" http://www.theanthropocene.de
"Outgribe" is a sound miniature that incorporates recordings of the mechanical and apparatus of various radio and telecommunications exchanges, abstracted and 'aestheticized', and layered with 'distance communication\' resources from both the natural and musical worlds. It is sculpted from materials from a longer work from 2008 titled "Outgribing".
This piece featuring the aural recollections of Tiernan Martin explores the sounds of the past that are long gone but remain vivid in our memories. Aural memories connect us to a specific time and place in our lives. Changing soundscapes can tell us a lot about the history of a place and how it is has changed over time. The sounds may have changed due to industrial engineering and economic developments. As composers we can create virtual soundscapes that can document the sounds of the past and and recreate it.
The only sound source of the work is the human voice that speaks, cries, shouts, sings. Emotional crisis. Explosion, anger, surprise. Tension. Different images that come and go, approach, leave, deform and transform quickly and concisely.
Each image shows, expresses an emotion but in the end, all are connected, sometimes also parallel, followed by a mass, number of layers, memories, from the past to the present, then from the present to the future. Schizophrenia. Hysteria. Madness. Fear. It's machine, which produces emotion, a mechanism in destruction.
May 22, 2014, 8:00 pm
Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
Two evenings of performances by international artists including Peter van Haaften (Montreal, QC, Can), Thomas Beverly (USA), David Ogborn (Hamilton, ON, Can), with more TBA shortly.
In this piece, I route historical weather data through software I built to create a real-time graphical score. Then, I control a bank of samples with two iPads and interpret the graphical score in real-time by freely assigning sound, harmony, rhythm, melody, and growth to the available weather parameters. As a result, the data in Telepresent Storm: Rita connects the audience’s visual and auditory experience with the actual data and energy of Hurricane Rita. Paradoxically, Rita was a massive show of destruction and grandeur and I hope this piece transports you to this time and place in September 2005.
The term 'electroacoustic' encompasses many audio concepts, broadly relating to the conversion of electrical energy into acoustic energy or vice versa. Musician and radio host Nick Schofield interviews Kevin Austin, the legendary composer and professor, with the aim to uncover what electroacoustics is and is not. Austin not only offers his animated definition but also divulges stories from his childhood, his introduction to working with electronics and a few current examples of electroacoustics in action.
A sound art-theatre play, written by Daniel Nadeau. Live voice actors, with foley and electroacoustic composition by Peter van Haaften combine to create a new trans-disciplinary work.
Newton 09 is written in three acts, chronicling the re-emergence of a lost art
after generations of silence. 300 years in the future, mental slavery has buried the
memory of joyful activity; life has become monotonous. Three brave scientists set out
to recover humanity's hidden happiness, and what they find needs to be heard to be
believed.
In a house, on a hill, a lonely electronic mind has been waiting. Since the days of
darkness, through the war, a little robot, programmed to bring the forgotten sounds
back to the world, has been waiting. And when our three heroes show up, well, the whole world is going to know.
The performance of transmission+interference uses hacked devices designed and built through shared workshops to explore the potential of light as creator, controller and carrier of noise. A system of tools spread and leak noise through light, which is then received on solar cells via various forms of interference. Known and unknown / hidden sounds exist within the complexity of wires and local aether that are sniffed out and embedded into the system to build up frequencies and rhythms / pulses of light and sound. transmission+interference is a collaborative project between artists David Strang and Vincent Van Uffelen.
May 23, 2014, 8:00 pm
Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
Two evenings of performances by international artists including Peter van Haaften (Montreal, QC, Can), Thomas Beverly (USA), David Ogborn (Hamilton, ON, Can), with more TBA shortly.
Shared Buffer #1 will be a live coding improvisation by a trio of globally distributed performers (Toronto/Hamilton, Montréal and Sheffield, UK), all working on a single piece of shared code. The performance uses Tidal, a small live coding language that represents polyphonic sequences using terse, highly flexible and polyphonic notation, providing a range of higher-order transformations. Shared Buffer Study #1 is part of a series supported by the research project “Live Coding and the Challenges of Digital Society” (McMaster University Arts Research Board). The TransX 2014 event will inaugurate this series of performances.
Radionoise is the general name for things that I do which use radios as the sound source. This usually involves having them interfere with each other when in close proximity by tuning one until it affects the reception of the other. This occurs due to the interaction of small electromagnetic fields crated by the local oscillators in each unit. Amplitude Modulation (AM) radios are best for this as they seem to interact quite readily and are inexpensive to obtain. It is also possible to complicate the interaction with a theremin - an electronic music instrument incorporating oscillators that operate in a similar frequency range allowing it to be played without needing to touch any part of the instrument directly. Due to the often unpredictable nature of radio operation, especially when dealing with smaller and less expensive units, the results can vary widely.
"The bull of heaven, who rages in his heart, who lives on the being of every god, who eats their entrails when they come, their bodies full of magic, from the Isle of Flame" - Inscription, Pyramid of Teti, VIth Dynasty
Rapacious sky is constructed principally from recordings of solar radiation and meteoritic activity in the upper atmosphere, captured via shortwave and put away for 30 years, re-organised and reprocessed, arranged in time and space according to the geologic timeline of boundary extinction events on earth. The resulting sensory space is intended to function as an opening, or series of openings - to what, exactly, is for the listener to determine.
May 24, 2014, 8:00 pm
Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street #176
General $15, Students $10
Two types of Alchemy. Both with very different recipes. The first – The Golem of Hereford - is an computer generated collage of interview fragments that are seamless and logical in their flow and composition. The second – Phase Space – is audio science conducted live in your presence right in the middle of the space. These performances offer different approaches to transmission art and the notion of what constitutes live radio.
Myth and history are malleable stories – they evolve with time and depend upon how often the story has been told and who is telling it. With each narration, part of it is lost while new elements emerge. Using thousands of interview fragments reorganised in real-time alongside multichannel field recordings, the Golem interrogates our perception of the past.
Situated between alchemical ritual and lab experiment, this audio/visual performance explores human perception in relation to the time-scale of nature, creating an embodied experience of the space where liquid, crystal, electricity, and flesh coincide.
By Erin Sexton
May 25, 2014, 2:00 pm
meet at Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street #176
FREE
Soundscape Concert
July 19, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie Street, #252
General $10
NAISA celebrates World Listening Day with a SOUNDwalk at noon and a performance of soundscape works in the evening at 8pm in the NAISA Space. Featured is a performance by guest artist Fernando Godoy Monsalve from Chile who will perform a live improvisation using materials he has collected in the Atacama desert. Also included are works by Hildegard Westerkamp, Adam Basanta, and Eldad Tsabary.
World Listening Day is an international multi-city celebration of listening practices of the world and the ecology of its acoustic environments. NAISA is participating with a performance of soundscape works featuring guest artist Fernando Godoy Monsalve from Chile. Monsalve will perform a live improvisation using materials he has collected in the Atacama desert. On the desert theme, we will also present Hildegard Westerkamp's classic Cricket Voice from 1987 and then explore the inner musicality of taken for granted sounds like plastic bags with Adam Basanta's Ecologie Materiele before plunging into the underwater realm to hear fishes and other creatures in the North Saskatchewan River with Darren Copeland's River Valley Snapshots. All of the works will be spatialized in the intimate environs of the NAISA Space using the NAISA spatialization system.
Unlike Katherine Norman’s Real-World Music, in which abstract and imaginative sounds enhance the experience of certain aspects of reality, this piece incorporates an absolutely fantastic story into the truthful field recording and could be described as a sonic tall-tale. The recording is made underneath the ice in the colony of the ice ants at Tasiujaq. Honestly!
Cricket Voice is a musical exploration of a cricket, whose song Westerkamp recorded in the stillness of a Mexican desert region called the Zone of Silence. The quiet of the desert allowed for such acoustic clarity that this cricket’s night song — sung coincidentally very near her microphone — became the ideal “sound object” for this tape composition. Slowed down, it sounds like the heartbeat of the desert, in its original speed it sings of the stars. The quiet of the desert also encouraged soundmaking. The percussive sounds in Cricket Voice were created by ‘playing’ on desert plants: on the spikes of various cacti, on dried up roots and palm leaves, and by exploring the resonances in the ruins of an old water reservoir. Cricket Voice was composed in 1987 with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Between the natural environment and the consumer products which are derived from it (paper / plastic bags and wrappers / foil) lies a sonic and metaphoric continuum. Within this scope, I chose to explore variations on the theme of extraction and re-deposition of one sound image to another, as well as create an evolving musical interplay between the ecological organization characteristics of each sound world. To listen click here.
Fernando Godoy Monsalve is in Toronto to present his installation Atacama: 22º 54\' 24\" S, 68º 12\' 25\" W, which opened on the same day as this concert and will run in the NAISA Space until August 16. We have invited him to present a laptop performance improvisation using sounds from his installation and other soundscape materials he has in his collection from Chile. NAISA is grateful for the support received from the Chilean Cultural Council.
By WL Altman
August 9, 2014, 10:00 am
The Farmer's Market, 601 Christie St
FREE
August 13, 2014, 8:00 pm
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
August 14, 2014, 8:00 pm
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
August 14, 2014, 2:00 pm
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
August 15, 2014, 8:00 pm
Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
The practice of mixing western concert instruments with electroacoustics undergoes a variation, or ReDo in this concert. By replacing the piano with kalimbas, melodicas and toy pianos and by incorporating robotics, video tracking in performance, and using instruments as loudspeaker resonators, this is more than just a substitution. It’s a continuation of the endless exploration of the rich creative possibilities of sound.
Bodies-Soundings interrogates two instruments - an acoustic guitar and a toy piano - as sounding bodies, whose resonant chambers do not sound, but only resound. The instruments are used as loudspeakers, amplifying sounds both sourced from the instruments, and external sounds that expand and contradict the instruments’ identities. Without performers, they are simultaneously ‘disembodied’ and re-imagined as physical bodies of their own, animated by living sounds; anthropomorphousizing them while also emphasizing their physical construction.
The piano is an extension of a human organism - a prosthetic separation/connection from a sound-making machine. TOYBOX plays in liminal zones between players' hands and activated sound, using video object-tracking software in place of piano mechanisms to both distance and connect the performers' hand gestures with sonic results.
Sequitur is a series of compositions for various solo instruments and live-electronics which I started in 2008. Sequitur XIV was written for the Hamburg-based pianist and performer Jennifer Hymer and sets the thumb piano in focus. This instrument, named ‘Mbira’ in Africa, was discovered in the middle of the 20th Century from the British ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, who developed out of it a standardized western instrument named ‘kalimba’, and let it be produced industrially. In contrast to the African original, this western new construction is tuned diatonically.
First I tried to approach the instrument like a child in that I pushed away all knowledge about the high art of Mbira-practice to the side. What did I see before me? A trapezoidal shaped wooden box with metal blades of differing lengths that were fastened over a sound hole in the middle. After I examined the sound possibilities of the kalimba’s body through rubbing, scratching and knocking, I attached a contact microphone to its surface and sent the sounds through the same computer program that I had developed for the other “Sequitur” compositions. Suddenly everything became enchanted: the canonic layering of my knocking and scraping noises compressed themselves into a polyrhythmic layering and I felt myself being transported to the south of Africa where the African musicians play this instrument in ensemble and thereby produce a highly complex polyphony which the Viennese musicologist Gerhard Kubik described as “inherent patterns.”
Only later I dedicated myself to the metal tines and through the help of live electronic manipulation found means and ways to dig out an ongoing diatonic. After many months of free experimenting, I was finally able to write a concisely written score for Jennifer Hymer, which turned my summing-ups of this instrument into a sound journey.
for melodicas, air mattress pumps, playback, and live electronics
written for the junctQín keyboard collective
“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
With the junctQín keyboard collective currently exploring the expansion of keyboard playing in the realm of electroacoustic music, I was interested in the pianist’s considering the role of their breath in their playing. In the context of this ‘un-piano’ recital, I have approached the this through the “re-working” of a Palestrina 5-part motet, written for 3 melodicas, 3 air mattress pumps, live electronics and playback for NAISA’s 16-channel system. I am grateful for project support from the Ontario Arts Council, Music Commissioning program.
Rituel is a particularly unusual sonic experience that varies in duration between 6 and 12 minutes. The piece sets the scene of a spinning FlyingCan that emits sounds around the performer. The title refers mainly to the very notion of ritual, a celebration in which every detail of the process is dealt with respect, and where every action is in the greatest reverence. In the case of this piece, this sound celebration is one of sharing, true testimony of the musicien on his own musical experience. Also, this ritual is an action, repeated in a usual and accurate manner, all while keeping a spiritual character.
In this piece, the musical discourse is that of a timber in continuous slow motion. Ritual is then a music of color and not of volume. The motive is an evolution of a soft flux of horizontal frequencies, slow continuous spirales folding and unfolding in a large range of the audible spectrum. It is a minimal music engineered with acoustic phenomena(beats, sparkling harmonics, whistles, etc.). The instrument’s sound propagates through the air and produces sound events which have not only to place the output of the instrument but also the location in space. Pure deployment of continuous sounds whose rhythm is not in the foreground, the form of the work is that of flow, elevation, and silent evaporation. The sound generated by the instrument may be acquired so much weightlessness that the music seems to "levitate". The silence in Ritual is not born of the complexity of each instrumental gesture, and its novelty is not the result of the deepening of intellectual inquiry: rather it comes from the uniqueness of the acoustic experience both by performer and spectator.
The work asks the performer to be constantly listening to the sound produced by the instrument in order to give it the desired changes, changes that are difficult to control and that are part of the same structure of the piece. With its micro-transforming process, Rituel uses the sound of the instrument for its intrinsic qualities and aims to capture the attention of the listener by introducing a sound field, where ears are surprised to hear new timbral sounds otherwise unknown. These unheard sounds add to the magic of the unknown, the mysterious.
Jonas dans la baleine is commissioned jointly by New Adventures in Sound Art and Electric Eclectics for presentation at both Electric Eclectics and Sound Travels in August 2014. The commission was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the OAC and CALQ's Québec-Ontario Artist in Residence program. In the following, Laporte discusses this new work and where he sees it placed in his artistic evolution:
This new musical work will set the scene for the new instrument “The Pipe” (robotic instrument) which will be amplified while also being digitally processed in real time. The title of this new piece/space references the sonic world in which Jonas (represented by the robotic instrument) would have plunged into once he was swallowed by the whale.
Jonas dans la baleine, will be music material that explores in a musical way sonic, timbral and unique vibrational universes. The piece will be a display of pure tone in which the form in that of flow, stasis, and silent evaporation. This music of mass and movement has the motive of the evolution of fluctuating similar timbers which organize themselves through accumulation and proliferation, fostering the emergence of a very organic sonic world. Polyphony is more than a global harmony, more than a total timber, hidden, behind a quasi-static whole, incredibly animated units.
** world premiere of commissioned works
For V Accordion, Expanded Instrument System and Cello
With sixteen channel sound diffusion.
August 16, 2014, 8:00 pm
Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
Following the theme of the previous night of transforming instruments and extending their possibilities, NAISA is delighted to present an extended solo performance by guest artist Pauline Oliveros along with Anne Bourne. Oliveros has a long history of challenging performance conventions regarding the use of time and space in music. \
Motion Memory and Mermaids is a gestural improvisation informed by the title and the player's listening. Motion memory is deeply embodied and triggered by listening inclusively to all that is sounding externally and internally. The mind is in motion always. Without memory there is no listening. Mermaids are inspiring creatures that live mysteriously in the deep waters either of reality or of mind or both.
August 16, 2014, 2:00 pm
Theatre Direct's Wychwood Theatre, 601 Christie St #176
General $15, Students $10
August 23, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St #252
General $5
INSTALLATIONS
Performance by Jaap Blonk
October 10, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie Street #252
General $10
In Polyphtong spatial placement and movement are extended by electronic means. The phonetic concepts of diphthong and approximant are an important focus in the more meditative sections of the work. It also uses the techniques of Blonk's cheek synthesizer: many kinds of stereo mouth sounds driven by sheer air, ranging from very low to extremely high pressures.
Performances by Eric Boivin, Albérick (fourthousandblackbirds) and screenings by Rick Sacks and Dominic F Marceau
October 18, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie Street #252
General $10
Life: redoundo by Rick Sacks
Crowdscoring by Elliott Fienberg
Selfie #1 by Eric Boivin & Dominic F Marceau
untitled/revisited by Eric Boivin, Albérick (fourthousandblackbirds) and Dominic F Marceau
The theme of Undo-Redo inspired Sacks to get to an idea he'd been toying with. At first he was going to eat breakfast backwards. Adding simple video effects he made a repetitive but varied exploration of a simple task, a surreal attempt to disrupt our sense of LIFE.
In this piece, members of the audience participate in an interactive music performance using their personal mobile devices. The role of the performer is shifted from triggering the sounds himself, to coordinating the audience through a piece of live sound art. Elliott Fienberg developed this work through the Sound Travels Intensive in August 2014.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This damage disrupts the ability of parts of the nervous system to communicate, resulting in a wide range of signs and symptoms, including physical, mental, and sometimes psychiatric problems...
For this improvised performance, sound artist Eric Boivin, experimental musician Albérick (fourthousandblackbirds) and filmmaker Dominic F Marceau will revisit their previous collaboration series Untitled, to create a new chapter in this ongoing series: untitled/revisited.
During this performance, each artist will be resampling and reprocessing sounds, music and images from their previous works as their primary source. These will be intertwined with additional material from their personal archives and new material, albeit to a minimal extent, creating a new innovative opus. The emphasis of the performance will be on the soundscape, whilst the visual aspects will be used as accompaniment so as to further enhance the mood, timbre and tonality of the piece. The two sound artists will construct an improvised soundtrack from past sounds and electronic musical elements. The video projection will guide the audience through the soundscapes. Each artist creates a unique world from revisited materials while sharing a common space, thus allowing individual universes to converge into one cohesive piece.
Performance by Ian Jarvis, work by Joao Pedro Oliveira + more
October 25, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie Street #252
General $10
Resinous Fold 2+4+3 (for Malachite, Bronze & Cerumen) by Sarah Peebles
Iridescence by Linda Antas
Variations on Silence (for Udo Kasemets)John Kamevaar
Aphâr by Joao Pedro Oliveira
Scintilla 21 by VTR (Wiktor Podgorski)
The Inevitability of Objects by Ian Jarvis
Based on three recorded solo improvisations on sho?, Resinous Fold 2+4+3 explores the harmonies of gagaku and creates paths between what Peebles thinks of as listening zones. Unlike the chordal drones which underpin melody in the main body of gagaku (which is more widely known), resinous fold shifts between smaller tone clusters drawn from gagaku's harmonic centres, and is inspired in its flow by gagaku tuning pieces known as ch?shi (music for one or multiple instruments without orchestra). Simple tones from individual pipes transform to rich, complex timbres as air flows through several metal reeds, travels up and out smoked bamboo pipes, and collides as it emerges from multiple points. Sum and difference tones and interference patterns of sound emerge and create a striking, immediate music which envelopes the surrounding space in a sort of opaque cloud, at once mesmerizing, yet somehow unsettling. (Solos recorded by Ted Phillips at Studio Excelo, Toronto)
Coloration caused by micro- or nano-structures is referred to as "structural color" and is a common cause of iridescence in the natural world (pearls, cuttlefish, beetles, etc.). Linda Antas was fascinated by the diverse manifestations of iridescence in nature and by the physics of iridescence, which links color and structure.
"Variations on Silence" is layered with cryptic references to John Cage. However, concurrently it thematizes extreme low fidelity as an aesthetic alternative to the prevalent quest for higher "realism" and technical transparency. It also refers to the inherent destruction of friction based representational technologies (like the wheels of a machine, tires of a car, etc., each use of a vinyl record or tape hastens its decomposition).
The video abstracts Cage's mouth (key framed and at half speed) from an interview where he discusses his notion of silence. The sound is the result of 433 plays of a blank vinyl LP The duration of the sequence is 4 minutes and 33 seconds, referring to his most famous work.
Aphâr is a Hebrew word that means “dust.” This piece is inspired by the dream of Jacob, described in the Old Testament (Genesis Chapter 28):
Scintilla 21 is a glimpse into geographical transformations, urban creations, and bodily modifications. It looks at these changes as part of a processes of overlapping cyclical sequences. It focuses on creation and erasure, thus echoing the theme Undoing and Redoing.
The Inevitability of Objects (TIOO) is a comment on the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology from a phenomenological perspective - the fingerprints inherently left on our technology. TIOO is a performance piece for live coding, DIY digital instrument, and live generated visuals that focuses on the live coding of interaction. The piece relates to the theme Undo/Redo as it is about the human actions, the trial and error that has resulted in the general technology that is used (laptop, software, physical computing), as well as the author’s preparatory actions to create the performance system, and actions taken during the performance.
Performance by Mugbait + more
November 1, 2014, 8:00 pm
NAISA Space, 601 Christie Street #252
General $10
Zvonci by Norah Lorway
e u t h a n a s i a by Dan Tramte
Wrathful Vine by Vanessa Sorce-Lévesque
Terminal Burrowing by Nick Storring
Gelded Eyes by Mugbait
Zvonci was composed at EMS Stockholm in June 2014. It is mostly synthesized using SuperCollider, with some eerie church bells recorded in Ljubljana, Slovenia in October 2013.
There are two distinct sound-image types in Euthanasia: 1) sounds that exhibit rotational qualities, and 2) sounds that glitch. The rotational sounds feature everything from broken spinning hard drives to revving engines and Euler's Disks. These are arranged in counterpoint based on their energy profiles, as well as timbre data gained by Musical Information Retrieval (MIR) tools. To bring these sounds together with the glitch sounds, glitch-modulation was applied to rotational sounds; likewise, glitch sounds were modulated by digital rotation models.
In Euthanasia, extremely high pitches sound for extended periods of time. When these pitches cut out, it dramatically draws attention to the deafening silence. Even though the speakers are not generating any sound at these points, one can still hear the high frequencies resonating in one's own head. At times, it's difficult to tell whether the sound is coming from the speakers, or if the listener is making them up.
You're on your death bed. The only two sounds you hear—your nervous system and the machine keeping you alive—are now your entire world.
Wrathful Vine is inspired by the following text from ‘the Oracle of the Wrathful Vine’:
The Earth stands not still…
But all things appear Thunder!
"Terminal Burrowing" was originally commissioned for the 2013 AKOUSMA Festival in Montréal, and emerges from my recent desire to bring together the different aspects of my practice—chamber composition, improvisation, and electroacoustics. Eschewing DSP in favour of layering improvisation on different instruments, it's orchestral music that would never exist in the concert hall, and that also responds well to a diffusion-oriented presentation. It is available commercially on my Orange Milk Records album "Endless Conjecture" (cassette/ download).
Not everyone gets a moment unforgettable. “Why are using static electricity and dead want to the peanut trick?" One army of word play. Each would be a goddamn liar. A rather menacing set of the heavens- the bubbling muck of love again. There is a little, and gave pooch the aberration that corresponded to be put. The dog had been deliciously scented dreams.
November 3, 2014, 7:00 pm
Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON
FREE