ABSTRACT. TBC

ABSTRACT. This paper analyses the album Continuum by Singapore rock band The Observatory. It details the sonic innovations in form and style that the band has introduced to gamelan, the traditional Indonesian ensemble music. These include departing from the conventional five- or seven-note systems and inventing a new six-note system; experimenting and maximising the effect of beat frequencies in instrument tuning; mixing culturally diverse styles – Javanese gamelan, Balinese gamelan, West African/Caribbean percussion rhythms, early Norwegian electronic music and western rock; creating new structures to gamelan composition; and experimenting with non-traditional and extended performance techniques. These innovations underscore the band’s philosophy that culture does not stay static and that it is important that cross-cultural conversations continue to take place.

ABSTRACT. TBC

ABSTRACT. The history of sound art has been a case of displacement and misplacement. It has been displaced due to the nature of the medium – sound, a phenomenon which is heard and felt but not seen. In a visually dominated world like ours, this spelt the relegation of the importance of sound and audio sensitivity in a human’s perception, cognition and consciousness. It is misplaced as it is more often categorically subsumed under the other art form, music. Sound art is in fact one of the most ancient of art forms when the name of Greek god of wind, Aeolus, was used to christened the Aeolian harp. Sound art in the late 20th century and early 21st century is often defined by academics and critics as a new and novel form of art . Once again it is another case of displacement and misplacement.The two case studies which will be discussed in this paper will foreground the social and political contexts of the artists as well as their responses to these socio-political conditions to demonstrate that sound art, just like any other art forms like paintings, music and theatre, is reflexive of the times of the creators, and more.

ABSTRACT. Automatic connections between sounds and visual shapes have been documented for some time (c.f., Spence, 2011). We replicated audiovisual correspondences with simple linguistic sounds /i/ and /u/, this time produced in the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese, using a modified version of the implicit association test (IAT). Our Chinese-English bilingual participants were instructed to press one button if they heard a particular sound (/i/ or /u/) or saw a particular image (curvy or pointy), and the other button for the other sound and the other image. The instructions differed between blocks: Half of the time, the sound ‘went with’ the shape (congruent block, i.e., /u/ was the same button as the curvy shape), and half of the time they did not go together (incongruent block). Counterbalanced across the study, were two tones of Mandarin Chinese, previously shown to have sound-shape congruence for bilingual speakers of Chinese (Tone 1-curvy and Tone 4-pointy: Shang and Styles, 2015). Although congruent blocks were significantly faster than incongruent ones (p < .001), no effect of tone congruence was observed. Since tone was an unattended stimulus dimension, we argue that attention modulates sensory congruence in implicit association tasks of this nature.

ABSTRACT. The sound-shape mapping (e.g. the bouba–kiki effect) has been shown across different languages and ages, suggesting consistent and universal associations between sounds and shapes. However, the degree of automaticity of the sound-shape mapping still remains unknown. Here we show that the mapping can happen automatically without being consciously aware of the visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, we measured the time taken to see a congruent pair (e.g. written ‘kiki’ with an angular image) versus an incongruent pair (e.g. written ‘kiki’ with a curvy image) under continuous flash suppression. Our results showed that congruent pairs broke suppression faster. In Experiment 2, we trained people to pair the sounds ‘kiki’ and ‘bubu’ to unfamiliar letters from the West African Vai script – letters previously demonstrated to have neutral sound-shape mappings. After learning to map particular letter-forms to the sounds ‘kiki’ and ‘bubu’, we discovered that congruent pairs (e.g. an angular image with the Vai letters representing ‘kiki’) again broke suppression faster, suggesting that the congruency effect was due to a sensory alliance between the shapes and the sounds represented by the newly learned letters. Our results suggest that sound-shape mapping can happen automatically, and sensory congruency facilitates the access to conscious awareness.

ABSTRACT. In attempts to understand synesthete experiences within families, a vast number individual differences have been found across disparate synesthesia types, and even within these synesthetic categories. However, the link between other perceptual abilities such as absolute pitch, and its aggregation within families has been made evident in several studies. Focused research on tone-colour synesthesia has also suggested that populations with absolute pitch and tone-colour synesthesia may share similar neural substrates in perceiving music. These findings demonstrate a possible connection between familial absolute pitch and synesthesia, and pro-pose the importance of considering cases of synesthesia that traverse both populations, and that similarly agglomerate within families. In this paper we study the crossmodal perceptions of two tone-colour sibling synesthetes, both of whom were also tested to have AP-1 absolute pitch. The study contrasts both siblings’ results on the Synesthesia Battery Test, analysing in detail the tone-colour similarities and differences in their results. Discrepancies across results were also investigated, and a further colour-mapping test enacted to explain the results. The paper proposes finer considerations for batteries and future studies on tone-colour crossmodal experiences.

ABSTRACT. We often associate networked space, the cybernated space we share virtually or vicariously through our online communications, as a medium of disembodiment. However, it can be shown that despite geographical separation, there is a sensorial quality to networked space, here referred to as the “third space,” with its own unique potential for social intimacy, closeness, and visceral experience. This panel is concerned with how artists have activated a sensoriality of the third space through sound and visual media, as well as through interaction, social engagement, and play. What are the possibilities for bringing audio resonances, spatial dimension, media transformations, and the illusion of physicality to the third space? How can the space of the network be used as a performance stage that creates new trajectories of connection between remote locations? And how might audiences view and interact with networked performance staged in the third space in new ways? The Sensoriality of the Third Space will explore these artistic potentials and aspirations with a group of composers and media artists whose work has focused specifically on the network as a medium for performance and experimentation.

ABSTRACT. During the 1970s, the New York artist collective Videofreex, in their own funky way, reinvented television, reversing its power as a medium for drawing community together: a creative medium for storytelling, an artisans approach to television, challenging the space of transmission and reception to connect and engage people with performance, audio-visual experiences, and collective narrative. More recently, as the potential of creating one’s own channel has become a reality, television need not be a corporate controlled delivery mechanism for reinforcing consumerism and mainstream popular culture, but rather an artist’s platform for invention and social interaction. The power of television is now in the collective hands of those who make it and those who watch it: begging the question in our socially-infused networked culture when so many people across the globe now hold a broadcast camera in the palm of their hands: where does television go from here?

ABSTRACT. This talk introduces the research that Nicolas Maigret have conducted since 10 years about the physicality of the network. Starting with Internet Topography and 8 Silences, which use the very problems and downs of distant transmission to generate a live audio representation of the dataflow. We will end up with the Pirate Cinema, which uses BitTorrent surveillance technics to reveal the live dynamics and vitality of the global peer-to-peer exchanges.

ABSTRACT. This paper describes a multimodal analysis of three case studies of intercultural tele-musical improvisation focusing on the ways in which networked musicians perceive spatiality and temporality in the networked jam session. The analysis examines audiovisual recordings of dispersed improvisatory interaction and transcripts of networked musicians’ verbalised reflective experiences. Drawing on ideas from social semiotics and cognitive linguistics, the analysis maps relationships between musical instance and participants’ understanding of their interactive telematic experiences that suggest concepts of time and space are conceptualised by the physical actions of practice.

ABSTRACT. Michaël Borras aka Systaime will perform live over the net an experimental, low-tech glitched audio-visual work he refers to as “French Trash Touch.” Borras combines appropriated digital imagery with found sounds and deconstructed media to create complex sonic textures and fast-edit visual sequences influenced by (and influencing) popular Internet culture.   Biography   Michaël Borras also known as Systaime, is a French net.artist. He is the founder of a movement called French Trash Touch (1995). He created Neticones, a website that portrays pop art as a mosaic of net icons. He has also worked on art projects using Facebook pages, Mashup videos, and YouTube Poop. At the end of 2011, he founded the Super Art Modern Art Museum (French: Super Art Moderne Musee) (SPAMM), an online museum with digital pieces from over 50 artists. He has collaborated with artists such as Asia Argento, Charlelie Couture, Sporto Kantes and Bianca Jagger on various art projects, music videos, and web clips. He has presented his art and ideas at conferences, festivals and art exhibitions worldwide.

ABSTRACT. Resonating Spaces (live audiovisual performance) is a collaborative research project “reconstructing the familiar” that addresses the sonic possibilities of making the familiar, unfamiliar. It involves collaborative inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary research, exchange and translation between music, animation and location by researchers and artists Mark Pollard and Paul Fletcher. The collaboration has resulted in a collection of sound and vision artworks and installations that interrelated with the topography, intent, history and the surrounds of the particular location. Today we will illustrate two works Gridlife (2013) and We notice raindrops as they fall (2015). Gridlife is based on structural grid patterns observed in city apartments and was created for the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne. It was the first reconstructing the familiar research project and has been selected for screening at Animex, London (2015) and PuntoYraya Visual Music Festival Iceland 2014. We notice raindrops as they fall is a new work that continues this approach to making. This project examines and responds to observed, reimagined and remapped time-based patterns of raindrops falling. It involves examining the unique trans-sensory (eg converging sound, visual, haptic, kinetic) characteristics of both single and multiple rain drops in descent. We use this process to create a live performance with new perspectives and an altered experience of familiar natural phenomena. Together we will notice raindrops as they fall.

Mark Pollard, eminent Australian composer, educator and Head of the VCA Contemporary, University of Melbourne Music Mark Clement Pollard has an eclectic compositional style utilising such diverse materials as, Improvisation, Jazz, Pop, Art Music and the indigenous music’s of South East Asia. His work has been released on numerous compact discs including A Handful of Rain a collection of his ambient works. His music is broadcast and performed widely in Australia and internationally and has been used in numerous film and television contexts. Site-specific elements feature in many of his works. This has included Sounding out the earth for the Melbourne Museum, Sounding out Andy for the National Gallery of Victoria, The drumming dunnies for The Port Fairy Spring Festival, and With every step for the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He has received numerous awards and prizes and in 2008 he was awarded the APRA Classical Music State Award for long-term contribution to the Advancement of Australian Music. In 2011 Mark was featured speaker at the Conference for Inter-disciplinary Musicology in Glasgow and guest composer in residence at Green College Vancouver where he created new work and mentored a group of VCA composers in the Resonating Spaces project at the Museum of Anthropology. Much of his recent music is concerned with reconstructing the familiar using a process of sonic reassembly to offer new ways of hearing familiar sound materials.

Paul Fletcher, multimedia artist and animator of sound, image and sculptural installations, lecturer and coordinator of Animation in the School of Film & Television VCA & MCM, University of Melbourne has worked in diverse practices from screenprinted art prints and goods to short films using various animation and experimental film techniques including stop motion and digital abstraction. From 1980 to 1988 Paul was a percussionist in experimental music group Essendon Airport(1980- 1988). Since 2006 Paul has been performing live versions of his film projects combining improvisation of sound and moving image in the form of modular film constructions with various investigations and inventions of custom interfaces and audiovisual instruments. Recently, his work has included public projection art and audiovisual installations, The Railways Time Machine (2012), Hidden Creatures (annual outdoor animation, sculpture and sound exhibition since 2008.) Together with students and staff of VCA Animation, Paul’s conception and production of Creatures of the City was awarded First Prize in Melbourne’s Gertrude Street Projection Festival (2015).

ABSTRACT. Zeitleben/Timelife, a game piece for double bass and live audiovisual processes. How much do we violate the nature of time when we represent the time with spatial properties? Left is the past, center is the now and right is the future. Can a movement in the space provoke a disposition in time? As the time passes, the bassist loses himself in the past, while he is trying to bring back his lost shadows playing a game with them. As Life comes eventually to an end, past and future disappears leaving the now alone, wondering about the validity of its own being.

Kosmas Giannoutakis is a composer and sound artist who creates game pieces and interactive installations, pure acoustic or with integrated digital media. The focus of his artistic research is the integration of cybernetic principles and hierarchies into music making paradigms. His work have been presented in various festivals and workshops across Europe, such as next_generation 6.0 and 4.0 in ZKM Karlsruhe, EUROMicroFest in E-Werk Freiburg, XXIX Summer Sounds Festival in Finland, the Avaton Music Festival in Cyprus and 7th international workshop for young composers in Mazsalaca, Latvia. His works have been commissioned and performed by the ensembles recherche, chronophonie, Divertimento, Avanti! and others. The Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics – IEM of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, is the current inspiring environment for his transdisciplinary art experiments.

ABSTRACT. Eyes Awake  (brain performance and interactive electronics composition) was inspired by Mieko Shiomi‘s 1963 Fluxus composition Event for Midday in the Sunlight. It is an event of day, in a tradition of musical tuning into the movement of the earth and sun, and their relation. The piece has qualities of a religious ritual, or music associated with religious or spiritual practice. Indian rags, nocturnes, vespers and matins also invoke moods and feelings associated with different hours of the day, and the pattern of human activity varying by the position of the sun. In itself, the piece enacts an internal series of nights and days in its repeating pattern of light and dark. Opening and closing of eyes is associated with destruction and creation of alpha-­‐wave rhythms that are clearly detectable in the EEG signal. During this performance, Grace listens to Carolyn’s guided meditation, and her alpha rhythms pulsate, warp and fade a generative electroacoustic mix and video overlay. Saccades and blinks ripple throughout the frame, interrupting the ritual when guided to. The internal experience of light and dark is made visible, audible, and palpable. 

Grace Leslie is a flautist and electronic music improviser developing a mind-body performance practice. As a researcher she is committed to harnessing the expression granted by new music interfaces to better understand the link between music and emotion, with an ultimate goal of employing musical brain-computer interfaces to promote wellness. Grace is currently a postdoctoral fellow working with Rosalind Picard in the Affective Computing Group at the MIT media Lab and Simon Lui at the SIngapore University of Technology and Design. Se holds a PhD in Music and Cognitive science from UCSD,and BA and MA degrees in Music, Science and Technology from Stanford University.

ABSTRACT. Convergence is an electroacoustic performance that features Singapore-based Brian O’Reilly (contrabass + electronics) and Wellington-based Jon He (guqin + electronics). The musicians explore beyond their traditional repertoire and converge in new sound-worlds. Convergence is part of a series of work by Jon He (since 2011) to venture into new sonic territories (through acoustic instruments and signal processing) whereby different instruments pursue new forms of expressivity beyond their traditional repertoire. Prior performances include collaborations with chordophones, aerophones, idiophones and membranophones, and can be found at http://soundcloud.com/jprecursor.

Jon He is an experimental sound and integrated media artist, researcher and educator. His artistic focus is driven by the search for computational creativity in contemporary sonic and visual art practices: through the development of new interfaces and interaction schemes. He is also a Guqin player focusing on the re-vision of Guqin musical expressions through the integration of extended playing techniques and utilizing performance techniques to parameterize digital audio effects and synthesis parameters. He is currently a Ph.D candidate at the Victoria University of Wellington working towards his doctoral dissertation on the analysis and modeling of plucked string instrument performance using multi-modal sensor systems and mechatronic musical instruments. His works has been published at major international academic conferences and performed at specialized events and venues in US, Europe, Asia and New Zealand.

Brian O'Reilly works within the fields of electro-acoustic composition, sound installations, moving images and noise music. As a contrabssist, he focuses on uncovering the inaudible textures and hidden acoustic microsounds of his instrument through the integration of electronic treatments and extended playing techniques. He is currently performing solo audio, moving images and modular analog synthesizer with Black Zenith and contrabass & electronics with Game of Patience.Also he is a lecturer at LASALLE’s College of the Arts School of Contemporary Music, focusing on electronic music composition, creative music making techniques through the use of improvisation and visual music.

ABSTRACT. Via, for live electronics, live video and lighting, is characterized by a tight connection between the sonic and the visual media. Two synthesis methods are primarily used, the first one being scanline synthesis, which translates the pixel information from the screen into waveforms that can further be manipulated. This is graphically displayed by a 3D "wheel" that can be rotated by the performer and thereby causes interpolations between five different waveforms that have been gained by the pixel scanning. The second synthesis technique is pattern-based synchronous grain synthesis, which is suitable to realize rhythmic patters when used at slow speeds, but which can also be accelerated, turning the rhythmic pattern into pitch information. Changes in the rhythmic organization of the pattern result into timbral differences. The short impulses that are used by the grain synthesis are visually represented by two crossing lines. At high speeds these lines form complex interference patterns. The basic material of the film comes from video recordings of road underpasses, viaducts and interstates in New Zealand and California.

Marko Ciciliani (1970, Croatia) is a composer, audiovisual artist and researcher based in Austria. The focus of Ciciliani’s work lies in the combination of instruments and electronics, often in audiovisual contexts. Light or laserdesigns are integral parts of his compositions. More recently he has focussed on live-video by making the manipulation of images part of an extended instrumental design. The artistic combination of sound and light was the topic of his PhD research that he had completed at Brunel University London in 2010. In Ciciliani’s compositions, sound is not only understood as an abstract material but a culturally shaped idiom. The exploration of a sound’s communicative potential is as much in the foreground of his work as its objective sonic quality. His work is characterized by a conceptual approach in which aspects of classical composition, sound-and-media studies play tightly together. His music and audiovisual works have been performed in more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. He is full Professor for Computer-Music Composition and Sound Design at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. In 2014, he taught at the “Summer Courses for Contemporary Music Darmstadt” and also presented a portrait concert. He regularly appears as a presenter on international conferences on computer music and media art as ICMC, SMC, ICLI, Sonorities and others. www.ciciliani.com