View: session overviewtalk overview
Bus transport from Innovation Centre and NEC (NTU) to Bollywood Veggies. Be a tropical naturalist!
(For participants having made full registration at Soundislands Festival.)
Sound is a medium that acts as a glue between the senses. Hearing is deeply intertwined with vision and movement. Beyond that, researchers and artists are mapping out crossmodal associations with touch, smell, feel, and taste, leading to new and fascinating multimodal designs and experiences, and a veritable coral reef of artworks.
The BrunchMusic@FoodMuseum event will serve surprise concoctions of smooth sonorities, silken tofu, sonic cacaphonies, banana salads, spiccato notes, spicy chicken, surround sound, steamy soups, and sensory interactions served up hot by curator and musician Bani Haykal together with Bollywood Veggies famed warrior chefs. Lingering flavours and scintillating music guaranteed for aficionados and everyone hungry for something genuinely unusual. Featuring Bani Haykal, Natalie Tse, Andy Chia, Michael Spicer, Deborah Tan, James Lye & Evan Low.
(Included for those with full registration to Soundislands Festival. For others, please contact the organisers to see if there are a few seats available. Indicative ticket price is 35$, which includes music, food & drinks.)
Produced in collaboration with Bollywood Veggies.
Bani Haykal is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans the fields of visual and literary perfroamcnes, using music and sound as primary mediums. A critically reflective artist and thinker, Bani's work examines the perceptions, relevance and culure of sound and music. He initiates collaborations with artists across all fields as a means to discover musical forms, language and expression.
Natalie Alexandra Tse is an avid Guzheng performer and music educator, who has performed both locally and internationally at events such as Spotlight Singapore (Moscow), Womad (Singapore) and Bydgoszcz Musical Impressions (Poland), amongst others. She has worked under the guidance of local talents such as Iskandar Ismail, as well as performed alongside international artistes like Guy Manoukian. Tse is also founder of SA trio, a Singaporean trio rooted in traditional Chinese culture while expanding sonic possibilities with the tasteful use of electronics.
Andy Chia, a Dizi instrumentalist, ethnic flautist and composer, is a National Arts Council scholar who graduated with a Masters of Arts in Dizi Performance from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Known for his musical versatility, Chia's performance and stage presence reaches out to the audience with passion and flavour. With zest for exploration, he has expanded on the sonic possibilities of his flutes, other wind instruments and electronics by unifying tradition with modern performance methods. Chia is also founder of SA Trio, a Singaporean trio rooted in traditional Chinese culture while expanding sonic possibilities with the tasteful use of electronics.
Michael Spicer has a B.A. (Hons) majoring in music, and a M.Sc in Computer Science, and is constantly looking for ways to combine these two areas. He has been performing professionally as a keyboard/synthesizer/flute player since the late 1970’s. He was a member of the popular Australian folk/rock group “Redgum” in the 1980’s. In 1995 he co-developed two music edutainment games “Agates, the rock group” and “Agates Virtual Music Machine”. He is currently teaching at Singapore Polytechnic, working on a PhD in composition at Monash University, and performing in Singapore with the improvisation group “Sonic Escapade”.
| 11:00 | By Selwyn Fault SPEAKER: Michael Spicer |
Bus transport from Bollywood Veggies to ArtScience Museum (Marina Bay Sands). Be a tourist again!
(For participants having made full registration at Soundislands Festival.)
What’s the colour of that sound? Does the shape of the plate change the taste of the cake? Explore unknown sensorial interactions together with leading artists and scientists in the fields of psychology, sound art, perception, and multimodal design. Guests speakers include interaction designer Stefania Serafin, crossmodality researcher Charles Spence, composer Joyce Beetuan Koh, filmmaker Daniel Belton, and psycholinguist Suzy Styles. The panel is hosted by museum director Honor Harger. “~sound:senses” is a collaboration between ASM and Soundislands Festival, initiated by PerMagnus Lindborg with support from CLASS and ADM at Nanyang Technological University, the Italian Institute of Culture, and the Arts Council of New Zealand.
Introductions & welcome
- Honor Harger, Director, ArtScience Museum.
- PerMagnus Lindborg, assistant professor, NTU; Soundislands Festival /Si15 chair.
Invited talks
Suzy Styles “Language: spoken, heard, connected”. Dr Styles (UK /Singapore) investigates how the mind handles that most human of processes: Language. As a psycholinguist, she uses methods from cognitive science, experimental psychology and neuroscience to explore the way that language develops in infancy, the way it functions in the mind of the individual, and the way it changes over the life-course. In short, how each person’s individual’s language experience contributes to their processing of natural language, and how symbols and sounds shape perception and the underlying representation of language. Suzy is Si15 proceedings chair. (http://psychology.hss.ntu.edu.sg/People/Pages/suzystyles.aspx)
Daniel Belton ”Movement: when one falls”. Mr Belton (New Zealand) is a choreographer and filmmaker with a background in visual arts and contemporary dance. He is the Artistic Director of the “Good Company Arts, founded in 1997, a company that is known for its unique multidisciplinary approach to production. In 2010, he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellowship. Daniel is a Soundislands Festival invited artist. During his sejour, he also conducts a two-day graduate workshop at the School of Art Design Media. (http://www.goodcompanyarts.com/main.html)
Joyce Beetuan Koh “Stage: illusions and involvement”. Dr Koh (Singapore) is a composer and creative director whose output ranges from concert music, dance collaborations, text-sound production to interactive sound installations. Originating from her interests in architecture and interdisplinarity, her work explores notions of sonic canvas, space, and the theatricality of music performance. Her sound world has been described as “engaging the intellect and requiring a different approach”. Joyce is Si15 artwork chair. Her new work, “When We Collide”, a collaborative and generative sound installation by six artists (Joyce Beetuan Koh, PerMangus Lindborg, Stefano Fasciani, Andrian Pertout, Seongah Shin, and Dirk Stromberg) is premiered at the Soundislands Festival. (http://www.nafa.edu.sg/admissions/why-nafa/teaching-staff/profile/dr.-joyce-koh-bee-tuan)
Charles Spence “Cuisine: scent, crunch, palate”. Dr Spence (UK) is is the head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University. He is interested in how people perceive the world around them. In particular, how our brains manage to process the information from each of our different senses to form the extraordinarily rich multisensory experiences that fill our daily lives. He has consulted for a number of multinational companies advising on various aspects of multisensory design, packaging, and branding. The author of over 500 published articles, Spence became widely known when he received the 2008 IG Nobel Prize for Nutrition for his groundbreaking work on the ‘sonic crisp’. Charles is a Si15 keynote speaker. (http://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/team/principal-investigators/charles-spence)
Stefania Serafin “Objects: what’s an instrument?”. Dr Serafin is is a full professor with "special responsibilities in sound for multimodal environments" in the Medialogy section at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. She teaches and researches on sound models and sound design for interactive media and multimodal interfaces. Her book Sonic Interaction Design (MIT Press, 2013) deals with the exploitation of sound as one of the principal channels to convey information, meaning, and aesthetic/emotional qualities in interactive contexts. Research interests include: Multimodal interfaces, interactive sonification, and auditory perception and cognition. Stefania is a Si15 keynote speaker. (http://imi.aau.dk/~sts/)
Panel animated by Honor Harger.
Music performance by CLUBbleu (Julia Mihály + Felix Leuschner): “DARK~asian~ENERGY”
The German duo CLUBbleu works with analogue synthesizers, e-drums, field recordings and live-electronics. Being greatly inspired by Electro-Acoustic music, Electronica and Industrial, CLUBbleu create their own musical cosmos based on urban soundscapes, sparkling synths, deep drones and creepy breakbeats. Varied kinds of interfaces, controllers and sensors are integrated in their performance. CLUBbleu regularly collaborate with other artists in audio-visual live performances. Today’s performance is based on field recordings CLUBbleu made in Singapore in 2014, seeking the most characteristic and unique urban sounds. Diving into this pulsating multi-cultural metropolis, they are now returning to Soundislands Festival and ArtScience Museum with a performance based on extraordinary Singaporian soundscapes. (www.clubbleu.de).
In autumn 2014 the German duo CLUBbleu went on a Singapore Field Recording trip trying to catch the most characteristic and unique urban sounds. For 2 months the duo dived into this pulsating multi-cultural metropolis and returned with a bunch of extraordinary singaporian soundscapes to Frankfurt to produce their upcoming CD called “DARK~asian~ENERGY [singa~core album]. The show tonight is their live re-working of the Singapore files, presenting a lucky dip of their new songs.
The German duo CLUBbleu works with analogue synthesizers, e-drums, field recordings and live-electronics. Being greatly inspired by Electro-Acoustic music, Electronica and Industrial, CLUBbleu create their own musical cosmos based on urban soundscapes, sparkling synths, deep drones and creepy breakbeats. For this the most varied kinds of interfaces, controllers and sensors are integrated in their performance. For their audio-visual live shows CLUBbleu collaborate regularly with different visual artists. CLUBbleu is Felix Leuschner and Julia Mihály. Felix is a classically trained drummer and composer with the main focus on music theatre pieces, as well as chamber music and vocal pieces in connection to live-electronics. Strong influences by visual arts and architecture mark essential components in his compositions. As part of CLUBbleu, Felix plays e-drums, using the instrument as a giant controller for real time sound synthesis. Julia is a composer-performer. She studied classical singing and electronic composition. The crossover of different music styles, such as contemporary vocal music, old school computer game music, trashy pop music tunes and electro-acoustic music, is probably the most outstanding feature of her compositions and performances. Within CLUBbleu, Julia plays analogue synths, game controllers and toy instruments connected to Max /MSP. (www.clubbleu.de)