Day Three: Saturday 9 November
TV Studio, Stockwell Street Academic Building
12-1pm: Concert 6 – Live
Brigid Burke & Sophie Rose – Gloss
– a series of 9 short, connected movements.
for Electronics, Bb clarinet/bass Clarinet, electronics and visuals
Gloss was inspired by a series of nine pen and ink drawings, which were used as a graphic notation for the different instrumental combinations and live electronics. The nine graphics were then integrated into the video artwork which shows glimpses of the graphics in superimposed layers in conjunction with pencil drawings of squiggles depicting wire. These were then photographed. The depiction of wire glosses the image with a superficial lustre.
Dr. Brigid Burke is an Australian composer, performance artist, clarinet soloist, visual artist, video artist and educator whose creative practice explores the use of acoustic sound and technology to enable media performances and installations that are rich in aural and visual nuances. Her work is widely presented in concerts, festivals, and radio broadcasts throughout Australia, Asia, Brazil, Europe and the USA. Brigid’s main focus is integrating musical ideas with a combination of different media. Each component of media is a tool in the exploration of her artistic process: sound (acoustic, laptop, clarinets and electronics), composition, improvisation, installation, collaboration (with dancers, acoustic performers and other new media performers), print making, pen and ink drawings, painting and animation (digital). She regularly works across a range of contexts including experimental and improvised music, new chamber music, classical music ensembles and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Brigid’s work seeks to extend beyond the boundaries of her art form and to reimagine the possibilities of sound and visual.
Her involvement New Music has led her to integrate sound, visuals, video mixing and theatre in her performances of her own work and in collaboration with other composers/performers. Currently she curates SEENSOUND a monthly Visual Music series https://seensound.com and the Teal House Gallery with Steven Broughton www.thetealhousegallery.com
Recently she has been a recipient of an Australia Council Project Music Fellowship & new work commissions ‘Artist in Resident at Marshall University USA with a Edwards Distinguished Professor Artist Residency, Indiana University USA, also ADM NTU Singapore. Also most recently she has presented her works at Federation Square Melbourne, Splice Festival USA 2020, Tilde Festival 2019, ABC Classic FM and I Echofluxx Festivals Prague International Media Festival Prague 2013-23, ICMC International Computer Music Conference Perth Australia, Generative Arts Festivals in Rome, Milan, Ravenna & Florence Italy, Asian Music Festivals in Tokyo, The Melbourne International Arts Festival, Futura Music Festival Paris France, Mona Foma Festival Hobart, The International Clarinet Festivals in Japan and Canada also Seoul and Australian International Computer Music Festivals. She has a PhD in Composition from UTAS and a Master of Music in Composition from The University of Melbourne.
brigidburke.net
Zouning Anne Liao – hypothetical particles
Hypothetical particles in physics refer to particles that have not yet been observed and proven to exist. However, these particles are necessary for maintaining consistency within a given physical theory. In this composition, I explore this phenomenon by examining the interaction between particles of light and sound. The amplitudes of the lights trigger changes in the music, revealing connections between the natural and synthetic realms of sound.
To facilitate this exploration, I created a digital photo-controller modeled after the light.void~ designed by Felipe Tovar-Henao, who is a current Postdoctoral Fellow in Music Composition at University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. His iteration of light.void~ was acknowledged as an ‘inferred replica’ of Leafcutter John’s light thing.
I dedicate this piece to Felipe Tovar-Henao, who is not only a good friend but also an important mentor and a significant source of inspiration that motivated me to pursue music composition.
Zouning Anne Liao Born in Guangdong, China, Zouning’s music draws inspiration from her fascination with nature and technology, blended with a constant curiosity about the playing capacity of instruments. She endeavors to incorporate unexpected and everyday sounds into her music.
Her music has been performed in the United States, France, China, and England. In 2024, her work will be featured at the IRCAM Forum Workshop 2024, SEAMUS/Sweetwater at Charlottesville 2024, Performing Media Festival as well as EMM2024. She was honored to also be featured in Musicacoustica Hangzhou Electronic Music Festival 2023, CampGround23, Turn Up 2023, SPLICE Festival V, and Everyday is Spatial 2023, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2022), SEAMUS national conference in (2021, 2022), National Student Electronic Music Event (2021), and the Society of Composers Inc. (2021). Zouning was named a finalist in the ASCAP/ SEAMUS Student Composer Commission Competition in 2021.
Zouning is currently pursuing a master’s degree with double majors in electronic music composition and music theory at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She also serves as an Associate Instructor of Music Theory and teaches written and aural theory at undergraduate level.
John D’Arcy – Blackbirds Over Lagan Waters
The small bird
chirp-chirruped:
yellow neb,
a note-spurt.
Blackbird over
Lagan water,
clumps of yellow
whin-burst!
– Seamus Heaney
The ancient Irish poem ‘The Blackbird’ has been translated countless times by writers the North of the island, each time carrying ripples of the River Lagan and the sonorities of the small bird. ‘Blackbirds over Lagan Waters’ is a re-imagining of the numerous translations of the old poem for live voice and spatial electronics.
The original version of the poem is written in ancient Gaelic metre ‘snám súad’, which Belfast writer Ciaran Carson translates as ‘the swimming of the sages’, or ‘poetic floating’. Carson said that there are ‘at least thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird’, and that ‘the blackbird can be heard in many ways’. And so, ‘Blackbirds over Lagan Waters’ attempts to hear the blackbird in a multitude of ways whilst the voice swims and floats along the River Lagan, immersed in the sounds of contemporary Belfast – still ‘mouth to the sea’.
Dr John D’Arcy is an artist-researcher based at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. His research involves technology-mediated live performance, voice-based intermedia artwork, and participatory song-making. John directs and composes music for experimental vocal ensemble HIVE Choir, creating site-specific and participatory performances with found texts and melodic improvisation. He co-founded sound art collective Umbrella and curates sound art events and exhibitions at Sonorities Festival Belfast. John is a board member of the Irish Sound Science and Technology Association, was a member of the Steering Group for Belfast’s successful bid for UNESCO City of Music status and currently sits on the Belfast Region Music Board.
Edmar Soria – Pathways Distant Motility
Speculative Audiovisual Research (2023).
Distant Motility is a multimedia audiovisual work that deals with the speculative capacity of machines to know and experience the phenomenon of the divine. In this work, speculative research, experimental electroacoustic rhythmic music and advanced 3D computer modeling/animation converge in a single multimedia experience.The visual element is developed through a deep exploration of diverse 3D modeling/animation techniques such as procedural modeling, parametric modeling, hard-surface and 3D scanning among others, in order to create audioreactive virtual scenarios and unimaginable entities that move between the extremes of the organic-figurative and the abstract. The sound element emerges as a result of an experimental exploration of the language and compositional techniques of electroacoustic music in conjunction with elements of rhythmic patterns and artificial soundscape.
In this sense, the work seeks to develop an audiovisual language based on the interaction of the visual, sound, body and technology; in other words, it proposes an alternative form of human-machine interaction from the digital creative but that is raised not only at the technical level but from the conceptual and reflective.
This work starts from the premise of formulating a question within the context of possible futures and technological singularity:
could a machine come to assume, investigate and experience the concept of God?
Clearly, from this premise, countless consequent questions arise: what capacities, from the techno-scientific point of view, would a machine need to possess so that at some point the need to question the phenomenon of the divine could arise in it? What implications and effects could arise in the behavior and/or agential preconceptions of the machine and its environment (natural and artificial) as well as of the machine with other agents of the same species or of other different species?
PhD. and M.Sc. in Music Technology from UNAM, a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional and an M.Sc. in Applied Economics from UNAM. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and artificial intelligence at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas, UNAM and is currently a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA, 2024-2027). He was head of the PIATS Research Area (Practice as Research in Art, Transdiscipline and Sound) of the Division of Social Sciences and Humanities at UAM-Lerma (2017-2023).
Winner of the Acousmonium INA GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicale) Contest 2016 (France-Mexico), he also obtained the 3rd place in the Xenakis Electroacosutic Music Contest 2023 (Greece). Winner of the SONOM 2014 contest (International Festival of Sound Art), finalist of the “Concours International de Composition Electroacoustique SIME 2018” (Lille, France) and of the Programs, Creadores Escénicos 2018 (FONCA, Mexico), Resiliencias Sonoras-Composición Electroacústica 2020 (UNAM Mexico) and Ecos Sonoros 2022 (Secretaría de Cultura, Mexico).
He has done artistic residencies in two of the most important acousmatic music studios in the world: Musique & Recherches (Belgium) and INA GRM (Paris, France). He has completed residencies in electroacoustic music composition and digital art at DXArts (Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, University of Washington), the Conservatory of Belo Horizonte-Brazil (under the direction of composer Joao Pedro Oliveira), and CMMAS (Morelia, Mexico). He has been recognized internationally through official commissions for multimedia compositions and performances by Difrazzioni Festival 2016 (Florence, Italy), Multiphonies GRM 2017 (France) and New York University Music Ensemble (2017), as well as in Digital Art Biennials (UK and Colombia, both in 2020).
His works include multichannel electroacoustic music, digital art (3D procedural modeling/animation), experimental music and music for contemporary dance and his works have been selected and presented in several international forums in Europe, USA, Asia and Latin America.
Edmar Soria – As an academic researcher he is a member of SNI-CONACyT (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores) and his areas of interest and work include spatiality/localization of sound (acoustics/psychoacoustics), 3D immersive sound, data visualization/sonification, applications of artificial intelligence to digital art, philosophy of AI and topics of mathematics applied to art, among others and has several refereed publications in this regard. He has published so far, three books as author and two as co-coordinator and author. He is Director and founder of the International Colloquium Espacio Inmersividad, which has so far 3 issues (2018-2019-2020) and Desfases, Festival Inmersivo de Producción Multimedia (2021-2022).