Several matralab members will be involved in a conference taking place this week (Sept. 13-15) at UQAM called Archives Sonores et Voix Radio.

About the conference (in French):

Archives Sonores et Voix Radio
Sep 13 – 15, 2012
Agora Hydro-Québec / Hexagram UQAM 175, avenue du Président-Kennedy (Montréal)

Le colloque marque les huit années de travail du groupe de recherche ARC_PHONO. C’est dans ce contexte qu’un événement à caractère international, ouvert au grand public, prend la forme singulière d’une émission de radio enregistrée en direct. Le public assiste à des émissions où les conférenciers — artistes (cinéma, vidéo, œuvres sonores et performances), compositeurs, critiques, historiens et intervenants dans le milieu des arts visuels — échangent autour des questions que le rapport entre l’audible et le visible soulève. De plus, chaque conférencier est jumelé à un artiste de l’audio qui a produit une trame sonore inspirée d’enregistrements audio archivés par ARC_PHONO et qui accompagne la communication. Plusieurs conférenciers et artistes produisent eux-mêmes leur propre accompagnement sonore.

for more information: http://www.arc-phono.ca/colloque2012

matrapeople including Sandeep Bhagwati, Chantale Laplante, Mathieu Marcoux, Julian Stein, and Max Stein will be taking part in the conference.

Presented as part of Whole Terrain: Reflective Environmental Practice: Communicating Science

Building on each our respective research-creation practices, we propose a participatory workshop on the subject of fostering fruitful art and science collaborations. Aiming to counter the unidirectional nature of closed communication, we will structure the workshop in ways that involve participants in dialogic, relational forms of communication such as story circle, live-art and community performance.

We will begin by engaging participants in an aesthetic experience with the intention of engrossing the senses. We will then present a variety of communications models and collectively explore how they might hinder or support learning, sharing, and development of knowledge. Together with the workshop participants, we will examine the limitations of slideware as a form of communication, drawing on Edward Tufte’s Power Point critique. Peter Norvig’s web-based version of the Gettysburg Address will act as a counter example to initiate our exploration of successful artist-scientist partnerships (e.g. Mel Chin, Jackie Brookner, Critical Art Ensemble, and the DATA project at the Nanolab of McGill University).

Ju-Pong Lin works with community performance and video to re-make “home” from within and without, drawing on theories of urban ecology. Devora Neumark is currently completing her doctoral thesis titled “Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the Making of Home Anew”, which examines the role that beauty plays in the process of becoming home anew in the aftermath of forced displacement. Working with Gregory Bateson’s philosophy of aesthetic wisdom, Neumark writes, “Bateson’s philosophy upholds a view of beauty’s holistic educational benefits. He suggests that the loss of aesthetic wisdom has brought humanity to the brink of unhoming ourselves on earth.” While our specific research interests lie in questions of home and the problematics of restoring a sense of being at home on earth we propose that beauty is not the “what,” but the how and the why of communication.
Participants will take away new skills and deeper appreciation for artistic approaches to knowledge-making. They will gain a heightened capacity to recognize the importance of sensual perception in assessing forms of communication and a revitalized awareness of the importance of incorporating a concern for beauty as a scientific value within their research paradigms, community and educational projects and communication efforts. We believe that an interdisciplinary art-science collaborative practice holds the possibility of reawakening the aesthetic wisdom Bateson celebrates and nurturing the co-creation of knowledge at the nexus between arts and science.

Interdisciplinary artist Devora Neumark is a member of the MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts Program Faculty at Goddard College (Vermont). Neumark is also currently a SSHRC-funded Humanities PhD Candidate at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (Montreal).
Ju Pong Lin makes community performance and performative video and is a faculty in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College (Washington and Vermont). Lin has just begun the PhD in Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England.

Web Links:
Homing in on Aesthetic Wisdom
Whole Terrain: Reflective Environmental Practice: Communicating Science

Devora Neumark is a PhD candidate at matralab.

Artist Linda Bouchard, will be in residence at matralab from August 8-25, 2012.

Murderous Little World

Organized around sept poems excerpted from Men in the Off Hours, by Anne Carson, Murderous Little World showcases the Canadian Trio Bellows and Brass with Guy Few, Eric Vaillancourt and Joseph Petric in an evening length bravura performance that has been described as “ …a mesmerizing multi-media combination of music, video and theatre.” by the Record (NUMUS Feb 2011). The artistic team comprises composer Linda Bouchard, Keith Turnbull director and Yan Breuleux, video artist.

Murderous Little World takes as its inspiration the terse yet epic poetic work of Anne Carson. The poems conjure up a textured universe of “little worlds” that span continents, and ages of human existence. Carson’s phrases seem to be made up of fragments or artifacts and point to individuals’ searching for truth against waves of corruption and cruelty. Bouchard’s musical compositions bring to mind the title of Carson’s book, from which the poems are taken and the collegiality, competitiveness and brutality that this title implies.

Web Links:
LindaBouchard.com

Linda Bouchard is an artist in residence at matralab.

Over the four days of the Comprovisations Workshop, Unai Miquelajauregui ran a live video stream of each event.

Streams of each event are archived at the following link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/matralab/videos

On May 28, matralab director Sandeep Bhagwati spoke on a panel “Vanishing Boundaries and New Beginnings” at the new cultural centre PHI Montréal in the context of the mutek festival’s mutek lab “Tools for an Unknown Future.” His contribution focused on the recent changes in the relationship between music creators, listeners and music technology – how can we re-think composition, music making and listening, when everyone can make the soundtrack for their lives automatically, with a simple user interface app ? How does this change the idea of a music festival and of music as an art form ? He also commented on the current turmoil in many societies around the world, observing that, for the very first time in human history, the information and orientation that humans seek is produced in, by and through the present moment, almost in real time – and that, as a consequence, most of the filters, stabilizers and orientation models of previous societies (traditions, moral values, institutions, media, communities) have dissolved or are dissolving under this onslaught – and that we as a species have not yet found a really constructive way to sift through the incoming data streams that inform our lives. Our societies currently are like ships without any stabilizing keel centreboard, swayed and sometimes even capsized by any short-term cross-current – and the only reaction many governments (or activist groups) seem to find to this situation, namely repression, hype and violence, is ineffective. For new beginnings, Bhagwati asserts, we need new models for analyzing the present with and through the past.

Sandeep Bhagwati is the director of matralab.

Native Alien will see its first public presentations this coming weeks. (see videos of previous musicians working on this project, such as Amelia Cuni, Rohan de Saram, Wu Wei, Dhruba Ghosh, Mike Svoboda and Vinny Golia on the Native Alien Webpage)

On May 18, a matralab team (Sandeep Bhagwati, Navid Navab and Julian Stein) will present a version of Native Alien for comprovising bass clarinet (Lori Freedman), 8 computer-improvisers and interactive scores at the IMPROTECH conference in New York. Sandeep will give a demo and talk about the project at around 3:30pm, and then they will do a performance at 8pm. Both will take place in Columbia University’s Prentis Hall. More about this concert (and the entire highly exciting conference) here.

Only a few days later, on May 24, they will present another version of Native Alien, this time for Disklavier Grand Piano, immersive improvising environment and interactive scores, comprovised by David Rosenboom. The concert will happen in Montréal, as part of the opening concert of “Comprovisations – Improvisation Technologies for the Performing Arts” (May 24-27, 2012) at Concordia University Montréal. (for details see website here).

Sandeep Bhagwati is the director of matralab.

Navid Navab and Julian Stein are research associates at matralab.

On May 3, 2012 Sandeep Bhagwati gave the keynote speech at the 38th annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Music Therapy (CAMT). His speech was titled “Musique en Forme de Pilule: Composition, comprovisation et musicothérapie”.

From May 3-5, researchers in the field of Music Therapy presented on themes revolving around the Avant-Garde. For more information visit: http://www.musictherapy.ca/conference.htm.

Sandeep Bhagwati is the matralab coordinator.

Adam Basanta will be premiering a new electroacoustic work on April 5th.

“three myths of liberalism” is a large-scale (17:30 minutes, 12 channel surround sound) electroacoustic composition, in which three interrelated aspects of classical liberal ideology are sonically and metaphorically interrogated: the relationship between the individual and the collective, the relation of work to monetary gain, and the search for individual self-fulfillment.
The piece was commissioned by Codes d’accès, a Montreal-based new music organization, alongside a diverse program of new works which include electronic sound, live performance, and visual projection.

April 5th, 8pm, at Usine C (1345 Av. Lalonde, Montreal), $15/20.
https://www.facebook.com/events/394385980571904/

Adam Basanta is a masters student at matralab.

Adam Basanta will be presenting “feelings I’m too tired for” for Bass Clarinet and electronics (perf. Krista Martynes) as part of a concert featuring works for solo instruments and live electronics.

this Friday, March 16 at L’envers (185 van Horne, second floor, Montreal).

Program:
Land of Marigold (Ellwood Epps + Josh Zubot)
+
New music for Solo and Electronics by Adam Basanta, Charles Quevillon, Adam Kinner and Eric Powell.

Performed by the composers, and Krista Martynes (Bass Clarinet).

doors at 21h, music at 21h30.
$8 cover.

Adam Basanta is a masters student at matralab.

On Tuesday, March 13 from 12:30-1:30 pm, matralab invites all of you to yet another research presentation around Native Alien, the computer improvisation software we are currently developing. This time around, we have been working for 10 days with sarangi virtuoso and singer Dhruba Ghosh – and the results are quite wonderful already. This presentation will take place in the matrabox.

Web Links:
Native Alien
Dhruba Ghosh
matrabox

Dhruba Ghosh is an artist in residence at matralab.