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Musicworks Issue 106 - Spring 2010 musicworks

Issue 106 spring 2010

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 FEATURE ARTICLES

Charles Stankievech
By Laura Paolini

Article Summary:
The work of Charles Stankievech uses sound, radio and minimal technologies, allowing viewers to find their own entry points into his practice. He is a reluctant optimist who is interested in the history of Canada’s North. His piece, the DEW project uses a geodesic dome to house a recording station that tracks the sounds of frozen Yukon rivers and broadcasts them over community radio and online streaming. The DEW project references The DEW Line, a Defense Early Warning communications system established to keep North America on guard against attacks from the USSR via the Arctic Circle. Pulling in present day environmental concerns and colonial claims for the Arctic, this ambitious project follows the trajectory of his other works such as Horror Vacui and Constellations which use popular music and their narrative resonance to create immersive audio experiences. The physical objects creating Stankievech’s work connect the viewer to the meaning-making process.

Anna Friz
By Chris Kennedy

Article Summary:
Anna Friz has been exploring the relationship between artist and audience for close to twenty years—first through community radio and most recently through sound installations. Her installations are unique in their use of localized radio transmitters and dozens of radio receivers to create sound environments within which she broadcasts her musical compositions. This article discusses her interest in the Brechtian idea of transception, which links the listener to an active role, and also discusses her most recent installation projects—Respire, shown at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, and Domestic Wireless, Dust, shown as part of the Leona Drive Project, a large-scale installation initiative undertaken in Toronto.

loK8Tr
By Matthew Pioro

Article Summary:
“Soon after I connected with the anonymous person(s) behind the LoK8Tr project, they broke all contact with me,” states author Matthew Pioro. LoK8Tr is a presentation within the New Music in New Places series by the Canadian Music Centre that will appear in March 2010 via social networking platforms. The search to find out the reason for the breakup between the artist(s) and the writer, and more information on LoK8Tr led to insights about the dangers and pitfalls of online collaboration. A successful online collaboration depends on one’s capacity for deep listening and on mutual concern for each participant’s sense of security. Hurdles can include technological glitches and miscommunication that results from the limited window provided by the online space. These observations came from speaking with other artists who have worked online: Porter Hall of the Mannlicher Carcano Radio Hour, the two participants of Double Blind (Love) and Michael Trommer of I/O Media. The actions and work of LoK8Tr remain a mystery.

Yannis Kyriakides
By Jason van Eyk

Article Summary:
Since his emergence onto the Netherlands new music-scene in the early 1990s, Dutch-Cypriot composer and Unsounds label-owner Yannis Kyriakides quickly built up an international career that would be the envy of many early-career composers. He has done so by crafting a unique musical voice guided by a clear philosophy of human perception and matched by a focused investigation into musical language and sensory space. Kyriakides’ fresh artistic forms hybridize media, performance practice, and disparate sound sources, to bypass the conventional structures of how music is presented and to offer his listeners new musical experiences. The emergence of digitization and online distribution has undoubtedly affected how he is now approaching the creation and dissemination of his music, and he is treating these developments as both present opportunity and future challenge.

PROFILE

Kristen Roos
By David Dacks

Kristen Roos’ sound art is based on sound waves. Whether working with DIY radio-based projects, massive arrays of low frequencies, or sampled and sequenced rhythmic construction, Roos demonstrates that there is more to sound than just audibility. His ongoing work with his micro radio project introduces a sense of reorientation and reconstruction of objects from their usual state into objects with multiple possible meanings. Roos draws on history, urban and rural sound ecology, and the capabilities of his means of transmission to suggest new or hidden realities in relation to the subjects he investigates.

COMMENTARY

Seize the Bandwidth: We are the New Music Curators
By Peter Hatch
Composer and curator, Peter Hatch traces the evolving contextual revolutions of music—from the concert hall, to radio, to the internet. Using Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” theory of distribution—Anderson argues that products in low demand can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters if the distribution channel is large enough—to argue that new music creators—through social media word-of-mouth—can now reclaim a position of vital cultural importance in Western society.

SONIC GEOGRAPHIES

Micheline Roi walks the Harbour Trail to Signal Hill in St. John’s Newfoundland.

IN THE WORKS:

Debashis Sinha is interviewed by Micheline Roi and discusses the creative conception of his radiophonic work Kailash.

SOUND BITE:

Electroacoustic and film composer, Thierry Gauthier is profiled by Richard Simas.

VISIONS OF SOUND

Composer and sound artist, Tina M. Pearson, profiles Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a global collective making new music within the virtual-reality platform Second Life.

CD CONTENTS

THIERRY GAUTHIER
1 | Cycles Download MP3:    (11.0MB)
ANNA FRIZ
2 | Respire (Excerpt / extrait)
DEBASHIS SINHA
3 | Kailash (Excerpt / extrait) Download MP3:    (12.1MB)
KRISTEN ROOS
4 | Kick Start (Excerpt / extrait)
YANNIS KYRIAKIDES
5 | Music in a Foreign Language
CHARLES STANKIEVECH
6 | Transmission (Mix from live installation / tiré d’une installation) Download MP3:    (8.24MB)
TINA M. PEARSON
7 | PwRHm (Excerpt / extrait)
JEREMY OWEN TURNER
8 | Riesenrad (Excerpt / extrait)
BJORN ERIKSSON
9 | Fragula (Excerpt / extrait)
NORMAN LOWREY
10 | In Whirled (Trance) Formations (Excerpt / extrait)
PAULINE OLIVEROS
11 | Heart of Tones (Excerpt / extrait)
ANDREAS MUELLER
12 | Aleatricity (Excerpt / extrait)

RECORDINGS
Chris Abrahams/Clare Cooper
on Splitrec
Ganesh Anandan/Hans Reichel
on Ambiances Magnétiques
Jorge Lima Barreto
on Clean Feed
Nicolas Bernier/Jacques Poulin-Denis
on Ekumen
on RMO Productions
Fast ‘n’ Bulbous
on Cuneiform
The Marteau Rouge/Evan Parker
on In Situ
Olga Neuwirth/ICI Ensemble
on Neos
on Monochrome Vision and Banned Production
Quatuor Qwat Reum Six
on Amor Fati
Pichelin / Charles / Grydeland
Saint Dirt Elementary School
on Barnyard Records
Toca Loca
on Centrediscs
Birgit Ulher
on Olof Bright
Rainer Wiens
on Ambiances Magnétiques

WORDS

Robert Adlington. Sound Commitments: Avant-Garde Music and the Sixties. (Oxford University Press) www.oup.com
Diane C. Fujino, ed. Wicked Theory, Naked Practice: A Fred Ho Reader. (University of Minnesota Press) www.upress.umn.edu
Louise Gray. The No-Nonsense Guide To World Music. (New Internationalist Publications) www.newint.org
Heidi Grundmann, ed., et al, Re-Inventing Radio; Aspects of Radio as Art. (Revolver) www.revolver-books.de
Seth Kim-Cohen, In the Blink of An Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. (Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd) www.continuumbooks.com
Iannis Xenakis, Music and Architecture. (Pendragon Press) www.pendragonpress.com

Events
Jazz em Agosto in Lisbon, Portugal
Guelph Jazz Festival in Guelph, Canada
Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
X Avant Festival in Toronto, Canada