Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music : sounding/the/net :: November 4, 2010 through November 7, 2010 :: Sonic Arts Research Centre, School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen’s University Belfast :: Admission is free to all events ::

This edition of Sonorities celebrates artistic collaboration by showcasing new work developed in the context of the Comedia Culture 2007 European project. This year’s festival extends from Belfast to Graz in Austria and Hamburg in Germany through a vibrant and eclectic collective of musicians, coming together to perform in, on and across the network.

As the use of computer networks increasingly influences our daily lives and the way we approach artwork, social interaction and creativity, we feature three days of events which present experimental and groundbreaking work in the field of network performance as well as revisiting 20th Century classics performed across Europe. Along with highlights such as grandfathers of networked music The Hub, pianist and composer Chris Brown, invited artists include Carin Levine (flute) and Evan Parker (saxophone) who will be performing new network-centric pieces by artists associated with the Sonic Arts Research Centre and the Comedia project including Pedro Rebelo, Franziska Schroeder, Andrea Szigetvári, Felipe Hickmann, Rui Chaves, Justin Yang, Patricia Alessandrini, Shirin Abu Shaqra, Alain Renaud, Imogene Newland, Pierre Proske, Robert King, Winfried Ritsch and The European Bridges Ensemble amongst others. The festival culminates in a concert by an improvised music collective directed by Evan Parker.

The Two Thousand + Ten symposium has been running alongside the festival since 2006, providing a platform for creating relationships between a public artistic program and an interdisciplinary critical platform speakers from fields such as new media, choreography, music technology, musicology, sociology and philosophy. This year’s symposium focuses on improvisation and includes keynote addresses by Georgina Born and David Borgo.

Join us for this unique event of network music, dance, interactive video and installation staged between Belfast’s Sonic Arts Research Centre, Graz’s Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik and Hamburg’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

Festival Programme (See http://www.sonorities.org.uk for full details)

Thursday, 4th November – 13:10 Chris Brown

Sonic Arts Research Centre

Free Improvisation, with interactive signal processing

Invention #7 “Branches” (2000-01)

for piano with MIDI output and interactive computer

Thursday, 4th November – 17:30 Real Time Drill – Peter Ablinger

Installation/Performance

Sonic Arts Research Centre

Queen’s University Belfast

Thursday, 4th November – 19:30 NetComedia

Sonic Arts Research Centre

European Bridges Ensemble:

Adam Siska; 185

John Cage/Georg Hajdu: Radio Music

Fredrik Olofsson: the choir, the chaos

Johannes Kretz: Aria

Johannes Kretz: Encore

Adagio pour l’absence – Patricia Alessandrini

Packet Loss: A solo-duet for Keyboard, Network, and Disklavier – Rob King (Visuals), Pierre Proske (Piano, Digital Audio)

Performed by Franziska Schroeder and Steve Davis (Belfast), Clemens Frühstück, Elisabeth Harnik and Summerer Reinhard (Graz), and Carola Schaal, Stefen Weinzierl and Turo Grolimund and the European Bridges Ensemble (Hamburg).

Friday, 5th November 13:00 wewalktogether (Live Broadcast) – Rui Chaves

Platform Gallery, Belfast

Reception at 13:00, Performance at 13:30

Friday, 5th November – 5.30pm woman=music=desire – SOMA

Snack Bar of the Student’s Union

Friday, 5th November – 19:30 Net 20th Century

Sonic Arts Research Centre

Queen’s University Belfast

A Pierre, dell’azzurro silenzio inquietum – Luigi Nono

Five – John Cage

Music for Pure Waves Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums – Alvin Lucier

December 1952 – Earl Brown

Friday, 5th November 21:30 The Hub

Brian Friel Theatre, Queen’s University Belfast

Saturday, 6th November Two Thousand + TEN Symposium

Sonic Arts Research Centre

9.15 – 9.25 Welcome: Franziska Schroeder / Pedro Rebelo (SARC/CoMeDia)

9.25 – 9.45 Paula Chateauneuf: The Establishment of an Italian 17th-Century Style Improvising Ensemble

9.45 – 10.05 Owen Green: Leading Separate Lives: On the Musical Distinctions Between People, Other People and Things

10.05 -10.25 Phillip Henderson: Identifying a timeframe for temporally self-contradictory music

10.25 – 10.45 Felipe Hickmann: Game structures as grounds for improvisation in networked performance

10.45 – 11.05 Dara O’Brien: Improvisation, Metaphysical Experience and Spirituality in North Indian Classical Music

11.15 – 11.45 Coffee Break

11.45 – 12.45 KEYNOTE Prof. David Borgo, University of California San Diego

1.00 – 2.00

Lunch Break 2.00 – 2.20 Han-earl Park: Subject Matter: Improvising Cyborgs

2.20 – 2.40 Adam Parkinson: Improvisation, Multiplicity and the Blind Probe Head

2.40 – 3.00 Richard Scott: Interactivity versus infinite memory: reflections emerging from the development of gestural technologies for free

improvisation

3.00 – 3.20 Justin Yang: Modern free improvisation, the pursuit of an enigma

3.20 – 3.40 Break

3.40 – 4.00 Eduardo Abrantes: Insignificant Voices – the phenomenology of vocal improvisation and meaninglessness

4.00 – 4.20 Kent De Spain: Improvisation and Intimate Technologies

4.20 – 4.40 Marcel Cobussen: Improvisation and/as a Complex System

4.40 – 5.00 Thomas Ciufo: Computer-Mediated Improvisation and Interactive Instrument Design

5.00 – 5.15 Coffee Break

5.15 – 6.15 KEYNOTE Professor Georgina Born, Cambridge University

Saturday, 6th November 7:00pm Laser Avatars

Broadcast from Vienna and Hamburg

Sonic Arts Research Centre

Laser Turing Test for Dancers – Johannes Kretz
Send Me A Sound – Andrea Szigetvári

Saturday, 6th November 8:00 pm NetPLAY

Sonic Arts Research Centre

Renditions – Alain Renaud / Curtis McKinney

A man, A Mark, Amen – Felipe Hickmann / Caetano Galindo
Netgraph – Pedro Rebelo

Webwork I – Justin Yang

Sunday, 7th November 6:00pm Call them Improvisors! – Evan Parker

Sonic Arts Research Centre