- Date & Time: Saturday, October 8, 8:00 PM
- Location: Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond, Pasadena (directions below)
- Admission: $10.00 or $5.00 for Seniors & Students
- Contact: Richard Amromin at (626)398-9278 or email at info@newtownarts.org
Featured Artists & Works
Copper Islands by Kristine Burns (U.S.A.)
Etudes Schaefferiennes by Richard Carbonell I Sauri (Spain) & Blas Payri (France)
Un Regard Sur la Ville by Elsa Justel (France)
Faktura and Cross Contours by Dennis Miller (U.S.A.)
When Timbre Comes Apart by Joran Rudi (Norway)
Roadwork by Diana Simpson (Scotland) and Dan Marti (Australia)
Klang-Film by Mario Verandi (Germany)
Hard Boiled Wonderland by Daniel Zajicek & Hsiao-Lan Wang (U.S.A.)
Sounding Images 2005, an evening of short experimental media works, is an adventuresome exploration of cutting-edge art seamlessly meshing experimental, digitally generated and manipulated imagery and electro-acoustic sound. As the digital age opens new windows between art disciplines, an explosion in new synthesized forms are forecasting a future language with a limitless horizon. Sounding Images 2005 will be a far-reaching, international compendium from many of the most adventuresome of today’s artists.
When SCREAM (Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music) and NewTown issued a call seeking works integrating digital music and imagery, little did they expect such a stunning international response. The large number new work and their overall quality affirmed the maturation of the recent convergence in art disciplines and technologies. The variety of aesthetics and social perspectives was a delightful surprise reflected in the nine works ultimately selected for Sounding Images 2005.
See following pages for artists’ biographies and program notes.
SCREAM, the Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music, was created by Barry Schrader in 1986. The purpose of SCREAM is to present annual concerts of new electro-acoustic music. SCREAM is funded by an ongoing grant from California Institute of the Arts, which makes these concerts possible.
To Get To The Armory
Exit the 210 Freeway at Fair Oaks. Go South (away from mountains) on Fair Oaks to Walnut. Turn left. There will be a parking structure on the right side, across from the park There is also limited street parking.
About The Artists And Their Work
Copper Islands by Kristine Burns
Copper Islands (2002) is the third in a series of “metal” pieces that explore a symbiotic relationship between metallic sounds (both synthesized and sampled) and largely monochromatic synthesized video. Audio materials were created in SuperCollider and Sound Hack, while the video was generated in Final Cut Pro. Duration: 9’00″
Composer and author Kristine H. Burns is Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Florida International University School of Music. Her book Women and Music in the US Since 1900: an encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2002) was “Enthusiastically recommended for large public libraries and music libraries.” because “no other source so comprehensively covers American women and music simultaneously.” (Library Journal). She is a member of CMS, ICMA, IAWM, and SEAMUS, for which she serves as Editor of Journal SEAMUS.
5 Etudes Schaefferiennes by Blas Payri, Audio and Richard Carbonell i Saurí, Video
Etude aux profils mélodiques
Etude aux contrastes de masse
Etude aux élans
Etude aux sons nodaux
Etude aux profils de masse
These studies have a close articulation of audio and video, using continuous evolutions or abrupt breaks of the audiovisual material. The audio has been created first and the video has adopted the structure of the audio part.
The audio explores diverse possibilities of the sound material and its articulation in a piece. Each study focuses on a concept of Pierre Schaeffer’s Treaty of the Sound Objects; it explores the possibilities of the given concept creating a short “fugitive” development.
Born in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), Richard Carbonell I Sauri studied and obtained a Degree in Fine Arts (Image major) at the Universidad de Barcelona, and a Degree in Music Studies at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Barcelona, and obtained a Teaching Certificated in Flute, Musical Theory & Solfege, and Piano. He created in 1993 a Film Independent company directing and producing super 8 short films. One of them was presented in 1998 at the Sitges International Film Festival and was awarded with several prizes. He codirected the film 200km., a documentary presented in San Sebastian 2003 International Film Festival (and other Festivals around the world), showed in commercial cinemas.
He studies Cinematography in Barcelona and Cinema direction in ECAM (Madrid), and with the most important Catalan cinema director Bigas Luna. All his work has been showed in the most important International Festivals in Spain, France, Bremen and Roma.
French-Spanish composer Blas Payri has studied electro-acoustic composition in Lyon, Montréal and Paris, and music applied to the image in Madrid. He is interested in the poetry of sound, and often includes texts and an audiovisual application of music. His electro-acoustic works have been played in several international festivals and radio broadcasts and have been awarded mentions at the Bourges (France, 2002) and the Pierre Schaeffer (Italy, 2002) competitions.
Un regard sur la Ville (A look on the city) (2004) Music and video by Elsa Justel
The city becomes a fantastic world when the images reflected on its surfaces change its reality. This work was realized with photographs of windows of the city of Paris and neighbors. The music is based on recorded sounds of crystals and other materials of the city ambiance.
Elsa Justel was born in Argentine and has lived in France since 1988. She studied composition and electroacoustics in Buenos Aires and received her Doctorate in Aesthetics, Sciences and Technologies of Arts at the University of Paris. She teaches Avant-garde music at the Conservatory of Mar del Plata, since 1980. Prizes and awards include: Prix Ton Bruynèl, Netherlands (2005), 5th. Competition of radio art, France-Germany (2003), Video Evento d’Arte, Italy (2001) Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria (1992), Stipendienpreis of Darmstadt, Germany (1990), International electroacoustic competition of Bourges, France (1989 and 2001).
Faktura and Cross Contours by Dennis Miller (U.S.A.)
Cross Contours (2005) explores a variety of nearly identifiable icons and images and develops numerous associations among them. Though never crossing the line into the purely representational, it attempts to stimulate references and mappings in the viewer. The work is (loosely) in three sections, with each retaining the same color space despite the appearance of new or transformed objects and forms. The music adds an affective layer and helps control the work‚s dramatic development. All images in Cross Contours were created using the Cinema 4D animation software, while the musical elements were created with the Kyma System from Symbolic Sound and the Tassman physical modeling synthesizer.
faktura (2003) is a work that explores a series of virtual environments, focusing on the infinite variety of forms and textures one might find. Morphing, evolving abstract objects appear against a backdrop of evocative music that sets the tone and affect of each scene. The piece develops over a 9-minute time frame, yet presents a timeless, shifting and (perhaps?) disorienting experience to the viewer. The Russian term “faktura” has a variety of meanings, including one published in the 1923 Constructivist manifesto: manner of construction. Other definitions include surface quality and texture.
Dennis Miller is on the Music faculty of Northeastern University in Boston. His mixed media works have been presented at numerous venues throughout the world, most recently the DeCordova Museum, the New York Digital Salon Traveling Exhibit, and the 2004 New England Film and Video Festival. His work was also presented at the gala opening of the new Disney Hall in Los Angeles (2003) and at SIGGRAPH 2001 in the Emerging Technologies gallery. His 3D still images have been published in Sonic Graphics: Seeing Sound (Rizzoli Books) and Art in the Digital Age (Thames and Hudson). Miller‚s music and artworks are available at www.dennismiller.neu.edu.
Road Work (2005), Dani Marti (video artist) and Diana Simpson (composer).
Road Work presents what is conventionally dismissed as mundane and ordinary and revisits it in order to gather a new perspective. It invites the audience to look more closely, at the people, the actions, the materials, in an abstract light. Behind an unlikely exterior, hidden gestures, intricacies of colour and texture are uncovered in such a way that, paradoxically, the material becomes a composed dance, a ballet of sorts. The audience experiences fleeting encounters and glimpsed lives, and the inaccessibility of this is very much the point – Everyday events inherently embody an element of fiction or theatre.
Dani Marti was born in Barcelona in 1963. He is currently undertaking a MFA at the Glasgow School of Art. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and has exhibited in Barcelona and Singapore. His show “Variations in a serious black dress” is currently being toured by the major Regional Art Galleries in Australia and he has been invited to participate in the next Beijing Biennale 2005. See www.danimarti.com for more information.
Diana Simpson (b. Glasgow, 1982) is currently studying a Masters program in Electroacoustic Composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where she is taught by Alistair MacDonald. Her works have been performed throughout Scotland, and she has collaborated with sculpture, video, animation and performance artists. In 2004 she was a prizewinner in the Insulae Electronicae International Competition of Electroacoustic Music.
Klang-Film (2004), Mario Verandi
The film “Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik” (Workers Leaving the Factory) by Harun Farocki set the starting framework for the creation of this audio-visual piece. The original soundtrack contains a voiceover reflecting on the images shown. Most of the spoken texts were edited out and only a few left. Therefore the film shown becomes essentially a silent movie. This allows the incorporation of music as a new and influential shaping element that opens up a new dimension for the perception of the visual sequences. This work explores the sensory counterpoint of sounds and images and their interaction, ambiguity and friction.
Mario Verandi (b. 1960 Buenos Aires) studied music in Argentina and Barcelona and received his Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham (UK). He was composer-in-residence at La Muse en Circuit (Paris), Césaré studio de création musicale (Reims), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Cuenca Electroacoustic Music Studios (Spain) and a guest of the 2000 artists-in-Berlin program of the DAAD. Verandi’s awards include the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), Musica Nova Competition (Prague), CIEJ Electronic Music Awards (Barcelona), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz), Stockholm Electronic Arts Awards (Sweden), SGAE Prize (Spain) and ZKM Commission Prize (Germany). Verandi´s music is available from the Electronic Music Foundation record label.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Hsiao-Lan Wang (composition) and Daniel Zajicek (video)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland began with a scenario for how the images should develop. Yet after the initial images were rendered, the composition of music began, guiding the visual component to the next stage. This process continued back and forth till completion, making it a truly collaborative effort. The title Hard-Boiled Wonderland is inspired by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Murakami’s novel describes two worlds that are very different, yet with lingering familiarity. Employing the abstract and the recognizable, side-by-side, Hard-Boiled Wonderland is an illusion that exceeds the expectations of the norm.
Hsiao-Lan Wang’s music investigates the fundamental elements of musical communication through new timbral, formal and technological relationships. Her honors include the Pauline Oliveros Prize and Libby Larsen Prize, ASCAP award, Pierre Schaeffer Computer Music Competition (Italy), the Craig and Janet Swan Composer Prize for Orchestra, the Composers Competition by Chamber Orchestra of Denton, and American Composers Forum. Her works have been heard at music festivals and on radio broadcast in Taiwan, the United States, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Czech Republic. She is currently a DMA candidate and teaching fellow in composition at the University of North Texas. www.hsiaolanwang.com
Daniel Zajicek is a composer, video artist, and performer. As a creator, Daniel is most interested in beauty and the bizarre, with his musical output consisting of chamber, electronic, video, collaborative, and theater works. Performances include the SEAMUS national conference, Most Significant Bytes, Imagine II, and MusicAcoustic 2005: Mix. He has been the recipient of the Richard and Candice Faulk Composition Scholarship, and the David M. Schimmel Memorial Scholarship, and as a pianist, Daniel was given a scholarship from the National Federation of Music Clubs. Daniel is currently attending the University of North Texas for Graduate studies in Music Composition.
Coming Soon