Sonic Fragments @ Princeton

If you're in and around Princeton this weekend, check this out (h/t to from Audiologo):

Sonic Fragments: Narrative and Mediation in Sound Art
A two-day festival and symposium
March 28-29, 2008
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Free and open to the public

Princeton’s Sonic Fragments Festival to Explore Sound Art

Princeton, New Jersey, March 9, 2008 – For two days in March, Princeton University graduate students will play host to an international group of scholars and practitioners who are gathering to explore the roles of narrative and mediation in art practices that engage sound as a material. The symposium will consist of three panel discussions as well as an exhibition of audio-works for portable music players made expressly for the geography, architecture, and social spaces of the Princeton University campus.

“As technology becomes more portable, artists are able to explore work that bridges the gap between public and private,” says Sonic Fragments co-organizer Seth Cluett, “making the sonic equivalent of the sketch, the landscape painting, and the hastily scribbled note available for the sound artist.”

The exhibition will begin the festival on the afternoon of Friday, March 28th. Thirty
iPods and corresponding maps will be made available for check-out from the Mendel Music Library Circulation desk in the Woolworth Center for Musical Studies. After participants have had time to explore the audio-works, opening comments and a panel comprised of artists and musicians will start the symposium. The first panel will consist of musician and sound artist William Basinski, whose melancholy minimal electronic music has achieved critical acclaim; artist Jon Brumit, whose Neighborhood Public Radio project is featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial; multimedia artist Brenda Hutchinson, who will lead sunrise and sunset bell-ringings throughout the festival; as well as sound artist Michael J. Schumacher, founder of New York’s Diapason Gallery for Sound Art.

After more time Saturday to explore the site-specific audio-works, the second panel will take up the notion of narrative as it relates to sound practices. Kristin Oppenheim’s spare and hypnotic sound installations invoke layers of personal memory, while Stephen Vitiello’s work transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. Mendi + Keith Obadike collaborate on interdisciplinary projects investigating race, history and identity, and Thomas Levin, a curator and cultural theorist, focuses on sound technologies and issues of surveillance in media practices.

The symposium’s third and final panel will address issues of mediation in sound art.
Rubén Gallo will talk about Mexican sound artist Taniel Morales's Pirate Radio. Ed Osborn will present his kinetic and audible sound installations, while Camille Norment will discuss her artistic practice, which extends the fine arts into extra-disciplinary realms such as scientific research, city planning, and interaction design. Tianna Kennedy, program director of Brooklyn’s free103point9 transmission arts network and a participating artist in the festival, will discuss issues related to transmission, participatory practice and social sculpture.

“We hear long before we see,” says Sonic Fragments co-organizer Betsey Biggs, “and
throughout our lives we move through a world of sonic fragments which are mediated by our bodies, memories, environments and technologies. Through these interventions, sounds assemble themselves into hazy narratives which each of us filters in a slightly different way. Sonic Fragments will explore the ways in which contemporary artists use sound, narrative and mediation to create meaning in their work.”

Sonic Fragments is sponsored by the Princeton University Department of Music, The Peter B. Lewis Center for the Performing Arts, The Graduate School, The Sound Lab research group in the Department of Computer Science, The Aesthetics and Media Track in the Department of German, The Program in Media and Modernity, The Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

For more information, visit http://sonicfragments.artdocuments.org or email us at sonicfragments@gmail.com.

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seth cluett
sound - theory - practice
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http://www.onelonelypixel.org

Also:

• Friday, March 28 + Saturday, March 29, 2008 •
Friday: March 28, 11am - 4pm
Saturday: March 29, 9am - 12pm
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Ringing, O' Tongues of Freedom (5:07mins) my sound art piece at the Sonic Fragments: Narrative and Mediation in Sound Art, A Symposium and Festival at Princeton University. My piece is a "hushed contemplation of memory, freedom, loss, and hope during a time when select men and women claimed The Battle of Princeton as insurance towards their eventual freedom. Featuring nighttime field recordings of the 1844 Bell and the Battle Monument, renderings of the Monument inscription, and digitally processed voice." I was fortunate to have vocal contributions from Steven M. Adams (Biological and Life Sciences Librarian and Interim Psychology Librarian), and Joshua B. Guild (Assistant Professor of History and the Center for African American Studies).

This is part of a sound art tour of various locations on the Princeton Campus and surrounding areas. The works and a map of the tour locations will be available on the symposium website, as well as on iPods made available at the Mendel Music Library during the Symposium. The Symposium itself features the participation of some truly dynamic and compelling sound artists and sound/narrative/new media thinkers including: Stephen Vitiello, Camille Norment, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Tianna Kennedy, and Princeton's own Ruben Gallo (Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures) and Thomas Y. Levin (Associate Professor of German)
For more information check the Sonic Fragments website: http://sonicfragments.artdocuments.org/

AUDIOLOGO's piece!
• Thursday, May 1, 2008 •
Taplin Auditorium
Fine Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
8:00pm

You Are Most Beautiful When... my live performance piece for the Composition Program's General Exams Concert. Despite the somewhat dry title, this concert promises to be a quite exciting affair with new works from my compatriot Graduate Fellows in Composition, Mark Dancigers, Anne Hege, and Andrea Mazzariello (as well as myself). Each of us has written work in response to a particular composer's work. My piece is a response to Der Doppelgänger by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) as performed by legendary contralto Marian Anderson and her long-time accompanist, pianist Franz Rupp. The theme of my response is gratitude, creative collaboration, and friendship, and features the participation of MuthaWit's Boston Fielder (I plan to make use of his reported 5 octave range!) along with other special special guests, plus dance, and video. This is the second requirement of my 4-part General Exam. I hope to see you there!

For Directions to Princeton and information about parking (no campus parking permits required after 5pm, and meters are free after 7pm) and trains (NJTransit) check this link: http://www.princeton.edu/facilities/conference/visiting_the_campus/