2017
December 7th @ 6:00pm
Gayle Young: The Frequency of Soundscape
We are pleased to welcome distinguished DisPerSion visiting artist/scholar Gayle Young!
An internationally-recognized Canadian composer, performer, author and instrument-builder, Young will introduce instruments she has designed, built, and found, playing them in combination with tuned audio recordings.
Part talk and part performance, guests will also be invited into her sound world by having a chance to play the instruments!
November 30th @ 6:00pm
11/30: Malcolm Goldstein Workshop
The DisPerSion Lab is pleased to welcome our distinguished visiting artist Malcolm Goldstein, who willl lead us in the workshop “The gesture of improvisation”.
This event will focus on the integration of breath/body gesture/sound, and improvisation as a process of discovery.
November 23rd @ 6:00pm
Colloquium Series: Christine Bellerose
Dance Studies PhD student and DisPerSion affiliate, Bellerose will present “Reconciling the body with technology <- from the somatic grounds.”
November 9th @ 6:00pm
Colloquium Series: Esmé Hogeveen
Visual Cultures PhD student and DisPerSion Research Assitant, Hogeveen will present work on the SSHRC-funded lab project “A systematic review of computational creativity practices across disciplines”
November 2nd @ 6:00pm
Deep Listening Session #3
Deep Listening is practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible. It includes bodywork, listening meditations, movement and sound-making exercises. It cultivates a full-bodied and heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration and play. Sessions facilitated by the certified Deep Listening Instructor Doug Van Nort.
All welcome, no experience necessary.
October 28th @ 5:30pm
Real Virtuality
Telematic performance connecting the DisPerSion Lab’s Electro-Acoustic Orchestra with the Stream Ensemble in Potsdam, DE. Part of the Brandenburg New Music Festival. Featuring new works by Thomas Gerwin (DE), John Rausek (DE), Doug Van Nort (CA). Sabine Vogel (DE) and Brian Abott (CA).
October 26th @ 6:00pm
Colloquium Series: Ian Macchiusi
Musicology PhD student and DisPerSion affiliate, Macchiusi will present “instrumentality and visual representation in the digital audio workstation.”
October 19th @ 6:00pm
Deep Listening Session #2
Deep Listening is practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible. It includes bodywork, listening meditations, movement and sound-making exercises. It cultivates a full-bodied and heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration and play. Sessions facilitated by the certified Deep Listening Instructor Doug Van Nort.
All welcome, no experience necessary.
October 12th @ 6:00pm
Colloquium Series: Ian Jarvis
Performance Studies PhD student and DisPerSion researcher, Jarvis will present “human-machine agency in digital music performance.”
October 5th @ 6:00pm
Deep Listening Session #1
Deep Listening is practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible. It includes bodywork, listening meditations, movement and sound-making exercises. It cultivates a full-bodied and heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration and play. Sessions facilitated by the certified Deep Listening Instructor Doug Van Nort.
All welcome, no experience necessary.
September 28th @ 6:00pm
Colloquium Series: Intro by Lab Director Doug Van Nort
A bi-weekly series of talks featuring a mixture of lab-community graduate students and distinguished invited guests.
Topic is DisPerSion, past/present/near-future.
December 1st @ 7:30pm
The DisPerSion Lab, The Music Gallery, Arraymusic and the York U. Music Department Present:
Malcolm Goldstein
Doug Van Nort
Electro-Acoustic Orchestra
Array Space, 155 Walnut Ave, Toronto
June 29th @ 8:00pm UK / 3:00pm Canada
2017 International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO)
Intersubjective Soundings (for MYO armbands, Soundpainting Conducting and Telematic Ensemble)
Doug Van Nort (Soundpainting, MYO-based Transformation) – Deptford Town Hall, Goldsmiths, London, UK
with
Electro-Acoustic Orchestra – DisPerSion Lab, Toronto
EAO For this performance is:
Dave Bandi (guitar), Chris Cerpnjak (cymbals, glockenspiel) , Glen Hall (saxophone), Ian Jarvis (catRT+supercollider) , Ian Macchiusi (Moog mother), Mackenzie Perrault (guitar), Danny Sheahan (keys, samples), Fae Sirois (violin), Lauren Wilson (flute)
June 3rd @ 4:00pm
Doug Van Nort Talk: Tuning Presents/Turing Presence
Part of “Improvisation and Listening: a Series of Events in Memory of Pauline Oliveros”
La Vitrola
4602 Boul St-Laurent
Montréal
June 1st @ 5:00pm
Exhibition launch for Still Listening
87 Commissioned Scores in Honor of Pauline Oliveros
featuring Doug Van Nort’s piece “The Turing Meditation”
Marvin Duchow Music Library
527 sherbrooke st west
Montréal
June 1st @ 3:45pm
Anne Bourne (cello, voice) /Elysha Poirier (water/light projections)/ Doug Van Nort (greis/electronics)
Tanna Schulich Hall
527 Sherbrooke st west
Montréal
May 13th Opening, featuring Listening Workshop by Van Nort
Soundwork @ Fieldwork
Maberley, ON
May 5th @ 7:30pm / May 6th @ 1:30pm
Origin8: An exploration in movement, light and sound
Created for the the National Ballet School of Canada’s quadrennial event, Assemblée Internationale
Movement and muscle tension from 21 dancers drive interactive music and visuals.
Featuring dancers from 21 different countries, coming to Toronto for AI17.
Choreography: Shaun Amyot
Interactive Music Composition: Doug Van Nort
Interactive Visuals: Don Sinclair
May – October 2017
Genetically Sonified Organisms
an Environmental Sonic Installation by Doug Van Nort
Description:
This piece creates an evolving interplay, in sound, between various agents that include humans and non-humans, both computational and biological. The physical GSO artifacts are a set of solar-powered ‘creatures’, designed to interact with one another and the larger sonic field in which they are immersed. The means of communication begins as a call/response from a set of simple tones/noises that introduce this new species into the sonic environment. Each creature will respond to sounds that are similar to their known vocabulary, evolving their call over the course of months based on the difference found between their own lexicon of calls and those that they hear around them. These artifacts, though, are merely vessels: rather than meditating on the technological objects themselves, through this piece I invite you to listen to this new sonic presence as it is woven into the fabric of an existing, dynamic and diverse acoustic ecology. Many thanks to Kieran Maraj of the DisPerSion Lab for designing the solar Raspberry Pi and enclosure prototypes.
April 12th, 7:30-9:00pm
DisPerSion Lab members take their Electroacoustic Music to Buffalo!
Collaborative Electro-Acoustic Music Series: Concert II
The second edition of the Collaborative Electroacoustic Music Concert Series will bring together faculty and student composers from the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design of York University, Toronto (CA) and the program in Digital Music from SUNY Buffalo State.
The concert will feature fixed media works by Evan Courtin, Ian Jarvis, Ian Macchiusi and Doug Van Nort, as well as live music performances by Michael Palumbo, Ethan Hayden and Tomás Henriques.
The Collaborative Electroacoustic Music Concert Series is hosted once a year, during the spring semester, by the program in Digital Music at Buffalo State. The series aims to foster inter-institution artistic partnerships around the subject of composition and performance of contemporary electronic music. Besides a concert, the collaboration includes parallel activities of pedagogical and research nature on electronic music theory and practice, discussed in lectures and/or workshops.
Special thanks to Tomás Henriques for this invitation.
April 6th, 9am-7pm
Multiple opportunities on York’s campus to experience ideas and work from lab members!
The Sensorium Grad Student Symposium
(9am-6pm, Nat Taylor Cinema)
will feature presentations by
Christine Bellerose – “On the Lived Imagined Body” and “Unplugged”
Ian Jarvis – “Creating Fire: An overview of implementing concatenative synthesis and machine learning in digital instrument design”
Ian Macchiusi – “‘Totemic Power’: Arrangement, Analysis and Performance in the Digital Audio Workstation”
Michael Palumbo – “Data Issues: Please see Attachment”
as well as comrades-of-the-lab
Signy Lynch – “The ‘Trumpian Performative’: Social Media Performance, Immediacy, and Authenticity in the 2016 Election”
and
Daniel Smith – “Mapping Meaning: The Collective Cartography of Everyday Life”
This will then converge to the
Digital Media Showcase (103 Accolade West) from 6-7pm
which will feature projects by two lab members:
i. Akeem Glasgow – Circles of life
“Circles of life is an interesting way of layering concepts to create a self-sustaining environment. These concepts revolve around autonomous agents, the game of life and genome generation. The sustained environment is run by Circular agents who search the world collecting and dropping life. This virtual environment shows how systems can cooperate to predict real behaviors and randomness.”
ii. Kieran Maraj, in collaboration with Alexandra Martens, Amir Rostami and Samina Shroff – The Cloud
“The Cloud is a physical representation of various weather systems occurring in the world around it. Through hue, brightness and strobing The Cloud is able to display aspects of the weather including precipitation and temperature, among others. The fluffy lamp is able to automatically update based on its location, or the user can choose to display the weather from other cities around the world, or simply set it to ‘furniture mode’ for a stunning centrepiece.”
March 23, 24, 8:00 and 9:00pm, March 25, 1:30 and 2:30pm Elemental Agency
Doug Van Nort: conception, direction, system composition, void state sound/interaction design
Vanessa Boutin, Holly Buckridge, Shaelynn Lobbezoo, Joshua Murphy, Paige Sayles, Marie-Victoria de Vera: emergent and collective choreography, dance
Yirui Fu: spotlight visual/behaviour design
Akeem Glasgow: kinect tracking and mapping to visuals
Rory Hoy: earth state sound/interaction design
Ian Jarvis: fire state sound/interaction design
Kieran Maraj: water, wind states sound/interaction design
Michael Palumbo: mobile audience interaction,network architecture programming
Mingxin Zhang: spotlight visual/behaviour design
Elemental Agency is a piece concerned with an emergent gestural language that manifests across movement, sound and light. Rather than sound/light articulating movement, or movement driving media, the approach builds outward from gestural metaphors as a point of shared intersection for these phenomena. The work draws upon the metaphorical constructs of Japanese Godai and Indian Vaastu Shastra theories of five elements: earth, water, wind, fire and void/space. Working with conceptual metaphors drawn from these traditions, constraints are provided to the dancers of embodying a given element as a collective – a texture of movement, rather than a singular human entity, that manifests the non-human agency of a given element. Motivations related to world, body, motion, emotion and enaction are given: earth as stubbornness and resistance to change, wind as expansive, elusive and compassionate, fire as energetic and forceful, etc. Using machine learning methods, the sonic interaction designers seek to capture moments of gestural expression and fuse this with sounds that similarly embody a given elemental quality/profile. Negotiation between art forms leads to a collective choreography and sound design that emerges from the embodiment of the nonhuman elements and the mediation of the machine agents. Visual projection functions as both lighting and enhancement of embodied experience in space, rather than screen-oriented media experience. Spotlights both enhance elemental qualities as well as embodying behaviours that align with the constraints of the element metaphors: rigid tracking of movement within earth state, amorphous following within water state, tendency towards consumption in fire state, etc.
Studio A, Accolade East
York University
Toronto, ON
Saturday, February 25th 2017, 7:00-9:00pm
Voorhees Theater, 186 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY
Concert featuring:Thomas Ciufo and Curtis Bahn, Sonic Constructions (hybird acoustic/electronic instruments)
Nick Demopoulos, Archeon Eon (“Smomid” and “Pyramidi” invented electronic instruments)
Adam James Wilson, Skronkbot (fretless electric guitar and automatic improvisation system)
Doug Van Nort, Solo Improvisation with GREIS (surface controllers and GREIS improvisation system)
Jeff Kaiser, ZEITNOT (Bb trumpet, quartertone trumpet, flugelhorn, interactive audio software)Panel discussion to follow performance, with the framing question:
“For centuries notions of musicality have centered on the execution of the musical performer and the performer’s ability to imbue an instrument with ‘spirit’ while demonstrating virtuosity (Kramer). Where is the end of your instrument? Do you see music-making agency within the computational systems you perform with? Does your machine/software/instruments ever surprise you?”
Saturday, February 18th 2017, 8:30-10:30pm
292 Brunswick Ave.
Thursday, February 16th, 2017
8:30-11 pm local time in Berlin
by Doug Van Nort, Thomas Gerwin, Sarah Weaver and Glen HallToronto: DisPerSion Lab, Room 334, Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, York University
Berlin: Exploratorium Berlin, Mehringdamm 55, 10961 Kreuzberg (Sarottihoefe, Entrance C)
Audio Broadcast via naisa radio: http://www.naisa.ca/naisa-radio
Video Broadcast via: http://live.wordpress-311999-2855731.cloudwaysapps.com This event features performances occurring across two continents, and overlapping through a telematic connection. The Toronto performance serves as the culmination of a sister event happening at the Exploratorium Berlin. The concert opens with guest artist Thomas Gerwin, who will conduct from the Exploratorium Berlin with a structured improvisation entitled “EAOIU” written for and featuring the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra (EAO), performing at the DisPerSion Lab in Toronto along with his Berlin ensemble.Following that performance, the collective cross-atlantic ensemble will continue performing newly-commissioned pieces by New York-based guest artist Sarah Weaver and EAO director Doug Van Nort, before finishing with a local performance of a new work by EAO member and active Toronto improviser Glen Hall.
