***The final program is available here***
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Jeff Todd Titon, Professor of Music Emeritus, Brown University, and Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric and Science, East Tennessee State University
(Friday, October 30th, 6:20 pm, Royal Alberta Museum)
The Sound of Climate Change
Climate change results in habitat changes for built environments as well as “natural” ones. Inevitably the sound mix exhibited in these environments will change in response to global warming. In listening to the sounds of climate change we are eavesdropping on nature’s alarm calls.
Jeff Todd Titon is Professor of Music, emeritus, at Brown University. His fieldwork over a 25-year period with Old Regular Baptists in Kentucky strengthened their efforts to conserve their musical traditions, and his field recordings were selected for the U.S. National Recording Registry. His most recent work is in sound ecology; it may be tracked at http://sustainablemusic.blogspot.com
Stephan Moore, Lecturer, Department of Radio Television and Film, Northwestern University
(Friday, October 30th, 7:10 pm, Royal Alberta Museum)
Into the Garden: Privileging Site in the Exhibition of Sound Art
Through the lens of recent work, and the 2014 sound art exhibition In the Garden of Sonic Delights, I will argue that sound art demands a curatorial approach that prioritizes the relationship between artist and site, embracing both the ephemerality of the sonic medium and its inherent materiality.
Stephan Moore is a sound artist, improvising musician, composer, and curator. He is the president of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology, and is a member of the electronic duo Evidence, The Nerve Tank, a canary torsi, Composers Inside Electronics, and the Wingspace Theatrical Collective. He toured for several years as a musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and has worked with artists as diverse as Pauline Oliveros, Anthony McCall, and Animal Collective. He is a lecturer in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University.
What’s Technology Got to Do with It?
New York-based media curator, writer, and professor Barbara London explores the challenges visual art institutions face in exhibiting and collecting “art in our time.” Now that interdisciplinary practice is normal and sound a standard medium, contemporary museums are compelled to retool conceptually and logistically. London draws examples from decades of curatorial experience at MoMA to discuss how technology’s transition from analog to digital impacted work at the intersection of performance and installation. She explores how artists developed strategies to articulate sonic and empowerment ideals. She considers the sonic work of such media artists as Steina, Joan Jonas, Laurie Anderson, Pipilotti Rist, and Jana Winderen to ponder directions and change.
Barbara London is a New York-based curator, consultant and writer who founded the video exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013. During her tenure at MoMA, she oversaw the acquisition of more than 500 media art works, including installations, single-channel videotapes, and music videos. Among her exhibitions are Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013). Currently she teaches at Yale in the School of Art.
Roundtable 1 – What is Exhibiting Sound? (and why do it?)
Michael Frishkopf, Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Michael Frishkopf is Professor of Music and Director of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta. His research foci include music and sounds of Islam, the Arab world, and West Africa; (virtual [world) music]; digital repositories; music and health; and music for global human development.
Barbara London, Former Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Barbara London is a New York-based curator, consultant and writer who founded the video exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013. During her tenure at MoMA, she oversaw the acquisition of more than 500 media art works, including installations, single-channel videotapes, and music videos. Among her exhibitions are Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013). Currently she teaches at Yale in the School of Art.
Marcia Ostashewski, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Canada Research Chair, University of Cape Breton
Marcia Ostashewski’s research focuses on the creative and cultural expression of communities, and has included work with Eastern and Central Europeans, Indigenous groups, at-risk youth, and newcomers to Canada. Her teaching work at Cape Breton University includes courses on the music and dance of Indigenous and immigrant communities, gender and performance, and culture and tourism, and she has also worked extensively in the not-for-profit and heritage sectors.
Scott Smallwood, Associate Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Scott Smallwood is a sound artist, composer, and musician who creates works inspired by discovered textures and forms, through a practice of listening, field recording, and sonic improvisation. He designs experimental electronic instruments and software, as well as sound installations and site-specific performance scenarios. He performs as one-half of the laptop/electronic duo Evidence (with Stephan Moore), and currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where he teaches composition, improvisation, and electroacoustic music at the University of Alberta.
Jeff Todd Titon, Professor Emeritus, Brown University
Jeff Todd Titon is Professor of Music, emeritus, at Brown University. His fieldwork over a 25-year period with Old Regular Baptists in Kentucky strengthened their efforts to conserve their musical traditions, and his field recordings were selected for the U.S. National Recording Registry. His most recent work is in sound ecology; it may be tracked at http://sustainablemusic.blogspot.com
Benjamin Tucker, Associate Professor, Linguistics, University of Alberta
Dr. Benjamin V. Tucker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics specializing in phonetics. His main area of research focuses on the production and perception of spontaneous speech (for example “Wazat?” for “What is that?”). He also works on the documentation of endangered and underdocumented languages.
Roundtable 2 – Environments for Exhibiting Sound
Amirali Alibhai, Head of Performing Arts, Aga Khan Museum
Amirali Alibhai is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator for over 25 years. Highlights of his career include work with the Richmond Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. Amir served on the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts from 2005-2008.
Corjun Buma, Associate Consultant/Director, Acoustical Consultants, Inc.
Mr. Buma is a private consultant specializing in room acoustics, building acoustics and noise control. Current activities mostly involve optimizing building designs for appropriate acoustical conditions, including reverberation control, HVAC noise control and room-to-room sound isolation.
Dave Clark, Independent Sound Artist
Educated at the Universities of London and Leeds, Dave has been in Edmonton since 1991. He has produced sound designs for over 500 projects in theatre, film, dance and multi-media, and received several awards. He has taught audio production at the University of Alberta since 2007, and his sound and storytelling Audio Lab has involved hundreds of young people at festivals since 2012.
Michael Frishkopf, Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Michael Frishkopf is Professor of Music and Director of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta. His research foci include music and sounds of Islam, the Arab world, and West Africa; (virtual [world) music]; digital repositories; music and health; and music for global human development.
Judith Klassen, Curator, Cultural Expression, Canadian Museum of History
Judith Klassen is a violist and ethnomusicologist. Her doctoral research explored the musical practices of Mennonites in northern Mexico, and led to her collaboration with the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach, Manitoba, on the exhibition Singing in Time: Music and Mennonites (2010).
Kristy Trinier, Curator, Art Gallery of Alberta
In addition to her current position as Curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Kristy’s previous roles include Public Art Director at the Edmonton Arts Council, and she is currently pursuing PhD studies in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought at European Graduate School based in Switzerland.
Roundtable 3 – Technologies for Exhibiting Sound
Sonya Betz, Acting Digital Repository Services Librarian, University of Alberta
As Acting Digital Repository Services Librarian, Sonya Betz administers ERA, the University of Alberta’s institutional repository, as well as OJS, the U of A Libraries’ open access journal publishing platform. She works with students and faculty seeking ways to make their research more open and accessible in digital formats.
Abram Hindle
Abram Hindle researches software engineering at the University of Alberta. He also publishes networking and systems papers about using computer music in the cloud.
Gary James Joynes
Gary James Joynes is a Canadian sound and visual artist who performs Live Cinema Audio-Visual works at international music events around the world as Clinker. He blends the beauty and physicality of sounds auditory and visual elements live in performance and in rigorous and emotional photo and video installation works.
Geoffrey Rockwell
Dr. Geoffrey Martin Rockwell has published and presented papers in the area of big data, textual visualization and analysis, computing in the humanities, instructional technology, computer games and multimedia. He is collaborating with Stéfan Sinclair on Voyant Tools, a suite of text analysis tools, and leads the TAPoR project documenting text tools for humanists.
Matt Skopyk
Matthew Skopyk is a sound designer and composer who has worked with many of Edmonton’s most prominent theatre companies, including Theatre Network, Catalyst Theatre, and Free Will Players. He excels at software/hardware manipulation, allowing for new realms of possibility in the theatre through manipulation of data.
Scott Smallwood, Associate Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Scott Smallwood is a sound artist, composer, and musician who creates works inspired by discovered textures and forms, through a practice of listening, field recording, and sonic improvisation. He designs experimental electronic instruments and software, as well as sound installations and site-specific performance scenarios. He performs as one-half of the laptop/electronic duo Evidence (with Stephan Moore), and currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where he teaches composition, improvisation, and electroacoustic music at the University of Alberta.
Roundtable 4 – Curating Sound Exhibits
David Candler, Founder and Director, dc3 Art Projects
Founder of dc3 Art Projects, David Candler, has spent 20 years looking and reading, travelling for and absorbing the world of contemporary visual art. As a longtime collector, he is a tireless advocate for the importance of art within a society and the role it plays in making the world richer and more complete.
Braden Cannon
Braden Cannon is a Private Records Archivist at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA), where his responsibilities include audiovisual and recorded sound records in a wide variety of media. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from Carleton University and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University.
Mary Ingraham, Associate Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Mary Ingraham is Professor of Musicology and Director of folkwaysAlive!, the University of Alberta in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Her research engages methodological and theoretical perspectives that examine the socio-political context for music creation in Canada, particularly those reflecting intercultural encounters between European, indigenous, and immigrant cultures.
Barbara London, Former Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Barbara London is a New York-based curator, consultant and writer who founded the video exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013. During her tenure at MoMA, she oversaw the acquisition of more than 500 media art works, including installations, single-channel videotapes, and music videos. Among her exhibitions are Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013). Currently she teaches at Yale in the School of Art.
Sean Luyk
Sean Luyk is the Music Librarian in the Rutherford Humanities and Social Sciences Library at the University of Alberta, and subject librarian for anthropology. Sean has presented and published on topics such as local music collecting, the scholarly activity of music librarians, and web archiving.
Stephan Moore
Stephan Moore is a composer, improviser, audio artist, sound designer, teacher, and curator whose creative work currently manifests as electronic studio compositions, solo and group improvisations, sound installation works, scores for collaborative performance pieces, and sound designs for unusual circumstances. Having completed his Ph.D. in Electronic Music and Multimedia the MEME program at Brown University, he is now a lecturer at Northwestern University.
Linda Tzang
Linda Tzang is the Curator of the Cultural Communities Program at the Royal Alberta Museum. Linda earned her BA from the University of British Columbia, an MA in History from McMaster University in Ontario, and an MA in Museum Studies from Leicester University in the UK and conducted post-graduate research on multicultural policy at City University, London.
Roundtable 5 – Exhibiting Sound in a Visual World
Amir Amirali, Head of Performing Arts, Aga Khan Museum
Amirali Alibhai is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator for over 25 years. Highlights of his career include work with the Richmond Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. Amir served on the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts from 2005-2008.
Marla Hlady, Associate Professor of Studio in the Department Arts, Culture and Media and part of the graduate faculty in Visual Studies, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto
Marla Hlady draws, makes sculpture, works with sites and sounds and sometimes makes video. She also, at times, collaborates. She’s shown widely in solo and group shows. Hlady completed her BFA at the University of Victoria, and her MFA at York University. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media.
Todd Janes
A performance artist and long-time champion of Edmonton’s local arts scence, Todd served as president of the Alberta Asssociation of Artist-Run Centres and advocacy chair for the Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton before taking on his current role as director, programmer, administrator at Latitude 53.
Judith Klassen, Curator, Cultural Expression, Canadian Museum of History
Judith Klassen is a violist and ethnomusicologist. Her doctoral research explored the musical practices of Mennonites in northern Mexico, and led to her collaboration with the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach, Manitoba, on the exhibition Singing in Time: Music and Mennonites (2010).
Barbara London, Former Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Barbara London is a New York-based curator, consultant and writer who founded the video exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013. During her tenure at MoMA, she oversaw the acquisition of more than 500 media art works, including installations, single-channel videotapes, and music videos. Among her exhibitions are Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013). Currently she teaches at Yale in the School of Art.
Roundtable 6 – Exhibiting Sound as a Creative Act
Nicolás Arnáez, MMus Composition, University of Alberta
Originally from Mendoza Argentina, Nicolás Arnáez is a Doctor of Music in Composition student at the University of Alberta. His work uses as a root the concept of interactivity in music and controlled spacialization, which he applies to the composition of electroacoustic pieces with real-time sound processing, the development of interactive sound installations and acoustic ensembles.
Howard Bashaw, Professor, Composition, University of Alberta
Canadian composer Howard Bashaw is originally from White Rock, B.C. A graduate of the University of British Columbia (DMA, 1989), he joined the Department of Music at the University of Alberta in 1993. Prior to this he taught at the University of British Columbia and the Université Canadienne en France.
Raylene Campbell, MFA
Raylene is an Edmonton-based sound artist with a two-decade history of professional performance and gallery presentation in Canada, the United States, and Europe. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Bard College in New York, and has taught in the Department of Music at Concordia University in Montreal.
Stephan Moore
Stephan Moore is a composer, improviser, audio artist, sound designer, teacher, and curator whose creative work currently manifests as electronic studio compositions, solo and group improvisations, sound installation works, scores for collaborative performance pieces, and sound designs for unusual circumstances. Having completed his Ph.D. in Electronic Music and Multimedia the MEME program at Brown University, he is now a lecturer at Northwestern University.
Leslie Sharpe, Associate Professor and Chair of Art and Design, MacEwan University
Leslie Sharpe has exhibited her work in Canada, USA, and Europe, and held artist residencies at P.S. 1/MoMA, the Banff Centre, and lvvavik National Park. She has taught at Pratt Institute, University of California, San Diego, and Indiana University Bloomington.
Scott Smallwood, Associate Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Scott Smallwood is a sound artist, composer, and musician who creates works inspired by discovered textures and forms, through a practice of listening, field recording, and sonic improvisation. He designs experimental electronic instruments and software, as well as sound installations and site-specific performance scenarios. He performs as one-half of the laptop/electronic duo Evidence (with Stephan Moore), and currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where he teaches composition, improvisation, and electroacoustic music at the University of Alberta.
Roundtable 7 – Exhibiting Sound for Research, Teaching, and Outreach
Erin Bayne, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Alberta
Erin Bayne’s research focuses on understanding how humans alter ecosystems and the consequences this has for wildlife. He is particularly interested in how anthropogenic noise influences habitat quality and alters natural soundscapes, and he uses a variety of new technologies to monitor wildlife through automated acoustic monitoring systems.
Pierre Boulanger, Professor, Department of Computing Science and Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging, University of Alberta
Dr. Boulanger cumulates more than 30 years of experience in 3D computer vision, rapid product development, and the applications of virtual reality systems to medicine and industrial manufacturing. He is currently the Director of the Advanced Man Machine Interface Laboratory (AMMI) as well as the scientific Director of the SERVIER Virtual Cardiac Centre. In 2013, Dr. Boulanger was awarded the CISCO chair in healthcare solutions.
Julia Byl, Assistant Professor of Music, University of Alberta
Dr. Julia Byl recently joined the music department at the University of Alberta, after serving at King’s College London for three years as a post-doctoral fellow and Malay Case Study leader on the European Research Council project, “Musical Transitions to Colonialism in the Eastern Indian Ocean.” Her recent book, Antiphonal Histories: Resonant Pasts in the Toba Batak Musical Present was published in 2014 as a part of Wesleyan University Press’s Music/Culture series.
Brian Fauteux, Assistant Professor, Department of Music, University of Alberta
Brian Fauteux is Assistant Professor of Popular Music and Media Studies at the University of Alberta. His forthcoming book, Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio (WLU Press, 2015), explores the history of Canadian campus radio, highlighting the factors that have shaped its close relationship with local music.
Marcia Ostashewski, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Canada Research Chair, University of Cape Breton
Marcia Ostashewski’s research focuses on the creative and cultural expression of communities, and has included work with Eastern and Central Europeans, Indigenous groups, at-risk youth, and newcomers to Canada. Her teaching work at Cape Breton University includes courses on the music and dance of Indigenous and immigrant communities, gender and performance, and culture and tourism, and she has also worked extensively in the not-for-profit and heritage sectors.
Regula Qureshi, Professor Emeritus of Music, University of Alberta
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, FRSc, is a cellist, sarangi player, and anthropologist of music. Professor Emeritus of Music, she is the founder of FolkwaysAlive and of the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta. Her books include Sufi Music of India and Pakistan, Sound, Contest and Meaning in Qawwali; Master Musicians of India:Hereditary Sarangi Players Speak; as well, as Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics. Her research goal is to explores music as affect and as social action.
Exhibiting Sound 