ARTER’s new series of sound art projects opens with the exhibition Freedom to the Black by renowned Turkish composer, sound designer, guitarist and producer Erdem Helvacıoğlu. Curated by Melih Fereli, the installation features Fluxus pioneer George Maciunas’s work “Piano Piece” (1970) along with Helvacıoğlu’s composition inspired by Maciunas’s very piano, which is in the Vehbi Koç Foundation Contemporary Art Collection.

During the first ever performance of Maciunas’s work, Ben Vautier, the French performance artist, nailed down all the white keys of this upright piano one by one, rendering the white keys immovable and thus leaving only the black keys functioning.

Freedom to the Black is “an attempt to liberate ‘the black’ from all biases and prejudices,” says the exhibition’s curator and Vehbi Koç Foundation’s Culture and Arts Advisor, Melih Fereli: “Take it as a plea, or even as a protest, if you like; but do bear in mind that ‘the black’ is a powerful part of the celebration of life, just like in Erdem Helvacıoğlu’s music, and in particular his composition as part of this installation, which is filled with the riches that ‘the black’ deserves.”

The accomplished composer Erdem Helvacıoğlu recorded the ’sound memory’ of Maciunas’s piano to create his astonishing 10-minute composition, Freedom to the Black. He accomplished this over a four-day recording session, by using various pieces of equipment and materials — scissors, bows, earplugs, stuffed toys, drum sticks, mallets, hammers, screwdrivers, pieces of silk and wool, among many others things—to extract a wide range of sounds from the piano’s body. Helvacıoğlu used 17 microphones with diverse characteristics and in unconventional placements for the recordings.

For the spatial design of the installation at ARTER, the artist and the curator collaborated with Dr Tony Myatt, director of the Music Research Centre at The University of York. Freedom to the Black utilises an innovative sound system, “Ambisonic B-format”, here used for the first time in Turkey. The system is installed in a specially designed ground-floor room at ARTER and it involves sixteen speakers that surround the audience in three dimensions for full spherical sonic diffusion.

An initiative of the Vehbi Koç Foundation (VKF), ARTER’s programmes are created with the aim of encouraging production of contemporary artworks both nationally and internationally, providing a platform of visibility for artistic practices especially in Turkey. ARTER offers artists a sustainable infrastructure for artistic production in terms of funding, exhibiting, promotion and publications, as well as support for educational activities.

Freedom to the Black inaugurates ARTER’s “Sound Art Projects” series. ARTER has added this exciting area of artistic production to its repertoire and it will continue to commission and exhibit new works in this genre.

Curator: Melih Fereli

Using a multichannel soundsystem throughout the entire space, a handful of sound artists activate the unique acoustics of Roulette’s new 1920’s Art Deco theater with multi-channel spacialized sound.

Featuring: Maria Chavez, Mario Diaz de Leon, Sabisha Friedberg, Alfredo Marin, Zeljko McMullen, Daniel Neumann, Tristan Shepherd, Doron Sadja, Ben Vida.

For more information here.

From the interview:

Why did you choose to work with mosquitoes?

Male mosquitoes serenade potential mates with a ‘love song’ by vibrating their wings. They synchronize their wingbeats with those of the females to mate in mid-air. … The constant glissandi — gliding from one pitch to another — and ‘tuning in’ of mosquito wingbeats reminded me of dhrupad, an ancient form of Indian classical music often sung by brothers in unison. My collaborator Ali Momeni and I played male mosquitoes some dhrupad and, sure enough, they tuned in.

The next {SØNiK} event will take place February 25, 2011. {SØNiK} takes place over two nights, and submissions are open to all works in sound, new media, performance, and video. Please email sonik@sonikfest.info if you would like to submit your work.

Submission Guidelines: Submissions are accepted via email, by linking to a website or an online audio/video account where the works can be viewed, if available.

To submit, send an email to sonik@sonikfest.info that includes the following information in the body:

-Your contact information (name, email address, phone number, website)
-The details of the work you are submitting (medium, length, title, date)
- Form of submission (video, mp3, etc.)
- Technical needs
- A brief bio/artist statement
- A brief statement about the specific work you are submitting. State if the work has been previously exhibited, and if so, where.
- Links to online samples of your works, if available.

Showing samples of other works is highly encouraged, though not required.
-For performance works, supplemental still images are encouraged and a more detailed explanation of the project proposed is required.

For any works that are unavailable online, please contact sonik@sonikfest.info, with “Submission Inquiry” in the Subject line, for further instructions on submitting.

Link: http://sonikfest.info/call/

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Volume, the first solo exhibition in New York by Swiss artist Zimoun. On view will be an immersive, site-specific sound installation based on prepared dcmotors and cardboard boxes.

Part of a series that received its U.S. debut in a solo exhibition at the Ringling Museum of Art this Fall, the installation emphasizes the grid as a method of visual organization. Precariously balanced rows of cardboard boxes form an architectural space containing a rumbling din produced by mechanical motors humming in unison.

Pulsing rhythmically, each unit in the system reverberates with its own sense of purpose and timing. Temporal microstructures emerge and shift, made visible by collective behavior. With minimalist and low-tech means, Zimoun constructs a blank zone of play utilizing repetition and the physical pressure of vibration.

As an author, Zimoun uses scale and tools of amplification to transform our associations with commonplace industrial objects. Tuned into kinetic and acoustic detail, his obsessive displays of collected materials unlock emotional potential in otherwise banal and chaotic gestures. In his work static volume permeates a space, yielding reductive clocklike operas of the everyday.

For the duration of the show, the gallery’s project room on the 6th floor will also feature four mechanical works by the artist and a video.

“Zimoun: Sculpting Sound” (2011) at the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL from bitforms gallery on Vimeo.

“200 prepared dc-motors, 2000 cardboard elements 70×70cm” (2011) by Zimoun + Hannes Zweifel from bitforms gallery on Vimeo.

“121 prepared dc-motors, cardboard elements 8×8cm” (2011) by Zimoun from bitforms gallery on Vimeo.

basic.fm is a new radio station that forms part of Pixel Palace, an exciting programme of digital arts and new media at Tyneside Cinema. It hosts Broadcast Art, Sound & Independent Culture, aspiring to be a space that can be inhabited by artists, curators, thinkers and interesting people with something to share and will be gradually be populated with work, projects, shows and archived events.

Since launching in November 2011, basic.fm has commissioned an exciting number of leading artists, including Mark Vernon, The Noize Choir, Ed Carter, Sarah Boothroyd and People Like Us.

Call for Participation

Pixel Palace are seeking new or existing works to host on basic.fm. Selected works will form part of a series of curated programmes (one-off and regular shows) that will appear on basic.fm from April 2012. Work can include sound art, spoken word, field recordings and artist interviews within the context of Broadcast Art, Sound & Independent Culture.

This is an unpaid opportunity but all selected contributions will be fully credited and linked appropriately to relevant websites and/ or sources. This call is open to all artists, musicians, field recordists and sonic artists regardless of nationality, age, or career stage.

Submissions must include:

• Title and description of new or existing work(s) for basic.fm (100 words maximum)
• Examples of past work (please provide links to work as large email large media files cannot be accepted)
• CV and contact information

About Pixel Palace

Pixel Palace is the exciting programme of digital arts and new media at Tyneside Cinema. This programme takes the form of arts residencies, commissions, live events and exhibitions. We experiment with new ways of sharing creative work, ideas and stories as we move towards the future of cinema.

Tyneside Cinema’s mission is to bring together people to experience, enjoy and engage with the past, present and future of cinema. Pixel Palace aims to extend and deliver this mission by working with new media artists and curators embracing digital arts, not only to reflect upon the cinema’s past, but to engage new audiences in its expanded present and pervasive future.
Jean Luc Goddard’s classic film “Alphaville” provides a creative starting point for Pixel Palace to explore the influence technology has upon us, shaping our behaviour and understanding of the world.

As Godard predicted, life is indeed shaped by computers. In Alphaville, in our world today, the cinema is everywhere, in the flick of a cigarette lighter, in the glow of a light bulb… it is in the way we perceive our world, in the way we speak, in the way we dream. We have no need of entering a movie theatre to experience cinema; life itself is just like a movie.

Kelly Brougher (2008). ‘The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving image’

Pixel Palace aims to work with artists to investigate the way in which the cinema reflects life but also the way in which technology has an “Alphaville” effect.

How to apply

Please email submissions to Dominic Smith, Digital Arts Manager at the Tyneside Cinema: info [at] thepixelpalace.org with the subject heading: basic.fm

Artists will be notified via email regarding the outcome of their submitted work(s).

SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. Phonography is the art of recording sounds from the environment around us, with an emphasis on the unintentional sounds which often go unnoticed in our daily lives. An international community of phonographers collect and share their recordings, with interests ranging from recordings of natural or urban environments to improvised situations or soundwalks, to the resonance of solid objects or the Earth’s atmosphere.

In the BOOK section of this site, you can plan a sonic journey through various locations recorded around the world. In the SEARCH section, you can search the database for specific sounds by member artists from many different places. If you are a member of SoundTransit, you can also CONTRIBUTE your recordings for others to enjoy. The Creative Commons Attribution license encourages the sharing and reuse of all sounds on the website.

During 2010, SoundTransit’s previous host in the Netherlands quadrupled the rent for the SoundTransit server, forcing it to move or consider closing. Turbulence.org offered its support and during 2011 has been working together with SoundTransit to get everything up and running again

To listen to over 2,000 recordings by 471 artists from around the world, experience a unique way of traveling via sound, and to find out how you can contribute to the SoundTransit project, please visit http://turbulence.org/soundtransit/.

Helen Thorington
Jesse Gilbert
Jo-Anne Green
Turbulence.org

AntiTesi in collaboration with the Superintendence for Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Trapani,, is announcing a Call for Proposals for Sound installations to present at Ex Stabilimento Florio delle Tonnare di Favignana e Formica in Favignana island.This call is connected to the Eighth edition of the Live!IXem festivals of music, sound and electronic arts .

The aim is to highlight the works of those artists who, involved in an experimental and creative exploration, use sound, integrating it with electronic audio-visual and digital design for Art installations in specific sites. Another aim is to witness the new aesthetic in contemporary art through a new way to conceive and carry out works within (or outside) of architectural spaces.

In this regard, the spaces that will host this could not be more appropriate: the former Florio Tuna factory on the island of Favignana in Sicily, the largest of the Mediterranean, which takes its name from a family of entrepreneurs that at the beginning of the twentieth century was the great protagonist in Sicily, the Belle Epoque. The ancient structure located in the largest of the Egadi islands, were obtained after the recent restoration of museum space, a conference room with 400 seats and a guest room.

To make this call even stronger there will be a collaboration between Live!iXem and OpenSound a platform that brings together seven European partners to create a project for cooperation and exchange that puts the sound in the middle of a series of outreach and artistic initiatives.

Open Sound is in fact a Grundtvig project for mobility and partnership in the training supported by the EU through the agency LLP - Life Long Learning Programme. Thanks to this partnership, Sicily will be the first venue where the festival will converge with some of the major representatives linked to the European art scene and musical sound research. During the festival, workshops will be conducted by some of the guest artists (the access to workshops is free of charge): this will contribute to become familiar with the locations of the former Florio Tuna factory on the island of Favignana.

SUBMISSIONS

We encourage proposals for site specific Sound Installations that will have to be set up in one of the locations of the Ex Stabilimento Florio della Tonnare di Favignana e Formica in Favignana Island Italy. Subscription and participation to the call are free of charge. It will be necessary to explore the locations through specific preparatory visits during Live!iXem Festival 2011, from 8 to 11 December 2011.

Suggested topics for presentations include, but are not limited to:

Best practices in Sound and architecture
Techniques used for Sound/Art Installation
Sound and environment/Sound ecology
Site specific
Software & network management
History & aesthetic theory of Sound Art/Installation
Teaching & pedagogical strategies
Hardware (audio, interface, computers, loudspeakers)
Software environments & frameworks
Artists/Composers’ perspectives on their own works

For more information and instructions for submissions, please refer to the website: http://www.ixem.it/live!ixem2011/callENG.html
, or download Call in PDF in english http://www.ixem.it/Call_Live!iXem2011_eng.pdf
Email contact: info@antitesi.org

The deadline for submission is February 26, 2012, but preliminary and preparatory visits will take place between December 8-11 2011.

–
domenico sciajno .:. www.sciajno.net
Details on the Live!iXem Call 2011, and how to submit here:
http://www.ixem.it/live!ixem2011/callENG.html
. on this downloadable PDF in english http://www.ixem.it/Call_Live!iXem2011_eng.pdf

image: Norbert Herber and Rowland Ricketts, The Gradual Accumulation of Additional Layers of Matter, 2011.

This exhibition explores, through an examination of creative and artistic practices, the interface of sound and new media technologies. The works in the exhibit include a number of trans-disciplinary interactions and collaborations that include sound in the context of visual and spatial artistic practices, including sound sculpture, installations, and performance works.

Featured artists include Carrie Bodle, Jacob C. Hammes, Norbert Herber/Rowland Ricketts, Tesia Kosmalski, Lou Mallozzi, Shannon McMullen/Fabian Winkler, Stephanie Rowden, and Jesse Seay. The list includes both emerging and established artists, primarily from the Midwest.

Because this exhibit is about the exchange of thought among a variety of disciplines, it will highlight the role that artistic practice and creative thinking have in our appropriation and understanding of technology, including practice and dialogue related to changes within both the natural and man-made environment. By comparing material practices in a variety of creative fields, new insights are gained into the way that artists and collaborators recognize the “new” and how the “new” becomes a building block for future discoveries.

This exhibit and symposium is sponsored by New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities at Indiana University. A catalog will be published documenting the exhibition. Please contact the gallery for further information. 812-855-8490 ::
gruwald@indiana.edu