About ICAD : The 18th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2012) will be held June 18-22, 2012, at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the heart of midtown Atlanta, Georgia. The event will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1st International Conference on Auditory Display. Since 1992, ICAD has been the premier international venue for the dissemination and discussion of work related to the science, art, and practice of sound as a communicative display. Through its active Sonification Lab and Center for Music Technology, Georgia Tech is pleased to host ICAD’s vibrant community of researchers and practitioners on its campus.

Competition Theme

ICAD 2004 titled its sonification competition ‘Listening to the Mind Listening’ and invited entrants to sonify EEG data captured while a subject was listening to music. The ICAD 2012 competition is inspired by this same idea: music (or sound) about listening to music. It is also inspired by the radical changes over the past decade in how we listen to music and how we share our listening activities with others. As portable media players and always-connected smartphones have become our primary listening platforms, social media services have become our primary sharing platforms.

This competition adopts the theme ‘Listening to the World Listening’ as it challenges us to explore what we can learn about listening through the analysis and sonification of social media data about listening.

There is no static data set for this competition; instead, entrants are invited to use a set of data APIs to obtain social media listening data. Use of a Twitter Music Trends data feed, which aggregates music listening data from Twitter by artist, is required. Entrants may optionally gather related data about the tweets themselves from the Twitter API, and about the referenced artists from the MusicBrainz and Echo Nest APIs. Detailed information about each API is included in the full call at http://distributedmusic.gatech.edu/icad/.

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2012

Notification of finalists: April 1, 2012

Submission Requirements:

Sonifications may be fixed-media audio files, interactive software programs or web sites, smartphone apps, musical performances, or sound installations. They may sonify the data in real time or out of real time. They may work with as little as a single set of fifty artists from Twitter Music Trends or as much as several months worth of data collected across all of the APIs.

Submissions must include an audio or video recording, no more than five minutes in length, of the complete sonification, excerpts from the sonification, or documentation of the sonification, as appropriate. Submissions must also include a 2-4 page statement, following the ICAD 2012 paper template, that describes the techniques used to create the sonification and the motivations behind them.

All questions should be addressed to Jason Freeman, ICAD 2012 Music Chair.

Jury, Finalists, and Winners:

A jury will select finalists to be featured during ICAD 2012, and the winner will be announced during the conference. The statements of each finalist will also be published in the ICAD conference proceedings.

Jury:

Alberto de Campo, Professor of Computational Art, Universität der Künste Berlin

R. Luke Dubois, Assistant Professor of Integrated Digital Media, NYU-Poly

Adam Lindsay, chief scientist, SocialGenius

Brian Whitman, co-founder and CTO, The Echo Nest

Full Details on the data sources and the competition are available at:

http://distributedmusic.gatech.edu/icad/

Link: http://distributedmusic.gatech.edu/icad/

Deadline: Thu March 1, 2012

Join artist Andrew Demirjian for a workshop where participants will design their own distinctive tones for sonifying the stock price fluctuations of the three largest music companies. Participants will audition and perform each other’s work working from Andrew’s audiovisual installation, The Week in Review, presented in Eyebeam’s Project Space (June 21-July 9). The control interface for Week in Review is a custom built LED clock interface and turntable, which enables a user to play through a week of stock price data. This is a workshop for Max/MSP and/or Ableton Live users.

This workshop is presented as related programming for Andrew Demirjian’s Eyebeam Project Space exhibition, The Week in Review.

▪ Politics and Poetics of satélites. MSST, Joanna Griffin, Reni Hoffmuller ….
▪ de/Construction of a satélite. David Pello.
▪ Listening, Spotting y Sousveillance. Alejo Duque.

“Galileo collapsed Geocentricity but this has been reconstructed through the unstoppable and insatiable ambition for connectivity that is today represented by the ring of artifical geostationary satellites. The Earth thus re-becomes an immobile object in the middle of a spinning “universe”.” Mathurin Milan

Orbitando Satélites proposes an exercise in the visibilisation and investigation of these “rarae aves” that operate in habitually imperceptible frequencies and distances. We listen to them with DIY antenas and radios, showing how to locate them and observe them with free hardware and software.

In the tradition of the independent groups involved in the creation of free/libre infrastructures the meeting unites amateurs and experts, from various countries and cultures, to develop a declaration which poetically sketches this occult ring that surrounds us.

Trying to invert the logic of the panopticum, we observe the satelites that are observing us, exploring their political dimensions as an opaque system of control as well as a potentially liberating force. Using visualisation and play techniques we investigate the poetics of satelites, developing new astrologies and detailled mythologies.

And, finally, we design our own communications / observation satelite, to be launched in July 2011 by balloon, around the same time as the inauguration which will visualise our investigation.

Some key themes and topics :

▪ Satélites and micro-satélites.
▪ Dispositives of power y contra-power.
▪ Listening to satélites. Satellite Hacking,
▪ The Astrology and Astronomy of satélites
▪ Celestial voices, Satelite soundart
▪ Design of open source satelite with radio & wimax
▪ Estratoferic baloons, Drones and Kites
▪ Arduino in space.
▪ Space politics.
▪ Satélite Tracking and Radiofrequencies
▪ GNU/Radio USRP Software Defined Radio
▪ Calculating & charting celestial mechanics
▪ Orbital Dreams
▪ ……

Deadline for applications : 18.04.11. Attendance is free, space limited. Email to p0[at]laboralcentrodearte.org a CV and letter stating your interest.

If you’re interested in the music/data Calliope will produce– all royalty-free MIDI tracks for musicians to remix, you can help make it possible. The whole purpose is to fly something in orbit that we can ‘hear’ on the ground.

You can support the project by buying mission patches and flight pins (http://tinyurl.com/calliopebase)

Lineup: Bernd Schurer (CH) Zurich :: Daisuke Ishida (JP) Berlin :: Lee Gamble (UK) London :: Martin Supper (DE) Berlin :: Yutaka Makino (JP) Berlin.

Bernd Schurer (CH): My artistic focus lies on the work with sound in a broad spectrum of different contexts: a constant shift, although, mostly investigating the experiential relationship between sound and what one would generally describe as space. There is a strong fascination in the study of the perception of sound and our interpretative patterns, and i have done some artistic “research” in the domains of Psychoacoustics, Architecture, Auralization, Sonification and AudioVisual Representation.

Presentations may vary from Computer Music Diffusion to Installation work to abstract Sound Art. Some of it has been exhibited internationally on various scales, from micro galleries to public space, from “art at home” to the Venice Art Biennial. Since 1996 he is co-editor and curator for electronic sound pieces at the domizil.ch imprint in Zurich, together with Marcus Maeder.

Bernd Schurer was born 1970 in Zurich; he studied Philosophy and Film Science with Professor W. Schobinger at the University of Zurich in 1993 and Visual Art at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts 1998. He currently is a Master Student with Professors Germ?n Toro- Per?s and Martin Neukom of Electroacoustic Composition and Theory / Media-technology at the Z?rich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He lives in Zurich and Berlin.
see: http://www.domizil.ch/

Daisuke Ishida (JP) :: Daisuke Ishida is a Berlin based artist working with sound and contemporary media.
He is interested in designing processes, physical environments in artistic contexts. His works pursue aesthetics and consequence of computer music, and seek to realize synthetic space in sound. His research includes Acoustics, Auditory Perception, Complex Systems and Machine Learning Based Algorithm.

Ishida established AUSREIHE, an independent organization committed to experimental electronic/computer music since 2009, is involved with the artist collective NK, which is dedicated to sound art practices in Berlin. in 2005 he participated in the MobLab project, a Japanese-German media camp. Together with Ken Furudate, Kazuhiro Jo and Mizuki Noguchi, he founded The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA and The SINE WAVE QUARTET in 2002, which received Honorary Mention in Digital Music category of the Prix ARS Electronica 2004 and Stiftung Niedersachsen work stipends for Media Art 2009 at Edith Russ Site for Media Art.

Daisuke Ishida has presented his artistic activities internationally such as ICC - InterCommunication Center(Japan), deaf - Dutch Electronic Art Festival(The Netherlands), transmediale(Germany), ART + COMMUNICATION WAVES - ARSENALS of the Latvian National Museum of Art(Latvia), SMT - Sendai Mediatheque(Japan), YCAM - Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media(Japan), International Triennale of Contemporary Art YOKOHAMA(Japan), Japan Now modern performing arts festival(Germany), MART - Museum of Art, Rovereto and Trento(Italy), Interferenze new arts festival(Italy), ISEA - Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts(USA), steim(The Netherlands), La G?n?rale(France) and Edith Russ Site for Media Art(Germany).

Lee Gamble (UK) :: Founding member of the UK-based CYRK collective, explores abstraction through computer software, improvisation, digital synthesis, process, and the deconstruction, mutation and reconstruction of form.
He has performed solo throughout the U.K and Europe and in collaboration with electronic composer John Wall. His computer compositions are published via UK label Entr’acte. His recent full-length album Join Extensions has just been released; his second full length will be released in late 2010 on Berlin based computer music imprint AUSREIHE. Collaboration with artist and researcher Yutaka Makino follows, also a work for Thomas Bey William Bailey’s Belsona Strategic Label and GX Jupitter Larsen’s Zelphabet series.

Lee has curated and co-curated various events and has produced and curated radio series? for London arts radio station Resonance 104.4FM. He has DJ’ed for many years at venues and on several radio stations. He has created podcast mixes for various organizations, the most recent one for the Icasea podcast series.

Martin Supper (DE) :: Supper has studied computer science, linguistic and musicology in Technical University Berlin. As a DAAD stipendiary, he studied computer music and electroacoustic music with Gottfried Michael Koenig in The Institute of Sonology in University of Groningen Utrecht, The Netherlands. He holds Diplom in computer science and PhD in musicology. Since 1985, He is the director of the Studio for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art in Berlin University of the Arts.

Yutaka Makino (JP) :: Yutaka Makino is an artist and researcher currently based in Berlin. His research seeks to amalgamate the historic precedents of computational composition and science, involving research in non-standard sound synthesis, spatial perception, acoustics, collective behavior, complex dynamical systems and new materiality. His works range from sculpture to sound works including computer music compositions and spatial sound installations that utilize spatial projection processes such as Wave Field Synthesis to achieve total physical immersion.

Makino’s works have been recognized/performed at numerous festivals and competitions internationally. He has been awarded the Prix Ton Bruyn?l 2007 and the DAAD Berliner K?nstlerprogramm 2010. He was in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Visby International Center for Composers, TU Berlin Electronic Music Studio and STEIM.
With the turntablist Takuro Mizuta Lippit alias dj sniff of STEIM, he frequently performs as Audile.
In 2009, he founded an independent computer music label, Strukto.

AUSREIHE is an independent organization dedicated to experimental electronic/computer music, founded in Berlin, Germany 2009. Contact; AUSREIHE : Daisuke Ishida info(at)ausreihe.com

There is a several thousand year history of associating music with cosmic phenomena, the famous “Music of the Spheres” created from the regularities in the astronomical universe. Even though of course there is generally no sound in outer space, because the conditions of pressure and density to allow acoustic waves are very rare.

The same urge motivates artists and scientists interested in sonifying

Sound Artist Peter Gena has a large collection of DNA Music and other sonifications of molecular structures: http://www.petergena.com/DNAmus.html

Like Kepler, and many others who subscribed to the Pythagorian ideas, Gena believes that:

“… a musical reading of DNA ought to be rendered literally. As the sequences represent life of many sorts, I am reluctant to tamper with the “score.” The DNA mixer can realize sequences as digital sound and/or print them out in musical notation. Ideally, performances of the gene sequences should be executed live from the computer as in an installation, where the ribosome simulations can be positioned spontaneously before playing. Red Blood Cells is a mix of five genes that are present in human blood: alpha and beta globin, heme synthetase, transaldolase, and glucose 6 phosphate. These are realized simultaneously, just as they are produced in the body. “

For more, go here.

Earthquakes Generate Music in Realtime from Micah Frank on Vimeo.

Utilizing new electroacoustic instruments of their own design, J.A. Deane and David Dunn present an evening of expansive sonorities that explore leading edge improvisation and scientific sonification. Combining their unique skills ‘as significant figures in multiple contemporary music traditions (jazz, free improvisation, classical new music, electroacoustic composition, sound art, biomusic, early music, world music, and microtonal performance), this duo presents music that draws upon new understandings of both ancient and modern insights into the fundamental nature of sound to effect human consciousness.

Also featured is the premiere of 4 Plus 4, an 8 channel collaborative sound piece by Philip Mantione and Martin Back. Each will precompose 4 channels of sound in a blind collaboration to be mixed live for the first time.

Deane performs upon a one-of-a-kind “lapsteel dulcimer” whose design is informed by the traditional Chinese qin, modern Western amplified plucked-string guitars, and the most recent innovations in digital modeling of string acoustics. Essentially the instrument is comprised of three monochords playable in both directions with an amazing arsenal of novel techniques. The resultant sound can also be modified through a palette of powerful signal processing devices.

Dunn uses a novel set of non-linear chaotic oscillators capable of generating an infinite variety of “auditory behaviors” emergent from their status as autonomous electronic systems. Based upon the theory of “biological autonomy” and new principles in cognitive science, these circuits represent an alternative design philosophy for the creation of electronic sound synthesis. More akin to living systems than information processing devices, these circuits produce a dazzling assortment of complex noises and pure tones that emerge as a type of self-organizing machine conversation. The resultant textures provide a stream of constantly changing sonic worlds for Deane to imitate, challenge, submerge into, or redirect. Together, these musicians and instruments interact to produce some of the most imaginative and challenging soundscapes in contemporary music. All of the final sounds will be heard through a state-of-the-art, 8-channel surround sound system.

ARTIST BIOS:

J.A. Deane has appeared on recordings with Ike & Tina Turner, Brian Eno and John Zorn, while producing an equally diverse range of his own music for both large and small ensembles. Deane pioneered the use of “Live Electronics & looping” (playing trombone with Indoor Life and Butch Morris) and “Live Sampling” (playing electro-acoustic percussion with Jon Hassell). He has created theatrical sound designs for writer/directors Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, Julie Hebert, Christoph Marthaler, and Theater Grottesco, winning critical acclaim in the United States and Europe. He has also composed and recorded music for over fifty dance works in collaboration with choreographer Colleen Mulvihill. Deane has appeared as a musician throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, working with Butch Morris in his Conduction projects since 1985 (Conduction #3). In 1996, Deane moved to New Mexico where he works with a number of ensembles including the acclaimed Out of Context conduction ensemble. Out of Context has performed a real-time score to the classic 1932 silent film “Peter Pan”, a concert at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum “playing” the photographs of Edward Weston, a concert “playing” the book – 1” = 25 Miles, by Sumner Carnahan, a theatrical score for Theater Grottesco’s Wenomadmen, released 4 critically acclaimed CDs, and contributed new signs and gestures to the Conduction Lexicon. In 1999 Deane began researching Human BioAcoustics, Five-Element Theory, harmonics and non-locality, exploring connections between the meridian system and the body’s natural ability to come into energetic balance through the use of low frequency sound waves.

David Dunn is a composer who performs, lectures and engages in site-specific interactions and research-oriented activities. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He was an assistant to the legendary American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. Other mentors included composers Kenneth Gaburo and Pauline Oliveros, in addition to Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in over 500 international forums over five continents. Besides his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals and been the recipient of over 35 grants and fellowships for both artistic and scientific research. Dunn was the recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award for Music in 2005 and the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center in 2007.

PRESS CONTACT:
Philip Mantione
music@philipmantione.com
505-466-4832

*

The purpose of this symposium is to conduct a state of the art review of the use sonification* within art projects, with a focus on the use of data taken from our surroundings (in a broad sense) as opposed to gestural interfaces or electronic instruments.

What distinguishes sonification from other forms of data mediation? What are the different ways in which sonification is used in art? What parallels, similarities, differences & contradictions exist between the use of sonification or audio display for technical & for artistic purposes? What differences in the artistic approach does the use of realtime as opposed to recorded data imply? What is the importance of the relationship between the source of data and the way in which it is mediated?

The symposium SONIFICATION will be organized as a series of 4 half day round table debates + 1 evening sessions where participants are invited to propose demonstrations, performances or documentation of work related to the theme. The Symposium is organized by Locus Sonus (École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix en Provence, École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nice Villa Arson) and LAMES MMSH (Laboratoire Méditerranéen de Sociologie) in partnership with CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice, LCC Univ. of the Arts London), IMERA (Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées) & Seconde Nature.
Observers : Jean-Paul Ponthot (ESA Aix en Provence), Cathy Lane (CRiSAP UAL London).

The schedule is as follows:

* On Thursday the 4th, two round table sessions of half a day will be held at LAMES MMSH
* On Thursday evening, Second Nature is set aside for demos and performances at Seconde Nature.
* On Friday the 5th, two other round table sessions of half a day will be held in the amphitheater at l’Ecole Superieure d’Art d’Aix en Provence.

* “Sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information data to sound”. G. Kramer, B. Walker, T. Bonebright, P. Cook, J. Flowers, N. Miner, and J. Neuhoff, “Sonification report: Status of the field and research agenda,” Tech. Rep., International Community for Auditory Display, 1999, http://www.icad.org/websiteV2. 0/References/nsf.html.

Locus Sonus Lab :: Julien Clauss, Alejandro Duque, Scott Fitzgerald, Jérôme Joy, Anne Roquigny, Peter Sinclair. http://www.locusonus.org

Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art. It is organized as a post graduate lab by the Art Schools of Aix en Provence (ESAA) and Nice (ENSA Villa Arson) in the south of France. We have a partnership with sociology lab CNRS, LAMES Aix en Provence (who are interested by the way that practices related to new technologies are creating modifications in artistic production and the way that the public responds to these modifications), and we currently continue collaborations with the CRESSON, architecture lab CNRS in Grenoble (sonic spaces research centre), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and other international partners.

Locus Sonus is concerned with the innovative and transdisciplinary nature of audio art forms, in the framework of networked sonic spaces, some of which are experimented and evaluated in a lab type context. An important factor is with the collective or multi-user aspects inherent to many emerging audio practices and which necessitate working as a group. Two main thematic define this research - audio in it’s relation to space and networked audio systems. Today our research is grouped under two main headings Field Spatialization and Networked Sonic Spaces.

Visual and sound artist Carrie Bodle will create a five-channel sound installation and sewing performance sonifying data from an ecosystem model developed by UW oceanographic scientist Dr. Neil Banas. Sound is translated from data, then visualized and made tactile by the artist embroidering the combined waveform into a continuous sound wave.

This computer model simulates the growth and consumption of plankton in the ocean ecosystem along the Washington coast during summer 2005. The five sound channels broadcast five dimensions in this data: wind (1) and tides (2) drive the currents and turbulence that bring nutrients (3) to the surface. Once in the zone where sunlight penetrates, phytoplankton (4) grow, zooplankton (5) eat the phytoplankton, and so on up the food chain. Embroidering these five sonified data sets as one ecosystem through a public art performance, research data from the Washington coast is made audible, visual, and tangible.

In collaboration with Dr. Neil Banas, UW Applied Physics Laboratory, and Keith Grochow, UW Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

This project was created with support from a 4Culture Individual Artist Project Grant

ArtsSparks is made possible by a unique partnership between the Seattle Parks Department, Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and 4Culture’s Site Specific Program.