May 2, 3, 2019
UCLA California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI): ARTSCI.UCLA.EDU
MAY 2
Artsmesh Networked Composition Performance + discussion
Ken Fields
2-5pm
CNSI presentation space
Artsmesh Network Music Performance and Discussion: Ken Fields (UCSB) connecting UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara (graduate students Ken and Rodney Duplessis), Canada (Joel Ong) and Harvestworks, NY (Gil Kuno). This will be followed by a workshop with Design Media Arts student Dillon Bastan and the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) with short talks by the symposium participants.
Artsmesh (macOS software) connects network music performers around the world. The multichannel, uncompressed audio travels at the speed of light on high speed networks (Internet 2). Video, Open Sound Control (OSC), synchronized metronomes, graphic scores, chat, gnuSocial feed, maps and other tools combine to make this suite of networked production possible. We will workshop the connection process, do a short jam, and open it up for discussion afterwards.
Ken Fields has been Professor of Network and Electronic Music at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing China for the last two decades. From the 2008-2013, Ken held the position of Canada Research Chair in Telemedia Arts, investigating artistic and musical performance over high-speed networks. Ken received his Ph.D. in Media Arts degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara (2000). He has been developing Artsmesh (macOS software) since 2008 – for network music performance. Ken is currently Adjunct Professor at UCSB, Multimedia Art and Technology Program and on the editorial board of the Journal of Organized Sound.
Gil Kuno
Through experiments in the audio-visual and re-envisioning experiences common within everyday life, Gil’s aim is to push people away from paradigmatic thinking. He takes a whimsical approach in subverting common perception of reality. Exaggerated perception and derailed reality are central themes to his work. He has collaborated with artists such as Eye Yamantaka (Boredoms,) Yoshimi (Boredoms, OOIOO,) Battles, Vincent Gallo, Elliot Sharp, Ken Ishii, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins,) Carl Stone, Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot,) Steve Albini (Big Black, Shellac,) Cristian Vogel and others.
Joel Ong
Joel is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space. Professor Ong’s work explores the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, he is interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment”. A serial collaborator, Ong is invested in the broader scope of Art-Science collaborations and is engaged constantly in the discourses and processes that facilitate viewing these two polemical disciplines on similar ground.
5-7pm
Dillon Bastan
DIY experimental electroacoustic instrument demo / performance
7-9pm
Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER)
Carol Parkinson, Bill Fontana, Paul Geluso
MAY 3
SOUND + SCIENCE symposium day 2
Location: UCLA California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) Auditorium + lobby + presentation space
10:00 am
Opening
Victoria Vesna
“Vibrations Matter”
Victoria Vesna is an artist and professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci Center at the School of the Arts and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). With her collaborative art projects she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation (PhD, University of Wales, 2000). Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nano- scientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and she brings this experience to students. She is the North American editor of AI & Society journal (Springer Verlag, UK) and in 2007
published an edited volume – Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information
Overflow (Minnesota Press) and another in 2011 — Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts. (co-edited with Christiane Paul and Margot Lovejoy) Intellect Ltd, 2011. Currently she is working on a series of artist books including the Hox Zodiac “cookbook”.
10:30
Keynote: Bill Fontana
“Acoustic Visions”
Bill has worked for the past 45 years creating installations that use sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural settings. These have been installed in public spaces and museums around the world including San Francisco, New York, Rome, Paris, London, Chicago, Vienna, Berlin, Venice, Sydney, Tokyo, Barcelona, Linz, Manchester, Istanbul and Abu Dhabi. His sound sculptures use the human and/or natural environment as a living source of musical information. He assumes that at any given moment there will be something meaningful to hear and that music, in the sense of coherent sound patterns, is a process that is going on constantly. His methodology has been to create networks of simultaneous listening points that relay real time acoustic data to a common listening zone (sculpture site). Since 1976 Bill has called these works sound sculptures.
11:15
Carol Parkinson:“Driven by Sound: Harvestworks!”
Carol Parkinson is the Executive Director of Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center an artist-run organization founded in 1977 whose mission is to support artists in the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies. She is the producer of the New York Electronic Art Festival, a series of workshops, concert performances and exhibitions that spotlight these works. Carol is also a founding member of TELLUS, the Audio Cassette Magazine, a cassette–based magazine of experimental music and sound art published between 1982 – 1996.
Noon
Paul Geluso:“The Evolution of the Immersive Sound Experiences : From Caves to XR”
Geluso’s work focuses on the theoretical, practical, and artistic aspects of sound recording and reproduction. He is the co-editor “‘Immersive Sound: The Art And Science of Binaural and Multi- channel Audio” published by Focal Press-Routledge and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Music and the Associate Director of Music Technology at New York University and the Studio Director at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts in NYC.
1:00pm: performance (CNSI lobby) Ivana Dama
“Microscope as a Musical Instrument”
Using an optical microscope as an Audiovisual instrument, Ivana Dama will give a unique improvisational performance.
Ivana Dama studies Design Media Arts at UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture. Born and raised under a post-communist regime in Serbia, Ivana explores the infusion of technology with traditional art practices. While only a young child when the bombings began, images of the destruction still clearly permeate her mind. The memories of living in a small shelter, with the sounds of bombs and vibrations, contributed to her interests in sound and space ranging from microscopic, architectural, and satellite scale. Ivana uses the variety of mediums including audio visual installations, metal engraving as well as a range of open source software for creative coding.
2:00pm
James Gimzewski: “Sounds of Quantum Entanglement”
Dr. Gimzewski is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles and Director of the Nano & Pico Characterization Core Facility of the California NanoSystems Institute. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, he was a group leader at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, where he research in nanoscale science and technology for more than 18 years. Dr. Gimzewski pioneered research on mechanical and electrical contacts with single atoms and molecules using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and was one of the first persons to image molecules with STM. His accomplishments include the first STM-based fabrication of molecular suprastructures at room temperature using mechanical forces to push molecules across surfaces, the discovery of single molecule rotors and the development of new micromechanical sensors based on nanotechnology, which explore ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement.
2:30pm
Seth Putterman: “Let There Be Light; and Sound”
Dr. Seth Putterman is a Professor of Physics at UCLA. His research areas include nonlinear fluid mechanics and acoustics, sonoluminescence, friction, x-ray emission and crystal generated nuclear fusion. He has served as a Consultant to government and industry including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, TRW and the Aesthetic Surgery Education and Research Foundation. Prof. Putterman serves as an Advisor at Tribogenics, Inc. He has served as a Director of the Julian Schwinger Foundation for Physics Research since 2002 and as a Panel Member for the Department of Defense’s Defense Sciences Research Council since 2007. Prof. Putterman served as a Director at Parametric Sound Corp. from May 9, 2011 to November 21, 2013. Prof. Putterman is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and the American Physical Society and a past recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
3:15pm
Nina Eidsheim: “In Search of Light: Wadada Leo Smith’s “Creation” in Sound, Symbol, and Breath.”
Nina Eidsheim (Professor of Musicology; Director of Graduate Studies; Dean’s Associate for Faculty and Graduate Student Development; UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music), Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice (Duke UP, 2015) andThe Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music (Duke UP, December 2019); co- editing Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies (forthcoming, May 2019); co-editor (with Josh Kun and Ronald Radano) of the Refiguring American Musicbook series for Duke University
Press; recipient of the Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Cornell University Society of the Humanities Fellowship, the UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship and the ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship.
3:45pm
Sarah Brady: “Sound as Extruded Form”
Sarah Rosalena Brady is an interdisciplinary artist working in new media, sculpture, and sound based in Los Angeles. Works orbit concepts of digital colonialism in ways that speak to unstable states and binaries between life/nonlife, human/posthuman, ancient/modern, and biological/technological to reauthorize power in materialism. They function as grounds for forging new power, allowing for new opportunities towards speculations about matter and digital destiny. She was recently given the Steve Wilson Award from Leonardo, International Society for Art, Sciences, and Technology and holds an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles. Exhibitions include de Young Museum, Fylkingen (SE), Djerassi Artist Residency, Gray Area Art and Technology, and SOMArts Cultural Center.
4:15pm
Jocelyn Ho: “Sheng- mobile phones as musical instruments”
Jocelyn Ho is a composer, performer and theorist who champions new music and reinvigorates traditional music with fresh, historical perspectives. Most recently, she is the artistic director of a New York music-art-tech project Synaesthesia Playground, in which she leads fifteen composers, visual artists, technologists, and fashion designers from all around the world to create an interactive, immersive experience that reinvents the piano recital with bio and gestural technologies. On the other end of the spectrum, she is a historical keyboardist specializing in the music of Haydn. She is a founding member of the Sydney Piano Trio. Jocelyn Ho is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at UCLA
5:00pm
Ted Byrnes:“Material Improvisation”
Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. He comes from a jazz background and has since made his home in the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise. Ted has played in duo/trio/or ensemble settings with: Mazen Kerbaj, Matt Weston, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Charlemagne Palestine, Ace Farren Ford’s Artificial Art Ensemble, Rick and Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and many more. Ted has also collaborated with / worked for a variety of visual artists, including accompanying Doug Aitken’s “happening”; scored and performed percussion for an Emily Mast performance, collaborated with Olivia Booth to play her glass artworks and with Dani Tull on a sound performance. He also performed with John Knuth and Bret Nicely at an installation in an empty pool, and has performed for FLUXUS artist Jeff Perkins on multiple occasions for his projector/light installations.