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DESFORM 2019 | DESIGN AND SEMANTICS OF FORM AND MOVEMENT, XI EDITION - Call for papers

OCTOBER 9-11, 2019

In recent decades, design has faced great challenges and profound transformations. Its traditional approach to crafting and shaping the tangible world has been revolutionized by the way this very world has changed, becoming infused with digital technologies that have made it smarter, more interactive, and more connected.

Recent technological developments have generated even more rapid and extreme changes. The emergence of AI, machine learning, flexible electronics, miniaturized and implantable sensors, and hybrid synthetic- biological materials have not only provided designers with new design ingredients, but also generated new cultural and social landscapes in which they must design.

This edition of the DeSForM conference will explore the implications of these recent and emerging technological transformations in the practice of design, with a particular focus on the aesthetics and human experience of these new systems.

Designing beyond intelligence means that the design of such advanced and smart ecosystems should consider issues beyond mere algorithmic thinking and functionality. Scholars in the design field should start reflecting on the connections and mutual relations between the performance of these intelligent ecosystems and their physical appearances, aesthetics, interaction modalities, and personalities. In doing so, they will be able to address the design of ecosystemic user experiences.

DeSForM has traditionally dealt with the design of new, dynamic and interactive artifacts supported by the rise of intelligent systems (sensors, processors, algorithms, actuators, smart materials, etc.). Such systems are becoming more and more complex and sophisticated, giving birth to new forms of digital-physical hybridizations, i.e. dynamic ecosystems where advanced materials, sensing technologies, artificial intelligences, data, and humans are deeply interconnected and mutually shaped. These emerging hybrid ecosystems have already reached a point where their understanding, design, and evaluation ask for the development of new approaches and tools, as the experiences they create are far more complex to foresee and assess.

In this edition, we challenge scholars in this field to start thinking beyond designing for and with intelligence embedded into single artifacts, to broaden their focus and start addressing designing for distributed, hyperconnected, and complex intelligent ecosystems, and how their meaning, experience, and ethics can be approached in this new landscape.

This evolving context of design calls for new design skills and ways of thinking that go beyond the traditional field of design, as well as the creation of multi-disciplinary and adaptable teams able to envision new interactive, interconnected and even unpredictable systems.

The emergence of AI, robotic solutions, and big data connected with the spaces, objects and people we interact with everyday, will create new landscapes for future generations of designers. This will require designers to adopt new lenses in the design and evaluation of emerging technology, and it will necessitate that designers equip themselves with new ethical paradigms.

This conference will face the need to explore new frontiers for design, where emerging forms of distributed intelligence become design material. This material should be fully investigated in terms of tangible manifestations, implications and impact on the design process, user experience, and social consequences. The conference will be structured around four main topics: Experiencing Complexity, Interacting with New Intelligences, Societal Impacts & Design Ethics, and Future Roles of Designers.

Conference topics

Submissions should be focused on one or more of the following themes. In addition to these topics, contributions addressing the general conference interests (i.e. designing meanings, semantics and aesthetics of smart, dynamic and interactive artifacts) are also accepted.

EXPERIENCING COMPLEXITY

The role of aesthetics in dynamic digital-physical ecosystems

Designing and evaluating user experience in complex digital-physical ecosystems

Systemic design

Design tools to tackle complexity in technology-enriched systems

SOCIETAL IMPACTS & DESIGN ETHICS

Algorithmic decision making, autonomous systems and their impact on user experience and behavior

Designing for transparency and reliability

Emerging technologies and their effects on society

Design tools for ethics

Future challenges for design

INTERACTING WITH NEW INTELLIGENCES

How artificial intelligence transforms artifacts (objects, spaces) and their interaction modalities

Embodying artificial intelligence through design; tangible forms and appearances of AI

How products’ aesthetics and user experience will change through AI:

At home, living experience in the private domain

At work, working experience in the semi-public domain

In society, connected experience in the public domain

FUTURE ROLES OF DESIGNERS

In designing for complexity

In creating new forms of artificial intelligence and interactions with them

In designing for society

In designing with technology for social innovation

Submissions

We invite authors to submit high-quality, previously unpublished, original contributions that explore one or more conference topics. Submitted papers (both full and short) will be assessed through a double-blind review process and accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Contributions can fall into one of the following categories:

Full papers (Oral presentation)

Full papers should be up to twelve pages (including references). Submissions should be anonymized for double-blind review. Accepted papers will be given a 20 minute presentation slot at the conference and will be included in the proceedings.

Short papers (Demonstration + Poster)

Short papers should be up to six pages (including references). Submissions should be anonymized for double-blind review. Short papers should describe actual design or art projects, which will be presented through live demos and posters during the conference. Submitters of short papers are also encouraged to provide in their papers a link to download media demonstrating their results, whether images, videos, or other media types. All content should be anonymized for double-blind review. Short papers will be included in the proceedings.

How to submit your paper

Please submit your proposal through the Easy-Chair platform. If you are a new user of Easy-Chair, you will be required to create an account. Once you are logged in, click again on the below link to ensure that you are visualizing the DeSForM 2019 page. The uploaded file must be in PDF format and should not exceed 20 MB.

See https://desform19.org for more information.

Held at the MIT Design Lab, the DeSForM conference intends to explore the implications of recent and emerging technological transformations

KEY DATES

NOV 15, 2018

Submission opening

MARCH 1, 2019

Full/Short paper submission deadline

MAY 1, 2019

Notification of acceptance

MAY 1, 2019

Conference registration opening

MAY 31, 2019

Camera ready paper deadline

MAY 31, 2019

Early bird registration closing

SEPT 15, 2019

Conference registration closing

SEPT 30, 2019

Seminar/Workshop registration closing

OCT 9, 2019

Conference starts

URBAN SOUND SYMPOSIUM | April 3-5, 2019 in Ghent, Belgium - Soundscape hackathon

The organizing committee of the International Urban Sound Symposium is proud to announce the first Soundscape Hackathon! This hackathon is held as a satellite event to the main symposium, and will take place in parallel to the symposium in De Krook, the new media centre of Ghent.

Goal and objectives

The goal of the soundscape hackathon is to generate awareness and create support for the design of urban soundscapes, and ultimately to foster the introduction of urban soundscape design in education and practice.

During the soundscape hackathon, teams of up to 4 people compete to redesign and improve the soundscape at selected urban open spaces worldwide. Teams are provided with high-quality immersive audiovisual recordings (360-degree video and spatial audio), collected within the framework of the Urban Soundscapes of the World project, in cities such as Berlin, Montreal, Hong Kong, Chicago or New York. Teams are required to develop software to alter the spatial audio recordings by adding or suppressing sounds originating from various directions, and subsequently to design a series of scenarios that present an improvement of the soundscape based on the original recordings.

An international jury will evaluate the designed sound environments and the way they are presented in VR to lay persons and professionals, and will award the winning team.

Planning

Teams will be given a detailed task description and all materials on Wednesday April 3 at 9 am, and they will have time to actively work on their project until Friday April 5 at noon. Participants of the soundscape hackathon are free to attend any of the lectures at the Urban Sound Symposium if they desire to do so.

On Friday April 5 in the afternoon, the teams will present their results to the jury and to any interested participants of the Urban Sound Symposium, during a demo session at De Krook.

Note that teams cannot claim ownership of their designs or of the supporting software.

Where will it take place?

The soundscape hackathon will take place in the brand new media centre of Ghent, called De Krook. This venue houses the library of Ghent, together with the media labs of Ghent University and imec. It is located within the city center of Ghent, only a 10-minute walk from Het Pand where the main symposium takes place. The media lab will provide one computer and one set of VR glasses for each team. Furthermore, the media lab is equiped with a state-of-the-art Iosono wave field synthesis system provided by Barco Audio Technologies (see pictures on the right), which can be used by the teams to test their acoustic designs. Technical staff will be available to support playback of spatial audio on this system.

Who can participate?

Teams of up to 4 people are invited to apply for the soundscape hackathon. We specifically target master students, PhD students and postdocs in acoustics, architecture, computer science, urban design or any related field, with an interest in soundscape design and virtual reality. The hackathon is open to people of all nationalities.

How to apply?

To apply for the soundscape hackathon, please send the following to [email protected] before January 31, 2019:

The name of the team

The names of the members of the team (4 members maximum)

A short CV of each team member (1 page maximum per CV)

A joint motivation letter (1 page maximum)

A limited number of teams will be selected on the basis of their CV’s and motivation letter; selected teams will be announced in the course of February 2019, and will be provided with the detailed regulations of the hackathon in due time.

Participation to the hackathon is free of charge. Participants have to cover travel and accommodation expenses themselves, but several alternative accommodation options close to the hackathon venue will be proposed by the organizers.

Award

The winning team will receive an award in cash of 1.500 euro.

ICA 2019 – Call for Papers

The German Acoustical Society (DEGA) is pleased to invite you to the 23rd International Congress on Acoustics - ICA 2019 - in the beautiful and historical city of Aachen. The ICA 2019 takes place from 9 to 13 September 2019. It will also include the 4th EAA Euroregio conference. Registration and submission of abstracts is now officially open. You are welcome to join the global community of acousticians at ICA and submit your abstract until 1 February. *Official Call for Papers: www.ica2019.org/authors/call-for-papers * *Conference Website and registration: www.ica2019.org * We are looking forward to seeing you in Aachen next summer. With our very best regards, ICA 2019 organizing team Michael Vorländer (Congress Chair) Janina Fels (Congress Vice-Chair) Martin Ochmann (Program Chair)

Research Fellow: Making Sense of Soundscapes

University of Salford - School of Computing, Science and Engineering

Permanent or length of contract: Fixed Term - 10 months

Applications are invited for a Research Fellow to join an EPSRC-funded project “Making Sense of Sounds” for 10 months starting January 2019. The project is investigating how to make sense from sound data, focussing on how to convert sound recordings into understandable and actionable information, and specifically how to allow people to search, browse and interact with sounds. We have several outcomes for individual sounds and we now wish to investigate time-varying real urban soundscapes.

You will be responsible for measuring and modelling how people perceive urban sound scenes, using quantitative and qualitative methods.

Your work will lead to new representations of human processing of everyday sound, and will be exploited by machine listening researchers on the project.

You will have a PhD in experimental psychology, psychoacoustics, audio perception or a research topic with significant content directly relevant to understanding perception. You are expected to have significant research experience in designing perceptual studies, preferably for sound and in multidimensional statistical analysis. Research experience in physiological response to sound and programming in Matlab, Python or R are desirable.

The project is led by Prof Mark Plumbley in the Centre for Vision Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) at the University of Surrey. You will be based in the Acoustics Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Salford and work under the direction of Prof Bill Davies and Prof Trevor Cox.

The ARC is one of the two large acoustics research groups in the UK. Key areas include human response to sound and vibration, audio signal processing and reproduction, building and architectural acoustics, environmental noise, soundscapes, outdoor sound propagation, remote acoustic sensing of metrological conditions and transducer design. The Centre has state-of-the-art acoustics laboratories, including an anechoic chamber, two semi-anechoic chambers, a listening room and a spatial audio booth.

Informal enquires are welcome, to: Prof Bill Davies ([email protected]) or Prof Trevor Cox ([email protected]).

Expected start date: As soon as possible

Please note the vacancy closes at 23:59 on the date provided.

All appointments will be made on merit, and as an equal opportunities employer, we welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons. In recognition of our commitment to create a diverse team that draws from our widest talent pool we would particularly encourage applications from groups who are currently under-represented at this level, which in this case is our female applicants.

For more information and to apply for this vacancy please visit: www.jobs.salford.ac.uk

Interview date: TBC

At the University of Salford we are committed to an inclusive approach to promoting equality and diversity.

Conference Announcement: Acoustics of Empire ( December 7-8, 2018, University of Cambridge)

The long 19th century was a period of dramatic political, scientific and technological change. Both sound studies and global/postcolonial studies have focused on this period, but have largely done so independently of one another. This conference raises questions of how sound and sound technologies were bound up in colonial and imperial practices, and how that global political context simultaneously shaped the science and practice of hearing and thinking about sound. In short, how might we imagine a global history of 19th-century acoustics and aurality?

More details here, including the full conference programme

Participants:

Peter McMurray, co-organizer (University of Cambridge)

Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, co-organizer (Yale University)

Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford)

Alejandra Bronfman (SUNY Albany)

Hyung Kyong Hannah Chang (Sungkonghoe University)

Nicholas Cook (University of Cambridge)

James Davies (UC Berkeley)

Ziad Fahmy (Cornell University)

Alexandra Hui (Mississippi State University)

Nazan Maksudyan (Humboldt Universitaet Berlin)

Jairo Moreno (University of Pennsylvania)

Anindita Nag (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

Rumya Putcha (Texas A&M University)

Sindumathi Revuluri (Harvard University)

Gavin Steingo (Princeton University)

David Trippett (University of Cambridge)

Richard Williams (SOAS University of London)

Part of the ERC-funded project Sound and Materialism in the 19th Century.

Questions? Contact [email protected]

New podcasts online

Podcast Thirteen is online, which features artist Tim Shaw. This is the final podcast of The Dominant Eye series. In addition, the closing panel discussion of the “The Ecology of Sound” symposium can be auditioned on the Podcast page. The podcasts can be found here, or go directly to Podcast Thirteen by following this link, or to the closing panel discussion via this link.

Issue 17 of JSS online

We are proud to announce that Issue 17 of JSS is now online. This issue again is a special issue, this time centred around sonic information design. Guest editors for this issue are David Worrall and Stephen Barrass. Sonic Information Design refers to the design of sounds to provide useful information in applications that have impact in our daily lives. The articles in this special issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies on Sonic Information Design had their origins as responses to the theme of the 22nd International Conference for Auditory Display, held in Canberra, Australia in 2016. JSS 17 includes the following papers:

Editorial: On Sonic Information Design - David Worrall and Stephen Barrass

Sonic Information Design - Stephen Barrass

Addressing the Mapping Problem in Sonic Information Design through Embodied Image Schemata, Conceptual Metaphors, and Conceptual Blending - Stephen Roddy and Brian Bridges

Sonifying for Public Engagement: A Context-Based Model for Socially Relevant Data - Milena Droumeva and Marc St Pierre

The Planetorium: Sonic Information Design for Earthling Audiences - R. Michael Winters, Avrosh Kumar, Brianna J. Tomlinson and Bruce N. Walker

Sonic Information Design for the Display of Proteomic Data - William L. Martens

Informative Sound Assists Timing in a Simple Visual Decision-Making Task - Keith Nesbitt, Paul Williams, Patrick Ng, Karen Blackmore and Ami Eidels

OPEN CALL FOR AUDIO PAPERS | AUDIO PAPER SYMPOSIUM - Performative formats and sonic argumentation, 10‑11 December 2018

OPEN CALL FOR AUDIO PAPERS

Deadline: November 1, 2018

AUDIO PAPER SYMPOSIUM - Performative formats and sonic argumentation / 10‑11 December 2018, Red Room, IAC

Malmö Academy of Music and the section of Musicology, Lund University hereby wish to announce a symposium on the publication format of Audio Papers.

We also invite you to submit audio papers proposals, which may be ﬁnished or presented as work‑in‑progress, to the event.

The symposium will bring scholars and artists from a wide range of practices in sound art and sound studies together. The format is that of a small-scale conference, with presentations and discussions of concrete matters of submitted audio papers. Following on from a series of laboratories at the Inter Arts Center (10‑11 December 2018, Red Room) this symposium widens the perspective on the novel practice of making audio papers by inviting two keynote speakers who represent adjacent and parallel developments in ﬁlm studies and sound art, Miklós Kiss and Svetlana Maraš.

Convenors:

Sanne Krogh Groth, associate professor, Division of Musicology, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences

Stefan Östersjö, chaired professor of musical performance at Piteå School of Music, Luleå

Technical University and associate professor of artistic research at the Malmö Academy of Music

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please submit your proposal no later than November 1, 2018.

Format of submission:

‑ Title of audio paper

‑ Abstract (150‑200 words)

‑ Bibliography

‑ Biography (100 words)

Although the format is ﬂexible, we welcome shorter audio papers of 12‑15 min. If possible, please also submit an audio ﬁle with an extract of the audio paper!

Proposals should be sent to [email protected] no later than November 1, 2018.

Read more about the audio paper here: http://seismograf.org/fokus/fluid-sounds/audio_paper_manifesto

Call for Papers | Sound Thought 2018: Signal

Sound Thought 2018: Signal

Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow

November 15-18, 2018

Sound Thought is an annual festival of music and sound research, composition, and performance run by postgraduate students from the University of Glasgow. Sound Thought presents a unique opportunity for postgraduate researchers by providing them with a platform to present their research in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment alongside the work of contemporary practitioners.

The theme, Signal, will be explored by exhibiting works contextualised by the following subthemes:

Signs of change

Signalling new forms of expression in music and the arts; cultural trends

Communication and protest

New methods of communication and collaboration in the face of adversity

Analog and digital signals

Developments in technology and their integration into practice and research

Call for Submissions and Proposals

The Sound Thought committee welcomes submissions from postgraduate researchers, academics, professionals, and practitioners of music, sound art, and electronic and audiovisual media, as well as from artists in other fields.

Submission of installations, performances, and fixed-media works are welcome. If you have an additional form or idea, please feel free to contact us to discuss your idea. We also welcome the submission of works currently in progress.

Further information and application forms are available from www.soundthought.co.uk.

The deadline for submissions of proposals is October 24, 2018.

Call for Papers | Inter-Noise session on Soundscapes from a Humanities/Arts Perspective

INTER-NOISE 2019 Madrid June 16-19

Session 13.08: Soundscapes from a Humanities/Arts Perspective

Session organized by Marcel Cobussen (Leiden University, NL) and Vincent Meelberg (Radboud University, NL)

The reduction of unwanted sounds in public spaces is usually equated with noise abatement measures and traditionally expressed in decibels. The more dB(A) a particular measure is able to suppress, the more efficient this measure is considered to be. While suppression indeed can be an effective way to deal with unwanted sounds, research makes clear that the volume is not always the main cause of noise pollution. Specific frequencies and/or vibrations with a limited amount of dB(A) can also have a significant influence on how people experience a public sonic atmosphere. At the same time, loud soundscanmask other, more irritating ones and thus have a positive influence on the way a specific space is encountered.

Besides the direct physical influence of sound on the well-being of living creatures, sound also plays an important role on a socio-political and even ethical level. Important issues are: who or what is producing a sound? Can (annoying) sounds in public spaces somehow be controlled, managed, or manipulated? Who is appropriating a specific public space through sound and who is – sonically, socially or otherwise – excluded? Who controls and determines the sonic atmosphere of a public space? When can unwanted sounds be heard? What are the expectations concerning the sonic atmosphere that listeners have?

In other words, non-acoustic variables should be taken into account too when evaluating a sonic environment: personal characteristics and circumstances (sound sensitivity, attitudes, expectations), situational aspects (the number of sound sources, the presence or absence of silent spaces), and contextual variables (how authorities react to possible complaints).

This session is organized as a spatial-temporal event where presenters and audience can discuss the complexity of analyzing and (re)designing a sonic environment. Potential topics may include but are not restricted to:

- Rethinking noise

- The socio-political dimensions of sonic spaces

- The role of sound art in transforming a sonic space

- Affective tonalities

- Sonic commons

- The ethics of sound

- The policy of frequency and vibrational forces (including infra- and ultrasound)

All abstracts (max. 500 words) for this session must be send as either a Word file or a PDF to [email protected]. Deadline for abstract submission is November 15, 2018. Abstract acceptance notice will be sent to the authors by the end of December 2018 via e-mail.

The congress fees (including 21% VAT):

- Early Full Delegate: 575,00 EUR

- Early Student: 180,00 EUR

- Accompanying Persons: 150,00 EUR

- Extra Paper: 100,00 EUR

Important deadlines:

- Abstract submission Deadline by November 15, 2018 (which must be send to noise@sonicstudies .org!)

- Manuscript Submission Deadline by March 1, 2019

- Early Registration Deadline May 15, 2019

For further information please visit the congress website: www.internoise2019.org

Call for Papers | SONOLOGIA 2019: I/O – International Conference on Sound Studies

SONOLOGIA 2019: I/O – International Conference on Sound Studies

April 9-12, 2019 – São Paulo, Brazil

DEADLINE: November 1 st , 2018.

In 2016 we had the first edition of SONOLOGIA: International Conference on Sound Studies, a transdisciplinary event attended by researchers from seventeen countries and five continents with contributions from fields of study as broad as music, sound art, anthropology, visual arts, theatre, literature, architecture, history, sociology, media studies, gender studies, among others. This second edition of the event proposes the theme I/O. An acronym which, metaphorically mobilized, provides a powerful way of addressing the diverse and problematic relations between the “I” and the “other”, as well as “inside” and “outside”.

This second edition of SONOLOGIA: International Conference on Sound Studies proposes the theme I/O. An acronym which, metaphorically mobilized, provides a powerful way of addressing the diverse and problematic relations between the “I” and the “other”, as well as “inside” and “outside”. By focusing on matters of alterity, subjectivities, limits, boundaries and crossings – either cultural, territorial or disciplinary – we invite papers devoted to particular and contingent relations that take to task hegemonic theories and practices in sound studies. Although the pairing of categories may indicate opposing notions, by retaining the slash [/] we intend to focus on inquiries that disrupt the limits of each category and suggest possible continuities, exchanges and intertwinements between the terms of the relation.

• Politics of sound and sound making. Institutionalization of artistic practices and research. Sound activism. Violence, war, control tactics and sonic torture.

• The role of technique and technology in listening and sound making. Critical perspectives on the repurposing of technology, precariousness, experimental lutherie.

• Discourses on listening and sound practices. Aspects of legitimacy, politics, place, alterity, gender or race, from the perspective of non-binary, non-normatives, post-colonial or counter-hegemonic epistemologies.

• Identity and alterity in sound practices in Latin America. Discussions regarding hybridity, interculturalism, miscegenation, transnationality.

• Sound materiality and immateriality. Critical inquiries regarding sonic materialisms and the limits of aurality. Ontological debates about sound and audio culture.

• Sound and territoriality. Politics of space and poetics of memory and forgetting within practices such as site-specific art, installations, soundscapes, sound walks, field recording, sonic cartographies.

• Crossovers between sound, voice, body and visuality. Studies on presence, performances and artistic practices related to theatre, dance, audiovisual, performance and literature, regarding its contingencies and particularities.

• (In)disciplines of sonic creative processes. Limits and ruptures in collective or individual creative practices. Human/non-human interaction. Alternative proposals of documenting and sharing creative processes.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Jonathan Sterne (McGill University) and Susan Campos-Fonseca (Universidad de Costa Rica) The conference will happen in São Paulo, Brazil, in April 9-12, 2019. Activities will be held at the Centro de Pesquisa e Formação of SESC.

Language and format

The official language of the event is English. However, inspired by the theme of the conference – I/O – we encourage that participants strive to relate in a flexible and inclusive manner with the language issue during the conference. In line with this perspective, we invite submissions of extended abstracts in either English, Portuguese or Spanish. Afterwards selected participants shall submit their complete papers, and present them in the conference, in English.

We accept alternative formats of papers that reflect critical and creative necessities of theoretical, practice-based or artistic research. However, the use of special technical resources needs to be evaluated jointly with the organizing committee. Paper presentations should last 20 minutes followed by up to 10 minutes of questions.

Submission guidelines

Please submit your extended abstract (in Portuguese, Spanish or English) of a max. 800 words, and a short bio (50 words) no later than November 1st, 2018 by 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time (GMT -3) to [email protected]. Please allow 24-48 hours for confirmed reception.

Selected presentations will need to submit camera-ready papers (in English) by February 25th 2019 with a provided (by us) ODT/ MS Word templates (max. 7000 words in A4 format). The papers will be published online in the conference proceedings.

Important Dates

• Submissions deadline: November 1, 2018

• Selection results: December 17, 2018

• Camera-ready paper deadline: February 25, 2019

For more information:

http://www2.eca.usp.br/sonologia/2019/

Seminar - Affective Atmospheres: Site-specific sound, neighborhood music and the social formation

Affective Atmospheres: Site-specific sound, neighborhood music and the social formation

Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut, 29th – 30th November 2018

The seminar invites scholarly and artistic contributions that make stimulating and fertile connections between sound and the society. The aim is to consider the idea of social formation (Althusser et al) that comprises an ever-evolving atmosphere of a place. Sonic atmosphere (aka ambience or ambient sound) indicates the essential background sounds, which are present in a site, place, area or location. From a position of social awareness, it is crucial to understand how the emergent and contingent sonic atmosphere of a site is constituted with multiple social influences, including but not limited to neighboring and socially diffused music and site-specific sounds that are part of the everyday ambience, which is not static but historically transformative. Likewise, social music (LaBelle 2001), as well as sounds and music diffused in urban or rural environment (e.g. Azaan or street demonstration) generate site-specific associations e.g. emanating from and reflected within a specific locale, or city. These elements require critical listening and investigation not only to understand the atmospheric layers they may suggest, but also to speculate their historical constituents as well as their contribution to or influences from the processes of social formation. Often such an inclusive idea of atmosphere proliferates a sense of plurality and multiplicity embedded in the public and social life of a place engaging the sociality in a more affective means. In this seminar, the various everyday iterations and social aspects of site-specific music and sound will be examined to locate how they engage with the contingent collectivity and fluid historicity of the site within a spirit of inclusion, contributing to the studies of sound, ambiances and social life. A series of concerts and live performances by invited artists, and screening of a number of film and video works will complement and enrich the discourse of the seminar with a practice-based approach.

Contributions are invited with a concern for the following broad areas of research/practice:

1. Music as atmosphere

2. Everyday sounds and social life

3. Sound and the neighborhood

4. Site-specificity of sound

5. Diegetic music in film and media

6. Live music performances on the street

7. Radio broadcast and urban memory

8. Ambience and sound of public spaces

9. Acoustic territories of urban living

10. Domestic sound

11. Literary description of sound from a place

12. Social music

13. Religious music in urban environment

14. Archival field recordings

15. Migration and new sounds in the city

Keynote speakers:

Professor David Toop, CRiSAP, University of the Arts, London

Professor Marcel Cobussen, ACPA, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University

Professor Cathy Lane, CRiSAP, University of the Arts, London

Prof. Ashish Avikunthak, Harrington School of Communication, University of Rhode Island.

Other invited speakers:

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Beirut, Lebanon/Goldsmiths, University of London

Dr. Friedlind Riedel, Bauhaus-University-Weimar

Dr. Maria Papadomanolaki, University of Brighton

Dr. Anette Vandsø, Center for Sound Studies, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut

Concerts (in association with Irtijal | International Festival of Experimental Music in Lebanon):

Schedule: 29thand 30th November, 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm.

Venue: Beirut Art Center, Jisr El Wati area/Souk el Ahad - Off Corniche an Naher - Behind Impex Chevrolet, highway side. Building 13, Street 97, Zone 66 Adlieh, Beirut, Lebanon.

Potential concert performances by:

David Toop, CRiSAP, University of the Arts, London

Cathy Lane, CRiSAP, University of the Arts, London

Lasse-Marc Riek, Gruenrekorder, Frankfurt am Main

Maria Papadomanolaki, University of Brighton

Jad Saliba, Sonology, The Royal Conservatory, The Hague

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut

William Joshua Hudelson, FAAS (Music), American University of Beirut.

Screenings: Auditorium B,American University of Beirut.

Kalkimanthankatha (The Churning of Kalki, Ashish Avikunthak 2015)

Presence (2012) and In Transience(2013) from Behind the Tin Sheetsproject

Talking Field (Budhaditya Chattopadhyay 2017)

Publication:

Selected papers and keynotes will be published in a future issue of a peer-reviewed journal.

Organized by Dr. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut, with supports from the International Ambiances Network.

Bold Tendencies Sonic Journal Workshop - Sunday 16 September, 2pm - 4pm

Book tickets HERE

Suitable for all ages

Siân Lyn Hutchings & The Noematic Collective present their Sonic Journal Workshop, a unique session tailored toward the Bold Tendencies Sonic Journal Library.

This workshop comprises ‘ear cleaning’ exercises first developed by Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist R Murray Schafer to re-engage the ears through a process of active listening. Taking as its impetus that our brain only retains 20% of what it hears a daywhat happens to the other 80%?Participants are encouraged to think about dormant, active and extinct sounds as a way of categorising their environment. They will then make their own sonic journal for the day through drawings, writings and recordings. It does not matter how participants choose to document their choice of sound, what is important is a focus on an active listening process.The outcome of the workshop is to teach participants the difference between active listening and hearing: to open their ears to the wealth of sounds and information around them, and to re-engage their sense of listening alongside visual perception.

4 Holly Grove, Peckham

London SE15 5DF

England

boldtendencies.com

Bold Tendencies COBRA Workshop - Saturday 15 September, 2pm - 4pm

Book tickets HERE

Suitable for all ages

Siân Lyn Hutchings & The Noematic Collective present COBRA, a new workshop that draws from the work of American composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, fostering an acute awareness of our surrounding sonic ecologies and the inherent musicality of day-to-day objects.

Using the Bold Tendencies site as a base to generate experimental compositions, objects will be chosen by The Noematic Collective for their predominantly visual function. These objects will then be transformed into instruments, changing the way we perceive those objects into sonic forms. Following John Zorn’s 1988 album Cobra, The Collective will generate a composition with participants.

The workshop will look to foreground our sonic awareness of objects and build on alternative ways of understanding daily experience. Without the prerequisite of formal training, participants will organise sounds around themselves through experimental conducting techniques, providing them with the ability to remediate the soundscapes of their day-to-day lives.

4 Holly Grove, Peckham

London SE15 5DF

England

boldtendencies.com

Bold Tendencies The Ecology of Sound - Thursday 20 September, 6.30pm - 8.30pm

The Ecology of Sound is a symposium to mark the culmination of The Dominant Eye, a project by Sian Lyn Hutchings and The Noematic Collective, commissioned by and hosted this summer at Bold Tendencies. The Dominant Eye has seen the creation of a new site-specific Sonic Library at the car park. The Library is an evolving holding of field recordings made by visitors, members of staff and guests, archiving the wide variety of sounds that can be recorded on site, from orchestral music to dramatic readings of wall text, spoken diary entries to improvised poetry. These sounds are recorded on cassette tapes, indexed and installed in the Straw Auditorium designed by Practice Architecture. The Sonic Library will form a permanent addition to the site.

Throughout the project, Sian, who is based in Newcastle at Northumbria University, has broadcast into the car park a series of podcasts with colleagues - artists, researchers and writers - all of who share a concern with the dominance of the visual in 21st century culture. For The Ecology of Sound Sian is bringing together artist and writer Salomé Voegelin, artist Tim Shaw, writer and artist Andy Weir, and artist Angus Carlyle to discuss the hierarchy of the senses and how we can better utilise other modes of perception to navigate and construct meaning from experience. The event will focus on how sound is currently used in day-to-day experience, and how it could be further extended to enhance a multi-sensory experience of pedestrian life.

Following a roundtable discussion there will be a series of 4-channel sonic performances from world renowned soundscape composer Barry Truax, as well as from The Noematic Collective itself.

Book to attend the Symposium HERE

4 Holly Grove, Peckham

London SE15 5DF

England

boldtendencies.com

New podcasts online

Podcasts Eleven and Twelve are online. In Podcast Eleven Siân Lyn Hutchings interviews Alison Carlier, while Podcast Twelve features Simón Granell. The podcasts can be found here, or go directly to Podcast Eleven by following this link, or to Podcast Twelve via this link.

New Podcast online

Podcast Ten is online, this time with Caroline A. Jones, Professor in the History, Theory, Criticism section of the Department of Architecture at MIT. The podcasts can be found here, or go directly to Podcast Ten by following this link.

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Journal of Sonic Studies