HAVN presents the Sonic Art Series
The Sonic Art Series (SAS) represents a continuation of HAVN’s mission, to support the development, exhibition, documentation, and dispersal of sound, images, and ideas. This is demonstrated through experimental and innovative art programming that features emerging and diverse groups of artists. SAS will celebrate ALL THINGS SOUND! This curated program features contemporary sound art practice in Canada. SAS will be presenting sound artists whose audible artworks connect ideas of sound with space; analog/digital audio in combination with physical sculpture; sound and performance art; improvised sound; visualizations of sound; as well as coded and interactive sound. This series has been generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
Jamie Beverley is a programmer-artist based in Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario. Jamie’s artistic practice is rooted in musical live-coding using Tidalcycles and SuperCollider. He has been a member of McMaster University’s Cybernetic Orchestra since 2014, and has performed (solo or collaboratively) at three international conferences (ICLC 2016/2017, NIME 2017).
Smartphone Soundscapes is an improvised musical live coding performance distributed over audience smartphones. Lend your phone to the Smartphone Soundscapes network and appreciate your unique position in an evolving array of smartphone speakers that is supported by a stereo PA system. In this performance I will navigate a diverse range of soundscapes that are made possible by a large collection of audience devices capable of processing and synthesizing sounds. Through a custom-built live coding interface programmed in Tidalcycles and SuperCollider I will write code to orchestrate sounds on audience devices that are connected to the network. A web application hosted over the network receives messages from my computer, and leverages Web Audio technology to synthesize sounds. By projecting my computer screen, I invite the audience to engage with my code and recognize how changes made to the algorithms are reflected in the soundscape.
CYBERNETIC ORCHESTRA - LIVE CODE Workshop
SAS has partnered with different members of McMaster University’s Cybernetic Orchestra who will lead people through the basics of making art and music using programming languages. Languages include Fluxus, Glitch, TidalCycles, and SuperCollider
No experience is necessary. Bring a laptop computer if you can (but some extra computers will be on hand for those unable to bring a computer).
FREE EVENT // FREE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
NICOLE RAMPERSAUD - Improvisation Workshop
Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Toronto-based, Filipino-Canadian artist. She works within the realm of sculpture, installation, performance, sound sculptures, tattoos and social practices. Her practice investigates issues relating to pathways of socio-political intersections across pre-colonial, post-colonial and contemporary transnational identities across multiple geographical spaces.
Landing is a sound performance that alludes to processes involved in construction/demolition sites and physicist, Werner Heisenberg’s theory: Uncertainty Principle. The theory became one of the concepts of quantum mechanics as it pertains to the ultimate mathematical impossibility of precisely determining a particle’s specific location and its momentum, simultaneously. The work, both in form and in concept, demonstrates the theory and metaphorically points to the precarious nature of human existence in the within post- modernity. Socio-economic interdependence in the global scale creates a sense of instability as changes are being introduced to us in an accelerating pace. Moments of stillness are fleeting and relative to our consciousness and perception as we respond to our peripheral and immediate environments. Everything is held in a state consisting of balance and friction, suspended in tension between impending collapse and regeneration.
Sonia Paço-Rocchia is an improviser, composer, sound artist, installation artist, maker, live coder, live electronics musician. Her work has been presented all over North America and Europe. Improvising, she uses a myriad of sound-makers, invented instruments and sound automata, voice and mostly bassoon, along with live electronics.
A performance for sound automatons made from saw blades, musical saw, stemsaw, other instruments derived from blades and live electronics.
The word «Scies» is the french word for saws and is pronounced exactly like the word «see».
This piece is a comment on the contrast between the rough and dangerous and the meditative and enchanting.
A side effect of this performance is it seems to compel people into making puns…
«Literally at the cutting edge of music. »
«Scies: You never saw a performance like this.»«Sonia Paço-Rocchia is a _keen_ coder, _sharp_ improviser and _cut out_ for instrument making.» «Her well-honed performances really have teeth!» «You can not forge a cutting-edge performance like this.»
Ramsha Shakeel is an emerging experimental musician and multimedia artist based in Toronto. Having performed solo and collaborative works in Berlin, Karachi and Toronto, her approach to experimentation continues to address the metaphysical tryst human beings share with the unknown.
Time is a vast concept and difficult to define the form of. We find it naturally conceivable to design space as we enter it and navigate through it, however, our concept of time remains somewhat linear, apart from when we dream or imagine. We should be capable of naturally perceiving time beyond linear concepts and be able to ‘design’ it as we ‘navigate’ through it. Routine tasks reinforce our conformed perception of time every single day. I intend to seize this opportunity to allow the audience to interact with these sandglass clocks, take time in their hands literally, and pour those fine grains of each fleeting moment as they find fit, sculpting the sonic responses using this sand to their liking.
MEREDITH JAY (Factory Media Centre)
Meredith Jay (b.1988) is a multidisciplinary artist who received a BFA in studio art from Concordia University. Located in Toronto, she makes sculptural installations that merge the digital and physical, as well as, sound, drawing, video and film. Through ritual and devotion Jay invokes and questions human behaviour and the collective memory.
“Sacred Space”
The intermedia installation Sacred Space functions as an inner sanctuary for the physical, and digital sculptural bodies exhibited. The Illusory holographic images float within the healing structures, generating a place of refuge from the persistent transience of home and loss of home. Our belonging is envisioned as a temple within one’s self.
DEREK JENKINS (Factory Media Centre)
Derek Jenkins is a multidisciplinary artist based in Hamilton ON. His practice is handmade, personal, and documentary, with an interest in labour and the domestic. He works at Niagara Custom Lab.
“The E6 Process” attends to the invisible labour beneath moving images. It is a work about work: the unseen beneath the seen, the heard beneath the unheard. It is subterranean. Assembled over months, it depicts the E6 process in one of the few remaining North American labs doing such work. With the last colour reversal motion picture stock discontinued in 2012, these recordings document a precarious ritual.
Recording the process–largely performed in darkness–with various microphones and techniques, the piece narrates the revelation of exposed images from beginning to end. Embodied and disembodied, it both tracks the worker and follows the film into the machine itself. Paired with the latent object of this labour, the piece invites listeners to hear and feel their way into the motion picture image.
Montreal-based artist Eccinaccea produces Life-form Interface Files for Y6K. Currently activity comprises transformation and recontextualization of found generative material: readymade tools such as C# code, 3D models, and modal synthesis units. Their work embraces the poetic, sensual, and illuminating potential of the artifacts that emerge from virtuality and technological processes.
An ambient installation in virtual space for 360 video/audio on VR headset, addressing the following:
When biotech, nanotech, and the IoT mature, will a breath mint have access to the cloud? Post-singularity, how will sentient (in)animate objects reproduce? Will they take inspiration from the myriad forms of (a)sexuality seen in The Three Domains of Life? Will the filmic depiction of such acts read more like XXX, Planet Earth, or How It’s Made?
Will all AI be godlike, or will some consciousnesses choose a simpler, more instinct-driven life experience (such as that of a worm or barnacle)?
When a cyborg wants to get “back to nature”, how will they choose to experience it? Will they unplug, or simply invoke a simulation? What new forms of pleasure will they encounter and design?
Josh Baptista describes himself as a Multimedia & Interaction Artist. His focus is on combining the physical and digital realms in unique ways. Carrying a Bachelor’s degree in Interaction Design, he does this both for passion and profession. Most of his work derives from an obsession to challenge the methods and mediums we use to interact with sound.
Dampening is an experiment using material to impact a sonic waveform. The double entendre speaks to the interaction itself; the dampening of material becomes the dampening of the waveform. Imagine hearing a loud sound in an empty warehouse. Now fill that warehouse with pillows, and cloth and foam and sponges. How would the absorption affect the sound? This is what I am exploring in this work.
The form and aesthetic of the installation treats a waveform as if it were a specimen in a lab experiment. The participant causes a reaction by applying water with the dropper. It is the notion that one can physically feel how dampened this imaginary space is through the moisture in the sponge. The dropper increases control, allowing participants to experience the nuanced effect it has on the sound.
Adam Basantais a Montreal-based sound artist. Across disciplines and media, he interrogates intersections between conceptual and sensorial dimensions of listening, and the intertwining of human behaviour and mass-produced consumer devices.
He has exhibited at Carroll/Fletcher Gallery (UK), National Art Centre Tokyo (JPN), American Medium Gallery (NYC), Moscow Biennale for Young Art (RUS), and The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA).
“A Line Listening to Itself”
8’ x 3’ x 5’. Microphone, boom stand, 7 reclaimed speaker cones, cables, electronics.
A single microphone tilted at a slight angle points downwards towards an extended line of reclaimed speaker cones. Using computer-controlled feedback networks, the microphone listens to its own amplification through each speaker, generating a 7 note feedback chord. Each tone in the chord emerges from a single speaker, undulating individually and collectively as the computer software adjusts itself to the changing acoustic environment.
Starting from silence, each chord begins slowly, building one note at a time until the full chord rings out; following, each note begins to fade, leading back to silence. This sonic ebb and flow takes place over 4-6 minutes, functioning as a slow breathing rhythm on a scale dwarfing human breath. As one chord ends, it gives rise to a new chord, leading to an ever-changing harmonic cycle.
Born, Barri Biederman in Toronto, early passions included designing 80’s aerobic wear/forceful sibling choreography. Throughout various studies and travels, I painted and followed underground music. I spent 13 years as a support/Harm Reduction worker. I recently created some large scale public murals with youth. I finally decided, instead of getting old, I’d work backwards, and realize my dream of creating indie music. Instead of having kids, I got a computer!
BooArtBiz is the visual art I’ve created since 1999 and bBomit is the music art I’ve created since 2013. This performance is a meeting of both facets, centred around the theme of a struggle between technology and health. As our technological selves grow and flourish our physical flesh selves diminish and mutate. We have entered a new era of sacrifice: our old fashioned life expectancies traded for the digital promise of foreverness.
My newer artwork emerges from a deep family tragedy that changed my world this past year. I always approach societal issues with a sense of humour, and eclectic palate. I embrace the dark and light together in a maximalist, expressionist, outpour. With U.C.L.B. I will perform bBomit music with a shifting backdrop of BooArtBiz paintings, including new music/visual pieces created specifically for this exhibit. I hope to inspire participants to ultimately choose their own meaning and have a stimulated time.
ALLIE BLUMAS and ALEXANDER KEHN
After graduating from Concordia University in 2013 with a BFA in Contemporary Dance, Allie moved to Toronto to further her artistic journey. As a founding member of Toronto based dance collective Open Fortress, Allie explores collaboration through movement to to explore and challenge the way dance is commonly expressed and experienced. She is also a member of the musical group DOOMSQUAD and a founding member of Heretical Objects Cooperative.
Alexander Kehn is an art-school and Earth sciences drop out who is a connoisseur of moments ranging from the aurora borealis to a good bowl of ramen. Alexander creates illustrations, animations, and sounds, and performs in the musical groups Beige, and Grouphug.
Untitled (working title): 30 minute sound/dance performance by Alexandra Blumas and Alexander Kehn
This piece, currently untitled, is an exploration of sound through the moving body. It’s about fine-tuning our understanding of our intimate selves. It’s about capturing and extending the internal body functions beyond the parameters of our bones, our joints and our skin. Fusing somatic dance explorations and live sound manipulations, this 30 minute performance amplifies the subtleness of the physical self into delicate moving tapestries to be danced to, felt and heard.
This project has been generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
