research

What do we gain from public exposure to sound and how can audio be used to create urban environments that connect with the public?

Sonic Publics addresses the public presentation of sound. Audio is installed in industrial-scaled art galleries, tower lobbies, hospitals and concert hall foyers. Taking numerous forms, from compositions accompanying light environments to music designed to comfort visitors in office lobbies, audio arts presented in this way expands and shifts contemporary notions of public and private space. Sonic publics have grown rapidly, exposed knowingly or unknowingly to audio arts through large festivals focused on displays that fill their environments with sound and light to commercial environments that have placed large-scale screens and sound systems in entrance spaces.

Sonic publics, as presented in this forum, form across situations; visitors’ unheard energies are made sonic, apps such as Spotify and YouTube present algorithmically manipulated music to the public—at once diversifying and standardising music, and synthesised music is played to children in hospitals.

This forum, with its focus on the presentness of sound, asks a crucial question: What do we gain from public exposure to sound, and how can audio be used to create urban environments that connect with the public in a human-centred manner?

SPEAKERS

Chair: Associate Professor Caleb Kelly, UNSW School of Art & Design

Dr Adam Hulbert, UNSW School of the Arts & Media

Dr Tom Smith, UNSW School of the Arts & Media / UNSW School of Art & Design graduate

Dr Pia van Gelder, ANU School of Art & Design / UNSW School of Art & Design graduate

This forum will also be livestreamed: https://unsw.zoom.us/j/89794965569
Wednesday, August 7, 12 - 2pm AEST
UNSW Art & Design Paddington

part of the 2024 Research Forum examining the key research undertaken at the UNSW School of Art & Design
info via Sonic Publics ticketing site

The 2015 Totally Huge New Music Festival Symposium
Call for Papers
via http://www.tura.com.au/tura-program/the-2015-totally-huge-new-music-fest...

The 2015 Totally Huge New Music Festival Symposium
Thursday May 21
The State Library of Western Australia, Perth Cultural Centre

Theme: Western Australian Art Music: 1970 – 2014
in association with the launch of the Western Australian New Music Archive

Keynote Speakers:
Stephen Adams, Australian Music Producer, ABC Classic FM.
A/Prof Cat Hope, Project Leader, Western Australian New Music Archive.

The Australian Research Council Linkage funded Western Australian New Music Archive (WANMA) will be launched at the State Library of Western Australia on Wednesday 20th of May 2015 as part of the 12th Totally Huge New Music Festival in Perth, Western Australia.

Papers for an associated one-day symposium the following day are sought, on the theme of “Western Australian Art Music Activity: 1970 – 2014” to celebrate the launch of WANMA, a digital archive focusing on the Western Australian art music since 1970 to the present day.

The call is for papers and panel proposals around remembering Western Australian music, in particular music with links to Western Australian composers, performers, writers, events, music series, writing, artists and other associated organisations or people. Monographs on or interviews with Western Australian composers, ensemble, curators or events are particularly welcome.

Composers that are likely to feature in the early iteration of the archive include Ross Bolleter, Alan Lamb, David Pye, Cathie Travers, Hannah Clemen, Lindsay Vickery, James Ledger, Iain Gradage, Roger Smalley, Chris Tonkin, Rupert Guenther, Nela Trifkovic, Rob Muir, Stephen Benfall, Chris Cobilis and many current WA composers. Ensembles and performers such as Alea, Pi Ensemble, the WASO New Music ensemble, Axis 21, Skadada, Decibel, Magnetic Pig, Energia, Headkikr, KAK, Lux Mammoth, Smidrin, Steve Richter, The High Impedence, Jo Re Mi, Tetrafide, Defying Gravity, Schvendes and student ensembles from UWA and WAAPA past and present. Events such as Club Zho, Totally Huge New Music Festival, Scale Variable, WAAPA and UWA lunchtime concerts, Noisemachin!, Guerilla Sessions and any current activity.

The papers will be double blind peer reviewed and published in Volume 5 of “Soundscripts”.

Abstracts between 300 and 500 words due by Feb 25 2015.
Notification of acceptance 10 March 2015.
Registrations due 15 April 2015 $100 for all.

Abstracts to conference@tura.com.au

Presented by Tura, WAAPA, SLWA and The Musicological Society of Australia

female pressure is an international network of female artists in the fields of electronic music: from musicians, composers and DJs to visual artists, cultural workers and researchers. A worldwide resource of female talent that can be searched after criteria like location, profession, style or name. "Why are there so few women active in the electronic music scene?" - each one of us has heard this question a thousand times... Here is the answer: It's not our number, it's about how and if we are recognized!

female:pressure intends to strengthen networking, communication and representation - a standard instrument to obtain information about artists, contact them, and find out about other, maybe less known women working in the fields of electronic music all around the globe.

via http://www.femalepressure.net/fempress.html
visit http://www.femalepressure.net for more details

Urban Tapestries is the name of a research project and experimental software platform for knowledge mapping and sharing – public authoring – conceived and developed by Proboscis in partnership with collaborators such as the London School of Economics, Birkbeck College, Orange, HP Research labs, France Telecom R&D UK, Ordnance Survey. The original research project began in late 2002 and was completed in Autumn 2004, with a follow-on research programme of experiments with local groups and communities called Social Tapestries starting in April 2004 and completed in Summer 2007 (additional publications and outputs were released in 2008).

Urban Tapestries investigated how, by combining mobile and internet technologies with geographic information systems, people could 'author' the environment around them; a kind of Mass Observation for the 21st Century. Like the founders of Mass Observation in the 1930s, we were interested creating opportunities for an "anthropology of ourselves" – adopting and adapting new and emerging technologies for creating and sharing everyday knowledge and experience; building up organic, collective memories that trace and embellish different kinds of relationships across places, time and communities.

The Urban Tapestries software platform enabled people to build relationships between places and to associate stories, information, pictures, sounds and videos with them. It provided the basis for a series of engagements with actual communities (in social housing, schools and with users of public spaces) to play with the emerging possibilities of public authoring in real world settings. The projects are documented in a variety of ways - from essays, project reports and academic papers to videos, installations and software (interfaces and code).

http://urbantapestries.net
http://socialtapestries.net
http://research.urbantapestries.net

transhumanism is a huge field encompassing many topics and arguments. concsiousness, what does it mean to be human, bio ethics, genetic modifications, nanotechnology, science, future technologies, spirituality, information technology, biopolitics, medical improvements, body enhancements, human computer interaction ... the list goes on

the World Transhumanist Association defines transhumanism as :

Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase. We formally define it as follows:

Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory.

Open Humanities Press journals are fully peer reviewed, scholarly publications that have been chosen by OHP's editorial advisory board for their outstanding contribution to contemporary theory.

OHP's journals are independent, published under open access licences and free of charge to readers and authors alike.

A grassroots response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities, Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide.

visit http://openhumanitiespress.org for more details and to see their included publications

The program MediaArtHistories starts this November for the second time and is currently accepting applications. MAH conveys the most important developments of contemporary art through a network of renowned international theorists, artists and curators like: Steve DIETZ, Erkki HUHTAMO, Lev MANOVICH, Christiane PAUL, Paul SERMON, Edward SHANKEN, Jens HAUSER, Christa SOMMERER; Gerfried STOCKER, Knowbotic Research, Charlie GERE, Oliver GRAU and many others. Using online databases and other modern aids, knowledge of computer animation, net art, interactive, telematic and genetic art as well as the most recent reflections on nano art, CAVE installations, augmented reality and wearables are introduced. Historical derivations that go far back into art and media history are tied in intriguing ways to digital art. Important approaches and methods from Image Science, Media Archaeology and the History of Science & Technology will be discussed. visit the MediaArtHistories website for more information and to apply