INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATIONS (rm 107)

Morning Session

9:15 | DR. FRANK A. RUSSO Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of SMART Lab, Ryerson University

Music as a technology for oscillatory coupling within and between brains

This talk will be divided into two complementary parts. The first part considers the perception of music from the perspective of oscillatory dynamics. After a brief discussion of physical principles that govern oscillatory coupling, I will consider its role in the perception of pitch, rhythm and emotion in music. The second part of the talk uses the same oscillatory framework to interpret new findings on the effectiveness of music as an agent of neuroplastic and social change.

10:00 | KATHY KENNEDY Composer, Artist and Lecturer, Electroacoustics, Concordia University

Voicing Public Space: Hmmm performances from 2005 to the present

The composer will discuss strategies for enabling adhoc groups to create sonic flashmobs, through her ongoing performance piece, HMMM. The non-verbal aspects of singing are explored, allowing the voice to be used in new ways.

11:00 | MITCHELL AKIYAMA PhD Composer, Artist and Scholar

The Object of Permanence: 2500 Years of Frozen Sound

The speculation that sound is endowed with material, tangible properties that make it susceptible to storage has, for centuries, haunted literature and philosophy. This talk will chart the prehistory of sonic storage, listening for moments at which philosophers and inventors imagined that sounds might possess an immortality that could outlive their makers. We will hear not only of acoustic condensation due to icy conditions, but also of the haunting and spectral quality of sonic storage, a phenomenon that continued a nineteenth century obsession with preserving the bodies—and the voices—of the dead.

Afternoon Session

1:00 | LORETTA FAVERI Artist, Designer and Founder of Sonic Wear Studios

Turning Movement into Sound:
How SonicWear is using wearable technology to inspire creativity and innovation

This session will look at SonicWear’s research and development of SOMO, a wearable sensor that turns body movement into music and how the device is changing the way we think about creative movement and dance education.

2:00 | PAUL JASEN PhD Lecturer, Department of Music & School of Journalism & Communication, Carleton University

Bass: A Myth-Science of the Sonic Body

This presentation will plumb the depths of the audio spectrum in this wide-ranging investigation of low-frequency sound, sensation, and sonic culture. This discussion will focus on sonic cultural practices – musical and otherwise – which exploit the body’s capacity to interact with low-frequency force.

3:00 | DIPNA HORRA Media Artist

Sounds of (Dis)Location: audio art projects, 2009-2015

Works presented in this talk offer the sense of hearing to evoke hybrid musical and visual spaces layered with aural memories. Subtle sound strategies are used to investigate deeper social contexts of storytelling, cultural identity and architectural elements. The installation of these objects in space is an exploration of ephemeral boundary conditions. Here, structures develop and the physical presence of sound proposes an elsewhere, an in between dwelling.

COLLIDE COLLOQUIUM (rm 106)

Collaborators from our experimental concert event, Collide, held on May 28 speak about their research, creative process and the greater social and cultural contexts for their work.

1:30 | Group 1: Times Collide (ERIN FORTIER, JASON BAERG & JAMES ROLFE)

This hybrid presentation will begin with a dialog across time and transition through performance, music, and new media representations of the relationships between land, animals, and humanness. Rhythm, colour, and narrative are key themes that are woven through the works.

In tandem with this talk:

Dance performance and intervention by Lucy M. May (Compagnie Marie Chouinard) & Erin Fortier

This choreographic performance hones in on the transformative properties of the body to reveal relationships in time. Sculptural reference points stand in for the forces that influence the active, reactive, and coincidental relationships between human, animal, and nature.

2:30 | Group 2 : Colliding Galaxies: Colour & Tones (JAYANNE ENGLISH & NICOLE LIZEE)

Using the colourization of data at specific frequencies, a striking Hubble Space Telescope image of Hickson Compact Group 31 is deconstructed in this composition for six musicians by Nicole Lizée. The accompanying projected visuals, based on images by astronomer Jayanne English, peel back layers of data to reveal detector noise and the pixelated substrata associated with the physics of machine “seeing”.

3:30 | Group 3 : Ice (FAREENA CHANDA, JIMMIE LEBLANC & STEPHEN MORRIS)

Ice is an immersive mixed-media and sound installation that explores the silent formation of icicles. The slow yet dynamic process of fluid water becoming static ice is characteristically universal, beautiful and violent. The piece invites the viewer to experience the frozen moments of this process by committing their mind and body to the installation space. The culmination of a collaboration between composer Jimmie LeBlanc, mixed-media artist Fareena Chanda and scientist Stephen Morris, Ice is inspired by and uses Morris’Icicle Atlas—an open source database of hundreds of icicle shapes evolving over time.