Deadline Sunday! Convergence: Complexity and Simplicity - Call for submissions

Convergence: Complexity and Simplicity
An International Conference/Festival of Music, Technology and Ideas, Thursday 12 to Sunday 15 September 2019

Information on the Convergence Conference/Festival of Music, Technology and Ideas at De Montfort University, Leicester UK, is now online at:

www.dmu.ac.uk/convergence

Submissions can be made via the site. Deadline for submissions is 31 March.

The theme in 2019 is Complexity and Simplicity and a wide range of paper and music submissions is encouraged.

Convergence aims to bring together many of the diverse strands of music made with new technologies and to celebrate these alongside some traditional practices.  In 2019 we will also be working with the Darbar Fringe Festival to bring high quality traditional and experimental Indian music projects to the conference.

We are delighted that Curtis Roads will be our guest composer - thanks to the support of the US Embassy in London and the British Association of American Studies.

Hope to see you in Leicester!

MTI postgrad Sam Topley @ TEDx

On Wednesday March 27th, MTI postgrad Sam Topley will be speaking at the TEDx Leicester Salon's 'Changes' event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/2273537662876919/
https://www.facebook.com/TEDxLeicester/posts/2168672829891940
www.tedxleicester.com

"Our second speaker for Changes is the indomitable Sam Topley, a musician, maker and community artist from Leicester. She is a doctoral researcher (PhD) at the Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute for Sonic Creativity (MTI2), De Montfort University, where she also lectures in experimental music technology and community arts practice."

About the event:
"What can art and creative practice really do to address inequality, our needs for regeneration and producing positive outcomes for our society’s most vulnerable people? Hear from our inspiring speakers who will share their ideas and experiences in using creativity to change systems, the urban landscape and empower communities."

Interfaces Community Arts Resources Hub

Are you interested in the field of new music and have organized or participated in a project related to this theme? If your answer is “yes”, then you can share your project to this hub and help offer access to new music by a diversity of audiences:

http://www.interfacesnetwork.eu/post.php?pid=200-submit-interfaces-community-arts-resources-hub

The Interfaces Community Arts Resources Hub is intended to act as an information hub regarding initiatives, in particular around Europe but also well beyond, that focus on offer access to new music by a diversity of audiences not familiar with it. By ‘new music’ what is meant is original innovative works of music, including the sonic arts, which largely reside outside of the commercial sector.

MTI² concert in Brno, Czech Republic, March 31st

A concert dedicated to the composers of the MTI² will be presented as part of the Sonix Series at Divadlo na Orlí, Brno, Czech Republic, on the 31st of March 2019:

http://divadlonaorli.jamu.cz/en/
https://www.facebook.com/events/823364237995967/

Composers whose work will be presented at the concert include Prof. Bret Battey, Dave Holland, Francesc Marti, John Richards, Neal Spowage, and Prof. John Young.

Review of John Young's 'To the Red Sky'

A review of John Young's recent immersive work 'To the Red Sky':

"A gust of electroacoustic sound rotated around the room as if someone was circling the edge of a fishbowl and I was the water within, confined and tormented. I had to put pressure on my feet to remind myself I was just sitting and listening, and that I was in the same place where I had been before I closed my eyes. There were crashes, clatters and clanks rebounding from every corner of the room. The speakers spat at me. I was haunted by harsh whispers, punctured by shots of sound. Then sporadic droplets of high frequencies gave a sense of hope that was soon swallowed by a battle of sharp shots and deep tones.

I felt the paranoia, I felt the interrogation, I felt the anticipation. I was in the trenches."

https://demoncrewreview.blogspot.com/2019/03/fear-and-terror.html

Leigh Landy appointed Visiting Professor @ Bournemouth University

MTI's Prof. Leigh Landy has just been appointed Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University, working closely with the Music and Audio Technology team there within the Department of Creative Technology.

MTI postgrad Sam Topley wins award in Dubai

MTI postgraduate student Sam Topley has received the 'Winner of the Featured Project' award at the Dubai Maker Faire, which ran from 26th - 28th February.

Sam was invited to participate by the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance, and presented her latest project, 'Playground', in which large crochet balls make sound and music as they are moved, rolled and jumped on.

Alongside this, Sam ran workshops to craft electronic musical instruments, using e-textiles (electronic textiles) to make musical embroideries and noisy pompoms. These workshops were mostly with local school children, with public & family participants as well.

http://bit.ly/Dubaimakerfaire

Bret Battey's 'Estuaries 3' wins 'Best Audiovisual' award @ MADATAC X

'Estuaries 3', an audiovisual work by MTI's Professor of Audiovisual Composition, Bret Battey, has just won the 'Best Audiovisual' award at the MADATAC X:

https://vimeo.com/264837797

MADATAC is an international contemporary festival of digital audiovisual & new media art, based in Madrid, Spain:

http://madatac.es/

"Figures of Speech: Oral History as an Agent of Form in Electroacoustic Music"

The article "Figures of Speech: Oral History as an Agent of Form in Electroacoustic Music", by MTI's Professor John Young, was recently published in Leonardo Music Journal:

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/LMJ_a_01047

Leonardo Music Journal
Volume 28 | Volume 28 - December 2018
p.88-94

The article reflects on how the author’s use of oral history recordings as source material in three electroacoustic works suggests ways in which complementary threads of storytelling and recorded memory can be shaped into purposefully directed forms.