MTI & DMU award Honorary Doctor of Music to Prof. Xiaofu Zhang

Yesterday MTI and DMU awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music to Professor Xiaofu Zhang of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China’s premier music school:

https://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/news/2019/july/class-of-2019-leicester-media-school-graduates-in-the-spotlight.aspx

Professor Zhang has spent the past 40 years writing, composing, teaching and researching at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China’s premier music school. His compositions are performed around the world.

He told graduates to seize the opportunities that technology presented to make a difference in the world. He said: “It is a pleasure and an honour to be given this honorary degree from DMU. I think it’s an opportunity to recognise my 40 years’ work in research and teaching but also a reminder for me to work harder. 

“I said to graduates today that they are graduating at the best time. Technology has made the world smaller and it brings many opportunities with it.”

DMU has had a relationship with the conservatory in Beijing for 15 years through close links with the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, led by Professor Leigh Landy.

MTI postgrad Sam Topley teaching at Goldsmiths

MTI postgrad Sam Topley will be teaching at Goldsmiths, University of London this summer, running a course on sound art and e-textiles at the Creative Computing Summer School:

https://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/studywithus/summer-school/

John Young's 'Three Spaces in Mid-Air' wins 2019 KLANG! competition

'Three Spaces in Mid-Air', a 2017 acousmatic composition by MTI's Professor of Composition John Young, has won the 2019 KLANG! competition for electroacoustic composition:

https://klangacousmonium.wordpress.com/concours-international-de-composition-electroacoustique-klang/

In addition, James Andean's 'Valdrada' and John Young's 'Abwesenheit' were both included among the competition finalists.

On 'Three Spaces in Mid-Air':

"Form, writes Nicholas Bourriaud, is ‘structural unity imitating a world.’ I have responded to this idea with Three Spaces in Mid-Air, which is designed as a continuous work in three discrete sections. Each explores the idea of spectral space through interaction and coalescence of sonic strata, as three-dimensional objects ‘suspended’ before the listener. The work’s individual sections also address the compression of form, each aiming to embody the atmosphere of a self-contained ‘world’ — evoking implications of direction, tension and release while balancing states of stasis and motion."

MTI activities this month in Mexico

Head of the Institute, Leigh Landy, is in Mexico City this month, for a range of activities including:

- A solo concert and three talks at CMMAS (Mexican Centre for Music & the Sonic Arts), in Morelia:
https://cmmas.org/cmmas_eventos.php?lan=es&id=1726

- A meeting with the Dean of Music and Head of Music Technology at UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico) in Mexico City, to discuss a new collaborative agreement with MTI². UNAM has courses at all levels in Mexico City, as well as postgraduate courses led by CMMAS.

- Co-directing this year's Electroacoustic Music Studies conference at UNAM, Mexico City.
This will include two talks, along with MTI's James Andean, on our planned ‘Sensing Sounds’ project.
The event will also include the launch announcement for EMS20, which will take place at the MTI² in June 2020 - stay tuned for more info!

John Richards in new documentary film 'The Sound is Innocent'

MTI's John Richards is one of the featured artists in the 2019 documentary 'The Sound is Innocent'. You can spot him, and his work with Dirty Electronics, in the film's trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByJSwD4j43A

"As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way. The oblique strategies through which analog equipment and digital recording tactics create new possibilities are observed by the filmmaker with playful affection, like a scientist in his lab among his favorite tools and… toys. A documentary debut that challenges all the preconceived notions about the observational approach and manages to create an exhilarating landscape in which sound becomes and space dissolves itself in tones never heard before. A different kind of space odyssey."

Out now & online: "Perceptual Issues Surrounding the Electroacoustic Music Experience", ed. Sven-Amin Lembke

Out now & online - the latest issue of the journal Organised Sound, guest edited by MTI's Sven-Amin Lembke:

"Perceptual Issues Surrounding the Electroacoustic Music Experience"

Volume 24 - Special Issue 1 - April 2019

Click here to visit the Cambridge Journals page for Organised Sound

Interfaces Festival trailer

Take a look at the trailer for our upcoming Interfaces Festival, which runs from May 29th to June 4th 2019 in Leicester:

The Interfaces Sound Art Festival brings sound art to venues across Leicester’s Cultural Quarter. Presented across the Cultural Quarter in Phoenix Square, The Curve Theatre, LCB depot and The Exchange Bar, the festival includes a diverse range of work that explores and celebrates sound in relation to space, place, image and sculpture.

More info:

http://www.interfacesnetwork.eu/post.php?pid=283-sound-art-festival