Welcome to Julio d’Escriván, Peter Ablinger, Alex Harker, Frédéric Dufeu

CeReNeM Newsletter, September 2012

CeReNeM begins the 2012-13 year with a big increase in its membership and in the range of its actitivies. We are delighted to welcome Dr Julio d’Escriván, Senior Lecturer whose research particularly focuses on live cinema and music for the moving image. Prof. Peter Ablinger joins us as Visiting Professor in Composition. He is one of the most innovative and influential composers in the field of new music today questioning fundamental values of musical perception and working with noise (‘Rauschen’), spatialisation, spectral modelling/ transcription, and the perception of sound. Dr Alex Harker joins us as a lecturer in computer music following a period at Huddersfield as a research fellow. His work centres on computer programming for creative audio applications, as well as compositions employing custom software tools. As part of this post he will continue to work on the HISSTools research project set up by Dr Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. Dr Frédéric Dufeu joins us as a research fellow as part of an AHRC funded project initiated by Prof. Michael Clarke and Prof. Peter Manning (Durham), entitled ‘The impact of technology on the creative processes of composing electroacoustic music’. He will be working on developing software dedicated to Interactive Aural Analysis and on the investigation of a series of case studies from the electroacoustic repertoire.

We also welcome back Dr Mary Bellamy who returns as Head of composition in the music department following a period of maternity leave. Eleven new MRes and PhD students (including 8 international students) commence their studies taking the total number of our postgraduate research cohort to fifty-four.

Sévérine Ballon (photo: Ny Musikk)

Our guests for 2012-13 include eminent composers and academic theorists Philip Tagg, Evan Johnson, Michael Pisaro, Matthew Sansom, Eric Clarke, Trevor Wishart, and we will have a multi-day residency with Clemens Gadenstätter, Klaus Lang, Christian Utz, and Beat Furrer as part of our Erasmus Exchange programme with Kunstuniversität Graz next Feb 2013. Visiting artists include ensembles Idée Fixe (Greece) and ELISION (Australia), the duo of Alice Teyssier & Jonathan Hepfer (USA), and soloists Séverine Ballon (France), Ryan Muncy (USA), and Carl Rosman (Germany/Australia) who will give concerts, masterclasses and workshops working with staff and students. Information about concerts can be found on the university website.

The upcoming Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival hcmf//2012 will showcase a number of CeReNeM staff and students, notably the solo concert by recent graduate Dr Heather Roche playing works by Alex Harker, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Aaron Einbond and Chikako Morishita (17 Nov); a collaboration between Monty Adkins and Jexper Holmen – Melonta; work by PhD student Tamara Friebel (19 Nov) and concerts with Philip Thomas and Peter Ablinger (both on 22 Nov).
Please see other news below and student news at CeReNeM Postgraduates.

Enquiries: Prof. Liza Lim, l.lim@hud.ac.uk

CeReNeM at ICMC 2012 Ljubljana

The University of Huddersfield was represented by 13 members of the CeReNeM team at the recent International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2012: Non-Cochlear Sound) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Prof. Monty Adkins reports:

Between 9th-14th September 2012 the world’s leading computer musicians, software developers and programmers assembled for the International Computer Music Conference in Slovenia, hosted by the Institute for Sonic Arts Research, Ljubljana. CeReNeM was the most represented of any international institution. An unprecedented 13 members of the department were involved in the conference giving papers, posters and concert performances. Monty Adkins presented a long paper co-authored with Carlos Duque and Gregorio Karman on his recent AHRC funded project about the electronic music of Roberto Gerhard. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Alex Harker also presented a paper on their URF funded HISStools – an innovative suite of audio plug-ins. This paper included a demonstration of the tools that was so successful that they had over 250 downloads of the suite of tools within hours of giving the paper.

l.-r. Al McNichol (UCB), Dr Harker, Prof. Adkins, Dr d’Escrivan, Samantha Horseman, Luca Holland, Dr Tremblay.

Short papers and posters were given by several Research Fellows and PhD students: Dr Aaron Einbond presented on his research with Diemo Schwarz (IRCAM) and Christopher Trapani on aspects of concatenative synthesis; Samantha Horseman and Luca Holland both presented on aspects of sonic art installation; Scott Hewitt (and Alex Harker) crashed every computer in the room during their paper, thereby wonderfully demonstrating the insecurity of networks for laptop performance and Al McNichol (lecturer at UCB) presented his PhD research concerning the use of new technologies in the classroom for children between 11-14. CeReNeM was also strongly represented in the concerts at the conference with performance being given of: Mark Bokowiec’s Amera, Alex Harker’s Fractures, Julio d’Escriván’s Give me a word, any word…, Lefteris Papdimitriou’s Panorama, Monty Adkins’ Hidden Tongues, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s La Rupture Ineluctable with Cologne-based Huddersfield PhD graduate, Heather Roche, on bass clarinet. The vibe of the conference was not only that CeReNeM was one of the leading research centres for new music but also one of the liveliest. Unlike many research centres that have specialisms in a small number of areas, those representing CeReNeM demonstrated the widest possible engagement with the field of computer music in all of its guises including: pedagogy, software development, live-coding, live electronic music, video-music, musicology of electronic music, sonic art and installation and mixed music.

Introducing Julio d’Escriván

Dr Julio d’Escriván

Dr Julio d’Escriván is a composer, originally from Caracas, Venezuela, with a strong interest in live cinema work and music for the moving image. As an electroacoustic composer, Julio won the Bourges prize twice in the late 1980s and since, has kept a constant interest in electronic music through performance and academic authorship. Julio’s recent composition work has focused on live concrete and plunderphonics using soundpainting composition as well as live coding. His most recent work in this area is the FUSIL project presented recently in Brazil in July 2012 at the IV Seminar of Music Science and Technology of the Dept. of Music at The University of São Paulo. The project will receive a wider audience in that city, at this year’s Bienal (the most important art event in Latinamerica) in November 2012 and at the Klem Kuraia Festival in Bilbao in October 2012. Among his other works, in November 2011 he premiered his Terra Nova, a piece for live projected videogame playing and orchestral ensemble, performed by the Anglia Sinfonia at West Road, Cambridge. Julio is the author of C.U.P.’s Music Technology book (2012), as well as co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (also C.U.P.) and the Composing with SuperCollider chapter for the M.I.T. Press Supercollider book published in 2011.

Mark Bokowiec, Cybernetics festival in Copenhagen

Julie Wilson-Bokowiec performs ‘V’Oct Ritual’, BEAM Festival, London June 2012

Dr Mark Bokowiec will present an illustrated paper ‘V’Oct(Ritual): the anatomy of an interactive composition’,  at the RE-New Digital Art Festival in Copenhagen, held at Aalborg University in November.  The theme of the festival is ‘Cybernetics Revisited – towards a third order’.  The full program can be viewed here: RE-NEW 2012. More information about V’Oct (Ritual) can be found on Dr Julie Wilson-Bokowiec’s blog.

Rupert Till’s ‘Modelling Stonehenge’ wins commendation in CAA 2012

Dr Rupert Till’s research received a commendation at the CAA2012 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference Recycle Award. Modelling Stonehenge: visualisation, auralisation, apps and films was awarded for ‘its imaginative and effective repurposing of photogrammetric data in a study of the acoustic properties of Stonehenge’.

Bryn Harrison premiere at 2012 Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt

Dr Bryn Harrison’s latest composition Eight Voices (2011) was premiered by EXAUDI on 23 July at the 46th Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt. EXAUDI director James Weeks commented on his blog during the preparations on this work: ‘It’s a beautiful series of four panels filled with overlapping loops of very detailed patterns, very much in the mould of [Bryn’s] recent work but (for me) sounding especially lovely on voices. It’s not easy to do, however: the writing is very instrumental and demands amazing control of body and mind.’ A discussion of the work between Bryn Harrison and James Weeks can be found here.

A CeReNeM sample disc of Bryn Harrison’s work is available on request:

Aaron Cassidy: London 2012 Cultural Olympiad commission

Aaron Cassidy: A Painter of Figures in Rooms (2012), EXAUDI conducted by James Weeks, Southbank Centre, London

Dr Aaron Cassidy was selected for the PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music 20×12 scheme, an initiative that commissioned 12-minute pieces by 20 composers from across the UK as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The Olympic idea of pushing the body to physical (and mental, and spiritual) extremes lies at the heart of Cassidy’s conception for A Painter of Figures in Rooms. The project involved a close collaboration with EXAUDI, one of Britain’s leading contemporary music ensembles and in residence at CeReNeM in May this year leading to new innovations in experimental vocal technique and notation. The ensemble documented the process of learning and performing the piece through a series of detailed and candid blog posts spanning the four months leading to the premiere:  http://exaudi2012.wordpress.com/

The performance of A painter of figures in rooms by EXAUDI at the Southbank Centre was recorded by the BBC on 14 July 2012 and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 18 August 2012.This work is available on NMC in mp3 and FLAC download formats here.

Additionally, a studio recording of the work, along with pieces by Joanna Bailie, Bryn Harrison, Richard Glover, Claudia Molitor, James Weeks and Stephen Chase, will be released on HCR in late 2012.

Further information in Huddersfield news.

Geoffrey Cox wins Maverick Movie Award for Best Sound Design

Dr Geoffrey Cox

Dr Geoffrey Cox, Subject Leader in Music technology has been awarded ‘Best Sound Design’ for his film made with Keith Marley, A Film About Nice. It was nominated for three other awards: Best Cinematography; Best Editing and Best Chronicle and is a thirty-minute documentary made about the city of Nice on the Cote D’Azur, France, inspired by Jean Vigo’s A Propos de Nice made in 1930.

The film focuses on ‘a day in the life’ of Nice shot from dawn ‘til dusk. The film was released as part of a collection of works produced by Keith Marley (LJMU) and Geoffrey Cox (University of Huddersfield) called Nothing But The Hours, published by Huddersfield Contemporary Records and is available as a double DVD package here and on Amazon.co.uk.

The Maverick Movie Award is run by Hollywood film producers, technical crew and actors – everyone involved in the jury process for this competition is a principal collaborator on a theatrically released movie, a TV or video release, and/or a top-ten film festival Official Selection.

Liza Lim – Appointed to Akademie der Künst der Welt Cologne; Performances in Munich, Stuttgart, Oslo

Prof. Liza Lim has been appointed one of thirteen founding members of the newly formed Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne. Board members include artists and academics from literature, music, visual arts, film, theatre and dance and are involved in both the curation of programmes and policy discussion about the role of the arts in our culturally diverse world. The Akademie is supported with annual funding of €1.2 million from the City of Cologne and other partners and runs events, a fellowship programme and an associated youth academy.

The Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne is a new kind of artistic society, one which deliberately focuses on global artistic and social themes, and which also addresses migration-related issues. The Academy’s founding members are Ali Samadi Ahadi, Madhusree Dutta, Galit Eilat, Tom Holert, Liza Lim, Faustin Linyekula, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lemi Ponifasio, Walid Raad, Rosemarie Trockel, Stefan Weidner, Liao Yiwu and Tom Zé.

The official opening of the Akademie takes place on October 25-28 with the festival _Cutting Edge, a response to the politicisation and debate around circumcision in Germany triggered by a court ruling from May 2012. The programme looks at the