Wednesday 14 March, 12-4pm (12-2pm, CM107 / 2-4pm CM137)
In Lab 14 we welcome composer and vocal performer Andrea Young, who will present her Digital Voice Interface and discuss vocality in relation to her work. In the second half of the lab, composer Ron Herrema will present recent work focused on audiation and specification, ending with a practical workshop on music as contemplative practice (please bring an instrument to Ron’s session if you can).
12-2pm / CM107: Andrea Young / The Digital Voice Interface: Compositions and Performances
The Digital Voice Interface is a live analysis of voice which extracts individual features that may control any parameter of electronic sound. The voice is both the instrument and the interface for the live-electronics which is, in turn, infused with “vocality”. Through a demonstration of this tool, a question of vocality is raised: is vocality more than the sum of its features, and if so, does the process of voice lend a greater vocality than the sound of the voice itself? A philosophical, musical and scientific discussion of voice provides both content and form for new works featuring The Digital Voice Interface in live-electronic and chamber ensemble settings.
Andrea Young is a Canadian performer and composer specializing in experimental voice and live-electronics. She performs an acoustic, amplified, processed and resynthesized voice, as well as a re-purposed sound-controlling voice enabled through feature extraction and data-driven live electronics. While her work relies on digital innovation, her musical output relies on the integration of her digital interface with analogue and re-purposed electronic media.
Her compositions and performances have been presented by Vancouver New Music, Calgary New Works, Open Space New Music, Galerie Sans Nom and Innovations en Concert in Canada. Internationally, her work has been presented by REDCAT and Automata, Los Angeles, Casino Baumgarten and Espace Senghor for Kyma International Sound Symposiums in Vienna and Brussels, The Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, as well as during ICMC in Athens. Andrea is also dedicated to performing for other composers – primarily for André Cormier during the Wandelweiser festival in Düsseldorf, Germany, for Community MusicWorks at the RISD Museum in Rhode Island, USA, and at Galerie Sans Nom, New Brunswick, Canada. Her research has been published in The Leonardo Music Journal Vol.#24, her performance of Agostino di Scipio’s Audible Ecosystemics No.3b was published by La Camera Verde and she is affiliated with several performing ensembles in Canada, USA and Europe including EXO//ENDO, OFFAL and Ensemble SISYPHE.
Andrea studied vocal performance and composition at The University of Victoria (2001), electronic music at The Institute of Sonology, The Hague (2007), and completed a DMA from The California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (2014). Her creative work, travel and studies have been enabled by several awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council and The Herb Alpert School of Music.
For more information: www.andrea-young.ca
2-4pm / CM137: Ron Herrema
Ron Herrema will present a selection of his past works and discuss their relation to Audiation and Specification as fundamental (and seemingly opposite) dimensions of compositional experience, as well as consider how these relate to other dimensions such as Improvisation, Expression and Materiality. He will follow with a workshop on the creation and performance of music as a form of contemplative practice.
Ron Herrema is a composer, digital media artist, and app developer. He received his PhD in composition from Michigan State University and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Creative Computing at Bath Spa University. He composes both acoustic and electroacoustic music, as well as both still and moving image. He has a particular (but not exclusive) affinity for algorithmic techniques in both realms. He also has an interest in the integration of contemplative practices with technology. In 2007 he began his study of Deep Listening® practice with Pauline Oliveros and is now certified as a teacher of Deep Listening.
His accomplishments in recent years include: receiving a Chagrin Award from Sound and Music; developing three iPhone app/artworks (Dancing Wu Wei, Trespass, and Infinity); co-producing the winning entry at the Tate Modern’s art hackathon; performing audiovisual free improv at Chisenhale Dance Space in East London; composing music for the award-winning film Acoustic Shadows; and creating an interactive installation for the Tate Britain.
For more information please see ronherrema.net
