Upcoming Workshops: Suspense Festival of Adult Puppet Theatre Workshops (CSSD)

SUSPENSE - FESTIVAL OF ADULT PUPPET THEATRE WORKSHOPS

CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA, LONDON

30 OCTOBER - 8 NOVEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

The Central School of Speech and Drama’s Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre and its Puppetry course are supporting three workshops on puppetry/object theatre as part of the new festival of adult puppet theatre Suspense between 30 October and 8 November 2009

Two-day workshops

1. Ephemeral Animation

This two-day workshop will be run by Nenagh Watson of Barking Dog Theatre and Creative Fellow at CSSD.

Ephemeral Animation is a term coined by Watson to encourage appreciation of animation, often momentary, of discarded objects animated via natural elements. The plastic bag blowing and dancing in the wind in the film American Beauty has become a cultural reference point. Void of the interruption of human ego, these fragmentary experiences have a lot to tell us about the art form of puppetry. This two-day workshop will encourage debate and exploration, stripping the art form to its raw essential state. We will examine Kantor's fascination with objects and 'puppetry without ego': how can we allow something to have its own intrinsic presence, its own immanence, provoking questions of what is authentic; and how can we engage audience in this appreciation?

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama

Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 October, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Workshop fee: £50 for both days (student fee £25).

2. Objects and New Technologies

This two-day workshop will be run by Maria Dominguez Alba who is a painter and film-maker, and also Research Fellow at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain.

This two-day laboratory will explore and create a multi-disciplinary dialogue between theatres of objects and puppets and new technologies. The workshop will focus practically and theoretically on the relationship between the object and new technology. It will also provoke reflection about identity and the body; of the individual's projection in a collective environment, and vice versa; virtual reality, fiction, the idea of presence, the concept of real time, tele-presence, the fragility of the technological medium and interaction.

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 October, 10.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Workshop fee: £50 for both days (student fee £25).

Four-day Masterclass with the Philippe Genty company

To be or not to be: a material

How to use emotional and sensorial memory for the creation of visual theatre

The Philippe Genty company is renowned for its visual theatre productions. The company leads many courses on manipulation of puppets and materials, object theatre, dance and movement and other elements of visual language. This four-day workshop will be led by Eric de Sarria (Drifting, Dedale, Zigmund Follies) and Simon Rann (Stowaways, Le Fin des Terres), long-standing members of the company. We aim to transmit knowledge of the manipulation of materials, puppets and objects, and to stimulate each student in their personal search for their own visual language. During these four days we will focus on two tools which are central to the artistic process of the company: the manipulation of materials nourished by personal memory.

The workshop will take place at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Monday - Thursday 2 - 5 November, 9.00 am - 6.00 pm

Workshop fee: £120 (students £60).

Workshop participation is by application: please send your CV and a letter of application to cariad.astles@cssd.ac.uk by Tuesday 15 September 2009.

On Friday 6 November The Central School of Speech and Drama, jointly with the Little Angel Theatre, is hosting a one-day symposium entitled Objects in Performance, which will include talks and presentations by object theatre practitioners, researchers and performers at Suspense.

The symposium will take place at the Little Angel Theatre between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm.

Bookings for the symposium will be taken by the festival bookings office at the LAT.

Places for the symposium (including show) will be £30 (students £10).

Goldsmiths Thursday Club (Goldsmiths, University of London)

GOLDSMITHS THURSDAY CLUB

OPEN CALL FOR PROJECTS & PROPOSALS

2009 - 2010 SEASON

DEADLINE: 29 JULY 2009

The Thursday Club is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s). The Club is supported by the Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) and the Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Originally set up in October 2005 by GDS as a more informal setting for research discussions, it has grown to include over 200 members: artists, technologists, scientists – in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities worldwide, that are connected via a mailing list and online forum.

Most importantly, there are regular meetings in ‘real’ space at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, University of London. Anyone can attend these events. By keeping these meetings free, informal and open to all, we provide a platform for diverse and open ended discourse, for people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline.

The Thursday Club brings together people from diverse fields and degrees of expertise, aiming to initiate discussion and debates among postgraduate students, researchers, academics, artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners.

Since it focuses on interdisciplinary practices, the Club is interested to experiment with innovative formats of presentation that are appropriate to the nature of the subject. We particularly welcome the proposal of round table discussions, panels, screenings, ‘hearings’, live gigs and performance lectures. We are also interested to platform experimental work-in-progress of both practical and theoretical nature.

Submission Materials

1. A Title and 300 word abstract of your proposal

2. A 1,000 word proposal that will substantiate your abstract as well as include information regarding issues of methodologies and format of presentation; also, this should explain why you think that the Thursday Club is an appropriate forum for the presentation of your work.

2. A 200 word biog

3. Your contact details: name, address, email, telephone number

4. Any relevant links to your work

5. A jpg of your work (if relevant)

Please send any submissions by email to Prof. Janis Jefferies

(j.jefferies@gold.ac.uk) and Patrick Tresset (ma701pt@gold.ac.uk) writing

‘Thursday Club Submission’ as a Subject.

The deadline for the 1st submission of proposals is 10AM, 29th July 2009.

The submissions will be reviewed by the Thursday Club Board and you will hear by the end of August 09.

THURSDAY CLUB BOARD

Dr. Tim Blackwell

Lecturer in Computing, Goldsmiths; co-Head, Live Algorithms for Music Network.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X]

Lecturer in Theatre and Performance - School of Arts and New Media - University of Hull @ Scarborough; Cultural Practitioner.

Kelli Dipple

Webcasting Curator, Tate.

Prof. Janis Jefferies, Thursday Club Convener

Professor of Visual Arts, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths; Co-director

Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and

Research Centre in Textiles; Curator; Artist.

Alex McLean

PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Sound artist.

Myrto Karanika

MFA Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

Dr. Sarah Kember

Reader in New Technologies of Communication, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths; Writer.

Nanda Khaorapapong

MFA Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

Prof. Carrie Paechter

Professor of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths; Dean of Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Stanza

Artist

Patrick Tresset

PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Artist.

Prof. John Wood

Professor in Design, Goldsmiths.

Matthew Fuller

Reader, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths; Writer.

CFP: Plattsburgh New Music and Culture Symposium

PLATTSBURGH NEW MUSIC AND CULTURE SYMPOSIUM

PLATTSBURGH, NEW YORK

11 - 13 AUGUST 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Plattsburgh New Music and Culture Symposium is a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion of music and its place in contemporary society. In our inaugural year, scholars from all disciplines and musicians are invited to participate by submitting proposals for presentations and works for performance.

The symposium will take place from August 11-13 in Plattsburgh, NY.

We seek submissions for:

• Papers (please specify if you would like a 30- or 60-minute time slot) and

• Original compositions for solo harp, solo horn, solo clarinet, clarinet and horn, or clarinet and harp with or without electronics. Works for electronics alone and composer-performers will also be considered.

The papers should deal with one or more of the following topics: music’s place in contemporary culture, questions on authority and aesthetics in a post-colonial world and new resonances (technology). We encourage anthropologists, cultural theorists, critics and scholars from both in and outside of music to participate. The compositions should demonstrate a highly personal language. Composers should include a brief written statement on the submitted work(s) along with a curriculum vitae.

Papers proposals should include an abstract and curriculum vitae and should be submitted electronically to suzanne@suzannefarrin.com.

Submissions for musical compositions should include scores (in pdf format),recordings (mp3 or a web link), a statement on the work and c.v. and can be sent electronically to suzanne@suzannefarrin.com.

Dates

Symposium dates: August 11-13

All proposals due: June 20, 2009

Notification of acceptance: End June 2009

The symposium is sponsored by the Conversations in the Disciplines Program of the State University of New York.

For more information please write to: suzanne [at]suzannefarrin.com

CFP: Music without Walls? Souce Studies in the 21st Century (Queen's University, Belfast)

INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM: MUSIC WITHOUT WALLS?

SOURCE STUDIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND SONIC ARTS, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, BELFAST

16 - 17 DECEMBER 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Website: http://www.symposiummusicwithoutwalls.co.uk

The symposium ‘Music without Walls?’ is being held to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and to celebrate subsequent developments in music source studies. The aims of this interdisciplinary symposium are to present and contextualize recent findings and to discuss how new technologies may facilitate and enhance our understanding of these issues.

Proposals exploring any aspect of this theme are invited, although those relating to new discoveries, archival research in former ‘Eastern-Bloc’ countries, case studies of various geographical locales, the implications of technological developments and future directions in source studies, are particularly encouraged.

The symposium will open with a research seminar given by Dr Michael Maul (Bach-Archiv, Leipzig) Wednesday 16 December 2009, 1 pm.

Individuals may submit one proposal in the form of an abstract of not more than 300 words (individual papers), or not more than 400 words (round table sessions).

The abstract should be preceded by information under the following headings:

NAME, INSTITUTION, POSTAL ADDRESS, EMAIL ADDRESS.

Abstracts may be emailed to Alison Dunlop adunlop04@qub.ac.uk Attachments (in MS word file or .rtf format) are preferred for the text of abstracts, but all attachments should be backed up with a plain-text version in the main email.

Deadline for receipt of abstracts is 1 September 2009.

Alison Dunlop

School of Music and Sonic Arts (Music Building)

University Road

Belfast

Northern Ireland

BT7 1NN

Tel : +44 (0)28 9097 5337 (School Office)

http://www.symposiummusicwithoutwalls.co.uk/

Upcoming Research Training Roadshow - Studying Music through Science and Technology (IMR)

RESEARCH TRAINING ROADSHOW: STUDYING MUSIC THROUGH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
INSTITUTE OF MUSICAL RESEARCH, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY
11 AND 12 MAY 2009 - 10.30 - 18.00


MONDAY 11 MAY
Research Training Roadshow Studying Music through Science and Technology (Senate House, Room NG16), 10.30 am – 6 pm

In association with Lancaster University, Queen Mary University of London, and Goldsmiths College

Speakers: Alan Marsden (Lancaster), Ian Knopke (Computing, Goldsmiths), and Dan Tidhar (Electrical Engineering, QMUL)

Free of charge. Advance registration required. To register, email music@sas.ac.uk.


TUESDAY 12 MAY
Research Training Roadshow Studying Music through Science and Technology (Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lecture Theatre/Recital Room, Lancaster University)*, 10.30 am – 6 pm

In association with Lancaster University, Queen Mary University of London, and Goldsmiths College

Speakers: Alan Marsden (Lancaster), Ian Knopke (Computing, Goldsmiths), and Dan Tidhar (Electrical Engineering, QMUL)

Free of charge. Advance registration required. To register, email music@sas.ac.uk.

*NB room change: this seminar will take place in Meeting Room 2 of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Lancaster University

ABSTRACT
Modern culture, in music research as in other fields, tends to divide science from art despite a strong strand of scientific music research dating back to the time of Pythagoras. This division is increasingly untenable in the light of the recent growth in 'Empirical Musicology' and developments in new technology. We aim in this study day to show how bridging this divide and applying scientific method and computing technology can help to address typical problems in musicology in general, and analysis in particular. Sessions will include material on Schenker and Palestrina; another focus will be applications of the software arising from the large-scale OMRAS 2 project of Goldsmiths' and Queen Mary Universities of London. Jargon and arcane technicalities will be avoided.

CFP: Systemic Musicology 2009 (Ghent, Belgium)

SYSMUS09
SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STUDENTS OF SYSTEMIC MUSICOLOGY
GHENT, BELGIUM
CALL FOR PAPERS

http://www.ipem.ugent.be/sysmus09

Important dates:
Submission of papers: May 29, 2009
Notification of paper acceptance: August 17, 2009
Camera-ready submissions: October 9, 2009
SysMus 2009: November 18-20, 2009


All research involving meaning, description, and technological mediation of music can be related to musicology. However, the complexity of musical engagement in socio-cultural contexts engenders different networks of research and knowledge, with distinct interdisciplinary configurations, methods and specializations. Systematic musicology specifically deploys this methodological diversity so as to approach each musicological question with a distinct configuration of methods. In doing so, systematic musicology often bridges methodological foundations of sciences with the critical analysis from humanities. It promotes the study of aesthetics, semiotics, and cultural studies by incorporating empirical and data-oriented methods into the methodological framework. It relies on paradigms from different disciplines as diverse as the philosophy of aesthetics, theoretical sociology, semiotics, and music criticism, combined with strategies derived from empirical psychology, acoustics, physiology, neurosciences, cognitive sciences, computing, and others.

Unfortunately, the concentration of efforts on methodological diversity and broad re-search questions may lead students to superficial discussions, disconnected results or research that is alienated from the musical matter. One of the biggest challenges for researchers in systematic musicology, therefore, is to learn how to deal with the inter-disciplinary nature inherent to their own field. Several questions are raised by this problem:

- How to guide yourself through innumerable methods, resources, and uncertain methodological pathways?
- How to design and execute interdisciplinary research?
- How to communicate with our partners: engineers, psychologists, and musicians?
- How to build an active network of collaborations within this interdisciplinary field?

These questions, together with courses in presentation and conference skills, will be addressed in SysMus09.

SUBMISSION:

Submissions are solicited for spoken research papers or posters related to any subdiscipline of systematic musicology. Suggested topic areas include, but are not limited to:

Acoustics and psychoacoustics
Cognitive musicology
Composition and improvisation
Computer Music
Cross-cultural studies of music
Mediation technology
Memory and music
Multimodal Interfaces
Music and emotions
Music and evolution
Music and language
Music and meaning
Music and movement
Music and neuroscience
Music education
Music performance
Music therapy
Musical development
Musical timbre
Pitch and tonal perception
Rhythm, meter, and timing
Social psychology of music

Short papers in English (max. 2 pages) should be submitted on the conference website (http://www.ipem.ugent.be/sysmus09/) and must be presented in one of the two formats: oral presentations or posters. The templates required for formatting papers and posters will be available at the same address. There will be a double-blind review process by a committee composed of advanced PhD students.

Wishing you welcome in Ghent in 2009!

Organizing Committee - SysMus09
Director: Luiz Naveda
Co-Director: Prof. Marc Leman

CFP: Internet Attractions - AHRC Workshop on Ephemeral Media (Nottingham)

INTERNET ATTRACTIONS: ONLINE VIDEO AND USER-GENERATED EPHEMERA

AHRC WORKSHOP ON EPHEMERAL MEDIA

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

23 - 24 JUNE 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS – 10th DECEMBER 2008
http://www.ephemeralmedia.co.uk/

Key speakers: Professor Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths), Professor Barbara Klinger (Indiana), Hugh Hancock (Strange Company), Emily Renshaw-Smith (Current TV - to be confirmed)

The emergence of new media technologies in the 1990s and 2000s, specifically the rise of digital and Internet technology, has been linked to fundamental changes in the media environment, shaping newly emerging circuits of production and consumption and propagating a cultural landscape where media seem available everywhere and all the time. This AHRC-sponsored workshop examines a particular feature of our accelerated media world - the growth of the brief or ‘ephemeral’ texts that exist beyond and between the films, television programmes, and radio broadcasts more commonly isolated for analysis.

What does ephemeral mean? In the context of the workshop it connotes short-form media (i.e. texts that are no more than a few minutes long) but also media which are fleeting in the way they circulate, or that are often overlooked within mainstream academic study. ‘Ephemeral media’ offers a rubric to designate and explore some of the key strategies, forms and practices that are helping producers and publics alike to negotiate today’s fast-changing mediascape. More generally, it invites historical and theoretical reflection on the significance of screen ephemera - on those forms of screen culture that, whilst momentary, remain active components of media experience.

The first workshop in the series focuses on user-generated ephemera, in particular the proliferation of online video. The emerging digital media environment has created new opportunities for user-generated content to achieve broad distribution and so create a public of users. This has been typified, and enabled, by recent phenomena such as YouTube. The fleeting and competing nature of user-generated content has placed particular emphasis on the role of media performance - what can be understood broadly as a display of communicative competence for assessment by an audience. The workshop will examine the status and significance of user-generated ephemera (in particular online video) and the kinds of performance inscribed herein.

Questions under discussion might include: How is performance framed in user-generated ephemera? How is user-generated ephemera assessed and discussed by audiences? How does the temporality of circulation on the Internet shape the kind of publics that are convened around user-generated ephemera? How do ephemeral media performances represent national, regional, ethnic identity? How are questions of authorship understood in forms that frequently involve the reworking of existing material? What role do “gatekeepers” play in filtering the user-generated performances that are distributed to online audiences?

The workshop is interested in, but not limited to, the following media forms and issues:

* Production and genre – creative amateur practices, technologies, genres involved in making online video; the relation between amateur and professional media production
* Performance and address – styles of online acting, dance, musical performance; projections of gesture and voice within online video and other user-generated ephemera (e.g. webcams, online pornography, blogging)
* Sensory communication – the use of sound and image: audiovisual methods and strategies
* media environments - the relation of user-generated ephemera to continuities/changes in the media landscape; historical precursors to online video and user-generated ephemera
* Audiences – online communities and the construction of user hierarchies; questions of authorship and negotiation in “bottom up” forms of ephemeral media; dynamics of cultural borrowing and authorship in online remakes, mashups, and machinima
* Distribution and Intellectual Property - the role of gate keepers and cultural intermediaries; questions of censorship, policy and legislation relating to ephemeral media production, distribution and consumption
* critical methodologies – the means and possibilities of studying user-generated ephemera


The ephemeral media workshop is part of the AHRC’s ‘Beyond Text’ research programme and is designed to facilitate discussion in a small group environment. It can provide travel (up to £100), accommodation, and subsistence costs to all accepted participants. To apply for the workshop, please send a 250 word paper proposal and a short biography highlighting relevant research interests or publications to generalenquiries@ephemeralmedia.co.uk by 10th December 2008.

Music and Machines IX: Resistant Material (Upcoming conference, Newcastle)

MUSIC AND MACHINES IX: RESISTANT MATERIAL

NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

15 -1 6 JANUARY 2009

The "International Centre for Music Studies" (ICMuS) and "Culture Lab" at Newcastle University announce a two-day symposium on resistant materials in musical creativity as part of the "Music and Machines" research series.

Musical practices encounter many sites of resistance/resistivity
- the engagement with or overcoming of physiological restrictions
- the technological limitations of instruments, voices, computer systems, and other performance media
- constraints imposed by musico-theoretical systems such as "common practice" tonality and other formalistic issues
- the unpredictability and/or ambiguity of some of the newer creative tools such as interactive software, circuit-bending or distributed performance systems
- the critical dissonances that must be negotiated in much interdisciplinary collaboration

Developing out of a series of research events that began in 2004, "Music and Machines IX: Resistant Material" pulls together some of the different ways that contemporary musicians and theorists have thematized or had to work through the issue of resistant materials.
As well as core members of the CETL-funded ICMuS research grouping in Postvernacular Music, the symposium will include guest presenters from Glasgow Caledonian University, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, University of East Anglia, Edinburgh University, Culture Lab
Newcastle, and the Psychology and Philosophy departments at Newcastle University.

Sessions will take the form of short presentations by invited presenters, followed by round table discussions, with members of "the audience" actively encouraged to become involved. Session
presentations will include position statements, project reports, theoretical perspectives, and live performances. There are also live concerts each evening held in Culture Lab.

Participants will include
Paul Bell (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
David Clarke (ICMuS)
John Ferguson (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
Bennett Hogg (ICMuS)
Lars Iyer (Philosophy, Newcastle)
Raymond MacDonald (Psychology, Glasgow)
Peter Nelson (Music, Edinburgh University)
Sally Jane Norman (Culture Lab, Newcastle)
Joel Ryan (Royal Conservatory in The Hague)
Simon Waters (UEA)
Nick Williams (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
Graeme Wilson (Psychology, Newcastle)

Topics covered will include turntablism in free improvisation, learning Indian Classical Music, ambiguity and indeterminacy in bent circuits, modelling resistivity in virtual environments, formalism and subjectivity, the instrument in free improvisation, philosophical and cultural-theoretical perspectives on ideas of resistance in musical materials, and issues raised by the development of interfaces between musical performers and digital technologies.

A conference fee of £10 to cover coffee and tea is payable to Culture Lab, Newcastle. For registration please contact Carine Aguet at carine.aguet@ncl.ac.uk

For further information please contact Dr. Bennett Hogg at bennett.hogg@ncl.ac.uk

Details of registration procedures and a more detailed outline of the event will be posted on the "Culture Lab, Newcastle" website in due course. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab