Sonic Arts Network
Encyclopedia
Sonic Arts Network was a UK-based organisation, established in 1979, that aimed to enable both audiences and practitioners to engage with the art of sound through a programme of festivals, events, commissions and education projects. Its honorary patron was Karlheinz Stockhausen
.
In 2008 the Sonic Arts Network merged with the Society for the Promotion of New Music
, the British Music Information Centre (BMIC) and the Contemporary Music Network to create a new organisation to promote contemporary Music in the UK called Sound and Music
.
Sonic Arts Network's activities separated into three main areas:
, François Bayle
, Yasunao Tone
and Ars Electronica
Prize-winner Eliane Radigue
. Some of the artists featured in Cut and Splice Acousmonium
2006 at the ICA
included Russell Haswell
, John Wall, Hecker
, Michel Chion
, Christian Zanési
, Philip Jeck
, Carl Michael von Hausswolff
, Zbigniew Karkowski
and Hans-Joachim Roedelius.
and sound art
scene in the UK. Free and open to the public, the event mobilises a national network of artists and engages with communities from all backgrounds – placing sonic art and the people who make it, in direct contact with the public.
Expo 2006 explored the inner, outer and public spaces of Manchester
. The festival included sound installations at the Cornerhouse
by Berlin
based sound art collective Staalplaat Soundsystem who presented The Ultrasound of Therapy; Bob Levene’s newly commissioned work The Space Between – Experiments for Speakers and Helmut Lemke
’s new work KLANGELN 7. There was also a performance by Norwegian female electro/instrumental improv group SPUNK
and Birmingham
sound arts activists Dreams of Tall Buildings performing the first graphic score in 40 years by Fluxus
artist and founder of the band The United States of America
, Joseph Byrd
. Victoria Baths
, winner of BBC
’s 2004 Restoration competition, saw over 600 people attend a day of site-specific happenings that utilised the spaces and acoustics of the listed building with a programme of performances and installations.
The focus for Expo 2007 shifts to Plymouth
and the South West of England where Expo will be presented in partnership with the University of Plymouth
's i-DAT (Institute of Digital Art and Technology).
This weekend of performance, exhibition and presentation will take place between 22–25 June 2007 across a variety of public venues in Plymouth including a selection of outdoor performance spaces, club spaces and an historic architectural space. Online works will also be part of the activities.
, Beach Singularity received its first performances on the beaches of Morecambe
, Cleveleys
, St. Annes, and Southport
in the summer of 1977 as part of the Queen’s
Silver Jubilee
celebrations.
, People Like Us
, Ergo Phizmiz, Dreams of Tall Buildings and Bob Levene.
pioneered by Robert Worby and Ian Dearden with composer John Cage
. After the appointment of Paul Wright as Education Officer in 1990 Sonic Arts Network provided projects for the South Bank Centre
, The Science Museum
, Canary Wharf
, Birmingham
's Symphony Hall
, many other venues in the UK and in Budapest and Tokyo. Electroacoustic composers involved included Robert Worby, Trevor Wishart, Stephen Montague, Alistair MacDonald, Duncan Chapman, Peter Cusack as well as video artist Stewart Collinson and poet Matthew Sweeney. In 2000 Sonic Arts Network led the education programme for Sonic Boom
at London’s Hayward Gallery
.
which aimed to explore and compare the local sound environments of young people across the UK; the impact of sound on our lives; and the possibilities for creativity through the interaction of these sounds with the internet. 52 schools from across the UK took part in its first year.
The project was aimed at pupils between the ages of 9-14 in primary, secondary and special schools. Each project provided pupils with the opportunity to record and gather sounds to use as the basis of their sonic postcards. The pupils became sound designers by composing and structuring their own sonic postcards which were emailed to other schools that participated in the project. All the sonic postcards were then uploaded to the Sonic postcards website.
and experimental music
was served by the Sonic Arts Network through a combination of online services, performance, exhibition and educational opportunities and a range of specially curated CDs and newsletters.
Issues were curated by Nicolas Collins
, editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal
and Chair of the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
, who developed a theme based around silence. Kenny Goldsmith
, a writer, poet and founder of UbuWeb
, who trawled his archives to create a compilation of sound poetry. Japanese performance artist, Junko Wada curated a deeply personal selection of music, produced by a process of curation, performance and collaboration. Professor Andrew Hugill
explored the French absurdist movement ’Pataphysics
– a CD which travels from unheard Soft Machine
tracks, Marcel Duchamp
and Gavin Bryars
and through to Frank Zappa
’s former lover, Nigey Lennon and a piece of silence that predates John Cage
by 70 years by Alphonse Allais
. Ben Watson
delivered a post-Allais polemic through a disgruntled whiny from the Esemplasm. Tim Steiner’s Big Ears unearthed the lost art of Radio broadcasting and Irwin Chusid
, broadcaster and author of Songs in the Key of Z, delivered DIY and outsider nuggets.
The latest in the series was The Topography of Chance by Stewart Lee
, comedian and writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera
. The CD explores spoken word, music and sound that all include some chance element in their creation.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.
In 2008 the Sonic Arts Network merged with the Society for the Promotion of New Music
Society for the Promotion of New Music
The Society for the Promotion of New Music was founded in London in 1943 with the intention of promoting the creation, performance and appreciation of new music...
, the British Music Information Centre (BMIC) and the Contemporary Music Network to create a new organisation to promote contemporary Music in the UK called Sound and Music
Sound and Music
Sound and Music is a development agency promoting and supporting contemporary music in the United Kingdom. It was established in 2008 from the merger of four existing bodies working in the contemporary music field: the Society for the Promotion of New Music, the British Music Information Centre,...
.
Sonic Arts Network's activities separated into three main areas:
- Activities – Events, regular festivals such as Cut and Splice and Expo, tours and commissions.
- Education – national education project Sonic PostcardsSonic postcardsSonic Postcards was an educational sound art recording project first conducted within UK primary schools in which children recorded their local environment and constructed short "sonic postcard" musique concrète pieces. Sonic Postcards was awarded the New Statesman New Media Award for education in...
, artist workshops and talks. - Network – Sonic Arts Network was a membership organisation that acted as a hub of information, opportunities and publications for the UK sonic arts scene.
Activities
Every year, Sonic Arts Network produced a number of nationwide commissions and projects in partnership with funding agencies, sponsors, broadcasters and venues. The aim of these activities was to bring some of the best new and existing work by sound artists from around the world to the UK. Sonic Arts Network's main activities included: Cut and Splice, Expo Plymouth 2007, Beach Singularity and Vacant Space.Cut and Splice
Cut and Splice is a festival of experimental electronic music that brings together international artists to premiere new work or recreate seminal historical pieces. The event has previously featured Bernard ParmegianiBernard Parmegiani
Bernard Parmegiani is a composer best known for his electronic or acousmatic music.-Biography:Between 1957 and 1961 he studied mime with Jacques Lecoq, a period he later regarded as important to his work as a composer...
, François Bayle
François Bayle
François Bayle is a composer of Musique concrète or acousmatic music.In the 1950s he studied with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1960 he joined the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, and in 1966 was put in charge of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales...
, Yasunao Tone
Yasunao Tone
Yasunao Tone is a Japanese artist who has worked with many different types of media throughout his career. He was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1935, and he graduated from Chiba Japanese National University in 1957, majoring in Japanese literature. He became active in the Fluxus movement in the 1960s and...
and Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
Prize-winner Eliane Radigue
Eliane Radigue
Eliane Radigue is a French electronic music composer. She started her work in the 1950s and her first creations were presented in the late 1960s. Until 2000 her work was almost exclusively created on a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape...
. Some of the artists featured in Cut and Splice Acousmonium
Acousmonium
The Acousmonium is the sound diffusion system designed in 1974 by Francois Bayle and used originally by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the Maison de Radio France. It consists of 80 loudspeakers of differing size and shape, and was designed for tape playback...
2006 at the ICA
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
included Russell Haswell
Russell Haswell
Russell Haswell is a multidisciplinary artist.He has exhibited conceptual and wall based visual works, video art, public sculpture, as well as audio presentations in both art gallery and concert hall contexts. Extreme Computer Music is one specialized area of activity...
, John Wall, Hecker
Hecker (musician)
Florian Hecker is an electronic music composer. He was born in Augsburg, Germany in 1975. His electronic music trends towards noise music and is often released via the Mego label. He has been working with computer music with artists such as Russell Haswell, Peter Rehberg, Yasunao Tone, Aphex Twin...
, Michel Chion
Michel Chion
Michel Chion born in 1947 in Creil, France, is a composer of experimental music. He teaches at several institutions within France and currently holds the post of Associate Professor at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle where he is a theoretician and teacher of audio-visual...
, Christian Zanési
Christian Zanesi
Christian Zanési is a French composer born in Lourdes in 1952.-Biography:Former student of Guy Maneveau and Marie-Françoise Lacaze at the Pau University , of Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel at the Paris Conservatory .In 1977 he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales...
, Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck is an English multimedia composer, magician, choreographer, woodsman and taxidermist. He is perhaps best known for his work Vinyl Requiem with Lol Sargent which won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993...
, Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Carl Michael von Hausswolff is a composer, visual artist and curator based in Stockholm, Sweden. His main tools are recording devices used in an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, architectural space and paranormal electronic interference...
, Zbigniew Karkowski
Zbigniew Karkowski
Zbigniew Karkowski was born in 1958 in Krakow, Poland. He studied composition at the State College of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden, aesthetics of modern music at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Musicology, and computer music at the Chalmers University of Technology...
and Hans-Joachim Roedelius.
Expo Festival
Since 1997, the Expo Festival is the playground of the experimental musicExperimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
and sound art
Sound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
scene in the UK. Free and open to the public, the event mobilises a national network of artists and engages with communities from all backgrounds – placing sonic art and the people who make it, in direct contact with the public.
Expo 2006 explored the inner, outer and public spaces of Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. The festival included sound installations at the Cornerhouse
Cornerhouse
Cornerhouse is a centre for cinema and the contemporary visual arts located very close to Oxford Road Station, on Oxford Street in Manchester, England...
by Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
based sound art collective Staalplaat Soundsystem who presented The Ultrasound of Therapy; Bob Levene’s newly commissioned work The Space Between – Experiments for Speakers and Helmut Lemke
Helmut Lemke
Helmut Lemke was a German politician and Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein . He was born in Kiel and died in Lübeck.- External links :...
’s new work KLANGELN 7. There was also a performance by Norwegian female electro/instrumental improv group SPUNK
Spunk
The term Spunk may refer to:* courage or spirit, pluck* Australian slang, meaning hot, sexy, referring to the person with an x-factor* quality of mind showing enthusiasm, boldness, energy, courage, determination and motivation...
and Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
sound arts activists Dreams of Tall Buildings performing the first graphic score in 40 years by Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
artist and founder of the band The United States of America
The United States of America (band)
The United States of America was an American experimental rock and psychedelic band whose works are an example of early electronic music in rock and roll.-History:...
, Joseph Byrd
Joseph Byrd
Joseph Byrd was the leader of The United States of America, a notable rock band from the 1960s, as well as the psychedelic group Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, of cult fame through their release The American Metaphysical Circus...
. Victoria Baths
Victoria Baths
Victoria Baths is a Grade II* listed building, situated in the Chorlton-upon-Medlock area of Manchester, in northwest England. The building is currently on English Heritage's Buildings at Risk Register....
, winner of BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
’s 2004 Restoration competition, saw over 600 people attend a day of site-specific happenings that utilised the spaces and acoustics of the listed building with a programme of performances and installations.
The focus for Expo 2007 shifts to Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
and the South West of England where Expo will be presented in partnership with the University of Plymouth
University of Plymouth
Plymouth University is the largest university in the South West of England, with over 30,000 students and is 9th largest in the United Kingdom by total number of students . It has almost 3,000 staff...
's i-DAT (Institute of Digital Art and Technology).
This weekend of performance, exhibition and presentation will take place between 22–25 June 2007 across a variety of public venues in Plymouth including a selection of outdoor performance spaces, club spaces and an historic architectural space. Online works will also be part of the activities.
Beach Singularity
Beach Singularity is a celebration of the British seaside. Set in an afternoon, the piece involves hundreds of holidaymakers of all ages in a bizarre and creative performance featuring a marching band, interactive electronic sound, beach activities and sound games. Supported by Contemporary Music Network (CMN), Beach Singularity will tour 3 seaside towns in August 2007. Composed and devised by Trevor WishartTrevor Wishart
Trevor Wishart is an English composer, based in York. Wishart has contributed to composing with digital audio media, both fixed and interactive...
, Beach Singularity received its first performances on the beaches of Morecambe
Morecambe
Morecambe is a resort town and civil parish within the City of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. As of 2001 it has a resident population of 38,917. It faces into Morecambe Bay...
, Cleveleys
Cleveleys
Cleveleys is a town on the Fylde Coast of Lancashire, England, about 4 miles north of Blackpool and 2 miles south of Fleetwood...
, St. Annes, and Southport
Southport
Southport is a seaside town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. During the 2001 census Southport was recorded as having a population of 90,336, making it the eleventh most populous settlement in North West England...
in the summer of 1977 as part of the Queen’s
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
Silver Jubilee
Silver Jubilee
A Silver Jubilee is a celebration held to mark a 25th anniversary. The anniversary celebrations can be of a wedding anniversary, ruling anniversary or anything that has completed a 25 year mark...
celebrations.
Commissions
Sonic Arts Network aimed to support the development of both emerging and established artists in the UK through a rolling programme of commissions that in recent years has commissioned new work for performance and installation across the UK from artists including Kaffe Matthews, Justin BennettJustin Bennett
Justin Bennett is a studio and live performance session drummer. He has been working professionally since 1997, and has participated on tours and albums with a number of notable bands, including Skinny Puppy and My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, as well as forming his own project, American...
, People Like Us
People Like Us (musician)
People Like Us is the stage name of London DJ multimedia artist Vicki Bennett. She has released a number of albums featuring collages of music and sound since 1992. In recent years, she has performed at a number of modern art galleries, festivals and universities.-Musical career:Since 1991 Vicki...
, Ergo Phizmiz, Dreams of Tall Buildings and Bob Levene.
Education
Sonic Arts Network undertook its first formal education project at the 1989 Huddersfield Contemporary Music FestivalHuddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is held in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It has a repertoire of cutting-edge jazz, orchestral, choral and electroacoustic performances, along with film, dance and music theatre...
pioneered by Robert Worby and Ian Dearden with composer John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
. After the appointment of Paul Wright as Education Officer in 1990 Sonic Arts Network provided projects for the South Bank Centre
South Bank Centre
Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, UK, on the South Bank of the River Thames between County Hall and Waterloo Bridge. It comprises three main buildings , and is Europe’s largest centre for the arts. It attracts more than three million visitors annually...
, The Science Museum
Science Museum (London)
The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....
, Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf is a major business district located in London, United Kingdom. It is one of London's two main financial centres, alongside the traditional City of London, and contains many of the UK's tallest buildings, including the second-tallest , One Canada Square...
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
's Symphony Hall
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Symphony Hall is a 2,262 seat concert venue located inside the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, England. It was officially opened by the Queen in June 1991, although had been opened on April 15, 1991. It is home to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and hosts around 270 events...
, many other venues in the UK and in Budapest and Tokyo. Electroacoustic composers involved included Robert Worby, Trevor Wishart, Stephen Montague, Alistair MacDonald, Duncan Chapman, Peter Cusack as well as video artist Stewart Collinson and poet Matthew Sweeney. In 2000 Sonic Arts Network led the education programme for Sonic Boom
Sonic Boom
Sonic boom may refer to:* Sonic boom, a shockwave, usually caused by aircraft travelling faster than sound* Sonic Boom is an album by hard rock-band KISS* Sonic Boom, Inc., a mobile entertainment developer and publisher...
at London’s Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
.
Sonic postcards
The main branch of Sonic Arts Network's recent Education programme was Sonic postcardsSonic postcards
Sonic Postcards was an educational sound art recording project first conducted within UK primary schools in which children recorded their local environment and constructed short "sonic postcard" musique concrète pieces. Sonic Postcards was awarded the New Statesman New Media Award for education in...
which aimed to explore and compare the local sound environments of young people across the UK; the impact of sound on our lives; and the possibilities for creativity through the interaction of these sounds with the internet. 52 schools from across the UK took part in its first year.
The project was aimed at pupils between the ages of 9-14 in primary, secondary and special schools. Each project provided pupils with the opportunity to record and gather sounds to use as the basis of their sonic postcards. The pupils became sound designers by composing and structuring their own sonic postcards which were emailed to other schools that participated in the project. All the sonic postcards were then uploaded to the Sonic postcards website.
Network
Sonic Arts Network was a membership organisation with over 600 members. This community of artists, organisations and the wider public with an interest in sound artSound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
was served by the Sonic Arts Network through a combination of online services, performance, exhibition and educational opportunities and a range of specially curated CDs and newsletters.
CD series
These guest-curated CD were released several times a year; accompanying the aural element of the publication was a richly produced booklet that often underpinned and contextualised the themes explored on the CD.Issues were curated by Nicolas Collins
Nicolas Collins
Nicolas Collins is a composer of mostly electronic music and former student of Alvin Lucier. He received a B.A. and M.A...
, editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal
Leonardo Music Journal
Leonardo Music Journal is an annual multimedia peer-reviewed academic journal published by the MIT Press on behalf of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. It publishes the work of artists who are inventing media, implementing developing technologies, and expanding the...
and Chair of the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, who developed a theme based around silence. Kenny Goldsmith
Kenneth Goldsmith
Kenneth Goldsmith is an American poet. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb, teaches Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and is Senior Editor of PennSound. He hosted a weekly radio show at WFMU from 1995 until June 2010...
, a writer, poet and founder of UbuWeb
UbuWeb
UbuWeb is a large web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.-Philosophy:...
, who trawled his archives to create a compilation of sound poetry. Japanese performance artist, Junko Wada curated a deeply personal selection of music, produced by a process of curation, performance and collaboration. Professor Andrew Hugill
Andrew Hugill
Andrew Hugill is a British composer, performer, writer, professor and researcher.-Biography:Andrew Hugill studied composition with Roger Marsh at the University of Keele between 1976 and 1980, and in 1983 he founded the ensemble "George W. Welch"...
explored the French absurdist movement ’Pataphysics
’Pataphysics
Pataphysics is a philosophy or pseudophilosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. The term was coined and the concept created by French writer Alfred Jarry , who defined 'pataphysics as "the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties...
– a CD which travels from unheard Soft Machine
Soft Machine
Soft Machine were an English rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene, and helped pioneer the progressive rock genre...
tracks, Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...
and through to Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
’s former lover, Nigey Lennon and a piece of silence that predates John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
by 70 years by Alphonse Allais
Alphonse Allais
Alphonse Allais was a French writer and humorist born in Honfleur, Calvados.He is the author of many collections of whimsical writings. A poet as much as a humorist, he in particular cultivated the verse form known as holorhyme, i.e. made up entirely of homophonous verses, where entire lines rhyme...
. Ben Watson
Ben Watson (music writer)
Ben Watson is a British writer on music and culture of Marxist views, known especially for his books on Frank Zappa.Watson is well-known for his writing in The Wire , as well as the author of numerous books, often entailing studies of popular culture from a Marxist perspective...
delivered a post-Allais polemic through a disgruntled whiny from the Esemplasm. Tim Steiner’s Big Ears unearthed the lost art of Radio broadcasting and Irwin Chusid
Irwin Chusid
Irwin Chusid is a journalist, music historian, radio personality and self-described "landmark preservationist." His stated mission has been to "find things on the scrapheap of history that I know don't belong there and salvage them." Those "things" have included such previously overlooked but...
, broadcaster and author of Songs in the Key of Z, delivered DIY and outsider nuggets.
The latest in the series was The Topography of Chance by Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director known for being one half of the 1990s comedy duo Lee and Herring, and for co-writing and directing the critically acclaimed and controversial stage show Jerry Springer - The Opera...
, comedian and writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera
Jerry Springer: The Opera
Jerry Springer: The Opera is a British musical written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, based on the television show The Jerry Springer Show. The musical is notable for its profanity, its irreverent treatment of Judeo-Christian themes, and surreal images such as a troupe of tap-dancing Ku Klux...
. The CD explores spoken word, music and sound that all include some chance element in their creation.
Other International Electroacoustic Organisations
- ACMA — Australasian Computer Music Association
- CIME/ICEM — Confédération Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique / International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music
- DeGeM — Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik e.V. (Germany)
- DIEM — Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music
- EMS — Elektroakustisk Musik i Sverige (Sweden)
- ICMA — International Computer Music Association
- HELMCA — Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association (Greece)
- NEAR — Netherlands Electro-Acoustic Repertoire Centre
- NOTAM — Norsk nettverk for Teknologi, Akustikk og Musikk
- SEAMUS — Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United StatesSociety for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United StatesThe Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States is a nonprofit US based organization founded in 1984 which aims to promote electro-acoustic music...