discussion program
introduction
In 2011, Unsound Festival New York will once again feature an extensive range of workshops, talks, panel discussions and screenings. These will also take place during Unsound Labs. The aim is to give a context for the music events taking place, and foster dialogue within a festival framework.
Details of the program are below.
Tour: Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center // Computer Music Center at Columbia / FREE
02.04.11 // 13:00 // Computer Music Center at Columbia University
See the site where the room-sized RCA Mark II Synthesizer has stood since 1959, when it helped establish a fabled electronic-music center. Terry Pender, associate director of the current Columbia Computer Music Center, will talk about the Mark II (no longer operable) and some of the center's archives, including working Serge and Buchla synthesizers. LIMITED TO 50; RSVP TO rsvpnewyork@unsound.pl
Tickets: Free
Conversation: Aurality, Motion, Architecture
02.04.11 // 15:30 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
Sound-artists Kabir Carter and Ed Osborn talk together about what motivates their various explorations of sound-in-space, including accounts of flying speakers, selling a sound installation on Canal Street, fishing for feedback, using microphones to measure rooms, and where they see the role of sound in the arts heading in the future.
Tickets: Free
Screening: MisinforMation
02.04.11 // 17:00 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
A screening of the British Film Institute DVD project MisinforMation, for which the enigmatic enterprise Mordant Music re-scored old public-information films from the 1970s and '80s era of the UK's Central Office of Information. Subjects covered, to mesmerizing and strange effect, include interior design, rats in mazes, and solvent abuse.
Tickets: Free
Talk: Sound Installations
03.04.11 // 13:00 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
Celebrated sound-artist Stephen Vitiello presents a talk about the exchange between sound and public art, with a focus on A Bell For Every Minute, a long-term project currently active in New York's High Line park. Talk includes a survey of Vitiello's found bell sounds, as well as other of his public projects including The Sound of Red Earth in Sydney, Australia.
Tickets: Free
Talk: ((audience)): The Cinema as Concert Hall
03.04.11 // 14:30 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
The organizers of ((audience)) talk about the history and evolution of sound within the space of the movie house, starting with a survey of films like The Jazz Singer, Fantasia, and Star Wars and ending with the current Dolby-dominated digital age. Presentation will also trace the roots of their own project ((audience)): Cinema for the Ear, to take place Monday night at the Walter Reade Theater.
Tickets: Free
Conversation: Deaf Center
03.04.11 // 16:00 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
The Norwegian ambient duo Deaf Center discuss their haunting work, including two forthcoming performances at Unsound: a side-project-related live soundtrack for F.W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu (by Svarte Greiner, with Paul Wirkus) and a Deaf Center set preceding music by composer Henryck Gorecki. In conversation with journalist Christopher R. Weingarten (Village Voice, Spin, Revolver).
Tickets: Free
Lecture/Demo: Morton Subotnick and the Buchla Synthesizer
08.04.11 // 18:00 // Greenwich House Music School
Morton Subotnick discusses the evolution of early electronic music and the Buchla voltage-controlled modular synthesizer, which he helped develop in the early ‘60s. Subjects include the conceptual basis and building of the synth, original modules with demonstrations, plus a focus on themes embedded in the title "The Transistor, the Tape Recorder, and the Credit Card: The Technological Big Bang."
Tickets: $15
Talk: Marcus Schmickler + CoH
09.04.11 // 13:00 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
Like-minded experimental musicians and labelmates on the Austrian imprint Editions Mego, Marcus Schmickler and CoH talk about their similarly refined approaches to extreme sounds. Dialogue to include talk of process, conceptual grounding, and how their work comes out of their respective home countries of Germany and Russia. In conversation with Andy Battaglia.
Tickets: Free
Talk: Lustmord
09.04.11 // 14:30 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
In advance of his first-ever performance in New York, dark-ambient pioneer Lustmord talks about his life and work, including exploratory and highly influential music dating back to the 1980s as well as his accomplished sound-design work for movies in Los Angeles.
Tickets: Free
Resynthesis: Synthetic Music Exploration Then and Now
09.04.11 // 16:00 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
A discussion starting with the recent reissue of Harald Grosskopf's classic kosmiche album Synthesist from 1980. Speakers include Grosskopf, his bandmate Axel Manrico and project coordinator Matt Werth. Younger musicians inspired by synth sounds from a future long ago include John Elliot (Emeralds), Laurel Halo and Alexis Georgopoulos (ARP). Moderator: Jordan Redaelli (Electric Independence).
Tickets: Free
Screening - Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines, and Mystery of Raymond Scott
10.04.11 // 15:30 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
A singular figure in the origins of electronic music starting in the 1950s, Raymond Scott developed prescient music-making machines, using them in work from TV ad jingles to the three-album set "Soothing Sounds for Baby". He also sired Stan Warnow, who made this documentary about searching for his father in the midst of old archival sounds and codes. Director Warnow will be present for Q&A.
Tickets: Free
Selected events
10.04 // Hotel Chantelle // New York
UNSOUND FESTIVAL CLOSING PARTY, PRESENTED BY KISS & TELL: Bethany Benzur Runaway Jeremy Berman Erika Sherman
03.04 // Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building // New York
Talk: Sound Installations