Technology, culture and location in a recent New Zealand sonic art project

The HIEMPA (Hybrid Instruments from Electroacoustic Manipulation And Models of Pütorino and Aquascape) project combined a team of people with technical, artistic, environmental and cultural expertise toward the artistic outcome of extending the New Zealand sonic art tradition. The project involved collecting audio samples from the aquascape of the Ruakuri Caves and Nature Reserve in Waitomo, South Waikato, New Zealand; and samples of a variety of Pütorino – a New Zealand Mäori wind instrument. Following a machine learning analysis of this audio material and an analysis of the performance material, hybrid digital instruments were built and mapped to suitable hardware triggers. The new instruments are playable in real-time, along with the electroacoustic manipulation of Pütorino performances. The project takes into account the environmental and cultural significance of the source material, with the results to be released as a set of compositions. This paper discusses the research process

HIEMPA: Hybrid Instruments from Electroacoustic Manipulation and Models of Pütorino and Aquascape

The HIEMPA project combined a team of people with technical, artistic, environmental and cultural expertise towards an artistic outcome aiming to extend the New Zealand sonic art tradition. The work involved collecting audio samples from the aquascape of the Ruakuri Caves and Nature Reserve in Waitomo, South Waikato, New Zealand; and samples of a variety of pütorino – a New Zealand Mäori wind instrument. Following a machine learning analysis of this audio material and an analysis of the performance material, hybrid digital instruments were built and mapped to suitable hardware triggers. The new instruments are playable in realtime, along with the electroacoustic manipulation of pütorino performances. The project takes into account the environmental and cultural significance of the source material, with the results to be released as a set of compositions. This paper discusses the background research and process of the project

From John Farnham to Lordi: the noise of music

In the field of music scholarship in general, it is popular music studies that have engendered the most innovative developments over the last several decades. As an academic formally based in literature and cognate theoretical fields, I would go further and offer the personal opinion that they have made some of the most interesting contributions to the methodologies of cultural studies over that period, fed by prior traditions of ethnomusicology and ethnography. One of the main reasons has a bearing on this article: it is impossible to write effectively about popular music, which is so predominantly independent of the printed score, without at least implicitly questioning the scopic orientations of cultural analysis and theory which dominate other fields (and indeed, sometimes music studies themselves). We can find an unfolding summary of the developments in popular music studies through what I suggest are the three most important academic journals in the field, which are, in order of seniority, Popular Music and Society (founded in the USA in 1971), Popular Music (UK, 1981) and Perfect Beat: the Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture (Australia, 1992). In its continuing series, Perfect Beat provides a comprehensive and focused exemplification of approaches to the critical analysis of the musics usually designated as ‘popular’ in the Oceanic region. In short, if we want to know what’s going on in Australian popular music studies, this journal is a good place to start

Horizontality: From "Window" to "Ground", Exploring Immersive Audiotory Space as an Interactive Participant Medium

My sound-based arts practice is currently concerned with the shift of focus from the materiality of the sonic art object to the conceptual and semantic dimensions involved in interaction within a system. The twentieth century saw the dawn of technologies that could not only mediate the sonic arts in new ways but also inform its techniques and tropes. Over the last few decades we have seen the emergence of the genres Transmission and Telematic Art, the methodology of both often being informed by new concepts of space. The rise of post-industrial Capitalism situates us in a new epoch of spatial awareness. This seems particularly relevant now that mediated sonic and communication technologies are an integral part of our lives. Transmitting media “punching a hole in space” now ignore acoustic container boundaries: a sound heard and its source can exist separately yet simultaneously. Physical location and distance become less relevant. How does this create a shift in how we perceive the spatial within the practice of living?; and 2. redefining concepts of author and audience. All who participate are involved in authorship creating a form that is impossible to mediate to a passive audience 5. My work explores how this situation and the aesthetics deriving from it inform me as a practitioner within the medium of sound: the generative and emergent behaviour that arises from relationship as a form of “composition” and, of particular interest to me, the desire to shift focus from the traditional role of sound as an object of aesthetic expression to immersive interactive auditory space as a means of entering into dialogue with the multidimensional environment which humanity inhabits

Mediated city: Annual review 2012

The research projects under Mediated City explore questions that traverse through various disciplines to create new knowledge. Here, design catalyses changes in people’s practices to cross boundary domains, such as art, business, geospatial science, interaction design and creative writing. Common themes under Mediated City are:• Activating public engagement in social, environmental and political issues• Creating spaces for dialogue and diversity• Altering our perception and relationship of place• Making histories accessible and meaningful in today’s world.This report documents the 2012 research activities for Mediated City including symposia, conferences, workshops, exhibitions, prototypes, and scholarly outputs including books, book chapters, conference papers, presentations, and journal articles.&nbsp

Electric Shadows (Dianying) *

Catalogue Essay on Isaac Julien's installation "Ten Thousand Waves". Probably also included in catalogue for Isaac Julien exhibition Sao Paulo Autumn 201

Interdisciplinary Film & Digital Media 2015 APR Self-Study & Documents

UNM Interdisciplinary Film & Digital Media APR self-study report, review team report, response to review report, and initial action plan for Spring 2015, fulfilling requirements of the Higher Learning Commission. IFDM was absorbed by the Cinematic Arts Department following this review