CTM Festival – Sound, Gender, Technology

Sound, Gender, Technology  CTM Festival 01/02/14 Berlin

‘Where to’ with Cyberfeminism? : Dis Continuity

Lectures and panel discussion: Sadie Plant, Marie Thompson, Fender Schrade, Susanne Kirchmayr, Moderation: Annie Goh

‘…Taking root from an abstract ontological level, in which binary categories of sex and gender have long been refuted (biologically as well as culturally), the panel aims to assess the interactions between sound, gender and technology from various philosophical and artistic positions. The widely discussed “cyberfeminism” borne in the early 1990s questioned the perpetuation of technology as male-dominated domain, whilst also inciting digital culture as an ideal flourishing ground for subversive strategies. Though the relationship of this purported digital utopia never largely or explicitly addressed sound, it shares dimensions in its affective power as well as non-linear, decentralized and un-hierarchical characteristics.

Approximately two decades since cyberfeminism boomed – how can we assess the cyberfeminist dream of the subversive potentialities within technology in the current status quo? How does an inquiry into the nature of sound tally to the broader aims of cyberfeminism? Does a gendered understanding of technology and sound technologies help the dismantling of the structures that form sound, gender, and technology today, or does it perpetuate these? Referring to both levels of feminist activism and feminist theory outlined above, as well as the dual tendencies within cybernetics towards order and chaos at the core of cyberfeminism – what can be identified as continuity and discontinuity in the structures of sound, gender and technology?’ CTM

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Alice Shields

Alice Shields is an American Composer known for her cross-cultural operas and vocal electronic music. She has recieved a DMA degree in Music Composition and served as Associate Director of both the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and the Columbia University Computer Music Center; as well as lecturing on the Psychology of Music in numerous institutions across America.

“Study for Voice and Tape was composed in 1968, using my prerecorded singing voice synchronized with electronic sounds on tape. The sound sources for the tape part include phrases created on an analog Buchla synthesizer, my own singing voice, and a shaken bell-tree. Pitch and timbral modifications occur through Klangumwandler and elaborate feedback, resulting in spiraling patterns that rise and fall in pitch and speed.” AShields

Alice is still producing work to date including her new chamber opera, ‘Zhaojun – A Woman of Peace’ (2013), in which her cross-cultural explorations step into the position of women in ancient China. Further information, recordings and contact can be found via www.aliceshields.com

Beatriz Ferreyra

Beatriz Ferreyra is an Argentine composer. She worked with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer (1963-70) where she collaborated on the realisation of the Solfège de L’objet Sonore albums. While there she completed research and ran the interdisciplinary seminars. In 1975, Ferreyra joined the Composers College of the IMEB (Institut international de musique électroacoustique de Bourges) and later created the experimental concerts series ‘Les rendez-vous de la Musique concrète’ at the Centre d’études et de Recherche Pierre Schaeffer. Ferreyra has performed at many international festivals, electroacoustic conferences and music seminars. As an independent composer, she has received commissions for performance at festivals and concerts, as well as public celebrations and events, films and ballets. Beatriz Ferreyra has also worked in the area of music therapy and served on numerous juries for international competitions adjudicating experimental musics.

‘Demeures Aquatiques’ (Waterish Dwelling): electroacoustic music commissioned by G.R.M. (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in 1967.  First Performance: Avignon’s  Festival, August 1968, France.

Laurie Spiegel plays Alles Synth

“This 1977 tape is one of the earliest examples of purely digital realtime audio synthesis. It manages to achieve an analog synth sounding quality, but is entirely digital synthesis and signal processing. The interactive software I wrote and am playing in this video recycles my keyboard input into an accompaniment to my continued playing, which is why I called it a ‘concerto generator’. I use part of one of the keyboards for control data entry, and the small switches upper right to access pre-entered numerical patterns. The sliders are mainly pre-Yamaha FM synthesis parameter controls, for the number and amplitude and frequency of the FM pair modulators and carriers…” Laurie Speigel 

Christina Kubisch – Mono Fluido

 Christina Kubisch is a German composer and sound-installation artist. She is a Professor of Audio-Visual Arts at the academy of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken and has had international solo exhibitions since the seventies as well as numerous releases with  various labels.

Below – ‘Ocigam Trazom’ from Mono Fluido (Important Records 2011), Constructed using field recordings, tape, flute and custom EMS synthesizer.

An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics by Daphne Oram

PDF of Daphne Oram’s out of print ‘An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics’, Galliard, Norfolk (1972) < Click link or image below for direct download.

Else Marie Pade

“In Denmark, I often felt a bit ridiculed as a female composer. Even my own husband was bothered by my creating music. One might say that I was doubly isolated in Danish composer circles, partly as a composer of electronic music, partly as a woman.” – Else Marie Pade

Else Marie Pade was born in Denmark in 1924. During the early 50s she became the first Danish composer of electronic music and Musique concrète.

While Denmark was not interested by Else’s work, Stockhausen and Boulez required her tapes to use during lessons and seminars held throughout Europe. These included “Syv Circler” (Seven Circles) 1958  ↓

De-gendering the Electronic Soundscape

An inspiring theses by Jennifer M. Brown of Southern Cross University

De-gendering the Electronic Soundscape: Women, Power and Technology in Contemporary Music.

Laurie Spiegel

Laurie Spiegel is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic-music compositions and her algorithmic composition software Music Mouse…

Ivana Stefanović – The Epistle of Birds 1976

Ivana Stefanović is a Serbian composer born 1948 in Belgrade. She trained as a violinist, and since the late 1960s, worked as music editor at Belgrade’s national radio and television. Her compositions include orchestral and vocal music, as well as radio art and stage music.

Ivana Stefanović – ‘The Epistle of Birds’ – a tape collage of bird songs published on 7″ in 1976 by Russian state label Melodyia

Geneviève Calame – Labyrinthes Fluides

“During the 1970s, classically trained Swiss composer Geneviève Calame (1946-1993) worked at Geneva’s Studio de Musique Contemporaine, where she composed various electronic music compositions likeL’Oiseau Du Matin (1972) or Geometry I, II, III (1975-1976). She was the co-founder of the Artistic Research Team, or A.R.T., in 1971, working on intermedia projects including video and new technologies. Created in the A.R.T. studio in 1976, Labyrinthes Fluides, is based on the EMS Spectron video sythesizer. allowing sound waves to generate pictures and movement.” Continuo

Maryanne Amacher – Music for Sound Joined Rooms 1980

Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009): Living sound, for “Sound-joined Rooms” series (1980).

“…meanwhile, the entire house was full of sound, circulating throughout the rooms, out the doors and windows, down the hill, past sedate Victorian mansions…cont“

Suzanne Ciani, Trailblazing Synth Musician

Radio piece with Suzanne Ciani on NPR, including clips of her music. She talks about gender politics in the history of music composition, the joy of composing and more… LISTEN HERE

Daphne Oram Documentary – Wee Have Also Sound-Houses

Suzanne Ciani demonstrating Sound Synthesis