The edition of Two Thousand + SEVEN once again ran in parallel to the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music (www.sonorities.org.uk), hosted by the Sonic Arts Research Center, Queen's University Belfast (www.sarc.qub.ac.uk). The festival is the longest-running new music festival in Ireland that presents cutting-edge new music and features some of the most thought-provoking and controversial musicians.

Original Call for papers/presentations:

The "object is no longer to compare humans and machines in order to evaluate the correspondences, the extensions, the possible or impossible substitutions of the one for the other, but to bring them into communication in order to show how humans are a component part of the machine, or combine with something else to constitute a machine. The other thing can be a tool, or even an animal, or other humans" (Deleuze and Guattari, 1995).1

Machinic performance, in Deleuze's and Guattari's sense, happens at multiple sites through multiple agents, both human and technological, and "to research a machinic performance implies to become part of it" (McKenzie, 2005).2

A multi-site networked music performance for example can range from performing a notated score with another musician in a remote location, improvising with other performers in different virtual spaces, playing with algorithms (the other performer could be a machine), to staging a performance in a virtual world (such as the online multi-player gaming environment Second Life).

Considerations of physical and virtual space are central to any technological construct that promotes social engagement, and as music performance is a field where physical, time-based, subjective and inter-personal concerns are most apparent, it is a highly suitable activity for exploring networked environments.

The questions that arise in virtual performance environments are of practical as well as of cultural nature:

•  What is the performer's and audience's experience of performances in virtual environments?

•  What type of language between performer and audience will (or will have to) develop in a virtual performance?

•  How do instrumental/ensemble feedback performance strategies (such as breathing, eye contact or body movements) manifest themselves in virtual environments?

•  How can we better understand a phenomenology of virtual performance environments?

•  How do virtual music exchanges redefine ideas and definitions of the performative?

•  How do virtual performance environments change our ideas of the body/instrument 'relation'?

•  What are the implications for the erotics of the body in an environment that is so often characterised by an absence of tactile behaviours?

For this one-day event we invite proposals for performative and theoretical papers that elucidate issues in networked performance environments.

The symposium will reflect the innovative approach of the festival and will unite performance practitioners, composers and theorists for a one-day session discussing topics that are not limited to above questions.

1 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1995). Balance-Sheet Program for Desiring Machines, trans. Robert Hurley, in Félix Guattari, Chaosophy ed. Sylvère Lotringer, New York: Semiotext(e), 120-1.

2 McKenzie, J. (2005). Hacktivism and Machinic Performance. Performance Paradigm, No. 1, Australia.

Details:

Date: Saturday, 21st of April 2007

Location: Sonic Arts Research Center/Belfast, www.sarc.qub.ac.uk


Live webcast of the symposium was:
(21st April 2007: 5.15 GMT+1)

http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk:8000/2000+7.sdp

Panel Discussion

Paper sessions will take place in the morning and the afternoon bridged by a lunchtime performance and finished off with two evening concerts. The symposium will close with a panel discussion with local and remote speakers. Remotely we will be joined by composer|pianist Chris Brown and Chris Chafe at CCRM (Stanford University California) as well as by performance and media choreographer Johannes Birringer who will be joining us from the BOSTON CYBERARTS Conference.

The discussion will be led by Director of Research at SARC, Pedro Rebelo.

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Keynote Speakers

George Lewis (Columbia University) and
Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, London)
  
George Lewis previously taught at UC San Diego,Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute. He has served as music curator for the Kitchen in New York, and has collaborated in the "Interarts Inquiry" and "Integrative Studies Roundtable" at the Center for Black Music Research (Chicago). A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. An active composer, improvisor, performer and computer/installation artist, Lewis has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. His artistic work is documented in over 120 recordings and has been awarded by a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship, 1999 Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts, and numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His oral history is archived in Yale University's collection of "Major Figures in American Music," and his published articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes.
www.music.columbia.edu/faculty/lewis.html

Steven Connor has taught since 1979 at Birkbeck College, where he is now Professor of Modern Literature and Theory. He is currently Academic Director of the London Consortium Masters and Doctoral Programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies. He is also the College Orator. For publications see:
www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc

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Registration

Registration for the one-day symposium is £30 (£15 unwaged).
This includes free access to all Sonorities Festival events on the day of the symposium.

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Travel

Information on how to get to Belfast and accommodation can be found here.

Food

Where to eat in Belfast (Restaurant guide, pdf - 6MB)

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All queries should be directed to:
f r a n z i s k a     s c h r o e d e r
franzisk[at]lautnet[dot]net

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