((audience))

Main Program
September 19, 2009 |  7PM
$10 or Included with Festival Pass

The centerpiece of the ((audience)) festival features 2½ hours of surround sound works by eight international artists. Presented as “cinema in the dark” with full 5.1 Surround Sound, the evening promises to be an immersive experience in cinematic audio.

Program 1 (Shorts)

LOUD OBJECTS 2009

Uli Schuster, “The Central Perspective for a Blind Person” (2008)(:59)*
Jamie Allen, "Introducing" (2007)(5:17)
Bryan Jacobs, "Within Scenes of Hurt" (2007-9) (7:00)
Loud Objects, "Underwater Chickens" (2008) (2:30)
Simona Brinkmann, "Ghost Herd" (2006, 2008) (5:15)

Program 2 (Feature)

NATASHA BARRETT 2009

Nathasha Barrett, "Trade Winds" (2006) (53:00)

Program 3 (Nightfall)

CEDRIC MARIDET 2009

Emmanuel Madan & Anna Friz, "The Joy Channel", (2007) (33:50)
Cedric Maridet, "Into the Night" (2006) (17:20)

*Syracuse Exclusive

Bios / Works Descriptions

Jamie Allen's Introducing presents “all the unintended prologues one is exposed to most every time one listens to recorded music;” the sound of cassette tapes being jostled, the sonority of a CD player drawer closing, etc. With its heavy bass channel and use of LFE, Allen's work plays with abstract, conceptual phonography in the dynamic range of conventional Hollywood action films. (Audio A – Inroducing)

Simona Brinkmann's Ghost Herd consists of the sound of a bison stampede, treated spatially. The bison are heard approaching from the ‘front’ as a distant rumble. As the rumble turns louder, the animals are heard stampeding the space occupied by the listener before running off to disappear into another low lingering rumble, and then silence, in the opposite direction. Brinkmann is interested in silence as a negative space for sound and noise, and her work is a composition of silence as much as it is of sound.

Bryan Jacob's Within Scenes of Hurt was created from snippets of audio taken from movies which display various states of human, nonverbal emotional expression. Sounds of actors in scenes of extreme turmoil were captured, then stretched, frozen, and examined from many angles. This piece is part of the artist's investigations of innate understandings of the human voice.

The Loud Objects’ (Kunal Gupta, Tristan Perich, Katie Shima) Underwater Chickens is a 5.1 sound experiment that extends the Loud Objects' live show into the cinema space. Working with low-level electronics, the Loud Objects solder together microchips on an overhead projector, building live circuits to create an assault of 1-bit noise.

Trade Winds by Natasha Barrett is inspired by the vast expanse of sea: a composition unleashing the musical potential of recordings from the 100-year-old sailing ship Dyrafjeld, from above and within harbour, shore and open oceans around the world, and an interview from a retired Norwegian captain. From a narrative listening position Trade Winds' macrostructure consists of two halves: the first exploring culture and fables, the second exploring nature and science. The central pivot is inspired by the chapter Mobilis in Mobili from 20000 Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne. Professor Aronnax and his companions are rescued by the Nautilus. After being submerged in pitch blackness "... a sliding sound became audible. You could tell that some panels were shifting over the Nautilus's sides... revealing a sight that no pen could describe.” Throughout Trade Winds the reference to Captain Nemo is evident in various manifestations of organ recordings. (Audio C – Trade Winds)

The Joy Channel is an experimental multi-channel transmission work by Anna Friz and Emmanuel Madan. It takes the hybrid form of a science-fiction style radio drama and an experimental sound/transmission art piece. Two versions of the piece have been developed to date: a theatrical live performance which premiered at Radio Tesla’s RadioVisionen: 250 Jahre Radio in Berlin, October 2007, and a broadcast work commissioned by Kunstradio in May 2008. The Kunstradio version has been submitted for ((audience)) and invites the audience to listen in to the communications of radio-empathic communities wandering the de-populated wastelands of New North America. Their communications are disrupted when the Hi-Zenith Corporation encroaches upon this territory with its initial coast-to-coast broadcasts of The Joy Channel. (Audio B – Joy Channel)

Cedric Maridet's Into the Night recreates an experience of walking at night. A mixture of field recordings taken along the path from Pak Tam Au to Dailong Wan in Saikung Country Park in Hong Kong, as well as synthesized tones; the piece "aims at being a journey into the night, into a dark and mysterious world of unknown and invisible creatures." ((audience))