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Interfaces Sound Art Festival

Posted May 7, 2019 by admin

Dates: 31 May to 4 June
Locations: Phoenix Square, The Curve Theatre, LCB depot and The Exchange Bar
Price: Free (No reservation needed)

The Interfaces Sound Art Festival brings sound art to venues across Leicester’s Cultural Quarter. Presented across the Cultural Quarter in Phoenix Square, The Curve Theatre, LCB depot and The Exchange Bar, the festival includes a diverse range of work that explores and celebrates sound in relation to space, place, image and sculpture.

Commissioned audio and audiovisual installations from Myriam Boucher, Mr Underwood and Urban Projections will be joined by contributions from Davide Baldazzi, Peter Batchelor & Ian Bilson, Rob Chafer, Bruno Iglesias, Danny Ingram, Donggyu Lee, Francesc Marti, John Richards and Stewart Worthy.

Installations from DMU Music and Audio Technology

LCB Depot installations start Thu 30 May 1:00 pm

All other installations start Fri 31 May, 1:00 pm*

All finish 4 June, 5:00 pm

Curve Theatre:

Peter Batchelor, Contraption
Rob Chafer, Innermost
Danny Ingram, Balloon Bridge
Francesc Marti, Speech 2
John Richards, Death and the Shell
Stewart Worthy, Tungsten Ghost

Exchange Bar:

Donggyu Lee, Window ≠ Wall

LCB Depot*:

Davide Baldazzi, Molekules
Bruno Iglesias, Frame of Phase

Please note that opening times at LCB Depot are

31st May: 1pm-10pm
3rd/4th June: 9am-5.30pm

From left: Batchelor/Bilson, Cascade(2018); Marti, Speech 2(2015); Iglesias, Monolith(2019), Worthy, Mirror Screen (2019)

Installation: Heed by Sam Underwood @ Phoenix Café

Posted April 24, 2019 by admin

Morton Underwood’s ‘Futuro Mantra Boxes’ at Matt’s Gallery, London 2014

Dates: 31 May to 4 June
Location: Phoenix Café
Price: Free (No reservation needed)

This project sees musical instrument designer Sam Underwood install a series of devices in and around Phoenix Café. A variation on his long term Sonic Graffiti project, Underwood felt it necessary to reflect on our current divisions. Each piece encourages close listening and quiet reflection as an antidote to the bombast that seems so commonplace at this time.

Sam Underwood is a musician, sound artist and musical instrument designer. His work in musical instrument design focuses on the development of new musical instruments; predominantly acoustic and mechanical, with a particular penchant for those in the bass/sub-bass register. One of the central aims of his work in creating new musical instruments is to develop fresh interfaces with sound for both performer and audience.

Sam’s work is exhibited as part of the Interfaces Sound Art Festival, part of the EU-funded Interfaces project, which aims to put sound art in real-world public places. Sound sculptures and Installations will be installed across the Cultural Quarter including Phoenix, The Curve Theatre, LCB Depot, and Exchange Bar.

Watch: Empty Spaces – Myriam Boucher

Posted April 13, 2019 by admin

Myriam Boucher’s Empty Space is a video and sound installation that acts as a companion to her audiovisual composition premiering in this year’s Visible Bits, Audible Bytes

Image: Still from Myriam Boucher’s *Empty Spaces*

Opening times: Fri: 5 – 9pm, Sat: 11am – 7pm
Location: Phoenix Art Centre

Myriam Boucher’s Empty Spaces is a video and sound-based installation that acts as a companion or ‘prelude’ to her audiovisual composition by the same name, which will be premiering in this year’s Visible Bits, Audible Bytes. The installation explores the genesis of her project: the village where she grew up – concerning the source of the desire to run away, to escape from reality.

Structured from several short and overlapped video segments, the installation presents a duality between the other world – presented by imaginary and dreamlike places, which are overlooked as the crow flies – and the real world, presented by empty and ‘tough’ places. This duality is also reflected in the sound and music: a harsh and very ‘cold’ sound from modular synthesizers and recordings of a dog barking, a snowstorm and a snow removal truck, all cohabit with sounds from a violin, cello and tubas.

In addition to this installation and the screening in Visible Bits, Audible Bytes, Boucher will also be presenting a VJ Workshop on Sat 1 Jun.

Montréal-based Myriam Boucher is an award-winning video and sound artist. Her work has won prizes in the 2015 and 2016 (first prize) JTTP awards, the LUFF 2017 (best experimental short-movie award), the 2015 JIM Electroacoustic Compositions Competition and the Bourse Euterke 2015, and has been presented at many international events and places, including Kontakte (DE), Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois (CA), Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg (FR), and Akousma (CA).

This event is part of Interfaces, a Creative Europe project which aims to inspire more people of all ages and demographics to experience contemporary music and sound art and learn to incorporate the European musical legacy in newly found idioms and contexts. De Montfort University’s Institute of Sonic Creativity is a partner, along with nine other European institutions.

Image: Still from Myriam Boucher’s Empty Spaces

Workshop: Collaborative Animated Light Graffiti with Urban Projections (29 May 2019)

Posted April 3, 2019 by admin

Workshop: Collaborative Animated Light Graffiti with Urban Projections

Reservation Link: https://www.phoenix.org.uk/event/urban-projections-collaborative-animated-light-graffiti/
Date: Wednesday 29 May 2019
Time: 19:000-21:00
Mobile light projects will be shown in the city, starting around 22:00.
Location: Phoenix Square https://www.phoenix.org.uk|
Price: Free, but space is limited. Online reservation required.

In this community workshop, participants will learn how to use special software on iPads to craft collaborative animations. A selection of the workshop pieces will then be displayed around Leicester at night with a custom ‘light cycle’ portable high-definition projection system.

Urban Projections is the work and collaborations of multimedia artist Rebecca Smith. Fusing hand-crafted art-forms with digital technologies, her work seeks to surprise and engage audiences with its playful tone and interactivity. Constantly striving and seeking ways to push the boundaries of her discipline, Rebecca creates unique digital experiences.

For questions about the workshop, contact Professor Bret Battey at De Montfort University (bbattey@dmu.ac.uk).

Workshop: VJ-ing with Myriam Boucher

Posted April 3, 2019 by admin

VJ Workshop with Myriam Boucher

When? Saturday, 1 June 2019
Where? Phoenix Cinema Conference Rooms
What time? 19:00-21:00
Price? Free, but space is limited. Online reservation required.

How to register: Visit the Phoenix website for details: https://www.phoenix.org.uk/event/vj-workshop-with-myriam-boucher/

Computers with Resolume software will be available.

VJing is the emerging art of live performance of visual projections with music. Here is your opportunity to learn VJ technique hands-on from an award-winning artist who is master in both visuals and music production. Montréal-based video and sound artist Myriam Boucher will teach aspects of her approach to live performance with Resolume software, with special attention to questions of how to work with musical structures and to create organic visual textures and transformations.

Myriam Boucher has VJ’d for numerous international artists, including Mind Against (IT), Medasin (US), Deadboy (GB), The Zenker Brothers (GE), Nina Las Vegas (AU), Automatisme (CA), Equiknoxx (JM), and DJ Lag (ZA) – and at major events such as Mutek (CA, AE) and Igloofest (CA). Her commission list is varied and distinguished and includes the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM), Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), Magnitude6, Collectif9 and Architek Percussion.

Her work has won prizes in the 2015 and 2016 (first prize) JTTP awards, the LUFF 2017 (best experimental short-movie award), the 2015 JIM Electroacoustic Compositions Competition and the Bourse Euterke 2015, and has been presented at many international events and places, including Kontakte (DE), Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois (CA), Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg (FR), and Akousma (CA).

For questions about the workshop, contact Professor Bret Battey at De Montfort University (bbattey@dmu.ac.uk).

*mage: Myriam Boucher VJing at Mutek 2018 © Bruno Destombes.*

Visible Bits, Audible Bytes: 31 May 2019

Posted April 3, 2019 by admin

Visible Bits, Audible Bytes

When? Friday, May 31, 2019
Where? Phoenix Cinema
What time? 18:00-19:30
Tickets? https://www.phoenix.org.uk/event/visible-bits-audible-bytes-2019/
Price: Free. Phoenix reservations recommended.

Visible Bits, Audible Bytes brings genre-defying audiovisual art to Leicester’s Phoenix Cinema. From the ecstatic to the sublime, from the chaotic to the calmed: see how artists and musicians around the world are using new technologies to animate imaginative audiovisual worlds. Going beyond the bounds of traditional narrative, abstract flows of image and sound invite wonder and contemplation.

With the support of the EU Interfaces project, Visible Bits, Audible Bytes has commissioned award-winning Montréal video artist and composer Myriam Boucher, to premiere a new live performance work in Leicester. On June 1, she will also be presenting a workshop on VJ-ing – the performance of live visuals for music.

Event: Punto y Raya Festival – A Retrospective (1 June 2019)

Posted April 3, 2019 by admin

Punto y Raya Festival – A Retrospective

Date: Saturday, June 1, 2019
Location: Phoenix Cinema
Time: 15:00-17:00
Price: Free. Phoenix reservations recommended.

Reservation Link: https://www.phoenix.org.uk/event/punto-y-raya-festival-a-retrospective/

“Punto y Raya fosters Audiovisual Arts in their purest state: Form, Colour, Motion and Sound. No representation! This renders it Universal and Timeless. Its mission is to recapture the spirit of Cinéma Pure and Absolute Film formulated by the European avant-garde in the 1920s, consolidating this unique artform laying at the intersection between Fine Arts and Media. This presentation by festival co-founder Nöel Palazzo offers a review of their 12-year trajectory, focusing on contemporary works and the many diverse techniques the artists have explored and developed.”

Credit: Still from ‘Studies I – IV’ by Jonathan Gillie

In Situ: Find out more

Posted February 2, 2019 by admin

In Situ

In December 2018, the ‘In Situ‘ project brought together a collective of sound artists to host a three-day series of talks and installations within historical locations in Leicester.

The collaboration between De Montfort University and IRCAM (Pompidou Centre, Paris), has involved the creation of site-specific artistic environments celebrating special historic architecture, providing unique sonic experiences at historical locations.

The activity is organised in the framework of the Interfaces Network, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

More information is available in the documents found below.

IN SITU PublicityLeaflet Download

Programme_In Situ Download

Of This Parish_Creed_FINAL Download

Updates on Athens Teacher Workshop

Posted January 9, 2019 by admin

COMPOSING SOUNDS USING DIGITAL APPS

In December 2018, Duncan Chapman & David Holland conducted a workshop with teachers in Athens (at the Onassis Cultural Centre), aimed at introducing ways of using digital apps for sound-based creativity in the classroom. Several of the products from this workshop are available below.

Workshop Information

Sounds not notes lie at the core of this “Composing sounds using digital apps” workshop! It sets out to teach us how we can records sounds from our everyday environment, then process and sequence them using a digital application.

It will also show the participants—who do not need any musical knowledge to take part—how to incorporate activities centred on music and/or sound into their teaching, and how to adapt them to the age of their students and their teaching context.

The workshop will revolve around three key axes: 1) how we can be taught to listen, 2) how we can record sounds, and 3) how we can compose with the sounds we record. The participants will also learn how to use the “Compose with Sounds” software package, and take away material at the end of the workshop which should be useful for their own teaching.