Noise Symposium: Florian Hecker, Curtis Roads, and Yasunao Tone on April 14

Lecture Hall
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street Campus

April 14, 2006, 5:00pm
free and open to the public

Download Reading and Listening List PDF (9K)

Following the 5:00pm Lecture at SFAI:

Friday April 14, 9:00pm and Saturday April 15, 8:00pm & 11:00pm See live surround sessions with Hecker, Roads, and Tone at RECOMBINANT MEDIA LABS in downtown San Francisco. For more information please call 650.255.8947 or visit:

www.asphodel.com
http://recombinantmedia.net

Noise Symposium:
Florian Hecker, Curtis Roads, Yasunao Tone

German sound artist Florian Hecker has been working with computer music independently and in collaboration with other artists such as Russell Haswell, Peter Rehberg, Marcus Schmickler, and Yasunao Tone since 1996. Hecker’s works emphasize the connections between recent developments and historical trends in computer music and related technology. Often working closely with software engineers and scientists, his recent productions incorporate psychoacoustic effects that disorient spatial perception. His full-length solo recording, Sun Pandämonium, received the Award of Distinction at the Prix Ars Electronica 2003. His work has been included in Off the Record, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; 3rd Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Max Pechstein Förderpreis, Kunstsammlungen der Städtischen Museen, Zwickau; 2nd International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Gothenburg; Mutations, TN Probe Gallery, Tokyo; and Ausgeträumt, Secession, Vienna. Recent performance venues include MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA; KW, Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; CCA Kitakushu Notam Forum, Oslo; ICA, London; Edvard Smilgis Theater Museum and Music Museum, Riga; Ars Electronica, Linz; All Tomorrow’s Parties, Chamber SandsSonic Light, Paradiso, Amsterdam; Medienturm, Graz; Kunsthalle Baden, Baden; Kyushu Institute of Design, Fukuoka; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Strasbourg; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; ICMC 2002, ICMC, Konsthallen, Gothenburg; Sonar 2002, MACBA, Barcelona; Royal Festival Hall, London; Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; 2001 Purple Institut, Paris; Bla, Oslo; Numero Festival, Lisbon; CCA Kitakyushu Mega-Wave; International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama; and Venice Biennale, 49th International Exhibition of Art.

Curtis Roads teaches in the Department of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has recently led master classes at the Australian National Conservatory, Melbourne, and at the Prometeo Laboratorio, Parma. He is co-organizer of international workshops on musical signal processing in Sorrento, Capri, and Santa Barbara. Certain compositions of his feature granular and pulsar synthesis, methods he developed for generating sound from acoustical particles. He has recently developed the Creatophone, a system for spatial projection of sound in concert. Another new invention of his is the Creatovox, developed in collaboration with Alberto de Campo, is an expressive instrument for virtuoso performance that is based on the synthesis of sound particles. His composition Clang-Tint (1994) was commissioned by the Japan Ministry of Culture (Bunka-cho) and the Kunitachi College of Music, Tokyo. His music is available on compact discs produced by the MIT Media Laboratory, Wergo, OR, and Mode. A co-founder of the International Computer Music Association in 1979, he was editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 1989 and associate editor from 1990 to 2000. His writings include over a hundred monographs, research articles, reports, and reviews. Recent books include the textbook The Computer Music Tutorial; Musical Signal Processing; and Microsound, which explores the aesthetics and techniques of composition with sound particles.

Yasunao Tone was one of the first Japanese artists active in composing “events” and improvisational music. He has been part of the Fluxus movement since 1962 and has also been an organizer and participant in many important music and performance groups such as Group Ongaku, Hi-Red Center, and Team Random (the first computer art group organized in Japan). Primarily a composer, Tone has worked in many media, creating pieces for electronics, computer systems, film, radio, and television, and environmental art. He was the recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica prize in Digital Music in 2002. Since coming to the United States in 1972, Tone has composed numerous scores for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and has given solo concerts at the Kitchen, the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Roulette, P.S.1, Guggenheim Museum SOHO, Chicago Art Club, Metronom, among other places; and has participated in numerous Fluxus concerts. Since 1976, Tone has been designing musical compositions as a compound of cultural studies, post-structuralist theories, ancient Oriental texts, and musical sounds generated by electronic means. One of these works, Geography and Music, was commissioned by the American Dance Festival for Merce Cunningham’s dance Roadrunners. Since 1990, Tone has participated in exhibitions and performances at the Hörspiele Festival, Cologne; the Audio Art Festival at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Venezia Biennale; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Tone has also participated in Japanese Art after 1945 at the Guggenheim Soho and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Bitstream and Pulse at the Whitney; the Yokohama Triennale, Mutations, Tokyo; Do It, at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil; the New Music Festival at Wesleyan University; the Lovebytes Festival, UK, Sonar; the Ars Electronica Festival and Spectacle Vivant at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Sonic Light Festival in Amsterdam.