Lunchtime-Series-2016

Hunter Ewen

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 06:00:00 +0000

Hunter Ewen Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2016 - 00:00

Instructor
Critical Media Practices, CMCI, University of Colorado, Boulder

Undirected Direction: Using Interactive Film, Image, and Sound to Facilitate Creativity in Live Performance

Friday, September 16, 12:00-1:00, in ATLAS 311

Hunter Ewen will present and discuss works in progress, past works, and historical influences on the relationship between specificity of instructions and performer creativity. How does a creator deliver an instructive message to a performer? What is the responsibility of an artist to establish a language to communicate directions clearly? How does a performer's relationship to emotion, aesthetic, and subtext change depending on specificity of score? The discussion will focus on music composition, non-narrative film, documentary, performance art, and sound-art.

Ewen has spent the last ten years exploring this phenomenon through graphic music notation, transmedia storytelling, experimental musical instruments and user interface designs. He was a founding member and former director of the Boulder Laptop Orchestra (BLOrk) and is the founder and director of the Boulder Image and Sound Network (BISoN) iPad ensemble. His work has garnered awards and performances from SEAMUS, Punto y Raya, Ouroboros Review, The Playground Ensemble, Manchester New Music, New Horizons Festival, BEAST FEaST, EMM, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Gamma UT, Studio 300, and his graphic scores were featured prominently in the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Armor, Amour, by Amy Pence. Ewen’s work has been performed across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia by groups like the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, Cairo Symphony, Silesian Philharmonic, Greater Cleveland Flute Society, Science on a Sphere, Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance, Third Coast Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, and by distinguished performers like Greg Banaszak, Lina Bahn, and Bill Mooney.

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Betsy Biggs

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:35:29 +0000

Betsy Biggs Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/22/2016 - 11:35

Assistant Professor
Critical Media Practices, CMCI, University of Colorado, Boulder

Electric Songlines: Place, Poetry, Play

Monday, October 31, 12:00-1:00, in ATLAS 311

This talk will give an overview of the artist's creative work, which provokes dialogues among the fields of music, sound, visual art, and geography, particularly the physical interaction of bodies with sound, narrative created through the juxtaposition of remembered and ‘real’ sounds, and the stumbling rhythms in the intersection of walking and the sound world. In many ways I consider myself a professional wanderer; I collect scraps of sound and image from my travels, deconstructing and arranging them in ways that I hope are evocative. By slowing down, clarifying, and reworking these sonic and visual fragments, I try to recreate my experience of place in highly abstract ways. For the last several years I’ve also used technology to engage public creativity and exploration, largely by designing playful situations that facilitate creative participation, and often adapting the technology of our contemporary world – mobile audio, digital video, interactive electronics – to engage people creatively with the physical and social worlds around them.At a time when technology seems to seductively and incrementally envelop each of us in a solipsistic bubble, I believe we must learn to use it as a means of connection – to ourselves, to our communities, and to our world at large.

For more than fifteen years, Betsey Biggs has created musical compositions, improvisations, interactive sound and video installations, site-specific audio works, public interventions, relational projects, and multimedia theatrical works that connect the dots between sound, music, visual art, place, storytelling and technology. Biggs has collaborated with Nick Hallett, Pamela Z, Luciano Chasso, Margaret Lancaster, Evidence, The Now Ensemble, The BSC, So Percussion, Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble and filmmakers Jennie Livingston and Amy Harrison, among others, and her work has been presented at venues as disparate as ISSUE Project Room, Abrons Arts Center, Roulette, the Conflux Festival, MASSMoCA, Sundance Film Festival, Hong Kong’s Videotage, and Brown University, and on the streets of Oakland, CA and Brooklyn, NY. Her largest recent project, “Sunken Gardens”, a large outdoor sound installation for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, employs induction loops to create eighteen fields of audio composed from musical and textual fragments inspired by the Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A new musical work, “Teewinot” is a sonic time lapse of the natural history of the Grand Teton mountains and was premiered at several national parks in July 2016 by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble. Biggs earned degrees in English Literature and Music from Colorado College and Mills College respectively and a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University. She has also held fellowships at Brown University and Harvard University. She has taught at Princeton, Brown and The Rhode Island School of Design, and currently serves as Assistant Professor of Critical Media Practices at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

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Jeanne Liotta

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:34:57 +0000

Jeanne Liotta Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/22/2016 - 11:34

Associate Professor
Film Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder

Title of talk: The Sounds of Science Cinema

Wednesday, November 9, 12:00-1:00, in ATLAS 311

Jeanne Liotta will take us on a subjective exploration of the sonic history of the cosmic in film, with clips and sounds ranging from LeoTheremin to Dr. Who, from Indian ragas to industrial drones, and culminating in the sonification of data by NASA and contemporary composers. All background for an exegesis of the soundscape for her 16mm film of the night skies Observando El Cielo (2007), which relies heavily on VLF recordings, and was made in collaboration with artist and filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh who is also known for her sound work in the band Radio Guitar.

Jeanne Liotta was born and raised in NYC where she makes films and other cultural ephemera – including her 'one-cut' newspaper collages, moving image installations and live projection performances. Her largest body of work takes place at a curious intersection of art, science, and natural philosophy. “Observando El Cielo” her 16mm film of the night skies was voted one of the top films of the decade by The Film Society of Lincoln Center, was Artforum's Best Film of the Year, was awarded the Tiger Award for Short Film at Rotterdam International Film Festival, Best International Screen at Images Festival, and Most Beautiful Sound Design award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her work has been seen widely and variously at festivals, museums, galleries, clubs, and science centers, i.e., The Whitney Biennial, The New York Film Festival, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Exploratorium, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Centre de Georges Pomipidou, CCCB Spain, MCA Denver, The Menil Collection, and Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, among many others. Her work is collected by The Museum of Modern Art, The Austrian Film Museum, and Harvard University. She is an Associate Professor in Film Studies at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and is also Co-Chair of Film/Video at the Bard MFA Program.

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