Announcements

ICMC 2004 in Miami

The 2004 International Computer Music Conference will be held 1–6 November 2004 at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, USA. The conference will feature multiple daily concerts of computer music and multimedia works along with a daily multitrack technical program of papers, demonstrations, posters, and exhibitions. Pre-conference workshops are scheduled for 31 October. Featured performers include the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra, the University of Miami Wind Ensemble, pianist J. Robert Floyd, soprano Jana Young, and the NODUS Ensemble.

Exhibition spaces will be located in the lobby of the primary concert hall and the lobby of the primary paper session hall. The exhibition hall will be open to the general public, and the organizers anticipate that booths will be frequented by as many as 1,000 people per day from the conference, the University of Miami campus, and the general community. Institutional and academic exhibitors will be featured side by side.

MIT Press and the editorial staff of Computer Music Journal will host a reception during the conference.

Additional information and program updates can be found at www.icmc2004.org/.

James Dashow 60th Birthday Concert Tour

During October 2004 composer James Dashow will celebrate his 60th birthday with a concert tour of universities in the USA. The program will include four scenes from Archimedes, a planetarium opera (octophonic electronic music and musique concrète, with computer-generated graphics and animations) and the video version of Media Survival Kit, a lyric satire for electrified voices, electrified instruments, and electronic sounds.

Tour dates will include: 14 October at University of Maryland, College Park; 16 October at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; 19 October at University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana; 21 October at University of Washington, Seattle; 23 October at University of Oregon, Eugene; 25 October at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), University of California, Berkeley (two performances); 27 October at California State University, Dominguez Hills; and 30 October at Lodestar Planetarium, the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

All performances are open to the public. See www.jamesdashow.net for more precise information and updates, and check the various host institutions' Web sites for additional specifics.

Consciousness Reframed 2004: Qi and Complexity

Consciousness Reframed 2004 will be held in Beijing, China, during 24–27 November 2004. The conference is convened by The Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, England, in collaboration with Beijing Digital Arts programs: The Digital Media Studio, Central Academy of Fine Arts; The China Electronic Music Center, Central Conservatory of Music; Department of Digital Art and Design, School of Software, Peking University; and The Institute of Digital Media, Beijing Normal University. Roy Ascott and Kenneth Fields are the co-chairs.

According to the organizers, Consciousness Reframed 2004 is a forum for developments in the field of art, technology, and consciousness, this year addressing emerging issues under the rubric of Complexity and Qi. From semantic or neural networks to cosmology, economics, and biology, a growing science of complexity interconnects theoretical models in a general field of instantiated knowledges. The ancient Chinese possessed their own scheme of systematic complexities and correspondences, called Qi. Qi is the basis of all Chinese arts, health, and philosophical systems. If we substitute the terms in the translation of our respective literatures, we may have a better understanding of what once was considered some mysterious, non-material energetic "substance." Complexity and Qi is a proposal for a shared meta-narrative between Eastern and Western discourses.

All correspondence can be addressed to conference2004@planetary-collegium.net. The conference Web site is at planetary-collegium.net/.