News

DAFx-09

The International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-09) took place 2–4 September 2009 in Como, Italy. There were three invited keynote addresses: "Wave Field Synthesis: Basics and Applications" by Karlheinz Brandenburg, "Recent CCRMA Research in Digital Audio Synthesis, Processing, and Effects" by Julius O. Smith III, and "Vocoders We Have Loved, Loathed, and Laughed At" by Perry Cook. The conference included sessions on wavefield synthesis, physical modeling, time-frequency spectral processing, sound synthesis, and modal analysis, among others.

Web: dafx09.como.polimi.it

Electroacoustic Music in Shanghai

The 2009 Shanghai International Electroacoustic Music Week was hosted by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music 19–23 October. The Music Week consisted of four thematic concerts, four academic exchange concerts, a series of workshops and lectures, and a three-day international seminar. Workshop presenters included Carlos Caires from the Conservatory of Lisbon and Hans Tuschku from Harvard University. Themed concerts included "Nonacademic-Style Electroacoustic Music" and "New Sounds from Around the World," as well as a concert devoted to commissioned works for electroacoustic music and multimedia. Liu Jian, a composer and professor at Wuhan Conservatory of Music, gave a lecture on oriental features in electroacoustic music.

Web: www.emusicfestival.cn

Figure 1.

Perry Cook, Julius Smith, Karlheinz Brandenburg, and Augusto Sarti at DAFx-09. (Photo: Francesco Santagata.)

New York Electronic Art Festival

Harvestworks hosted the 2009 New York Electronic Art Festival at a variety of venues around New York City during the month of October. There was plenty for the musically inclined audience, including a concert series entitled "Improvisation and New Media," which surveyed "the ways improvisation-driven computer interactivity reshapes the practice of contemporary composers." The series included live coding by Nic Collins and Nick Collins, live audiovisual work by the Shadow Puppies (Hans Tammen, Nick Didkovsky, and Kurt Ralske), a collaboration between Ikue Mori and the League of Electronic Musical Robots (LEMUR), a circuit-bent instrumental performance from Joker Nies, improvisation from Triple Point (Pauline Oliveros, Jonas Braasch, and Doug Van Nort), and Atau Tanaka playing his neurons through Adam Parkinson's PureData patches on iPhones.

Workshops and demos were held throughout the Festival, and included vocalist Lesley Flanigan sharing her work on her Speaker Feedback Instruments, and David Hindman discussing and demonstrating his guitar-controlled computer games.

Web: www.nyeaf.org

Figure 2.

Nic Collins at the New York Electronic Art Festival. (Photo: Marty Perez.)

Festival of Interactive Music Technology

The MMiX Festival of Interactive Music Technology was produced by Jocelyn Gonzales and Theaterlab in New York City 8–11 October 2009. The festival was curated by composer Patrick Grant and consisted of performances, media installations, and workshops. There was a performance by Dan Trueman and His Mini-Laptop Orchestra, live music and video from Elliot Sharp and Janene Higgins, and Mike Clemow and Amy Khoshbin's presentation of the Power Bike Parade, a bicycle-powered electronic orchestra.

Web: www.theaterlabnyc.com/Theaterlab3/MMiX.html

Figure 3.

Joshua Fried performing Radio Wonderland at the MMiX festival. (Photo: Jocelyn Gonzales.)

Futura

The 2009 edition of the Futura Festival was held 20–23 August in Drôme, France. Four full days of art acousmatique et des arts de support were presented in at least six concerts per day, including one concert which lasted all night long. Several classical works were performed, such as Joji Yuasa's <icon> on the source of white noise (1966) and Luc Ferrari's Organic (1973). Other composers featured during the festival included Bernard Parmegiani, Michel Chion, Ryoji Ikeda, Guy Reibel, and Elzbieta Sikora, among many others. The festival was followed by a weeklong summer course on the interpretation of acousmatic music, which was conducted by Jonathan Prager, Olivier Lamarche, Tomonari Higaki, and Denis Dufour.

Web: www.festivalfutura.fr

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival

The tenth annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF) took place at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco, California, USA, 16–19 September 2009. The festival featured four of its founding organizers—Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, Ed Osborn, and Donald Swearingen—one on each...