The Sound Of Distance Oct 21 – 24 2021 HKW Berlin

If HKW were one big instrument, what would it sound like? The four-day festival The Sound of Distance takes this question seriously and seeks answers in the expanded resonance chamber of concerts, performances, talks and sonic activations, indoors and outdoors, in a radius that includes the carillon in the neighboring bell tower and the echo of the surrounding government buildings.

Curated by Jan St. Werner and HKW

Sound significantly determines the spatial perception of things and events. Sound waves are constantly in motion. The Sound of Distance makes it possible to experience them over different distances. Artists present works – some conceived especially for the festival – between guitar drones and cello sounds, sound installations and works by avant-garde composers like Annea Lockwood and Alvin Lucier. Much can be experienced by audience members in individual rhythms, with their own accents and intensities – whether the sounds reach all the way to the Bundestag or arise as otoacoustic emissions directly in the inner ear. Thus, along with acoustic perceptions, The Sound of Distance also sharpens the sense of personal location. Creating new configurations of human and object, visible and invisible, proximity and distance.

With Alvin Lucier, Andrea Belfi, Annea Lockwood, Anthea Caddy, crys cole, David Grubbs, Diana Deutsch, Dirk Rothbrust, Dodo NKishi & Tunde Alibaba, Dynamische Akustische Forschung, Hani Mojtahedy & Andi Toma, Helga de la Motte-Haber, Jan St. Werner, Judith Hamann, Louis Chude-Sokei, Marcin Pietruszewski, Maurice de Martin, Oren Ambarchi, Patricia Reed & J.-P. Caron, Sam Auinger & Katrinem, Sam Dunscombe, Stephen O’Malley, Wibke Deertz, Zwerm

https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2021/the_sound_of_distance/start.php

Download The Sound Of Distance booklet

Fotos Silke Briel

Squares Will Fall is a multidirectional loudspeaker choreography performed by three acrobats of the Ekaterinburg Circus. Three elements of the composition are played via three loudspeakers hanging from the circus ceiling. The performers mix the sound elements in real time by moving the speakers. The audience is free to change position during the performance and also make audio recordings for personal use.

Sound features feataures Justin Vernon, Uma Barba, John Colpitts, Zach Condon, Mats Gustafsson, Hilary Jeffrey, Ben Lanz, Dodo NKishi, Kyle Resnick, Jeremy Ylvisaker

Performed by Danil Balakin, Sergey Fedorenko, Denis Karpov

Production: Anastasia Dergousova, Alexander Tkhomirov, Nikita Shvalev, Natasha Andreeva

https://uralbiennial.ru/en/we/artists/person12-jan-st-werner

The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art was curated by Adnan Yıldız, Çağla Ilk and Assaf Kimmel and took place in Yekaterinburg, Russia 02.10.2021—05.12.2021

In his installation “19 Toques for GNM“, artist and musician Jan St. Werner, in collaboration with voodoo percussionist Tunde Alibaba, breathes life into the permanent exhibition of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, Germany. Central to this work is the batá drum, a double-headed hourglass drum rooted in the Yorùbá music of Benin. In voodoo practices, the batá is traditionally used to animate various aspects of daily life through intricate rhythmic phrases known as toques.

For “19 Toques for GNM,” Alibaba draws from his personal reflections within the museum to craft these toques. Each drumhead of the batá is recorded separately, with the sounds played back through loudspeakers positioned at the farthest points of the respective museum spaces. As a result, each of the 19 exhibition rooms is transformed into the interior of a batá—a resonant chamber where the collection is reimagined.

The toques serve as responses and commentaries, attuned to the distinct character of each room within the GNM, reminding us that cultural influence extends beyond the visible. The irregular pauses between the toques create polyrhythmic interactions across the rooms, linking them acoustically and inviting new associations within the museum’s architecture. This interplay between object, vibration, and listener recontextualizes the collection, adding a new dimension to the experience of the museum’s space—one that challenges Eurocentric traditions and opens up fresh perspectives.

The batá itself is a migratory instrument, originating in Nigeria and closely associated with voodoo. It is a medium of communication, an instrument of activation, and a vessel of cultural transmission, carrying voodoo to regions such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the United States.

19.11. – 21.12.2021

Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg

Curated by Çağla Ilk and Tuncay Kulaoglu

19 Toques für GNM

A resonating bass frequency on floor one is the basis for Jan St. Werner’s sound piece. Werner responds to the continuous swell and decay of the busy traffic noise that surrounds the tower by adjusting two sine wave oscillators to its unstable metrics. One sine wave is played through one of two open holes in the ceiling facing downwards into the first floor of the building. The second sine wave is played through the second hole facing upwards into floor two. The two signals overlap and create circulating sound patterns that activate and connect the spacious floors of the tower.

Thank you Nikita Shvalev, Michael Akstaller, Cagla Ilk

https://uralbiennial.ru/en/we/artists/person12-jan-st-werner

The RDD system utilizes a custom built uni-directional speaker that produces a tightly focused beam of sound, like a sonic spotlight, which can be robotically aimed in any direction from any single position within the performance space. This robotic speaker is in effect a mobile soloist, however the resulting experience upends expectations: cast into the room, the RDD’s sonic beam bounces and blends with the reverberant space in subtle and surprising ways. Much of the time the sound appears to originate from invisible yet mobile sources in the room or from the walls, floor and ceiling themselves. We look around for another sound source, only to realize that the room’s own reflections are transforming this robot soloist into a spectral ensemble. Though we can rationally connect the sound’s source to the position of the robot, its ventriloquistic projections open the potential for sounding to the entire volume of the room. No longer a simple container, the room becomes a respondent and the sonic coauthor of a spatial drama. Likewise, as the speaker’s narrow beam reflects it produces complex patterns of sound that vary widely by listening position, such that a listener’s own movements produce striking changes in what they hear. The audience for an RDD performance is invited to move and explore these acoustic effects, to displace themselves from their passive position as audience-receivers and into a system of feedback and response as listener-collaborators.

RDD’s robot is not intended to be the work’s focus, but is important primarily for the displacements it can effect: controlled disorientations and sensory redirections which invite a refreshed engagement with the choreographed situation, toward a sense of space that is multi-perspectival and responsive. These displacements begin with the speakers themselves. Spatialized audio, whether multichannel surround or wave field synthesis, is delivered traditionally from a set of fixed loudspeakers. Movement is simulated by the transition of sound between these fixed elements. This defines what RDD co-founder Jan St. Werner calls a ‘room within a room’, a kind of virtual space of listening placed within the real space we occupy as persons.

Andy Graydon

Robodynamische Diffusion (RDD) ist ein Projekt von Michael Akstaller, Nele Jäger, Oliver Mayer und Jan St. Werner

Gefördert von LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation TH Nürnberg und Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

Mit freundlicher Unterstützung von Evocortex

Fotos & Video Joseph Kadow / Single RDD Foto Eunice Maurice / Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

https://kunsthalle-baden-baden.de/en/program/state-and-nature-2/jan-st-werner-encourage-the-stream

Encourage The Stream (2021) by Jan St. Werner, half of the electronic music group Mouse on Mars, functions as an acoustic amplification of the Oos River, which flows through the park as the heart of Baden-Baden and shapes its nature. In an attempt to communicate with the Oos, Werner places a microphone just above the water to transport the sound of the river via a directional loudspeaker beyond the riverbank into the park toward the Kunsthalle. Thereby, Werner creates the possibility to explore and perceive the Oos at different frequencies of sound (acoustically) and create new spatial relationships. The active act of listening creates a perceptual experience of distance and proximity. The acoustic supersedence of space and time also stands for engagement with the forces of nature. It is therefore no coincidence that the first large-scale public art work commissioned by Çağla İlk and Misal Adnan Yıldız for their tenure as directors of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden is a single project of an experimental artistic practice that brings together the fields of visual art and sound.

Thrill-549 – 2021

The duo of John Colpitts aka Kid Millions and Jan St. Werner brings together the minds of two mavericks committed to exploring new avenues of musical expression. Kid Millions is one of the most sought after drummers and improvisors in NYC, known for his expansive solo work as Man Forever, as well as collaborations and performances with the likes of Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Boredoms, and So Percussion. Millions’ acclaim is equally rooted in his work with rock bands such as his own Oneida, as well as working with bands like Royal Trux and Spiritualized. Jan St. Werner has consistently remained at the vanguard of electronic music with his work as one half of Mouse on Mars as well as with his solo work and collaborations with The Fall’s Mark E Smith, Oval’s Markus Popp, Stereolab and The National. On their debut collaboration Imperium Droop, Millions and Werner, along with special guests Mats Gustafsson, Andrew Barker, and Richard Hoffman, created a collection of beautiful pieces built on surprising sound combinations. Together, the works on Imperium Droop are a joyful listen and an exhilarating foray into the unknown.

Imperium Droop is the continuation of an ongoing musical dialogue between the two musicians that began in 2016, when Werner invited Millions to perform an interpretation of his Felder album as part of a series of curated concerts and interventions around the globe. Oddly prescient of the events of 2020, the unique performance was held at Oneida’s practice space with an extremely limited audience of one – songwriter Helado Negro. The concert was to be the first in an ongoing series of  recorded collaborations between the two musicians, from improvised live performances in New York and Berlin. In addition to a series of concerts accessible via the internet, the duo slowly archived a wealth of recorded material that would form the foundations for Imperium Droop. Revisiting and reimagining this material, the duo meticulously edited and arranged elements of the recordings, from full sections to individual sounds, sculpting new pieces from the library of improvisations. Another equally important component for the album was  Mouse on Mars’ collaboration with Lee Scratch Perry which had a profound effect on Werner’s artistic practice and approach in the studio.

Werner’s application of a seemingly infinite arsenal of textures unleashes colorful swaths of energy. Mats Gustafsson joins Werner on the maximalist “Color Bagpipes,” unleashing torrents of swiveling melody and breathy clicks over the exponential thunder of Millions’ drum kit. Pieces like “Dark Tetrad” and “Astral Stare” demonstrate the duo’s mastery of space and surprise. Dark flutters flow in slow pulses across “Apotropaic” where erratic swirls of sound twist and mutate on “Sorrows and Compensations,” unified as a single force by the overwhelming diversity of sounds. Millions’ drums effortlessly ride each wave of Werner’s prismatic deluges and channel their energy into dynamic movements. Through his singular prowess, Millions’ tireless rhythms and subtle gestures mirror Werner’s boundless textural palette and drive each piece towards transcendence. 

On Imperium Droop, Kid Millions and Jan St. Werner have combined their powers into an incomparable work of gripping and intrepid sonic fluctuations. In exploring a liminal space between improvisation and composition, the duo manage to expand their musical dialogue beyond the physical limitations of space and time, striking a truly unique balance between the urgency and unpredictability of improvised performance and deliberate nature of studio composition.

https://mouseonmarstj.bandcamp.com/album/imperium-droop

Alchemical, Casey Reas + Jan St. Werner

bitforms gallery is pleased to introduce ​Alchemical​, a collaborative exhibition by Casey Reas and Jan St. Werner. ​Alchemical presents the artists’ suite of videos alongside a selection of prints by Casey Reas. The online component of this exhibition is presented in collaboration with New Art City.

Untitled Film Stills are a series of prints that trace Reas’ exploration of generative adversarial networks (GAN) as image-making instruments. This empirical procedure more closely resembles alchemy than the artist’s usual practice of software art. Reas and technical lead Hye Min Cho trained GANs with specific films selected for their visual and emotional environments. The artist extracted impressions from consequent material, thereby positioning GANs as an apparatus of his visual language. ​Untitled Film Stills​ are selections from the unique and labored procedure of modeling, generating, and editing.

As the ​Untitled Film Stills​ evolved over a year of production, Reas began animating images that formed the video series ​Untitled ​ 1–5. This cyclical procedure required GAN models to be repeatedly trained to produce a range of images the artist could choreograph with cinematic transitions. Works within this series signal toward subject matter through titles such as ​Untitled 4
(Two Dead!)​ or ​Untitled 1 (No. Nothing.)​ . Reas’ directed movement is instilled with uncanny gestures made manifest through the sentient electroacoustic sounds of Jan St. Werner.

Werner’s compositions augment the transmutation of imagery in and out of recognition by adapting computer-generated sounds with granular synthesis, a technique that transforms acoustic events into microscopic grains to be arranged and modulated freely. This process allows certain auditory signals to be obscured while others may manifest suddenly. The final culmination of visuals and sound mimics a discernible lexicon of film while establishing a new, multi-sensory expression of cinema.

Alchemical​ delights in the curious combination of machine and human perception. The works synthesize image comprehension through an incantation of sound and motion. Werner and Reas employ a critical process of mediation in relation to machine learning that honors the processes of transformation and combination over generative output.

Thank you to Meyer Sound and Sound Associates for their generous contributions that make it possible to provide a spatial audio experience of Jan St. Werner’s compositions in the exhibition space.

Alchemical
by Casey Reas + Jan St. Werner
January 8–February 14, 2021
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 AM–6 PM

Virtual exhibition tour

https://www.art-agenda.com/features/377888/casey-reas-and-jan-st-werner-s-alchemical

Compressed Cinema is the series title for five new audiovisual works completing in 2020. The video images were created by Casey REAS, and each work has a stereo audio track composed by Jan St. Werner.

The images for the videos were derived from a set of “film stills” created by Casey REAS with generative adversarial networks (GANs). This process is documented in REAS’ 2020 book Making Pictures with Generative Adversarial Networks.

http://ww.compressedcinema.net

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Casey REAS’ software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work ranges from small works on paper to urban-scale installations, and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations. Reas’ work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001; Processing is an open-source programming language and environment for the visual arts.

More at https://reas.com

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Jan St. Werner is an electronic music composer and artist based in Berlin. He’s best known as one half of the electronic duo Mouse on Mars, and he also pursued a solo career creating music under his own name as well as Lithops, Noisemashinetapes, and Neuter River. Starting in the mid-1990’s as part of Cologne’s A-Musik collective, St. Werner released a steady stream of influential records both as a solo artist and with Mouse on Mars. During the 2000s, he acted as the artistic director for Amsterdam’s Institute for Electronic Music (STEIM). In 2013 Werner launched a series of experimental recordings called the Fiepblatter Catalogue on Thrill Jockey Records. Werner has been a visiting lecturer at the Arts Culture and Technology department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, and he holds a position as a professor for Interactive Media and Dynamic Acoustic Research at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, Germany.

More at https://fiepblatter.com/

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Decay Object, Book, 2020

Images, collages and renderings from the Fiepblatter visual archives. 120 pages, 300 numbered copies

https://fiepblatter.bandcamp.com/

Molocular Meditation, LP, 2020

Molocular Meditation is a bespoke light and sound environment featuring the voice of the Fall’s Mark E Smith. Smith is heard making observations on mundane objects, events and a range of meditation techniques basically associating his discontent with an apolitical british upper class. His voice forms the narrative component of an electroacoustic composition by Jan St. Werner placed in a hyper-real scenario evoking a state of transformation and deceleration. Molecular Meditation premiered at Cornerhouse, Manchester in 2014. This album presents a re-edited stereo version of the original multi-channel installation. Voice and guitar feedbacks were recorded by Werner and Smith at Blueprint Studios Manchester, electronics in Werner’s Studio in Berlin.

The B-side consists of unreleased new work partly written around the same time as Molocular Meditation in context of Werner’s Fiepblatter Catalogue on Thrill Jockey. Back to Animals is a non-metric rhythm exercise frantically hybridizing percussive accents with synthesized pulse. On the Infinite of Universe and Worlds is the layout for an electronic opera on Giordano Bruno’s Renaissance writings which Werner was asked to conceptionalize for Finish festival Musica Nova. VS Canceled finds Mark E. Smith reading an email from Domino Records explaining their discontinuation of Von Sudenfed, a band Mark E. Smith had founded with Mouse on Mars’ Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma in 2006. Their debut album Tromatic Reflexxions came out on Domino in 2007.

http://editionsmego.com/release/EMEGO265

https://fiepblatter.bandcamp.com/album/molocular-meditation

Sound becomes a spatial experience, band structures are deconstructed, a brand new sound technology celebrates its premiere in art: In 2018, Jan St. Werner, part of the duo Mouse on Mars, listened to a festival sound check by the US indie rock band The National. Echoes, voices and acoustic artifacts overlapped, songs were begun and interrupted, harmonies were detuned and filtered. The image of the perfect rock band was torn open, while at the same time the incompleteness of the action seemed to follow a method. The ambient sound installation The Spatio Sensory Soundcheck reconstructs this experience. The musician and composer disassembled a sound check recording as well as individual tracks of the current album I Am Easy to Find by The National, then electronically manipulated and reassembled them with his own elements. Mouse on Mars and The National had contributed music to each other’s most recent albums. Now Werner goes a step further – the installation dissolves the categories of band and album and shifts tsounds in a continuous state of instability on a psychoacoustic stage: With a novel speaker system based on wave field synthesis, Jan St. Werner arranges the sounds independently of each other in the space; movements and perspectives of the listeners become part of the composition.

https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/veranstaltung/p_163508.php

The installation employs a speaker system by Holoplot. The audio technology of the Berlin-based company creates fully digital 3D-beamforming of multiple audio beams based on its own wave field synthesis algorithms and real-time audio processing.

Glottal Wolpertinger was initially conceived as a radio installation for documenta 14, with each of the tracks broadcasting individually over the course of ten weeks and culminating in a convergence of all eight tracks at a performance in Athens. The pieces consist of microtonally tuned feedback, multispectral drones which Werner modulated and filtered with a purposeful, and indeed vocalized, emphasis given to the different frequencies and textures used. By naming the individual frequency bands, Werner defies traditional tuning systems and instead centers the piece on collaging variable elements. Sonic elements churn and sprawl across the tracks in constant motion. Their drones, combatting for space, entangle one another and oscillate into overtones that shift, build, and wither with fluid motion that blurs the line between consonance and dissonance.

Glottal Wolpertinger’s incarnation as a recording is no less potent than its preceding forms, but serves as a continuation of the project’s evolution as a distinct listening experience. Werner’s apt title for the project embellishes the ambiguity and cognitive dissonance inherent with the work, as the wolpertinger is a creature of European myth which is said to be the mutated result of different species breeding under special circumstances in the Alps. Glottal intonations are those produced by the guttural and throat region of the body, the center of organic sound. According to Werner, wolpertingers are “bastards, collaged freaks who exist in the grey zone of nature’s perfect plan,” the same grey zone in which his pieces live.

http://thrilljockey.com/products/glottal-wolpertinger-fiepblatter-catalogue-6

http://thrilljockey.com/artists/jan-st-werner

https://fiepblatter.bandcamp.com/album/glottal-wolpertinger-feedback-modulation

Written, performed and produced by Jan St. Werner

Live guitar Aaron Dessner

Studio guitar Bryce Dessner

Software Dietrich Pank

Voice Jessica Rasmussen

Additional Live recordings by David Memari and Paolo Thorsten-Nagel

Mastered by Rashad Becker

Artwork by Paul McDevitt & Cornelius Quabeck

Art Direction by Rupert Smyth Studio

Fiepblatter Catalogue # 6

Thrill Jockey 488

Für Schlagzeug und Elektronik – Kompositionsauftrag des WDR – UA 
Dirk Rothbrust – Schlagzeug
Jan St. Werner – Elektronik & Komposition

Samstag, 23.02.2019 WDR Funkhaus Köln & WDR3 Radio

https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3/veranstaltungen/musik-der-zeit-346.html

»central spark in the dark« erkundet und dynamisiert die Beziehungen zwischen Elektronik und Akustik, zwischen Klang aus den Lautsprechern und Perkussionsinstrumenten, zwischen den Reflexionen im Raum und dem Klangbild im Kopf des Zuhörers. Die mehrkanalige Mischung erlaubt den komposito- rischen Elementen eine erweiterte Räumlichkeit: Klänge treffen sich nicht ausschließlich in den Schaltkreisen des Mischpults, sondern mitten im Aufführungsraum – in the air.

»central spark« lässt sich auch als Paradox verstehen, denn in dem Stück gibt es keine Mitte, keine zentrale Perspektive. Jeder Funke könnte selbst Zentrum eines klanglichen Universums sein. Die akustischen Signale werden kontinuierlich und oft abrupt verschoben, sie lösen kognitive »Zündungen« beim Hörer aus. »spark« steht auch für eine akzentuierte Kontrapunktion, für einen Rhythmus, der aus ständigen dialogischen Bewegungen neue Klangbeziehungen generiert und sie über die Grenzen der Notationslinien schiebt. Es gibt keine tonalen Flächen, aus denen harmonische Verdichtungen entstehen, sondern schnelle, partielle Verknüpfungen, durch die sich unvermittelt neue Räume öffnen und in denen sich in Mikrozeit musikalische Figuren bilden – wie Wunderkerzen, die kurz im Dunkel unserer Vorstellungswelt gezündet werden und ebenso schnell wieder verlöschen. Die digitalen »sparks« sind wie Steine, die über gefrorene Eisdecken springen. Es prasseln disparate Materialien in verschiedenen Aggregatzuständen aufeinander; Feuer, Eis, scharfe Splitter, wie aus felsenfesten Formen gesprengt. Es entsteht ein dynamisierter Raum, in dem extreme Kräfte wirken.

Das Arsenal des Schlagzeugers ist nach dem Klangbild der Elektronik ausgerichtet und kontrastiert es. So greift der Instrumentalist die Bewegungen der stark manipulierten, computergenerierten Klänge auf und steht mit seinen klanglich klar umrissenen Formen dem unendlich variierbaren des Digitalen gegenüber.

Video: Nik Kern

Fotos: Felix Berner

Ensemble neoN & Jan St. Werner
feat. Dynamische Akustische Forschung – Periodic Composite Waveform Environment (WP)
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter
15 & 16 September 2018

https://ultima.no/en/events/ensemble-neon-and-jan-st-werner-wp

Experimental electronic composer Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars, Lithops, Microstoria) and Ensemble neoN collaborate on an unconventional performance format that includes new compositions, improvisation, spatial arrangements and interventions from Werner’s class in Dynamic Acoustic Research, which he leads at Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts. For two days, Ensemble neoN will take up residence at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and a space will open up in which a mass of different audio practices will be exercised. Dynamic Acoustic Research is a radical course of investigation into post-war contemporary music, psychoacoustics and unconventional methods of capturing and producing sound and music. Periodic Composite Waveform Environment explores sound as an unstable art form and pushes players to the limits of their capacities.

11.00   Periodic Composite Waveform Environment Pt 1
Ensemble Neon & Jan St. Werner  
12.00   Intervention 1
Dynamische Akustische Forschung
12.30   Jan St. Werner performs Solo Pieces from the Fiepblatter Catalogue
13.00   Innermost Effects 1 – Texts by Thomas Raab and others Ensemble Neon & Jan St. Werner
14.00   Periodic Composite Waveform Environment Pt 2
Ensemble Neon & Jan St. Werner 
14.30   Intervention 2 Dynamische Akustische Forschung
15.30   Jan St. Werner performs Solo Pieces from the Fiepblatter Catalogue
16.00   Periodic Composite Waveform Environment Pt 3
Ensemble Neon & Jan St. Werner 
16.30  Dynamische Akustische Forschung & Ensemble Neon & Jan St. Werner 

In collaboration with Henie Onstad Kunstsenter.

Supported by Norsk kulturråd and Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg.

Dissolve Music @ MIT is a two-and-a-half-day conference and sound festival, March 7-9, 2018, to bring together musicians, sound creators, and scholars of music and sound studies to discuss the diversity of music and experimental sound. Combining art and scholarship in a spirit of dialogue and controversy, the conference aims to dissolve boundaries between different arenas of sonic engagement to identify paths towards alternative, more inclusive futures.

mitdissolve.com

Keynote Speakers

Diana Deutsch (UC San Diego), pioneer in psychoacoustics research and inventor of musical illusions

Thomas F. DeFrantz, professor, African and African American Studies, Duke University, choreographer, author “Dancing Many Drums.”

Organizers:

Jan St. Werner, musician with Mouse on Mars, prof. Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg

Rekha Malhotra, award-winning music producer and activist; M.S. student in Comparative Media Studies

Ian Condry (MIT), cultural anthropologist of Japan, professor at MIT, author “Hip-Hop Japan.”  How do new experiments in music and sound offer possibilities for activating social and political change?

Nicole L’Huilier, sound artist and Ph.D. student at MIT Media Lab, Opera of the Future research group

Walker Downey, writer and Ph.D. student, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC), MIT Architecture

Confirmed Participants:

Geeta Dayal, artist/activist and author of Brian Eno’s Another Green World

Oswald Wiener, musician, activist and curator from Vienna, now living in Berlin

Maren Haffke, researcher in Germany working on a project called “The Sound of Order / The Order of Sound”

Sonya Hofer, musicologist specializing in post-WWII musical avant garde

Toni Lester (Babson College), professor and sound artist.  How do issues of author control in music and interpretation help us understand the politics of race, queerness, and free speech

Stefan Helmreich, professor of anthropology, MIT, author “Sounding the Limits of Life”

Nancy Baym, author and researcher in the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA

Wayne Marshall, professor at Berklee School of Music, technomusicologist, author & DJ

Patty Tang, ethnomusicologist of Senegalese drumming, and professor in Music and Theater Arts, MIT

Toshiya Ueno, professor Wako U (Japan), author “Urban Tribal Studies,” DJ Toshiya the Tribal

Koichi Sei, sound artist, DJ and owner of Bar Bonobo in Tokyo, Japan, a legendary meeting ground for musicians, sound artists, and DJs

Susanna Bolle, DJ on WZBC and organizer of the Non-Event series of experimental music and sound in the Boston area

Ganavya Doraiswamy, musician and PhD student at Harvard in the Music Department

Rajna Swaminathan, musician an PhD student at Harvard in the Music  Department

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