The Flight of Birds and Sacred Spirits
Live Videomusic Performances by Freida Abtan and Zazalie Z.
Co-presented by the Toronto Animated Image Society
Nov 12, 8 pm, $15/10
Theatre Direct's Christie Studio, 601 Christie #170

Included are videomusic performance-screenings by two Montreal artists: Freida Abtan combines electroacoustic sound art with evocative HD animation realized in Max/MSP and After Effects and Zazalie Z, a dynamic vocal performer, combines her experimental vocal practice with video art. Flight of Birds by Freida Abtan is a mytho-poetic look at the realm of the spirit. Sacred Spirit «Sur le territoire des esprits sacré» by Zazalie Z. is a remembrance piece in honour of First Nation Peoples. Beliefs, myths, rituals, and cultural genocide are the various themes Zazalie Z. interweaves in this poetic and rebellious live performance.

Flight of Birds by Freida Abtan
The flight of birds is a mytho-poetic look at the realm of the spirit. Women draped in peacock feathers release invisible birds from their cages. Movements of the body are abstracted to fill the empty space. There, they seem to harden into wings, extending the body towards flight.

Sacred Spirit «Sur le territoire des esprits sacré» by Zazalie Z. (2009)
Zazalie Z. loves to explore the boundaries of vocal art, strum on expérimental strings, and navigate between contemporary, traditional, and avant-garde music. Inspired by the cultures of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit people, she spent the last three years touring reserves and indigenous centres to record images at Pow Wows and spiritual gatherings. She created the text, the soundtrack, and the videos for the show Sacred Spirit «Sur le territoire des esprits sacré » based on the stories she gathered and her own experience and memories during these events. Sacred Spirit is a remembrance piece in honour of First Nation Peoples. Beliefs, myths, rituals, and cultural genocide are the various themes Zazalie Z. interweaves in this poetic and rebellious live performance.

SOUNDplay Videomusic Performance/Screening
Live Videomusic Performance by Max Alexander
Nov 19, 8 pm ($10/5)
NAISA Space, 601 Christie St #252, Toronto

Empire by Max Alexander (live performance)
Baudrichord by Bjørn Erik Haugen
fuzee by Louise Harris
Filling by Laurie Radford

An international collection of videomusic works selected from the 2011 NAISA call for submissions on the theme of “About Time” is screened as well as a live performance of Empire by Max Alexander.

Empire by Max Alexander
Empire is an audiovisual piece that is a result of a five-hour live audio performance in a four-story chute in Chicago in summer 2009. The audio was improvised based on existing recordings, and then recreated for the video version of the piece. The piece attempts to render the natural as something strictly formal, as images of sunset become read more and more as pure colour throughout the stages of the piece. Consequently, time becomes less and less significant throughout.

Baudrichord by Bjørn Erik Haugen
Baudrichord is based on an interview of the french post-modernist theoretician Jean Baudrillard. I wanted to make use of Baudrillard`s theories of the simulacra on himself as a source. The use is ambivalent since I both am inspired and critical of his theories. His spoken words are analyzed by a program that interprets his voice into tones, or midi-notes. These notes are then fed into a piano that plays these notes mechanically. With that I mean that you can see the tones played, the keys are playing without anybody but the computer moving them. The piece is a simulacra, that makes use of Baudrillard speaking, both as a source and a symbol of his theories creating a soundpiece made out of notes. This is a regression since his voice is reduced to notes. The audience looses the content of what is being said in the interview. Instead they hear a piece for piano made out of him talking on the video.

fuzee by Louise Harris
A fuzee (fusee) is a cone-shaped pulley with a spiral groove used in chord or chain-winding clocks. fuzee is an 8 minute audio/video piece in which sonic momentum is translated into visual movement in a pre-defined and very specific way. The sonic component of 'fuzee' is made up entirely of recordings of clocks chiming or ticking. The visual component makes abstract reference to the inner workings and mechanical motion of clocks and other time pieces.

Filling by Laurie Radford
The videomusic work Filling explores the concept of "filling": the filling of the visual and aural fields, the filling of visual and aural space, the filling of the 'frame' of the screen, and the filling of time with audiovisual materials that present diverse contrasts and plays of texture, density, momentum, geometry and aural-visual interactions.

Fast-Forward
Nov 25, 8 pm ($15/10)
Theatre Direct's Christie Studio, 601 Christie #170

Fast forward to the future – the future of NAISA's next spatialization system and the future of noises and images previously unseen and unheard. This screening/performance features a new work by Toronto's Kaiser Nietzsche and an improv work by the designer of NAISA's spatialization software, Benjamin Thigpen. Included are >> by Kaiser Nietzsche, Improv by Benjamin Thigpen and a screening of Patah by Diego Garro.

>> by Kaiser Nietzsche
Improv by Benjamin Thigpen
Patah by Diego Garro

>> by Kaiser Nietzsche
>> is a suite in 9 six minute movements, whose play order is determined randomly for each presentation. The sound components of the work are a continuation of the noise aesthetic of the original Kaiser Nietzsche project in the late '80s - "musique concrete"/synthesis. The videos are largely homogeneous - formally thematic with continuous variation. There is no "motivated" relationship between sound and image; they were created separately.

Improv by Benjamin Thigpen
Benjamin Thigpen performs a live laptop improvisation using the new NAISA spatialization system. The latest addition to the NAISA spatialization system is the Holosonics Audio Spotlight speaker. The audio spotlights are a unique speaker design that allows sound to be distributed in a focused beam, not unlike a flashlight. When these beams of sound hit hard surfaces they bounce and create echoes and other effects. Read more about the audio spotlights at http://www.holosonics.com/

Patah by Diego Garro
Stylistically, this composition is rooted in the tradition of Electroacoustic Music but articulates spectro-morphologies in both the audio and the visual domains. A viewing strategy may consider the role of sonic materials in permeating the ‘fractures’ (‘patah’ in Indonesian) of streaked coloured textures and the dramatic resulting audiovisual effect. Patah articulates time through methods typical of music composition. Processes of accumulation create temporal surmises resolved at key, climatic moments. The perceived time-axis is thus continuously warped. Audio and video material contribute equally to the compressions/expansions that sever the chronometric from the artistic timeline.

Time and Space
co-presented with the Canadian Electroacoustic Community
Nov 26, 8 pm ($15/10)
Theatre Direct's Christie Studio, 601 Christie #170

Works from the Jeu de Temps / Times Play Competition
Fragments by Maxime Corbeil-Perron (10:00 / 2011)
Effervescence/Somnolence by Marc-André Perron  (10:24 / 2010)
Canción de Otraparte (Chanson d'ailleurs) by David Arango Valencia (12:04 / 2011)
Scratch by Jullian Hoff (12:06 / 2011)
Parasite by Guillaume Barrette (10:00 / 2011)
eige cendre by Guillaume Campion (11:22 / 2011)
Elephants, Bats and Birds by Darren Copeland

This concert features works by Canadian sound artists selected from the Jeu de Temps competition as part of a cross-Canada celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. The concert program also features a new work by Darren Copeland on the sound-making of elephants, birds and bats.

Jeu de Temps / Times Play
The performance will feature NAISA's newly enhanced spatialization system used to interpret works from the 2011 winners of the CEC’s annual Jeu de Temps / Times Play competition.  Jeu de Temps / Times Play is not only a competition for  young and emerging sound artists from (or living in) Canada but is also a focus issue for the annual webzine eContact! which documents all of the submissions to the project as well as a CD compilation (Cache) of the top works. Several past winners have gone on to win prizes in other renowned electroacoustic competitions internationally, such as Bourges, Métamorphoses and the SOCAN Foundation Awards. More info: http://cec.sonus.ca/jttp/

Fragments by Maxime Corbeil-Perron
Fragments was inspired by the lines and colours of Wassily Kandinsky’s Komposition no. 8, with the intention to create a fragmented vision of time and space. In composing this piece I also tried to achieve transparency between the respective nature of its sound materials, using as much from the synthetic as the acoustic universe.

Effervescence/Somnolence by Marc-André Perron
The first of a set of three pieces born of the composer’s reflections on the principle of acoustic ecology, Effervescence / Somnolence (E.S.), an excursion that at once explores a surrealist universe and our own, and is in fact conceived of this duality. The piece is constructed using recordings of sound objects and of recognizable, unknown and forgotten soundscapes.

Canción de Otraparte (Chanson d'ailleurs) by David Arango Valencia
Canción de Otraparte, the Spanish equivalent of “Elsewhere Song” was inspired by Viaje à pie (Journey on Foot), a book written by Colombian philosopher Fernando González. In this book, González is in search of innovation and decides to set off on a journey. Throughout his journey, his ideas become influenced by that which surrounds him and as a result, his initial ideas are transformed. Paralleling this book, Canción de Otraparte is a search for innovation. Exploring the city in which I live, I wanted to capture the sounds of Montréal and allow them to direct the piece, both influencing and transforming it. Some of the sounds used are street traffic, subways and the Symphonie portuaire, an outdoor concert held in Montréal’s old port, in which boat horns, trains, helicopters and church bells are showcased. Some of the sounds recorded indoors include crystal glasses, tunnels in the underground city, the shattering of glass and broken ceramic.

Scratch by Jullian Hoff
Scratch is a trip along a 45-second “pick slide”, an abrasive “pick slide”, the wild ride of a drummer on the crest of a drumfill…

Parasite by Guillaume Barrette
Parasite is an acousmatic work that uses the sounds of my daily life in recent years. My interest in the guitar and instruments used in traditional music is apparent in the work, as is my appreciation of sounds created synthetically, electronically. During a trip to England in Fall 2010 I learned how to build small analogue synthesizers and discovered that by using the resistance of the human body as a controller, striking and unexpected sounds can be generated. I explored with enthusiasm the potential for this interface to create sounds having a quasi aleatoric character and decided to record a number of excerpts to play with and incorporate in this piece.

Neige cendre by Guillaume Campion
With the exception of a few forest sounds and piano samples, all sonic material heard in Neige cendre comes from quartz crystal vessels. These instruments, commonly used for meditation or music therapy, produce a sound which is very close to sine waves. However, when listening closely, one notices a number of parasite sounds produced when the instrument is played — frictions, faint whistling and other imperfections without which the vessel's sound would be of little acousmatic interest. Neige cendre is thus a sort of narrative between the two sides of a single reality, the “pure” and “impure” sides of it, all tending towards their ultimate poetic fusion. I wish to thank Philippe-Guy Robichaud for the use of his crystal vessels.

Elephants, Bats and Birds by Darren Copeland
Darren Copeland's new work Elephants, Bats and Birds explores the extended frequency range enjoyed by these creatures as the basis for musical abstraction and spatial composition. The creation of this piece and the enhancements to the spatialization system used in this work is supported with funding from the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council. The spatialization research is also supported by a research fellowship from the Chalmers Foundation, administrated by the Ontaro Arts Council.