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Program
Barbara Finck-Beccafico - Poésie de l'ADN: Portraits audiovisuels poétiques de l'identité biologique et ésotérique de l’être humain (dur. 25:00)
- Barbara Finck-Beccafico (computer, sound synthesis)
Un peu de tout / a bit of everything
Philippe Macnab-Séguin - Gone for Eggs (2023, premiere) for fixed-media (dur. ~6:00-8:00)
Yulin Yan - Apropos of Thrownness (2023, premiere), for fixed media (dur. ~7:00)
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay - les espaces négatifs (2023, premiere) (dur. 7:37)
Kasey Pocius - eTu{d,b}e de Labo #1 (2023, premiere), for fixed media (dur. 5:56)
Nicola Giannini - Architecture éphémère (2023, premiere), acousmatic, multichannel (dur. ~7:00)
Program Notes
- Poésie de l'ADN:Portraits audiovisuels poétiques de l'identité biologique et ésotérique de l’être humain [Poetry of DNA: Poetic audiovisual portraits of the biological and esoteric identity of the human being] is based on an interdisciplinary approach, combining programming, biotechnology, sound and visual creation, esotericism as well as participative and performative art. Poetry of DNA starts with an application whose algorithm and settings allow to generate audio-visual material from DNA data. Finck-Beccafico used the data of her family members to compose six individual portraits of video-music, employing artistic, esoteric and human modalities of data interpretation, as well as a creation process consisting of an energetic connection ritual of deep listening and meditation.
Un peu de tout / a bit of everything
- Gone For Eggs /excerpt/ is a semi-narrative piece, inhabiting a space somewhere in and between the idioms of prog-rock concept album, electroacoustic fixed media piece, cantata, contemporary concert music, and experimental beat-based electronic music. Its text, written by poet Nicholas Papaxanthos and myself, loosely follows states of consciousness experienced in waking up in the morning extended to their most absurdly dramatic, oscillating between the dreamlike and the mundane, the banal and the mythic. The excerpt you will hear today constitutes roughly the first third of the piece.
- Apropos of Thrownness was initially inspired by Notes from the Underground, a novella written by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This piece aims to reveal a state of mind being 'thrown' into the world via music, like a monologue from the underground man.
- les espaces négatifs [The Negative Spaces] /first part/
I love a garden as a composed space, an aesthetic simplification of a more complex nature. The trace of the gardener is, beyond what is presented, what is left out, to highlight a perspective, to distinguish a figure over a background. A judgement. - eTu{d,b}e de Labo #1 is the first in a series of fixed media works, exploring the possibilities of the eTube outside of the real-time context. The source material consists of improvisations of Tommy Davis on eTube with the SpireMuse software. The entirety of these improvisations is presented as a kaleidoscopic montage at the beginning of the piece, which is then used to feed the processing which slowly builds before eventually overtaking the acoustic sound of the tube, leaving nothing but a digital trace of the initial improvisation...
- Architecture éphémère [Ephemeral Architecture] /excerpt/ was composed with the intention of creating an immersive experience through the exploration of the depth of field, the width of sound images and the relationship between proximity and distance. The aim was to create a spatialization where the trajectories and positions of sound sources are sometimes clearly localizable in space, and sometimes less localizable. In terms of spatialization techniques, a hybrid approach was adopted, using both ambisonic and surround techniques.
Biographies
Artivist-terrienal-eco-feminist-intersectional-anti-speciesist-Queer-F*EM: this is how Barbara Finck-Beccafico (she/they) positions herself in the artistic ecosystem. Upon completing a Masters degree in Composition and Sound Creation at the University of Montreal (2021), her electroacoustic compositions have been heard at the Montreal Ultrasound concert series, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium and the Venice Electroacoustic Rendez-vous. Their series of 6 engaging multi-sensory installations have been programmed for the Nuit Blanche in Montreal and Paris. The audio-visual project Wållgren has been seen in Korea, France, Canada and the United States. Barbara has also participated in Ma Première Place des Arts (2019) and the Festival en Chanson de Petite Vallée (2015).
Philippe Macnab-Séguin is pursuing his D.Mus in composition at McGill University under the supervision of Jean Lesage. His music is rhythmically driven and stylistically diverse, reflecting his background as an electric guitarist and his konnakol lessons with Ghatam Karthick. He gives presentations and workshops on Aural Sonology, and has received over 20 scholarships and awards for his work, including a BMI award, three SOCAN young composer awards, and funding from the SSHRC and FRQSC.
Yulin Yan is a composer of instrumental and electroacoustic music. Her works are characterized by nuanced timbre and tension, emphasizing the ambiguity of the perception of reality and fantasy. Besides the sonic layer, the intensity of her works is often created by reference to extra-musical content, including literature, theatrical elements, olfactory art as well as social issues. She is currently pursuing her master degree at McGill University Schulich School of Music with Philippe Leroux.
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay is a composer with a keen interest for creative coding and a performer on bass guitar and sound processing devices, in solo and within various ensembles. Commissioned and performed worldwide, his chamber music is mainly released by the label Empreintes DIGITALes. He is a member of the London-based collective Loop. He formally studied composition, bass guitar, analysis and studio production in Montreal. He joined the University of Huddersfield in 2005, where he is now Professor of Composition and Improvisation, and leads the FluCoMa (Fluid Corpus Manipulation) project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. FluCoMa instigates new musical ways of exploiting ever-growing banks of sound and gestures within the digital composition process, by bringing breakthroughs of signal decomposition DSP and machine learning to the toolset of techno-fluent computer composers, creative coders and digital artists.
Kasey Pocius is a gender-fluid intermedia artist originating from St. John’s, Newfoundland and located in Montreal, who grew up experimenting with multimedia software - while also pursuing classical training in both viola and piano. Outside of fixed electronic works, they have also pursued mixed-media performances with live electronics, both as a soloist and in comprovisatory collaborative environments. They are particularly interested in multichannel spatialization, and how this can be used in group improvisatory experiences. They hold a BFA from Concordia in Electroacoustic Studies and are currently pursuing an MA in Music Technology at McGill under the direction of Dr. Marcelo M. Wanderley.
Nicola Giannini is a sound artist and an electroacoustic music composer based in Montreal. His practice focuses on immersive music, both acousmatic and performed. His works have been presented in Australia, North America, South America, and Europe. Originally from Italy, Nicola is a doctoral student at the Université de Montréal, under the supervision of Robert Normandeau, and is a research assistant at the Groupe de recherche en immersion spatiale (GRIS).