2015 Symposium Schedule

Technologies of Sound: Systems, Networks, Modernities

Stony Brook University, February 13-14

Friday, Feb. 13 (1006 Humanities Building)

9:30 a.m. Coffee and Registration

11:45 a.m. Opening Remarks
Anna Reguero, Symposium Chair

Noon - Technologies of Opera
Michael Richardson, chair

Marco Ladd (Yale University) 
“The Opera Glass as Cultural Technology”

Navid Bargrizan (University of Florida) 
“Internet and Mediation in Manfred Stahnke’s Orpheus Kristall (2001)”

Christy Thomas (Yale University) 
“Opera in the Light of Technology: Ricordi and the Emergence of Italian Cinema”

2 p.m. - Economies of Recorded Sound
Michael Boerner, chair

Ben Negley  (University of California, Santa Cruz) 
“Tempo, Duration, and Variability in Mahler’s Second Symphony: An Empirical Approach”

Ralph Whyte (Columbia University) 
“Musicality, Respectability, and Profitability: Approaches to Advertising Sound Recording in America (1899—1912)”

3:20 p.m. - Interactive Technologies
Oksana Nesterenko, chair

Dina Maccabee (Wesleyan University) 
“ASMR and Aural Technologies of Online Sociality”

Grace Osborne (New York University) 
“Listening and Longing: Sonic Nostalgia in the interactive simulation video game Gone Home”

5 p.m. Keynote Address
Benjamin Tausig, Faculty Chair

Arved Ashby, Professor of Music, Ohio State University
"Talking about Music as Humanists and as Technologists"

6 p.m.—Reception

Saturday, Feb. 14 (Staller Center Recital Hall)

10 a.m. - Organologies
Bethany Cencer, chair

Philip Rice (Michigan State University) 
“The Excessive Machine: On the Queer Construction of the Organ”

Hallie Blejewski (Wesleyan University) 
“Human-Instrument Relationships in the University of the West Indies Steel Pan Research Laboratory”

Nicholas Curry (Yale University) 
“Signification and Mediation in the Age of Auto-Tune”

Noon - Embodied Technologies
Katherine Kaiser, chair

Lucie Vágnerová (Columbia University) 
“Laurie Anderson Has Not Been Listening: The Anti-Mediatory Position as a Sound Technology of Power”

Max Hylton Smith (University of Pittsburgh) 
“Digital Place beyond Phonographic Space: The Historicizing Soundscape of Emursive’s Sleep No More”

1:15 Lunch

2:30 p.m. - Cultures of Technology
Felipe Ledesma Núñez, chair

Violet Cavicchi (Brown University) 
“'We Are Cusqueños': Indigenous Voice in Quechua Radio Music”

Max Suechting (Stanford University) 
“Computer Face//Pure Being: Technologies of Repetition in Flying Lotus's Cosmogramma”

Lauren Flood (Columbia University) 
“Dark Circuits: Technoscience, Sonic Black Boxes, and Modes of Knowledge”

4:30 p.m. - Negotiating Liveness
Jocelyn Ho, chair

Celeste Oram (University of California, San Diego) 
“Real-Time Scores”

Jay Loomis (Stony Brook University) 

“Crafting 21st Century Soundscapes and Locative Media Mobile Apps”

8 p.m. Special Evening Panel at Stony Brook Manhattan, Rm. 313 

(387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY; Entrance, between 27th and 28th Streets)

Media, Art, Culture, Technology (MACT) Salon 1: Sound Art

Featuring:

Margaret Schedel, Assistant Professor of Composition at Stony Brook University

China Blue, from the Engine Institute, Inc.

Ken Ueno, University of California, Berkeley

Seth A. Cluett, Ramapo College of New Jersey

This event builds off of a panel discussion at the College Art Association Conference.

See original panel at http://conference.collegeart.org/programs/four-perspectives-on-sound-art-history-practice-structure-and-perception/

CFP: "Technologies of Sound: Systems, Networks, Modernities"

The Stony Brook Music Department announces its Fifth Annual Graduate Music Symposium, “Technologies of Sound: Systems, Networks, Modernities,” to be held February 13-14, 2015.

The Stony Brook Graduate Music Symposium aims to engage emerging scholars from various disciplines in dialogue about the relationship between music and technology. In this conference, technology is conceived as a broad discourse shaping music history and theory, not only in reference to the tools of music making, but also to methods and procedures in the creation and performance of music, the ethics of various music technologies, and effects of technologies on performers and listeners. We welcome symposium participants to explore these various conceptions of technology and how it relates to historical, social, political, philosophical, and scientific manifestations in music. The topics may include, but are not limited to:

● Electronic music, electro-acoustic music, acousmatic music
● Notation and theoretical systems as technologies
● Performance practices and organology
● Technology and its effect on soundscape and/or aurality
● Technological mediation, reproduction, and distribution of sound and music
● Sounds and technologies of conflict and power
● Sounds and technologies of gender, sexuality, race
● Audio-visual production and multimedia
● Acoustics, amplification, sound systems
● Audio recording technology, including musique concrète and digital methods

The symposium will also feature a keynote address by Arved Ashby (Ohio State University), and will coincide with a performance by the Stony Brook Opera. We invite graduate students to submit 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers and 30-minute composer presentations, and 40-minute lecture recitals. We welcome proposals from scholars in music history, theory, ethnomusicology, and other areas within the humanities and social sciences, as well as performers and composers whose work resonates with our theme. Proposals for composer talks should include a description of the proposed work and a short biography.

Please submit proposals to musicgradsymposium@stonybrook.edu by Friday, December 19, 2014 (please note a deadline extension). Stony Brook is accessible via JFK, the Long Island MacArthur Airport, the Long Island Rail Road, and the Bridgeport/Port Jefferson ferry. Housing with Stony Brook graduate students may be available for presenters staying overnight.

Conference Program

Music and Nature: Between Scientific Reason and Divine Power

Stony Brook University, February 14-15, 2014

the schedule reflects changes caused by inclement weather as of  9 am Feb 14

Friday, February 14 (1006 Humanities Building)

9:30 Coffee and Registration

11:15 Opening Remarks

Oksana Nesterenko, Symposium Chair

11:20-12:20 Birds

Hayley Roud and Barkley Heuser, chairs

Zachary Ebin (York University, Toronto)

“Suzuki and Bird Song: Assessing Suzuki’s Claim that Talent is not Inborn”

Ryan Taussig (University of Tennessee)

“Divine Creation, Human Music: The Spiritual and the Natural in Olivier Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles”

12:35-1:35 Engaging Senses

Benjamin Downs, chair

Anna Reguero (Stony Brook University)

“Dancing Structure: Modern Dance Choreography, Musical Analysis, and Phenomenology”

Rogan Bogaert (University of Western Ontario)

“Two Senses of ‘Body’ in Janet Cardiff’s Forty-Part Motet” (skype session)

Suzanne Thorpe (UCSD, Integrative Studies Program) and Paul Geluso (NYU)

“Phloq: A Collaboration of Composition and Technology to Evoke Corporeal Engagement with Environmental Sound” - rescheduled to Saturday, February 15, 4pm

Composer presentation

Visit to the installation of Phloq, a multichannel work evoking the sensorial experience of a flock of birds taking flight (Wang Center, Gallery 4, alcove L ) 
 rescheduled to Saturday, February 15, 4: 30 pm. the installation will be running all day on Saturday

1:35-2:20 Lunch break

2:20 – 3:20 Soundscapes and Places

David Blake, chair

Garrett L. Johnson (Arizona State University)

“Deserts, Insects and Oscillators: David Dunn’s Bioregional Music”

Jason Kirby (University of Virginia, Critical and Comparative Studies in Music)

“"Country Pie": Bob Dylan's Genre Experiments in a "Back-to-the-Land" Moment” (skype session)

3:35-4:45 Cycles and Tonality: Human and Nature

Michael Boerner, chair

Katherine Betteridge  (Bangor University, North Wales, UK)

“Earth, Spirit and Shamanic Ritual: a Musical Journey to Mongolia”

Composer presentation

Ryan Rowen (UCLA)

“A Reminiscence of Nature's Forgotten Melodies: Reactionary Tonality in Nikolai Medtner’s Sonata-Reminiscenza”

5:00-6:00 Keynote Address

Professor Stephen Decatur Smith, chair

Professor Holly Watkins (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester)

“Toward a Posthumanist Organicism”

Reception to follow

Staller Center, Music Wing

Saturday, February 15 (Recital Hall, Staller Center for the Arts)

9:30-10:00 Coffee

10:00 – 11:00 Evolution and Natural Science

Michael Richardson, chair

Felipe Ledesma-Núñez (Stony Brook University)

“Luis Humberto Salgado: Nationalism, Music Evolution, and Mestizaje”

Yu Jueng Dahn (University of Cincinnati)

“Natural Science and Bostonian Musical Scene: Reception of Robert Franz’s J.S. Bach Arrangements”

11.15 - 1:00 Spirituality and the Supernatural

Oksana Nesterenko, chair

Tysen Dauer (University of Nebraska – Lincoln)

“The Zazen Pianist: Meditation, Oneness, and the Nature of Sound in Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds”

Lecture recital

Valerie Rogotzke (Yale University)

“Exercising the Spiritual Senses: Musical and Liturgical Practices at Helfta”

Joe Cantrell (University of California San Diego)

“The disembodied digital voice: Sound recording as means of accessing the supernatural”

1.00-2:30 Lunch break

2:30- 4:00 Sounds of Nature

Anna Parkitna, chair  

Mary Hubbell and Alice Jones (The Graduate Center at the City University of New York)

"Images of Nature in 20th-century Works for Voice and Flute"

Lecture recital

Katherine Pukinskis (University of Chicago)

"March Snow, Marta Sniegs: writing the beautiful into new concert music"

Composer presentation

 Suzanne Thorpe (UCSD, Integrative Studies Program) and Paul Geluso (NYU)
“Phloq: A Collaboration of Composition and Technology to Evoke Corporeal Engagement with Environmental Sound” - followed by a visit to the installation of  Phloq

 Dinner break

8:00 Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra Concert

The event is funded by Stony Brook University  Graduate Student Organization and supported by Stony Brook University Music Department. 

CFP: “Music and Nature: Between Scientific Reason and Divine Power”

The Stony Brook Music Department announces its Fourth Annual Graduate Music Symposium, to be held February 14-15, 2014. The symposium will feature a keynote address by Holly Watkins (Eastman School of Music), as well as the performance of the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra presenting works by Richard Strauss, Hindemith and Bartòk. 

Music has always involved nature by imitating its sounds, referring to it in texts set by composers, and more recently by means of recording technology. As environmental awareness has become more widespread, an increasing number of musicological works have engaged with ecological questions.

Since Ancient Greece, thought about music has considered its relationships to nature, as both philosophy and physics were concerned with the nature of musical sound.  The concept of nature itself has been constantly changing throughout history and Aristotle’s idea that understanding of nature involves understanding of change is still valid today. The broad conception of nature includes the essential quality of things, the inherent force that directs either the world or humans, and the material world itself.

We welcome the Symposium participants to explore these various conceptions of nature and how they relate to historical, social, philosophical and scientific manifestations in music, and also invite composers to share of their works that involve sounds of nature. The topics may include, but are not limited to:

·         musical depictions of nature and supernatural;

·         natural beauty versus artificial artworks;

·         acoustics and the nature of musical sound;

·         naturalistic music theories;

·         the "natural genius" or cults of genius;

·         performing in a natural way;

·         gender, sexuality, and revealing human nature in music;

·         nature versus industry at the age of modernity;

·         sounds of nature in electronic works;

·         sound studies in the era of changing technology;

·         acoustemology, local musical ecology and soundscape;

·         political ecology in musical works;

·         bodily engagement in music experience.

We invite submissions of 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, 30-minute composer presentations and 40-minute lecture recitals. Proposals for composer talks should include a description of the proposed work and a short biography.

Please submit proposals to musicgradsymposium@stonybrook.edu by Friday, December 6, 2013. Stony Brook is accessible via JFK and MacArthur Airport, the Long Island Rail Road, and the Bridgeport/Port Jefferson ferry. Housing with Stony Brook graduate students may be available for presenters staying overnight. 

For more information about SBSO concert program, please visit  http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/music/performances/ensembles/sbso.shtml

Conference Program

2013 Stony Brook Graduate Music Symposium: Program

The program for the 2013 Stony Brook Graduate Music Symposium is below. Information about getting to Stony Brook can be found here, and campus maps are available here. We hope to see you at the conference!

Music of the Spectacle

Friday, February 22 (1006 Humanities Building)

11:30 Coffee and Registration, Light refreshments

12:15 Opening Remarks

Professor Judith Lochhead, Director of Graduate Studies

Benjamin Downs, Symposium Chair

12:30-1:30 Popular Combinatorics

David Blake, chair

Lindsay Wright (University of Chicago)

 “Collage, Montage, and Meaning in Popular Music”

Olivia Benware (University of New Hampshire)

 “Live-Looping, Andrew Bird, and the Spectacle of the Modern One Man Band”

1:45-2:45 Spectacle, Out of Doors

Kassie Hartford, chair

Glenda Bates (Stony Brook University)

 “Pomp, Performance, and Palio: Music’s Role in Ceremony and Spectacle as a Construct of Cultural Identity and Civic Pride in the Sienese Republic, 1260–1555”

Antonette Adiova (University of Michigan)

 “Street Dancing in Hybrid Space: Religiosity and Commercialism in the Feast of Our Lady of Peñafrancia”

3:00-4:00 Spectacle across Media

Bethany Cencer, chair

 Michael Boerner (Pennsylvania State University)

 “Erik Satie and the Influence of Parisian Dadaism”

 Monica Chieffo (Tufts University)

 “Maria’s Veils, Salome’s Machinery: The Dance Scene in Metropolis  and Salome”

4:15-5:30 Keynote Address

Professor Ryan Minor, chair

 Professor David Levin (University of Chicago)

Reception to follow

Staller Center, Music Wing

8:00-9:00pm Humperdink’s Hansel and Gretel

Staller Center for the Arts

Saturday, February 23 (Tabler Conference Room)

8:30-9:00 Coffee and Bagels

9:00-10:30 Reconstructed Voices

Carlo Lanfossi, chair

 Katherine Kaiser (Stony Brook University)

 “Music Without Spectale?: Intimate Auralities in Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Rissolty Rossilty”

 John Romey (Case Western Reserve University)

 “Dancourt’s Early Divertissements: Musical Theater At The Comédie-Français (1685–1699)”

 Amanda L. C. Fontaine (University of New Hampshire)

 “’O Friends, Not These Strains:’ An Analysis of the Use of Text and Textual Symbolism in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony”

11:00-12:00 Sonic Spaces

Benjamin Downs, chair

Nathan Friedman (Wesleyan University)

 “Modifying the Demeanor of the Galaxies: Spectacle and Utopia in the Music of Iannis Xenakis”

Orit Hilewicz (Columbia University)

 “Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel Transforming the Boundaries of Individuality: A Study in Musical Ekphrasis”