SOUND THOUGHT

2nd & 3rd march 2012

glasgow. the arches

introduction InstallationPaul Henry - A White Eggs from My the PerformerFriday/ 12.00- 21.45/ B3 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ B3

A video installation from Glaswegian musician and dancer Paul Henry. White Eggs is a document of an intimate ritual performance using live voice looping, dance and wireless technology to allow the artist to stop ‘performing’ and start to act. Or stop acting and start to Do.

Martino Nicoletti - I Must Not Look You In the Eyes: The Zoo of theGiraffe WomenFriday/ 12.00- 21.45/ B3 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ B3

A super-8 short, shot in Thailand, devoted to the ethnic tourism among theKayan minority. This short puts a sharp gaze on a lesser-known form of human exploitation. The miraculous pupil of Baudelaire’s eyes projected towards the remotest tropics and the most cogent contradictions of thecontemporary world.

Bethan Parkes - Room Friday/ 12.00- 21.45/ B4 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ B4

Room questions the relationship between man and his environment, exposing the affective impact of acoustic spatiality. Presented in darkness and in surround sound, Room wants to heighten your awareness of a fundamental question: How do I feel here?

Justyna Ataman and Lise Koefoed Larsen - Hear You Sharing Friday/ 12.00- 21.45/ B2 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ B2

Be part of creating the environment around; an analogue sound-installation asking you to change the space into an alternative instrument. Hear You Sharing shines a light on how your movements shape the ongoing reality in tandem with the people around you. With thanks to sponsors Walker Woodstock.

/performanceWhat is it?

A festival of mould-breaking music, sound and performance A hub for dialaogueInterdisciplinary compositions, performances, installations, workshops, presentations and provocations.

Who?

Postgraduates from Glasgow University and the Arches

Who else?

The most vital and forward thinking artists working across a variety of disciplines from musicians and composers to film-makers and visual artists.

You- the audience, who are invited to spectate, participate, reflect,or perform.

What are we considering?

Music as Gift

What value has this? What is offered and what is returned? What is at stake in the exchange? Does giving diminish the giver? Do gifts require justification or is it the thought that counts?

What can we expect?

Blindfolded journeys through dark corridors, noise, argument, pop song endurance and outright murder, lost correspondence to Chris De Burgh,ultra-minimal improv, the most exciting chamber ensemble in the country, stupidity, seriousness, music for understanding, transgression and change…

Enjoy

S.T

/welcome to sound thought 2012

F.K. Alexander- Why I Never Became A SingerFriday/ 18.00- 22.00/ Dressing Room CSaturday/11.00-19.00/ Dressing Room C

‘They say to be a singer you need 10% talent and 90% confidence. I have neither.’The human voice is the most vulnerable of all instruments. And yet singing has become the symbol of degradation and validation (cf. X Factor). F.K. Alexander’s response is to sing along to her most treasured albums, one by one, non-stop, for 8 hours a day.

Leila Peacock and Robin Warren - Factual Uncertainties Friday/ 19.00- 21.45/ Arch 6 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ Foyer

A sound installation that’s part mesmeric music, part informative incantation. A monotonous voice reads from a list of reliably unreliable ‘facts’. A poetry of lists, a satire of our fetish for facts, useless information as entertainment, instruction-manual hypnosis… You learn something newly useless every day.

Marcello Messina - Ursprung Collective Friday/ 19.00- 21.45/ Arch 6 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ Foyer

Ursprung Collective is a spoken word / music project based in Brooklyn, NY. Taking the poetry of Michael Anthony Adams, Jr. as inspiration, the collective features soundscapes from gn0m0n, DJ Super Squirrel, Weylin’ Rose, The Atmospheric Science, Low-Key and Marcello Messina.

Emily Shepherd - Weight and Sound in SculptureFriday/ 19.00- 21.45/ Arch 6 & Saturday/11.00-19.00/ Foyer

In collaboration with Amy Pickles/Fiona Keenan/Alison Stockwell/Adam Scarborough/Thomas Leyland-Collins/Benjamin ParkesAn installation of objects on display with musicians’ interpretations of their counterparts in sound. The soundtracks were developed through investigative collaboration between artists and musicians considering sculptural forms in terms of their weight, and what this weight or mass may sound like. Sculptures kindly donated by Ragnar Jonasson and Helen Shaddock.

Installation/performance

papersSound as Gift (chaired by Claire Healy)Friday/ 13.30-15.00 / Practice Room

Kenny Barr, University of GlasgowMusic Copyright and Gift

Dr. Brian W. Nail, University of Glasgow‘I’d write my love a letter’:Reading Sam Amidon’s ‘Pretty Saro’ as epistolary gift

Luca Guariento, University of GlasgowRobert Fludd’s musicae: different musics, same gift from the heavens

The first session focuses on Sound Thought 2012’s central theme of music as gift, touching on themes of history, philosophy and technology. Kenny Barr will explore tensions between the notions of music as gift and music as commodity, focusing on the role of copyright. Dr Brian Nail will examine folk artist Sam Amidon’s retelling of the traditional folk song ‘Pretty Saro’, arguing that the song can be understood as a kind of love letter. Luca Guariento will introduce the musical work of doctor and philosopher Robert Fludd, including a live performance of his compositions on period instruments.

Sound, space and performance (chaired by Alison Eales)Friday/ 15.30-17.00/ Practice Room

Claire Healy, University of GlasgowThe Tell-Tale Sky: Performing Presence and Sacrifice

Bethan Parkes, University of GlasgowAffective Spatialities in the Acousmatic Arts

Markee Rambo-Hood, University of GlasgowA brief history of timing: musical logic and the theatre of Robert Wilson

In this session, Claire Healy will discuss the encounter with the artwork, exploring problems of the performative in improvisation and suggest meaningful approaches from the audience’s perspective. Bethan Parkes will explore audiences’ sense of presence in virtual acoustic space, and Markee Rambo-Hood will explore ideas of musical minimalism and musical composition in relation to the theatrical practise of stage director Robert Wilson

Introduction: Dr Nick Fells, University of GlasgowFriday/ 18.30-19.00/ South Bar @ Midland St. entrance

Dr Nick Fells, teacher and Head of Department of Music at Glasgow University, will provide a welcoming speech to kick off the festival. Nick is a composer, performer and sound artist. He works in acousmatic, soundscape, instrumental and vocal composition, installation, and music for visual media and dance. He is a founder member of the composers’ collective nerve8 and of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and plays with a number of otherimprovising groups. As a performer, he plays shakuhachi and computer-based instruments.

If These Gadgets Could TalkSaturday/ 11.00-11.30/ Practice Room

After a career as a sound engineer, Delaina Sepko is now a qualified archivist with a special interest in music archives. In this presentation, she examines the impact of two technologies used in music production - multi track recording and digital processing - on the preservation of music. Specifically, the uses of two objects - a 2” reel-to-reel tape and a MIDI scontroller keyboard - will help raise questions about preservation of music in cultural heritage institutions like archives.

Sound, place and identity (chaired by Dr Brian Nail)Saturday/ 11.45-13.15/ Practice Room

Robert Anderson, University of GlasgowRain Town or Indie Town: social network theory and Glasgow’s local music scene

Jo Clements, University of GlasgowThe past and the pastoral in eighteenth-century Scottish music history

Sheryl Lynch, University College DublinMusic and creative stimuli: the case of Ireland’s Bamenda diaspora

papersIn the final session, Robert Anderson considers the role that social networking (in the widest sense of the term) plays in propagating a creative culture amongst Glasgow’s popular music makers. Jo Clements discusses the early construction of Scottish music history and its relationship to existing beliefs about the past. Sheryl Lynch examines a Cameroonian organisation called NOWACIR and their unique musical practices in Ireland

Keynote Speech: Dr Katie Gough, University of Glasgow Saturday/ 15.15-16.00/ Practice Room

As a Lecturer in Theatre Film and Television Studies, Katie’s research cuts across drama, geography, history and critical theory in order to interrogate contemporary historiography by means of performance. At the centre of these investigations is an intellectual preoccupation with interdisciplinary methodologies central to performance studies and cultural studies in/of the Atlantic world. In response to the theme of gift and gift-exchange Katie will present on her chapter about the relationship between sound, architecture and mapping called ‘Between the Words: Syncopated Rhythm and Tender Mapping’. This will focus on the work of Zora Neale Hurston - and, in particular, her work on developing a ‘New Negro Theatre’ during the Harlem Renaissance based on her ethnographic work in the field and particularly her attention to Jook Joints in the South as a model for the theatre.

Panel Discussion Saturday/ 16.00-17.00/Practice Room

Taking the lead from Katie’s presentation, this open group discussion including artists from the festival will explore the proposed/disposable theme ‘sound as gift.’ How did this influence participants? How useful is the idea of exchange? What commerce has the artist? How or to what end does music comply with capitalist models of production? Is our need for music a false need? How does the festival model function within the matrix of the culture industry?

Discussion will continue at the table - all are welcome at the Sound Thought dinner in Arches Restaurant (17.00-18.00).

papers

performance Friday 2nd March

Friday/ 21.45-22.30/ StudioPerformances and Compositions from:

Fred Crase - Isolation PsychosisFinding competent musicians to perform with can be difficult. Here is the solution: ‘Shortly after arriving in Glasgow, I had a dream I was seated be-tween my 12-string guitar and 12-string banjo, playing them simultaneously.’

Marcello Messina - I PatrunaA composition for mezzo-soprano, violin-cello and sampler seeking to make an allegoric statement about the possibility of a solidarity-based alternative to the dominant politico-economic system based on monetary exchange. I Patruna is inspired by Sicily’s struggle for independence.

Kelvin Thomson, Marilyn Wyers and Danae Eleni - BeeBee for soprano, bodyist and laptop explores the creative interaction of the moving-thinking body and the collaborative process of new sound/music/movement making. Bee articulates the narrative trajectory of Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’. This performance of Bee will demonstrate particularly how the moving body can contribute to musical communication and perception. Simultaneous text and body movement is developed through contact improvisation between the bodyist and the singer. Gestures underscore the spoken text and further inspiration is drawn from the bee ‘waggle’ dance.

Okishima Island Tourist Association - Transcendental Harsh Noise Death Culture Obliteration! With Sarah Glass (Grimalkin55, The Fnords) and Lea Cummings (Kylie Minoise, Opaque)Against the slavery of the consumer, Okishima… place his being conscious. Must not the creative act be freed from censorship, and the Unconscious mind from the police state that negates it? THE SEEDS OF THE NEW SOCIETY ARE CONCEIVED IN THE FLAMES OF THE OLD! Okishima are not feeling edgy – the system is feeling nervous.

performance saturday 3rd March

Saturday/ 13.30-15.00/ Studio Performances and Compositions from:

Muris (Neil Davidson and Liene Rozite) - 10 Pin BoringLiene Rozite and Neil Davidson: ‘Write each other 9 questions. Read them, then try to answer them by playing. Confer afterwards’. But afterwards: ‘Let’s write good, new, really sincere proper questions of each other’s practice… the sonic dimension doesn’t get aired but is indicated and proposed. So the outcome is the possibility of a sonic realisation, but not the realisation’. Yes?

David Duncan - Clarinet and String QuartetDavid Duncan is interested in how to use notation as a prism to reflect pat-terns of sound. For this piece, only a very limited collection of gestures are heard, but as the individual instruments go in a out of phase with each other they produce constantly shifting surface textures.

Edit-Point with Chandra ChapmanEdit-Point is an electronic composers’ group conjuring surreal sonic landscapes made possible by studio technology. This performance offers electro acoustic cello sounds projected into 3D space through surround sound.

Jer Reid, Jenny Soep and Monica De Ioanni - Three Lines Saturday/18.00-18.40/Studio

An improvised performance crossing projected drawing with live music and dance. The idea being that all people are naturally creative beings and the art forms we use merely facilitate our expressions rather than defining us. Sound heightened spatially by dance heightened graphically by drawing heightened cinematically by sound…

/compositions/compositions

performance

open improv

Open improvisation – all welcome!Saturday/ 11.00-13.00/ Arch 6

This group will interrogate improvising processes in preparation for a perfor-mance at the After Party at The Old Hairdressers (Saturday/ 22.00). All fes-tival-goers are invited to meet everyone and collaboratively make sound as improvisation is made a moot point. Perform yourself. Bring an instrument or sound or newspaper or mobile phone. Remediate the sounds and the space you hear. Then do it again later in front of people (and again later). This group will be led by Neil Davidson. Neil plays guitar, writes sometimes, plays in With Lumps, Age of Wire and String and GIO, and with Liene Rozite to make Muris - a conceptual composition/ improvisation duo. Neil does occasional theatre work in Norway and Portugal.

/installationFriday 2nd March

Julia Letitia Scott - ST w.i.p? ext. soloFriday/ 19.15-19.45/ Practice Room

Julia Scott’s work involves voice, movement, music, film, text and ceramics. Her practice is self-reflexive and predominately performative. She creates a determined atmosphere in which the audience is implicit. Her work explores subtleties of power and is explicitly indebted to her community. Utilising the sacred/formal devices and objects of contemporary art, or music practice, such as, the artists (ever gazed at) y2k12 muse, the computer; and the normative spheres around these worlds, such as, social sexual dynamics to comment upon language, modes of production, desire, feminism, and communication. Her involvement in several bands, Gropetown, Thoth, Palms and Fem Bitch Nation is an extension of, and an influence upon her practice. This piece will explore violent and passive gesture. Obviously, I wrote this myself. Yours forever, The heroic, individualistic, performance artist.

Muris with Peter Nicholson - Einige Leben Friday/ 20.00-20-45/ Studio

Richard Strauss’s score Ein Heldeleben reduced to a solo cello part. The proposition: Identify an unreflected-on aspect of classical music performance practice; take it to its absurd illogical conclusion; re-frame it so as to draw new conclusion and produce new things to listen to and new reasons to listen.

Claire Healy - Chicken LickenFriday/ 20.45-21.00/ Arch 5

What do you see when you look up? Can you touch it? What does it sound like? For many the sky is home to the sacred and the unknown. We call to it, throw our arms up in prayer and plea. We ask for answers, courage, advice. This interactive media event explores the action of the individual and the

/installation

performance/installation

Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, Buffalo, buffalo - The Opposite of TechnoFriday/ 21.00-21.30/ Practice Room

Buffalo… make music which explores layering, repetition and the social aspects of performances. For The Opposite of Techno the audience will be invited to interact with portable cassette recorders, mixtapes, blank tapes and texts.

Edd Crawley - Gate (One on One Performance)Friday/19.00-21.45/Arch 6 EastGate will remove the participants’ sight and immerse them in a soundscape for the duration of the work. A short journey for two people at a time, Gate is an experiment in our reaction to sound, music, and shared experience. “Bliss” (The Herald).

power of the collective.

concert Saturday/ 19.00- 21.00/ Arch 2 Performances and Compositions from:

Jason Hazael - Dear Mr (…), I hope you won’t feel jealous right now…;-)A setting for cello and mezzo-soprano of a torn-up fan letter, pilfered from the dressing room trash of a well-known pop singer. Fragments of the letter are projected behind the musicians. This piece is a tribute to the author of the letter, and will be presented by anonymous recording to them following the performance. A celebration of musical obsession…

Richard Barron - The Testament of CresseidA setting for two singers and chamber ensemble of key moments from Robert Henryson’s poem The Testament of Cresseid. Markee Rambo-Hood (mezzo-soprano) takes the part of Cresseid and Chris Hutchings (baritone)Henryson himself, who both narrates the events and offers a humane perspective on the morality of the Middle Ages. Flute, clarinet, violins, viola and cello.

Chris Hutchings – PredestinationPredestination ponders Free Will and loss of control via a freely scored piece for any instrument(s). Do the players have any real choice over what they perform, or have their choices been dictated by everything they have heard over their lifetimes?

Brink Improv – inContextBrink Improv are a collective from Edinburgh University’s Digital Composition and Performance programme. Avoiding the clichés of live electronic music, inContext sees the results of research into real-time composition and self-made instrumentation and is far more than a collaboration of knob-twiddlers.Charles Ross – HoneyHoney attempts to explore some of the paradoxes faced by realist painters - an arbitrary snapshot, real or imagined, becomes a methodical work, often requiring weeks or even months for the painter to complete. Here the imag-ined subject is a performance by an improv ensemble; however the actual work is entirely notated by the composer. As the piece progresses the ensem-ble becomes more reflexive, less thought out, a music of nerves and guts, finally taking on the almost telepathic qualities of a hive mind.

After Party: Interrogate! Engage! Party!Saturday/ 21.00-00.00/ Old Hairdressers

- Sileni are an improvised grotesque burlesque electro-jazz splatter dada punk duo made up of Owen Green and Ali Maloney. Drawing equally upon free jazz, hip-hop, electronic composition, performance poetry, physical theatre and black clown, they create spontaneous worlds at performance that are dark, beautiful, exhilarating, dangerous and fantastic: pure fire music.- Wounded Knee is Drew Wright, a singer, experimental vocalist. Drawing from a variety of influences his music ranges from stripped down folk balladry to abstract improvised vocalic stravaigs. Tonight Wounded Knee presents ‘Song for One’. You can play fieldworker to Wounded Knee’s informant as he shares a song from his extensive repertoire with you. Just you. Will it be an old song, a new song, a borrowed song or a blue song? Have a wee rummage in his bawbag and find oot!- Markee de Saw and Bert Finkle are variety cabaret. They met in Berlin in twenty nine. An ingenue and a lothario. He has intimate tattoos. She has scar tissue. No, they met in Jerusalem eight years earlier than that. He dragged tourists round the sights of antiquity while she played chess against the rabbis and the mullahs for money. They say she won her voice from God. No, they met in a dream and continue to argue over which one is the dreamer and which the vision.- Neil Davidson leads experimental collaborations from ST Open Improv Group.After investigations during the festival, this group will perform for the first time.

Tamara Friebel and Annabel Carberry - Hula Hoop – I’m out of breath – All for youThis piece looks at the idea of giving until it hurts: to what extent do artists push themselves for the audience, for the ‘gift’ and how much is their own fulfillment limited by the constant desire to impress and entertain? Featuring Annabel Carberry, one of the world’s leading hula hoop artists, Chris Hutchings (baritone) and Markee Rambo-Hood (mezzo-soprano). With live electronics.

Julien Lonchamp - From there, nothing…A star at the end of its life-cycle, collapsing on itself: as its matter is compressed to a region of zero volume, a black hole appears from which nothing can escape, not even a sound. Using the full instrumental and timbral potential of the orchestra, From there, Nothing… offers a journey inside a fading star.

after party

friday timetableARCH 6 arch 5/dance arch DRESSING ROOM studio PRACTICE ROOM18.00: Midland St Opens18.30-19.00: Introduction - Dr. Nick Fells, Head of Music, Glasgow University19.00-20.00: Performance/Participation slot19.00-21.45: (Arch & East) Ed Crawley19.00-21.45: Installations (Arch & West)Emma ShepherdLella PeacockMarcello Messina 21.00-21:45: Performance/Participation slot

20.45-21.00:Performance/InstallationClaire Healy

18.00-22.00:PerformanceF.K. Alexander

20.00-20.45: PerformanceMuris and Peter Nicholson21:45-22:30: Performance/Composition #1Fred Crase‘Kelvin Thomson, Marilyn Wyers, Danae EleniMarcello Messina (I rijali)Okishima Island TouristAssociation

13:30-15.00: Paper-Sound as Gift.15:30-17.00: Papers-Sound, Space and Performance.19.00-20.00: Performance/ParticipationJulia Letitia Scott21.00-21:30: Performance/ParticipationBuffalo, buffalo, buffalo, Buffalo, buffalo

B2 B3 B4Instal 1Midday OnwardsJustyana Ataman and Lise Koefoed LarsenOpen from 12pm

Instal 2Paul HenryMartino Nicoletti Open from 12pm

Instal 3Bethan ParkesOpen from 12pm

Viridian Quartet -Lamond Gillespie - violin IDaniel Paterson - violin IIEmma Peebles - violaPeter Nicholson - cello

Matt Rogers - conductor and clarinetBill Sweeney - clarinet and bass clarinetClaire Healy - fluteJordan Currie - percussionMarkee Rambo-Hood - mezzo-sopranoChris Hutchings - baritone

Additional Musicians

saturday timetableARCH 2 arch 6 dressing room studio PRACTICE ROOM b219.00-21.00:Concert-Jason Hazael Richard Barron Chris HutchingsBrink Improv Charles Ross Tamara Friebel& Annabel CarberryJulian Lonchamp

11.00-13.00:Open Improv Session - participation open to all Sound Thought audience / artists

11.00-19.00:PerformanceF.K. Alexander

13.30- 15.00 Performance / Composition #2David Duncan Muris Edit Point

18.00-18.40:Performance Jer Reid and Jenny Soep

11.00-13.15:Papers-If These Gadgets Could Talk

15.15-16.00:Keynote SpeechDr Katie Gough (GU)16.00-17.00:Panel Discussion

Instal 1Justyna Ataman& Lise Koefoed LarsonOpen from 11am

B3 B4 foyer hairdressersInstal 2Paul Henry Martino Nicoletti Open from 11am

Instal 3Bethan ParkesOpen from 11am

From 12 noon:Installations-Emma ShepherdLeila PeacockMarcello Messina

17.00-18.00: Sound Thought dinnerArches Restaurant – all welcome!

21.00-midnight: Sound Thought Afterparty.

Featuring performancesfrom Sileni, Wounded Knee, Markee de Saw and Bert Finkle, Sound Thought group

ticketsfriday 2nd- Saturday 3rd march 2012

From 12 noon Friday & 11am SaturdayFestival pass: £15 / £10 // Day pass: £9 / £6

Concert only ticket: £6 / £4

www.thearches.co.uk01415651000

253 ARGYLE ST | GLASGOW G2 8DL

The Old Hairdressers [AFTERPARTY]01412222254

22-28 RENFIELD LANE | GLASGOW G2 6PH

Sound thought 2012

Alison Eales, Iain Findlay-Walsh, LJ Findlay-Walsh, Claire Healy, Paul Henry, Markee Rambo-Hood, Chris Hutchings, Louise Irwin,

Liene Rozite, Jill Smith

with special thanks to

Jill Smith, Grant Anderson, Robert Watson, Nick Fells, Martin Cloonan, The University of Glasgow,

The Arches Staff, Royal Musical Association, University of Glasgow Chancellor’s Fund,

Collaborative Research Training Initiative, Walker Woodstock all composers/performers/researchers.

ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION

RMADesign/A. Rickard Straus/2012