September 15 (Friday)
September 15th (Friday), 3:00 p.m. — 4:30 p.m. (EDT)
Zoom Meeting Link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/94551410844?pwd=S1VuYVRnOWZBTzQ5RjArK3oxWFNZZz09
Each session will follow the same format: Artists will give a 15 minutes presentation then spend 10 minutes showing the work (or excerpts). There will be a 5 minute break between each participant.
Shards of Memory (2020)
Jason Cullimore
This work is an update of Shards of Memory (2020), a GPS-driven, interactive, algorithmic score experienced in augmented reality on the University of Regina campus in Canada. It was realized as an iPhone app coded in Unity and composed by Jason Cullimore during his doctoral studies. In Shards of Memory, virtual objects were placed around the campus at locations where significant memories had formed for memory contributors drawn from the University of Regina community. A persistent algorithmic score was generated by the app which projected and interpreted the emotional associations of the memories specified by their contributors. As app users neared a memory marker (seen in augmented reality on the iPhone screen at particular GPS coordinates), the score’s expression adapted to mirror the emotions the memory contributor associated with their memory. The work constitutes a new form of memory archive, where personal memories are shared and interpreted via emotionally-targeted, interactive, algorithmically-governed music. The form of the score was influenced by input from its users, its memory contributors, and the app designer. Shards of Memory represents one of the first locative scores for a real-world site, designed to foster empathy and social connection between app users and community members through experiencing an algorithmic score. In the update to the original Shards of Memory presented here, a version of the app is instantiated on the York University campus (Toronto, Canada), using a newer algorithmic music engine developed by Dr. Cullimore in the years since he earned his PhD.
Jason Cullimore
Jason Cullimore was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada where he built a career composing music for film, television, experimental theatre and concert performance. His projects have been funded by the Canada Council, Saskatchewan Arts Board, FACTOR and SOCAN Foundation, and he is the recipient of two Western Canadian Music Awards. Among his many works are a new concert score for the classic 1920 silent film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," which was presented in concert in Regina with the ensemble performing in sync to a screening of the film. His concert works have also been performed by the Regina, Winnipeg and Victoria Symphony Orchestras. In 2021 Jason earned an Interdisciplinary PhD in Computer Science and Fine Art from the University of Regina, for which he designed and coded several algorithmic music works. These included a novel, interactive score for the university campus taking the form of an iPhone app, and a machine-learning based chord sequence generator. Jason now lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to compose music for film and concert performance, while developing new algorithmic works in media such as augmented reality. Jason works at a creative intersection of computer science and music composition, and credits his PhD with changing how he understands and composes music.
Sun Dial I (DCF77)
Eric Maltz
Sun Dial I (DCF77) is a site responsive land art installation which challenges the current measurement and perception of time. Secretly located at DCF77, a long wave transmission station in Mainflingen, Germany, where an array of broadcast antennas sends out a powerful pulse each second, at a frequency of 77.5khz. This transmission synchronizes railway systems, telecommunications technology, industrial infrastructures, and radio and television stations. The range of this broadcast is tremendous, bathing every living being and inanimate object within its 2000km radius in quantized, atomic time. In contrast to this modern means of time keeping, I installed a Sun Dial in the same field as DCF77’s antennas. Constructed of natural objects found on site, this ancient technology is only accurate in its region and cannot operate without the sun. The juxtaposition of these two time keeping methods (one ancient, local, dependent on nature and the other ultra-modern, trans-national, and machine based) creates a site responsive environment. Inaccessible behind a barbed wire fence, the sun dial stands alone, quietly generating its own fragile frequency, questioning our relationship with time. Time, like sound, is invisible, fluid, without body. We can measure it, try to capture it in a wristwatch or an mp3 – but these are just representations of an event already past. We are living in the echo of the industrial revolution, and the world is becoming a carefully regulated factory. Through experiencing other modes of time perception, we can become less efficient and more human.
Eric Maltz
Eric Maltz is a sound bricoleur and an artistic researcher combining land art, field recordings, filmic improvisations, and durational performance to create installations and sound art environments. His practice is rooted in the exploration and perception of time, dream study, and finding connections between disparate objects. Underlying all is the belief that sound is a vehicle for emotion.
MURMULLOS (WHISPERS)
Andrés Torres
MURMULLOS (WHISPERS) is a sound art piece that is a part of a proposal for the dissemination of the testimonial volume of the Final Report of the Truth Commission in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. This proposal is called Ritual Readings and was conceived by former commissioner Alejandro Castillejo-Cuéllar, with whom the sound piece I also created. The Ritual Readings is a social process of closing the Commission's listening, in a ritual sense, and is at the same time a contribution to the appropriation of the final report. Composed of nine interconnected parts, this work presents a 3D audio sound narrative that evokes both the fragilized beauty and resilience of natural landscapes affected by violence. The sound composition combines field recordings captured in iconic locations, testimonies from local communities, and abstract sonic elements symbolizing destruction and healing. Through its multidimensional approach, MURMULLOS seeks to create a deep awareness and reflection on the consequences of the Colombian armed conflict on the natural environment and the communities that depend on it. MURMULLOS is a powerful testimony to the role of art in denouncing, healing and promoting social change through the collective construction of memory.
Andrés Torres
Sound Artist, Professor, and Researcher associated with the Audiovisual and Multimedia Communication program at the Universidad de Antioquia (UdeA). His research-creation work focuses on translating data that enables the auditory exploration of natural and cultural phenomena through intermedial devices such as sound installations and performances. He has exhibited his work in Europe and Latin America. He lives and works in the city of Medellín, Colombia.