Event Details

Sunday, August 12th, 2018
|  1:00pm - 3:00pm

Creative Soundmaking: Microphones and Ambient Sound

Creative Sound-making with Electronics and Ambient Sound

In this event, music technology (microphones, loudspeakers, laptops, and MIDI controllers) will be used to focus on natural ambience, allowing participants to hear everyday sounds in new ways.  The electronic techniques will be explained and demystified, as participants process ambient sound live with hands-on interactive devices, learning to both listen more closely and manipulate the sounds around them in a collaborative installation. 

 

HaEccEity/ QuiDDity is a performative installation that manipulates the ambient sounds of a space using a variety of signal processes including high-definition FFT equalization, sinusoidal analsysis/ resynthesis, and delay/feedback. Through these techniques, the piece highlights or obscures different parts of the ambient spectrum, while also adding its own coloration and sonic presence. The piece can be performed indoors or outdoors for any duration.

 

This recording consists of excerpts from an installation at Buffalo NY's Burchfield Penney Art Center, during their annual Stay Gold event (December 8, 2017).

 

https://soundcloud.com/ethan-hayden/haecceity

 

 

 

NULL POINT SOUND GARDEN PROGRAM

SUNDAYS 1-3PM, FREE

Sound Garden cultivates community through collective sound-making and listening, featuring workshops, performances, installations, soundwalks, and open rehearsals. On Sunday afternoons in July and August, the program explores a variety of ways to make sound and music in dialogue with Artpark’s rich soundscapes and landscapes, through participatory events produced by Buffalo-based experimental sound initiative Null Point. Presenting cutting-edge experimental sound in accessible formats, each program provides numerous ways for participants of any or no musical background to make creative, hands-on sonic contributions to the performance. No prior musical experience is required.

 

July 15 - Dirt Wave

A new work by Arrow Fitzgibbon for amplified ground utilizes vibrations, movement, and rock music to explore grey areas between deafness and hearing, dysphoria and self - acceptance. This piece aims to create an experience that is both meditative and exciting for people among all spectra of abilities and identities.

 

July 22 - Bodies and Branches

This event features a new work by Lena Nietfeld that explores relationships between humans and their surrounding environments. In the first part of this two-part piece, performers and audience members use their bodies to imitate ambient sounds found in the natural environment, while in the second part, they imitate human-created sounds using natural materials found in the performance space. Each participant becomes at once composer, performer, and listener, blurring traditional distinctions between these three facets of sound creation. The program begins with a one hour workshop those who wish to participate or to learn more about the piece, followed by a one hour performance.

 

July 29 - Discovering Place through Close Listening

Featuring sound works by the late Pauline Oliveros, a long-time resident of upstate NY, this event will center listening strategies the composer developed to facilitate attentive, inclusive, spontaneous listening to all sounds audible in a particular place. The event will begin listening exercises (no prior experience required), followed by a sonic walking tour of Artpark’s site, and a performance where Null Point’s musicians play instruments in dialogue with Artpark’s sonic environment.

 

August 12 - Creative Soundmaking with Microphones and Ambient Sound

Creative Sound-making with Electronics and Ambient Sound

In this event, music technology (microphones, loudspeakers, laptops, and MIDI controllers) will be used to focus on natural ambience, allowing participants to hear everyday sounds in new ways.  The electronic techniques will be explained and demystified, as participants process ambient sound live with hands-on interactive devices, learning to both listen more closely and manipulate the sounds around them in a collaborative installation. HaEccEity/ QuiDDity is a performative installation that manipulates the ambient sounds of a space using a variety of signal processes including high-definition FFT equalization, sinusoidal analsysis/ resynthesis, and delay/feedback. Through these techniques, the piece highlights or obscures different parts of the ambient spectrum, while also adding its own coloration and sonic presence. The piece can be performed indoors or outdoors for any duration. This recording consists of excerpts from an installation at Buffalo NY's Burchfield Penney Art Center, during their annual Stay Gold event (December 8, 2017).

 

August 19 - Reimagining the Electric Guitar

What becomes possible when an electric guitar is brought into physical contact with the materials of an outdoor environment? What happens when the instrument’s capacity for drastic amplification is brought into contact with outdoor environmental materials (sticks, vines, blades of grass, etc.)? Approaching the electric guitar as an amplifier of environmental materials, the event guides participants in exploring a range of ways to activate the instrument with materials found in Artpark’s environment. Through a framework developed by composer Colin Tucker, the resulting sound-making techniques will be refined and assembled into an informal performance involving all interested participants alongside Null Point’s musicians.

 

August 26 - Sound Garden Program Culmination

Beyond “Nature” and “Culture:” Instruments encounter Landscape (part of “Music in the Woods”)

For the program finale, Null Point’s large ensemble returns to Artpark to present part 10 of David Dunn’s epic outdoor piece PLACE. Featuring ten musicians activating conventional instruments (clarinet, trombone, drum, electric guitar, violin, viola, cello, and more) with materials found in Artpark’s outdoor environment, the performance aims not to damage instruments, nor to shock, but rather to explore the astonishingly unexpected and varied sounds that emerge from this unusual interchange of “cultured” instruments and “natural” materials. At particular times during the performance, listeners with any or no musical background will be invited to make contributions to the performance by activating and/or modifying the performers’ instruments with environmental materials. After beginning in Artpark’s lush Emerald Grove, the musicians will gradually disperse throughout the expansive park and in turn emphasizing differences between the park’s diverse terrains while presenting an ever-changing panorama of moving sounds.

 

 

 

NULL POINT FEATURED IN SOUND AMERICAN

Buffalo-based presenting organization, Null Point, takes over Sound American for this very deep dive into the music and philosophy of the great, under-appreciated composer DAVID DUNN in this very special issue concentrating on their recent performance of his seven-hour epic PLACE.  

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