SPARC Symposium 2017: Touching Sound
22 - 23 September 2017
The discourse around touch and the tactile has been growing in recent years. Within music, this conversation is mainly dominated by the integration of haptics with sound technology and the way in which music ‘touches’ us emotionally. This symposium aims to explore the deeply embodied experience that is hearing and listening and add to this ever growing field of practice and research. Composers and sound artists, alongside a ceramicist, a landscape architect and a surgeon, will consider this tactile experience from an open perspective, including the political, social, and aesthetic.
Short provocations by thirteen speakers and an evening concert on the first day will form the basis for a round table discussion and an afternoon concert on the second day.
*Click the links to be re-directed to video*
DAY 1 - CITY, University of london: college building
11-12.30 // session 1
· Roger Kneebone (keynote) Crossing Boundaries – exploring touch in medicine and beyond
· James Weeks Mud in my Ears
· Amber Priestley Poetry's playground: transforming the written word into an integral sensory experience
· Will Cole Out-thereness / contact / movement / interaction: touch as a model for expanded musical form
12.30-14.00 // lunch
14.00-15.30 // session 2
· Jo Gibbons Thoughts on fractal symmetries and natural systems
· Pétur Jónasson Contact—Pressure—Release—Memory
· Amie Ray Fleshy Stories
· Jan Hendricks Unthinking musical structure / The body as musical structure
· Thor Magnusson Touching What? On the Problem of Digital Organology
16-17.30 // session 3
· Julian Stair Filling the Void: An Argument for a Reappraisal of Touch
· Teoma Naccarato Synchronism: A Pretext for Touch
· Miguel Mera Audiovisual Touch
· Adam Harper IRL vs URL: Tangibility and the Digital
· Aaron Einbond Disembodiment: reproduction, transcription, and trace
18.00 // Drinks and Performances
· Amber Priestey (installation) World to escape to, salty seas to float by
· Benedict Taylor (performance)
· Claudia Molitor (film) Manifesto
· Pétur Jónasson & Thor Magnusson (performance)
DAY 2 - IKLEKTIK
11.00 // welcome
11.30-14.00 // open discussion (chaired by Claudia Molitor & Aaron Einbond)
14.00-15.00 // lunch
15.00-16.30 // performance by Tullis Rennie