Sonic Arts Network enables people to engage with the art of sound in ground breaking, exciting and innovative ways.
Sonic Arts Network CD Launch: Newcastle
alt.gallery, Newcastle
www.altgallery.org
The fantastic alt.gallery in Newcastle will host a retrospective of the work of People Like Us (Vicki Bennett) from 15 May - 12 July.
The exhibition also launches the next CD in the SAN CD series, 'Smiling Through My Teeth', that explores humour in sound and music and is curated by Vicki Bennett. Come along to see the exhibition and hear tracks from the publication.
For the past seventeen years Vicki Bennett has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. Using collage as her main form of expression, she creates audio recordings, films and radio shows that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. The exhibition will focus on the concept of collage, showing an edited selection of her work, including twenty album releases, numerous singles and remixes, live sets, seven films and over a hundred and fifty radio shows.
People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show 'Do or DIY' on WFMU has had over three quarters of a million hits since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
Every week during the exhibition a different collection of special downloads from the People Like Us archive will be available from the gallery, bring your memory stick along for a free take away!
A specially commissioned essay by Drew Daniel of Matmos also accompanies the exhibition.
The event is part of the Late Shows series of events; NewcastleGateshead's world-class festivals and events programme. www.thelateshows.org.uk
Expo Brighton & Unconference Announced
expofestival.org
unconference.expofestival.org
Sonic Arts Network and Radio Reverb are proud to announce Expo Brighton, the UK's largest weekend of free sound art and experimental music, will take place on 4-6 July 2008 in venues and spaces across Brighton.
Featuring Stephan Mathieu & Aleks Kolkowski, John Wall, DJ Scotch Egg, Blood Stereo & Ludo Mich plus the best emerging artists back-to-back with some of the leading figures in UK sonic art playing things you've never heard before (and maybe never will again).
Three days and nights of people enjoying, playing, discovering and listening to sonic art. Experience a wiki-conference, a radiophonic intervention in the Royal Pavillion Gardens, installations and performances, shopping centre public art, club nights and film screenings across the streets, buildings and air waves of Brighton.
A full programme will be announced soon.
Unconference
A new element of Expo Brighton is Unconference – a wiki conference to discuss ideas that intersect with sound art and experimental music, including digital art, sound terrorism, hardware hacking, composition, open source, or anything you like…that’s the point. Basically, the community defines the programme for unconference.
The content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event. Discussing the ideas online, deciding on who will host, who will attend, what will be discussed and at what time. Those coming to the event can post on the discussion boards ahead of time topics they want to present about or hope others will present about. The site also acts as an attendee list. On the day there will be rooms, facilities such as projectors, soundsystems, coffee available and all discussions will be recorded and shared on the website post the real world event so discussions can carry on, connections made with new people and knowledge shared.
This website and the event itself is free to participate in. We just want the community to speak for itself and share knowledge - so go ahead!
Visit expofestival.org and unconference.expofestival.org
Expo is supported by Arts Council England
Sonic Arts Network New Podcast Series
Sonic Arts Network presents the first in a series of six episodes for the Sonic Arts Network podcast series. Jonathan Webb explores the outer edges of sound and music, from artists working within the fields of sound art, noise, electronic music, modern composition, field recordings, drone music and anything else that straddles the term sonic art. We will also present work that connects to the live, education and publishing work of the organisation.
Expo Brighton: Call for Work
4-6 July 2008
Presented by Sonic Arts Network and RadioReverb 97.2FM
In association with Earshot and Arika
Expo is the hub and playground of the experimental music and sound art scene in the UK and beyond. Free and open, the event mobilises a national network of artists and engages with communities from all backgrounds – placing sonic art and the people who make it in direct contact with the public. Expo steps out from traditional venues and into spaces that lie at the heart of the community - inspiring practitioners and the public to reconsider their environments.
Annually relocating, the Expo traverses the country creating its own community each year. It disperses into the locality it arrives in, scattering events, happenings and sounds across the towns and cities it visits, joining together place, people and art. Work is drawn from a national call and the event collaborates with local partners and highlights the work of local artists. In the spirit of open culture and accessibility the project has developed a social community ethic amongst contributing artists and has encouraged creative approaches to the staging of new work.
Expo aims to present serious, experimental and challenging work in a playful, open and inclusive context, encouraging the public, both local and national, to have direct experience of and access to the most radical and exciting sound work.
After the success of last year’s highly eclectic event in Plymouth the focus now shifts to Brighton in July 2008. This weekend of performance, exhibition, presentation and broadcast will take place across a variety of physical and virtual spaces. The weekend aims to highlight the broadest possible range of approaches and thinking that surround the sonic arts. We welcome submissions of all kinds.
Henri Chopin: 1922 - 2008
Sonic Arts Network is further saddened by the news that, barely a month after losing Stockhausen, we received news that Henri Chopin died on 3rd January 2008. Chopin was known primarily as a concrete and sound poet and created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice.
His output was huge and diverse, acting as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, film-maker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s.
In 2004 we invited Henri Chopin to be part of the launch event for our sound poetry CD, Agents of Impurity (Curated by Ubu Web founder Kenny Goldsmith) and his personality and performance captivated the entire audience. He will be sadly missed.
Listen: http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html
Watch: http://www.ubu.com/film/chopin.html
Further Information: http://www.erratum.org/