Oct. 08: Ken Ueno

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on Oct. 08 (Tuesday), we are pleased to welcome composer, vocalist, improviser, and sound artist Prof. Ken Ueno who will speak on the topic of “Spatializing Anthropology”. Please note that seating is limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Date: Oct. 08, 2019 (Tuesday), 16:00

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic:  Spatializing Anthropology

ABSTRACT:

Ueno will present some of his recent works that incorporate anthropological fieldwork in his installation performances, creating a kind of hybrid performance space, which narrativize architectural spaces. 

Biography:

A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professor Chair in Music. Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, Other Minds, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. In 2012, he was a featured artist on Other Minds 17. In 2014, Frances-Mairie Uitti and the Boston Modern Orchestra premiered his concerto for two-bow cello and orchestra, and Guerilla Opera premiered a run of his chamber opera, Gallo, to critical acclaim. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and California. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

Sept. 24: Verina Gfader

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on Sept. 24 (Tuesday), we are pleased to welcome artist researcher Dr Verina Gfader who will speak on the topic of “New Moon visions”.

Date: Sept. 24, 2019 (Tuesday), 16:00

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic:  New Moon visions

ABSTRACT: 

Ideas around the book as a character/actor, and printed matter as a ritual and celebration, shall initiate a conversation here. From within a practice–organised as fields of research aided by drawing and animation, printed matter, text performance and fabulations, and fictional institutions–lines are drawn to how the (artist) book performs or to ask: Is there something like an infinite space of a book, as a relation between performance/the choreographic and print? Can we reverse the temporal dynamic of private print process or invisible production – and publication?

Biography:

Verina Gfader is currently affiliated with the City University of Hong Kong (Meaning and
Narrative in Abstract Animation research project) after having concluded work for the
V&A Museum of Design Dundee (publication project). She is also Creative Director of EP, a book series across art, architecture and design, from Sternberg Press, Berlin; and Co-Director of the international animation network, Animate Assembly (with Esther Leslie, Edgar Schmitz, Anke Hennig). Her recent postdoctoral fellowship on The Contemporary Condition at Aarhus University, Denmark, follows from doctoral studies at Central Saint Martins, London, and a prior research residency at Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) to explore the structural coherence between independent Japanese animation and geographical, institutional and social ideas. Her interest and expertise at large covers two fields: Publishing and Fine art animation/time-based media (including performance), with extensive material being out in the public sphere.

As an artist, she orchestrates her practice as organised fields of research aided by drawing and animation, printed matter, text performance and fabulations, and fictional institutions.

Sept. 17: Robert Seidel

For the first colloquium of the semester, held on Sept. 17 (Tuesday), we are pleased to welcome Berlin-based artist  Robert Seidel who will speak on the topic of “Expanded Image Spaces: Animation as an Artistic Practice”.

Date: Sept. 17, 2019 (Tuesday), 16:00

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic:  Expanded Image Spaces: Animation as an Artistic Practice

ABSTRACT:

The Berlin-based artist Robert Seidel dissolves boundaries of genre by extending the clarity of the drawing – through the flow of painting, the spatiality of sculpture and temporal elements into an abstract-organic film narrative. Besides the silver screen, conceptual, as well as real visual projection surfaces include architectural and sculptural forms.

The material for these medial interlacings frequently originates in nature and in the abstract gaze of science on nature, for example in the form of 3D scans, Motion Capture Data or MRI images. Through subsequent deconstruction with digital tools, it becomes possible – before the eyes of the recipient – to condense these fragments into a rhizomatic memory structure independent from physical space and linear time. The filmic image conserves the whole creation process in abstract-organic tableaux vivants. In the process, temporal sequences or movements become not only imagined – as frequently attempted in the history of drawing and painting – but actually represented.

Examples of his artistic practice include the visualization of split seconds of a car crash (_grau, Diploma Bauhaus University Weimar, 2004); virtual sculptures made of city fragments (vellum, Art Center Nabi Seoul, 2009); environmental performances and installations (magnitude, Epicenter Projects, 2015; tempest, Digital Graffiti Festival, 2017, mue, Palais des Beaux Arts Lille, 2018), projection-based sculptures (folds, Lindenau Museum, 2011; grapheme, Museum Wiesbaden, 2013) and experimental films (vitreous, 2015 and husby-klit bk., 2017). 

Biography:

Robert Seidel (*1977) began his studies in biology before transferring to the Bauhaus University Weimar to complete his degree in media design. His projections, installations and experimental films have been shown in numerous international festivals, as well as at galleries and museums such as the Palais des Beaux-Arts Lille, ZKM Karlsruhe, Art Center Nabi Seoul, Young Projects Los Angeles, Museum of Image and Sound São Paulo and MOCA Taipei. His works have been honoured with various prizes, including the KunstFilmBiennale Honorary Award and the Visual Music Award Frankfurt. In his work Seidel is interested in pushing the boundaries of abstracted beauty through cinematographic approaches, as well as ones drawn from science. By the organic interplay of various structural, spatial and temporal concepts, he creates a continuously evolving complexity. Out of this multifaceted perspective emerges a narrative skeleton, through which viewers connects to the artwork on an evolutionary-derived and phylogenetic-fixated symbolic level. Seidel lives and works in Berlin and Jena as artist as well as curator.

April 30: Anthony De Ritis

For the last colloquium of the semester, held on April 30 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome Professor and composer Anthony De Ritis(芮笛诗) who will give a talk on the topic “Electroacoustic and Sound Design Prototypes for the Percussion Concerto “The Legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl”

 The talk will start at 4 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: April 030, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Electroacoustic and Sound Design Prototypes for the Percussion Concerto “The Legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl” (牛郎织女之神话)

ABSTRACT:

“The Legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl” (牛郎织女之神话) is a Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra written by Anthony Paul De Ritis for Chinese and Western percussion virtuoso, Wang Beibe. It was premiered by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) under the direction of Gil Rose on April 21, 2018, and recorded at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA, on April 22, 2018. It was featured in a music review by the “The Wall Street Journal” titled “Music Across Generations and Cultures.

This work uses Chinese folklore and instrumentation as its inspiration, and is based on an ancient tale of forbidden love between celestial beings. The work is built on narrative elements, or at least motifs that represent characters and actions (including a transcription, for winds, of traditional Chinese wedding music), but it is also a concerto for a large array of Chinese percussion instruments.

In this talk, De Ritis will present the pre-composition materials that led to the creation “The Legend of Cowherd and Weaver Girl,” which include field recordings, sound design, electroacoustic music composition, spectral analysis, experimentation and transcription, all serving to build an audio prototype for the this purely acoustic composition.

 Biography:

Anthony Paul De Ritis is Professor and Chair of the Music Department at the Northeastern University, Boston.

De Ritis is a composer who has been working with Chinese and Korean traditional instruments in acoustic and electroacoustic contexts since 1999. In Fall 2011, De Ritis was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in residence at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM, 中央音乐学院)(2011), China’s leading conservatory of music. Since then, De Ritis has been invited to be a master of Beijing’s DeTao Masters Academy in the cultural and creative industries, and frequently offers lectures and master classes in several Beijing academic institutions, including the Central Conservatory of Music, China Conservatory of Music（中国音乐学院), Beijing Contemporary Music Academy (北京现代音乐研修学院), the Communication University of China（中国传媒大学), and at the new x-lab within the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University（清华大学), where De Ritis and his D’Amore-McKim School of Business colleague, John Friar, offered x-lab’s first ever 3-day workshop, “Managing Creativity for Innovation”. De Ritis is now a member of Tsinghua’s United Design Center.

Described as a “genuinely American composer” (Gramophone), “a visionary” (Audiophile Audition), and “bracingly imaginative” (The Boston Globe), Anthony Paul De Ritis has received performances nationally and internationally, including at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, Yale’s Woolsey Hall, Taipei’s Zhong Shan Hall, Beijing’s Yugong Yishan, Seoul’s KT Art Hall, the Italian Pavilion at the 2015 World Expo in Milan, and UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

April 4: Machiko Kusahara

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on April 4 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome Japanese scholar Machiko Kusahara, who will give a talk on the topic “Utsushi-e: The 19th century Japanese screen practice as a precursor of ANIME”

 The talk will start at 4pm in M6058.

Date: April 04, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4 pm

Venue: M6058, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Utsushi-e: The 19th century Japanese screen practice as a precursor of ANIME

 Abstract:

Utsushi-e is a Japanese magic lantern performance that started in the beginning of the 19th century and remained extremely popular throughout the century, until the arrival of cinema. The magic lantern, the technology that was brought by the Dutch in the second half of the 18th century, was merged with the existing formats of storytelling and 2D aesthetics to form a unique screen practice. Popular stories – dramatic, romantic, horrifying or humorous – were presented with moving images on the screen, accompanied with narration, music, and sound effects. Exquisite techniques were developed in order to realize characters’ motion and emotion.

The talk will present the once lost screen practice with abundant video documentations and images from revived utsushi-e performances and related fields, examining the interaction between a new technology and the existing culture from a media archaeological approach.

The notion of “film” is no longer clear-cut in the era of digital technology. Similar is the distinction between live-action and animation. Utsushi-e is not only an interesting media by itself but also helps us to think about the “origins” of our image culture.

Biography

Machiko Kusahara is a scholar in media art and media archeology who lectures and publishes internationally on topics including media art, Device Art, magic lantern, and panorama.

She started curating and writing on computer graphics and media art in early 80s. Since then she served in launching venues including NTT/ICC and juried for international competitions including Ars Electronica and Japan Media Arts Festival. Her research focuses on interrelations among media technology, art, culture and society, both in contemporary and in early visual media.

Kusahara is Professor Emeritus at Waseda University and currently teaches at the graduate schools of Nihon University and Digital Hollywood University. Kusahara holds Ph. D in engineering from University of Tokyo.

 

April 2: Viola Yip

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on April 2 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome sound artist Viola Yip, who will give a talk on the topic “Designing instrument as composing and performing”

The talk will start at 4 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: April 02, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Designing instrument as composing and performing

 

Abstract:

 As an experimental music composer and performer, Viola Yip’s recent interests fall on designing new experimental instruments to explore the sonic materiality of found objects, the interactions between performative gestures, instruments, space, as well as her own composer-performer body as an intersectional work-in-progress.

In her talk, she will show some of the instruments that she built for herself. Through discussing the thought process behind each instrument, it will also demonstrate how instrument building has become an important process for composing and performing.

 Biography:

A native of Hong Kong, Viola Yip is a New York‐based composer and performer, who tries to find the boundaries and push them in her sound world.

Her compositions are not limited to acoustic music, electronic music, graphic scores and structured improvisations. Recent works have appeared in ArtX at Bowling Green State University, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Ravinia Festival, Fresh Inc Festival, soundSCAPE Festival, TEDXSMU, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, NASA saxophone conference, ThingNY spam v3.0 concert, Quiet City concert, Vox Novus Concert, Musicarama concert series (Hong Kong) and PAUSA Art House (Buffalo).

As a new music advocate, she performs contemporary works regularly as a pianist, speaker and improviser. Her recent interest falls on using her own voice as an instrument and exploring the expressivity and musicality of the human natural voice

March 20: Ikue Mori CONCERT

For the next colloquium, held on March 20 (Wednesday), we are very pleased to welcome Japanese sound artist Ikue Mori, who will give a concert “Spectra Improv + Moving Image – Ikue Mori with Ken Ueno, HKNME and friends”

 

The concert will start at 8 pm in SCM Multimedia Theatre.

Admission: registration required on https://goo.gl/forms/7fUQsxc1leCc9vrv2

 

Date: March 20, 2019 (Wednesday)

Time: 8 pm

Venue: Multimedia Theatre, G/F Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Admission: FREE – registration required

 

featuring

Ikue Mori 森郁恵

Ken Ueno (HK/ USA), extended vocals/ curator

Ikue Mori (JP/ USA), electronics/ video

Shane Aspegren (HK/USA), drums/ electronics

Matthew Lau (HK), percussion

Angus Lee (HK), flute

Fiona Lee (HK), electronics and objects

Simon Hui (HK), double bass

 

In partnership with the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble

 

FREE Admission, Registration Required

免費節目，請先登記留座

 

Registration登記>> https://goo.gl/forms/7fUQsxc1leCc9vrv2
Programme Enquiries 節目查詢：info@hknme.org

March 19: Ikue Mori

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on March 19 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome Japanese sound artist Ikue Mori, who will give a talk on the topic “Find out how this work”

The talk will start at 4:30 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: March 19, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:30 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: “Find out how this work

 Abstract:

Ikue Mori will first give an historical introduction starting from 1977 with the downtown New York music scene, NO WAVE drummer band, improvisors and electronics composers. She will propose to the students to listen to various collaborations and solo music pieces and will talk about the transformation of the performance scene with the use of instruments, from drums, drum machines and laptop. She will finally demonstrate how to perform with Max patch and control visuals, proposing a short live performance while watching the computer window of the Max patch activity.

Biography:

Ikue Mori moved from her native city of Tokyo to New York in 1977. She started playing drums and soon formed the seminal NO WAVE band DNA, with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright.

DNA enjoyed legendary cult status, while creating a new brand of radical rhythms and dissonant sounds; forever altering the face of rock music.

In the mid 80’s Ikue started in employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. While limited to the standard technology provided by the drum machine, she has never the less forged her own highly sensitive signature style.

During the 90’s she has subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music.

In 1998, she was invited to perform with Ensemble Modern as the soloist along with Zeena Parkins, and composer Fred Frith, also “One hundred Aspects of the Moon” commissioned by Roulette/Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronics Digital Music category in 99.

In 2000 Ikue started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound, thus broadening her scope of musical expression. She was commissioned by the KITCHEN ensemble, wrote and premired the piece “Aphorism”, also awarded Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship.

In 2003 she was commissioned by RELACHE Ensemble to write a piece for film In the Street and premired in Philadelphia. Started working with visual played by the music since 2004. In 2005 Awarded Alphert/Ucross Residency.

Ikue received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2006. In 2007 the Tate Modern commissioned Ikue to create a live sound track for screenings of Maya Deren’s silent films. In 2008 Ikue celebrated her 30th year in NY and performed at the Japan Society. Recent commissioners include the Montalvo Arts Center and SWR German radio program and Shajah Art foundation in UAE. Current working groups include MEPHISTA with Sylvie Courvoisier and Susie Ibarra, PHANTOM ORCHARD with Zeena Parkins, project with Koichi Makigami and various ensembles of John Zorn.

March 14: Ulrich Wegenast

For the next colloquium of the semester, held on March 14, 2019 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome German Professor and curator Ulrich Wegenast, who will give a talk on the topic “Animated Spaces – Animation, Architecture, and Game Art”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: March 14, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Animated Spaces – Animation, Architecture, and Game Art

Abstract:

The lecture deals with new concepts of spatial animation in the context of Architecture, Game Art, and Live Performance.

In the digital age the traditional profession and role of an animator has changed rapidly. Animation can’t be regarded exclusively as a filmic medium anymore. Animation has expanded in almost all creative fields. Chris Gehman and Steve Reinke stated in their book The Sharpest Point. Animation at the End of Cinema “the very definition of animation has become unstable in the era of digital media”. Animation became one of the most flexible media distributed on every platform and is used in different contexts like architecture, engineering, and scenography. Nowadays animation has left the black box of the cinema and the TV screen and is ubiquitous. As Steve Reinke added: “In the end, animation is triumphant, but at the price of an enormous levelling: it becomes everything.” The lecture deals with the new situation and possibilities of animation evoking a new profession combining film, architecture, and game art. A central aspect of this development is the way how media spaces are created with new digital technology: on the one hand side architecture becomes more and more fluid – i.e. in the realm of the so-called Blob Architecture –, on the other hand side animation is extremely important in regard to the construction of (virtual) space. At the lecture traditional examples of animation by Raimund Krumme, Zbigniew Rybczynski or Virgil Widrich are compared with new conceptions of animation, architecture, game and installation art by companies and artists like Zeitguised or Realities United. Within this development and fusion animation studios like Nexus or H5 (Ludovic Houplain) have produced new forms of animation and visual communication which go beyond traditional animation. Another tendency in the field of expanded animation which will be discussed in the lecture is the combination between the life performance of the theatre play or the opera and real time animation in the work of groups and artists like Sputnic/Theater Dortmund or Paul Barritt. The borderline between the reproduced image and live animation becomes blurred. These new concepts of spatial communication and expanded animation will be analyzed, presented and discussed.

Biography:

Ulrich Wegenast, born 1966 in Stuttgart, graduated from Stuttgart University (Master in History and History of Art), and Hanns Eisler School of Music, Berlin (postgraduate studies in Culture and Media Management). Since 2012 he is honorary professor at the Babelsberg Film University.

1987: founding member of Wand 5 and Stuttgart Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media – a festival for experimental film and media art. In 2001 development of the conference „media-space“. He was member of the Wand 5-board until 2006.

From 1993-2005 has was curator for the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film and the European Shortfilm Biennale. In 2005 he became the artistic director of the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film.

In 2002 he developed the experimental film section for the Munich Filmfest. Curatorial work and jury work for the Goethe Institute and various other institutions and festivals around the world. From 2003 to 2004 he has worked as a consultant for the Frankfurt Schirn Kunsthalle and 2005 for the documenta jubilee exhibition. 2005-2013 member of the advisory board of the Goethe Institute (Film, TV, Radio), 2007-2013 member of the jury of the German Short Film Award.

From 2004-2011 he was teaching Film/Media Art, Media Theory and Alternative Distribution at the Karlsruhe School of Design, Stuttgart State Art Academy, and Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. From 2004 to 2014 he was head of the media department of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Free Art Academy.

He has published a 6-part DVD edition on German animated film in cooperation with Absolut Medien, Berlin, and Goethe Institut, Munich which has received the Willi Haas Award for best DVD-edition on German speaking film in 2012.

Wegenast gave more than 100 lectures and workshops on animation, experimental film, media art, arts administration and game culture around the globe including Harvard University, University of Toronto, Berlinale Festival, Tallin Black Nights Festival, the Bangkok Culture Centre and Ars Electronica in Linz.

March 12: SCM Major/Elective Talk

Date: 12 March 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 3:00 – 5:00 pm

Venue: Lecture Theatre 1 (M3017), 3/F, CMC