vague terrain 13: cityscene – call for work
Submitted by Greg J. Smith on Fri, 12/12/2008 – 10:26 


[Adrian Holovaty / Everyblock]

In the 1980s architect Bernard Tschumi posed the following question: “If writers could manipulate the structure of stories in the same way as they twist vocabulary and grammar, couldn’t architects do the same, organizing an architectural program in a similarly objective, detached, or imaginative way?” While Tschumi was speculating the foundation for a new type of architectural practice, his thinking can be applied to problematizing our current, informatized cityscapes. Ubiquitous computing, home-brew geospatial analysis and open source culture are rapidly changing our conception and experience of urban space. If “event” could be used as a catalyst in architecture, what paradigms might we employ to recontextualize the city?
Vague Terrain 13: citySCENE is dedicated to exploring urban representation. The issue will serve as a global index of strategies for abstracting, quantifying and documenting urban life. Subjective cartographies, architectural mashups, urban informatics, augmented reality gaming and field recording based work are all examples of research that we are interested in. What is important is that the work is ambitious and innovative.
We are seeking submissions in all formats – audio, video, photographic documentation and text. If you are interested in submitting work to be considered for inclusion in Vague Terrain 13: citySCENE please note the deadlines below and contact the issue curator, Greg J. Smith at greg@vagueterrain.net.

Additional Information

Format: Please see http://vagueterrain.net/content/journal/submission-guidelines for full submission guidelines. Please consult this document as it is very important to read when considering the scope and deliverables of a submission. All of these criteria will have to be met in order for work to be included in the issue.

Copyright: Vague Terrain publishes material under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Creative Commons License. Potential contributors are welcome to propose alternative licenses for their work – but we prefer the flexibility and open nature of CC.

Submission Deadline: Potential contributors should establish contact and provide links/information about a proposed submission before January 24th. Selected participants will be contacted by February 1st and all submission material and supporting documentation will need to be uploaded by February 15th. The tentative publication date for the issue is March 1st.

Curator Information: Greg J. Smith is a Toronto-based designer and researcher with interests in media theory and digital culture. His work is invested in exploring how contemporary information paradigms affect representational and spatial systems. These dynamics have been explored in a range of mediums including drawing, visualization, writing and editing. Greg co-curates and edits the digital arts publication Vague Terrain and is a contributor to Rhizome and Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1. Greg has presented work at venues and institutions which include Medialab-Prado (Madrid), the Annenberg Center for Communication (Los Angeles), the Public Memories Project (Syracuse), soundaXis (Toronto), Université de Montréal and TAGallery (online). He has taught digital humanities at the Department of Communications Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University and been a guest reviewer at the University of Toronto, Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), Ryerson University and the Los Angeles Institute of Architecture and Design (LAIAD).

 

CALL FOR WORKS 

Electroacoustic Audio-visual Music

Submission Deadline: 20th February 2009 (postmark) 

This is a call for fixed media electroacoustic audio-visual music works exploring the interaction between sound and image. Works should be cohesive audio-visual entities and not just video/film with a soundtrack or music with a video/film track. The audio within these works should be electroacoustic in nature. 

Works are requested for a PhD research project investigating audience reception of differing styles of audio-visual composition and the role of composer intention in facilitating audience reception of electroacoustic audio-visual music works. This research builds upon the foundations laid by Leigh Landy and Rob Weale through the Intention/Reception Project (Weale 2006) (Landy 2006). 

Works will be presented to a series of audience groups who will then complete questionnaires and discuss their reception of each of the presented works. Results from these tests will then be analysed in order to discover any trends that exist between the different audience groups.

It is hoped that this analysis will form a useful resource for composers of electroacoustic audio-visual music works providing key information on how audiences perceive and receive their works. The research will also provide fruitful information concerning the accessibility of these types of works.


KEY REQUIREMENTS

– In this phase of the project, submissions must be fixed media works (as opposed to ‘live’ performance based works).
– Works must have stereo audio and be for single screen.
– The duration of submitted works should be no longer than 8 minutes due to testing practicalities or, alternatively, a well-defined self-contained section of the work lasting no longer than 8 minutes can be identified within the entire work. 
– Composers must be willing to complete a ‘Composer Intention Questionnaire’ outlining dramaturgic information relating to each submitted work. 
– The composer should own all rights to the submitted works and provide the researcher with the right to include selected works as part of future scholarly publications of the research. 
– Multiple works may be submitted. 

NB: Works of high reputation may be rejected for testing due to issues of familiarity.
 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All submissions must consist of the following:
1. DVD containing the work to be considered (PAL or NTSC format) and or QTM file. 
  Works should have stereo audio and be for single screen. 
2. Programme notes (please include duration, year of creation and a list of previous  
  performances).
3. Composer biography.
4. Contact information: email, postal address and telephone.
All requested information must be provided in order for the work to be considered.


DEADLINE

Only submissions received by (or postmarked) Friday 20th February 2009 will be considered.

Composers of selected compositions will be notified by 31st of March at the latest. 

A ‘Composer Intention questionnaire’ will be dispatched to the appropriate contact address for completion by the composers of selected works. Failure to complete a copy of the questionnaire for a selected work will prevent the work from being used in the study.


Please send hard-copy materials to:

Andrew Hill
C/o Simon Smith
Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre
0.19 Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester
LE1 9BH, UNITED KINGDOM


Many thanks for your interest.



References

Weale, R. (2006) Discovering How Accessible Electroacoustic Music Can Be: the Intention/Reception Project. Organised Sound 11/2: 189-200.

Landy, L. (2006) “The Intention/Reception Project” in Mary Simoni, ed. Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic Music. Routledge (New York) pp. 29-53 + appendix on DVD.


— 
http://visualmusic.ning.com/profile/AndrewHill
www.myspace.com/ahillav

www.myspace.com/lovelandfrog

A call for EA works (live/fixed/stereo/multichannel) for the upcoming EuCuE series (Short Notice!)

EuCuE Concert Series XXVII – January 2009, call for works (SHORT NOTICE!) 

This is a very short notice (two weeks) call for works for the upcoming EuCuE concert series at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall < http://music.concordia.ca/HarvestMoon/Air-20_Sept-2005.mov> of Concordia University in Montreal. (28-30 January 2009).

The following types of works are invited for consideration:

1. EA works with a live component (of any type, including live electronics, instruments, voice, and others)
2. Works for fixed media – either in stereo for live diffusion or organized for any number of channels between 10.1 and .1 (subwoofer alone)

Deadline: 

1. Fixed media pieces must arrive at Concordia University, or be uploaded to an FTP server by Wednesday 21 January 2009 (see below).
2. For live presentations please contact the organizer Eldad Tsabary (eucue@yaeldad.com) as soon as possible to discuss feasibility.  

Accepted pieces will be programmed in one of the six January concerts. Pieces not selected for this series will be considered for future EuCuE series. 

Where to send: 

You may submit your fixed media work as a stereo file or individual mono files on a CD/DVD by mail, or uploaded to an FTP server. See submission guidelines below! 

Address: 

EuCuE XXVII 
c/o Eldad Tsabary 
Music Dept., RF #302, 
Concordia University 
7141 Sherbrooke W., 
Montreal QC 
H4B 1R6, Canada 

Or FTP: 

ftp.yaeldad.com 
User name: eucue 
Password: january

If you need to submit in any other way please contact Eldad Tsabary at eucue@yaeldad.com

Submissions guidelines (fixed media pieces): 

Format: 
Please send your pieces as audio files (wav or aiff). 

Normalization: 
Please normalize your piece to peak within -1 dBFS 

Program & technical notes: 
Please include program notes, technical notes and a short biography in a word document or PDF format 

Naming (important!): 
Name your mono files in the following format: titlechannelsamplingrate-bitresolution (see examples below). 

Stereo files should be named: /title samplingrate-bitresolutionstereo/ 

Channels should be designated clearly according to the following naming convention: 
RF = right front 
CF = center front 
LF = left front 
RFS = right front side 
RS = right side 
RB = right back 
LFS = left front side 
LS = left side 
LB = left back 
CB = center back 
SUB = sub [LFE] 

/Note: Even if you choose to send a 5.1 piece, you can select your preferred speakers by naming them according to these designations. In other words, if you prefer your front speakers to be the three in the front , use RF,CF, and LF. If you prefer your left and right front speakers to be farther away from the front center you may use RFS, CF, and LFS. The same goes for the back speakers. Use B for “back” and not R for “rear” because “right” and “rear” get confused!/ 

Example: for a piece titled “study:” 

/study 48-24RF 
study48-24RFS 
study48-24 SUB 
study48-24 stereo/ 
etc. 

Release form: 
Your work will be webcast and possibly placed on the Sonus.ca gallery, therefore all works must have a release form signed on the CEC website: http://cec.concordia.ca/contracts