Installation at ACMC

I have an installation called Cloud Drum at this year's Australasian Computer Music Conference in Sydney, July 10-12. It is based on the vibrations of an idealised drum, as is Triangular Vibrations, but Cloud Drum is real-time, interactive, black-and-white, and a much gentler piece.

Triangular Vibrations again

Well, it won't be played at the International Computer Music Conference, but Triangular Vibrations is having a good run. As noted in an earlier post, Ivan Zavada took it on tour; also it was included in the art program that was part of the 2008 Computational Aesthetics conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Now it is being included in the Liquid Architecture Screening Reel, part of the Sydney leg of the Liquid Architecture festival, 11 and 12 July 2008.

Later: Triangular Vibrations will be screened as part of Abstracta Cinema in Rome, Italy on 23rd September, 2008.

ICMC acceptance, or not

I submitted my piece Triangular Vibrations to the 2008 International Computer Music Conference, in Belfast this year. I received first a provisional acceptance, and then then a confirmed acceptance. I was very pleased about this, as I thought there would be a lot of competition.

But then it turned out that one has to attend the conference in order to have the work played. Unfortunately there was no mention of this in the call for pieces. I don't object to a policy of priority for those who can attend, but I would have liked an indication of this at the time I submitted the piece. I contacted the organisers, and was told "we could not have anticipated the volume of submissions that were made". So, it was very competitive.

I don't know what to conclude from this. Despite the Internet, Australia is still a long way away from Europe, in time and in dollars. For a little while I was making frequent overseas trips, but I couldn't sustain it, and I haven't been further than New Zealand for a while.

"Triangular Vibrations" on tour

Ivan Zavada from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music recently took a program of electro-acoustic music by Conservatorium composers to Sweden, and also presented a concert in Florence (Firenze) at the Conservatorio Cherubini. My piece Triangular Vibrations was played in Gävle and Stockholm in Sweden, and at the concert in Florence.

The concert in Stockholm was at Fylkingen, a long-established new and experimental music association and venue in Stockholm, which has a special emphasis on electronic music. Over the years they have presented works by many well-known composers, including Berio, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Cage, La Monte Young, David Tudor, and many more. I'm pleased to be in this company!

Master of Music

I submitted my portfolio and essay for the Master of Music (Composition) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music last year ('07). It is now all corrected, bound, and sent off to the University library. Under the rules in force when I started, the essay was to not to be about my own work, so not an exegesis, but was instead to be about a topic related in some way to my work. I wrote on "The Concept of Emergence in Generative Art". The essay is here.