SOUNDS LIKE 10: Aggregation  

With this year of the festival marking our 10th edition and with the hindsight of our hiatus, we can’t help ourselves in looking to both the past of the festival - inviting a handful of returning Sounds Like artists to share how their work has progressed. But to look to the past is not to shy away from our future: working as a tight-knit collective to create programming that nurtures a supportive and engaged audio art community here on the prairies.  

Whether we describe these artistic works as audio or sound art, experimental music, or even the avant-garde – we understand that art and music are fundamentally social practices. These works truly come alive in the spaces where we gather, whether in collective consumption or in communal practice.   

Breaking with the tradition of viewing these practices through lenses of experimentation and individualism, audio art can be perhaps better thought of in terms of folk art: artists working within and exploring understood motifs that have come before to create something wholly original and new.  

This is a medium born out of community and exemplified practice. A medium shared in both formal and informal spaces, where artists grow and adapt their abilities (both manual and intellectual) through transmission with others. This is done with an understanding and respect of the artistic foundation that their work stands upon.  

The sum or the aggregation of this practice, demonstrated by the artists participating this year, can be observed in the creation of instrument and materials both sonic and physical, by hand or by the use of technology in unanticipated ways, which is itself an inherent part of the artistic practice and the artwork.  

This understanding of the integral importance of the community and the collective can be applied to the broader arts, but is something we understand to be crucial to our mandate of how Sounds Like goes forward.  

Furthermore, the continued existence of Sounds Like (since 2011!) wouldn’t be possible without this arts community, without the collective of artists who have worked tirelessly to manage it, without the foundational artist run centres here in Saskatoon that started the festival, maintained it and continue to support it.  

With the aggregation of these many parts –  

of experience,  

of practice,  

of people,  

of communities   

we will together continue to challenge expectations of what art is supposed to sound like. 

For our 10th year, Sounds Like has adopted a policy of free admission: we strive to make the artistic works that we present within our community as accessible as we can manage and to give back in the little ways that we can. We hope that this decision will allow for opportunities of discovery - these events can and especially have been intimidating for those who are unfamiliar with audio art - and we want to allow room to welcome in potential new appreciators of sound.

Sounds Like is only possible through the continued support of artistic funding bodies including Canada Council for the Arts and Sask Arts, as well as our community partners and sponsors including PAVED Arts, The Broadway Theatre, Remai Modern, PR Productions, Nokomis Craft Ales and the University Art Galleries at the University of Saskatchewan, and the continued support of the arts and music community here in Saskatoon. Our funding allows us to do a great many things, but the costs of operating a festival only continue to increase and there is inevitably many overhead costs that our funding is unable to cover. While we do not require an admission fee, we do encourage donations from our audience members who are able to pay-what-they-can to help us to be able to continue our operations well into the future!

Sounds Like is dedicated to providing a welcoming environment with all of our programming, and we have a zero tolerance policy in regards to hate speech, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, as well as abusive, harmful and/or discriminatory language or behaviour.

GUEST CURATOR: crys cole

Sounds Like is excited to have sound artist, composer and curator crys cole guest curating a full night of programming for our 10th edition of the festival, selecting Sam Dunscombe, David Behrman and Cleek Schrey.

“It is my pleasure to be invited to curate this very special program for the 10th edition of Sounds Like. This program takes place in two unique parts. 

For the first part we present Becoming Oceanic by Composer/Musician Sam Dunscombe (AU/DE); an engrossing long-form work developed through extensive research into the use of music in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy sessions. Sam’s work with the MIND Foundation in Berlin put her in contact with a range of practitioners –psychotherapists, paramedics, shamans and religious leaders – who use the psychedelic experience as part of their healing work. This experience, together with extensive research into best practices in this realm of therapies has convinced Dunscombe that the current application of music in this context is suboptimal. The use of more obvious western classical, ‘new age’ and ‘world’ music for one seems limited in it’s potential, leading her to consider the possibilities that an expanded approach to sound could bring to these sessions. The possibilities of the material nature of sound itself, such as the way that sound can reveal or describe an acoustic space, as well as the way that sound can act directly upon a listeners body is particularly interesting to explore. Drawing on this experience and combining it with her extensive practice as an experimental composer and musician, Dunscombe has created a work that proposes an expanded pallet of materials and techniques for the creation of effective therapy music. Applying her skills as both a phonographer and composer she has created a deeply sensitive, sumptuously elegant work. Given the important history of Psychedelic research in Saskatchewan, I felt that bringing this refreshing and stimulating project to Sounds Like was a perfect fit.  

The second half of this program is dedicated to the incomparable work of American artist & composer David Behrman alongside his recent collaborator, emerging composer & fiddler Cleek Schrey. Since the 1960’s David Behrman’s artistic contributions as a composer, artist, founding member of the Sonic Arts Union (with Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley & Gordon Mumma), teacher and curator, place him clearly as a critical figure in the development of electronic music. An innovator of computer music, Behrman developed techniques that merged acoustic instruments with digital tools and electronic instruments, creating works that are playful, otherworldly and highly interactive. This interplay melds with a surreal and beautiful sonic palette that is uniquely his own

The significant relationship that Behrman develops with instrumentalists has been a key component of many of his important works. There is alchemy at the root of this work that binds the unique voices of his collaborators to his electronic sounds. These relationships are integral and each rendering of a piece is shaped in part by the personality and ideas of his collaborators. Each work remains essentially Behrman, but the interplay is energetic, giving way to variations that illuminate each partnership. Through decades of collaboration Behrman has developed great relationships with many important instrumentalists, and this concert brings him together with an innovative young collaborator with whom he has been working for nearly a decade: American fiddler/composer Cleek Schrey.”

Cleek Schrey is an exciting artist who fuses a deep connection to traditional music with an unyielding exploration of new approaches in sound. There is wonderful exchange of vitality and ideas in this collaboration and in tonight’s program we will hear this interplay through variations of two historic Behrman pieces alongside a new work – Recorders – composed and developed by the two artists together.

crys cole is a Sound Artist, Composer and Curator based in Berlin Germany. From 2008 - 2019 she was the Curator and Director of send + receive: a festival of sound in Winnipeg Manitoba. She has also organized events and festivals in Montreal, Vancouver and Berlin and has been a guest writer, lecturer, panellist, and radio host in various contexts around the world for over two decades. 

Sounds Like 2019 Organizers: Travis Cole, David LaRiviere, Spencer Martin, Lindsey Rewuski, Janice Weber

2019 Festival Design: Lindsey Rewuski, Ghost House Studio. Micrograph images courtesy of University of Rochester: URnano.

2019 Festival Images

2019 Artists

Sounds Like VIII : Interventions
October 4 - 7, 2018

The 8th edition of Sounds Like (An Audio Festival) explores the theme of Interventions through audio-based installations, performances and workshops. Artists from across Canada, USA, Japan, and UK will intervene in a variety of physical and social spaces to transform the everyday into unique sonic experiences. Presented and curated by the Unheard Sound Collective.

Festival Passes / Facebook Event

2018 Festival Images

2018 Festival Artists

2018 After party artists

2018 Schedule

Thursday, October 4
7:30 - 10:00pm @ PAVED/AKA Event Space (424 20th Street West)
Kate Carr (AUS/ London UK)
Joda Clément (Vancouver BC)
Hendrix/Gendron (Winnipeg MB)

11:00pm - Late @ PAVED/AKA Event Space (424 20th Street West)
Sounds Like An After Party
  • 11:00pm: GreyScreen (Calgary AB)
  • 11:45pm: Ancient Greens (Saskatoon SK)
DJ sets by: XOD (Saskatoon SK)
Door: $15 / Free w/ Festival Pass 

Friday, October 5
7:00- 10:00pm @ Remai Modern Riverview Room (102 Spadina Crescent East)
Olivia Block (Chicago IL)
Tim Olive & Doreen Girard (Kobe JP / Winnipeg MB)
Free w/ Festival Pass

11:00pm - Late @ PAVED/AKA Event Space (424 20th Street West)
Sounds Like An After Party
   • 11:00pm: Lost In Transcription (Regina SK / Kennedy SK)
   • 11:45pm: Bitter Fictions (Calgary AB)
   • 12:30pm: Natural Sympathies (Regina SK)
With DJ sets by: Cacophonous Bubblegum (Saskatoon SK)

Door: $5 / Free w/ Festival Pass

Saturday, October 6
12:00pm - 4:00pm @ Location TBA
Magali Babin (Montreal, QC) : I’m Sitting in an Empty Lot
Free to the public

4:00pm @ Underground Cafe (430 20th Street West)
Brigitte Bardon't presents: Drone Therapy
Free to the public

8:00pm - 10:00pm @ Le Troupe du Jour (914 20th Street West)
Jean-Sébastien Truchy (Montreal QC)
Brigitte Bardon't (Toronto ON)
Door: $15 / Free w/ Festival Pass

11:00pm - Late @PAVED/AKA Event Space (424 20th Street West)
Sounds Like An After Party
   • 11:00pm: Ursa ( Saskatoon SK)
   • 11:45pm: Ygretz (Regina SK)
With DJ sets by: Cpt. Pickard (Saskatoon SK)
Door: $5 / Free w/ Festival Pass

Sunday, October 7
1:00pm @ PAVED/AKA Event Space (424 20th Street West)
Artist talk w/ Magali Babin
Free w/ Festival Pass or PAVED Membership

2:30pm @ PAVED/AKA Event Space
Black Sabbath Saved My Life: Collaboration, Constraint and Contradiction - Artist talk w/ Tim Olive
Free w/ Festival Pass or PAVED Membership

4:00pm @ PAVED/AKA Event Space
The Untuning of the World: Non-Representational Field Recording and In Situ Processing - Workshop w/ Joda Clément
Free w/ Festival Pass or PAVED Membership

7:00pm @ The Broadway Theatre (715 Broadway Avenue)
Screening “Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present”
Free w/ Festival Pass or Broadway Admission

ONGOING: Sound Installations

October 4 - 12
10:00am - Close @ Remai Modern (102 Spadina Crescent East)
Olivia Block: Vestibule, sound installation

PAVED Arts presents
Sounds Like VII : Dialogues, November 9 - 12, 2017
Dialogues: a critical investigation of sound as interpersonal discourse

A dialogue is more than a simple conversation. It’s purpose is to not only understand what is being said, but why it is being said. Through respectful dialogs, we have the ability to move outside of ourselves, losing the sense of being inside our own bodies as we connect with an other person. This year, at Sounds Like VII, both the artist and the audiences are encouraged to explore the concept of Dialogues, to listen deeply, to question and respond to the work presented, and to each other. And, like an open dialog, you can expect the works presented to veer into vulnerable or explosive territories, at times intimate and whispered, or passionate and fierce, or even critical and coersive. Enter the dialogue, and leave with a broader view of the world we live in. Thanks to venue support from community partners La Troupe du Jour, Remai Modern, and The Broadway Theatre, Sounds Like extends the conversation to a broad public, creating an event that is as much about careful listening as it is about creative expression. Enjoy the festival!
- Chad, Tod, and Travis  // Unheard Sound Collective

Sounds Like an After Party//
Saskatoon artist, Jon Vaughn, has been planning after-parties for Sounds Like festival, since it’s inception in 2011. In 2016, PAVED Arts decided to make these after-parties an official part of the festival, and so a tradition lives on. Jon Vaughn has continued the theme of Dialogues with his curation of the after party programme, with a focus on live collaborations, experimental electronics, and contemporary vinyl DJs. 

Sounds Like Artwork and Design//
2017 festival artwork and design by Lindsey Rewuski (Ghost House Studio) // Sounds Like Communications Manager.
~
Thursday, November 9, 2017 at La Troupe du Jour
Robert AA Lowe (New York NY)
Martin Rodriguez (Montreal QC)
Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin, Vancouver BC)

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe // is a Brooklyn-based artist and multi-instrumentalist who works with voice and electronics to create spontaneous and ecstatic musical compositions, often under the moniker of Lichens. Most recently, creating patch pieces with modular synthesizer and singing to them has been a focus of live performance and recordings. Lowe believes that the sensitivity of analogue modular sound systems echoes the organic nature of vocal expression, and that the two together can induce a trancelike state that promotes deeper listening. As a philosophical explorer of the interplay between human and artistic expression and technology, we are thrilled to bring Robert to Saskatoon for the first time, where he will be performing his spontaneous audio work, in conjunction with visual projections, by artist Patrick Smith.

Martin Rodriguez // Radio Therapy (2015) The fog of chemo and numbness of radiation. The brain surgery. Paralysis. The seizure that exposed it all. The sterile sounds of the hospital. One must find a way to heal. Radio Therapy expresses these sentiments by transforming the brutal sounds of Rodriguez’s MRI into a meditation on the healing process of his recovery from a cancerous brain tumor, creating both a soothing and battling ambiance of recovery & remission. Radio Therapy is produced by harnessing radio frequencies alongside a transmission of Rodriguez’s MRI brain scan through a transducer that is attached to a standalone guitar, forcing the body of the guitar to vibrate. Influenced by environmental sounds, Rodríguez draws a connection between the instinctive sonic communication occurring in nature and how human beings harness sound for their means of expression to create soundscapes which are living, listening, and engaging in the present. The artist wishes to thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its support to this project.

About Jeneen Frei Njootli // Through performance, Vuntut Gwitchin artist, Jeneen Frei Njootli turns an ear to materials, such as caribou antlers, to sound the transmission of embedded and layered ancestral knowledge. This performance is also part of sound art exhibition wnoondwaamin | we hear them, curated by Lisa Myers, on view at PAVED Arts, Nov. 3-Dec 9, 2017. 

Friday, November 10, 2017 at Remai Modern
Ora Clementi [crys cole (Winnipeg MB), James Rushford (Australia)]
Adam Basanta (Montreal QC)

Ora Clementi // is the duo of Canadian sound artist crys cole and Australian composer-performer James Rushford. Formed in 2013, their collaboration is a unique investigation into liminal performance states, with a focus on text and speech as preconscious thought processes. Central to cole and Rushford’s duo are questions surrounding interpretation, the function of memory, semiotics, and the syntactical discipline of sound within both listener and performer. Utilizing field recordings, electronics, contact mics, various wind and keyboard instruments, percussion and voice, Ora Clementi play with subtleties of sensory perception, invoking a dreamlike context that hovers between musical performance and pure abstraction. 

crys cole is a Canadian sound artist working in composition, improvised performance and sound installation. cole has exhibited and performed throughout Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, the USA and Thailand. // James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer, currently based in Los Angeles. His music has been published by Pogus (US),  Prisma (Norway), Bocian (Poland), Penultimate Press (UK), Black Truffle (AUS) and KYE (US). James recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts at the California Institute of the Arts.

Adam Basanta // Small Movements (2016) During the performance, microphones and speakers are hand-manipulated to create delicate, low volume, harmonic feedback melodies and chords; jars are placed on top of speakers as physical sonic filters; cassette tape recorders record their surroundings and play it back in phased loops. The performance relies on small movements, small changes in the relationship between performer and technologies, and technologies to one another, meditating on the instabilities of sound production; the quiet, fragile and delicate phenomena resulting from the intertwining of sonic technologies. Adam Basanta is a Montreal-based sound artist, composer, and performer of experimental music. His work traverses sound installations, electroacoustic and instrumental composition, site-specific interventions, and laptop performance. Across disciplines and media, he interrogates intersections between conceptual and sensorial dimensions of listening, instabilities of instrumentality, and means with which site and space can be articulated.

Saturday, November 11, 2017 at PAVED Arts
Workshop w/ Adam Basanta: Digital Sound Manipulation and Design
Open Talk & Live Demo w/ Colin Fisher: Live Acoustic Improvisation

At Emmanuel Anglican Church, The Refinery
Colin Fisher (Toronto ON)
Civvie (Winnipeg MB)

Colin Fisher // is a Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser, who is active within many various communities and aesthetics. His solo work explores what he feels is the essential power/potential of music that exceeds classification. This potential reveals itself through listening deeply to ones biological organism and its connection to greater creation. Fisher believes that music has the capacity to create, to sustain life, and to bring the organism back into balance/homeostasis. Colin’s collaborative work links him across various communities and localities - he is most active in Not the Wind, Not the Flag, a psychedelic/ecstatic music duo with percussionist/musician Brandon Valdivia. Their decade long exploration of duo music has produced a substantial recording output, as well as a vast amount of live performance and tour experiences. A vital and engaged voice in the Improvised, Rock, Folk, Experimental and Creative Music Community in North America, Fisher has also been active with Elfin Choirs (solo project), Bernice, Many Arms, I Have Eaten The City, Bad Breath, HAHA, Body Help, Pick-A-Piper, & New Civilization. Colin has appeared and collaborated with: Anthony Braxton, Caribou, Jah Youssouf, Rhys Chattam, William Parker, Dominic Duval, Sabir Mateen, Joe Mcphee, Maury Coles, David Daniels, Chris Kelsey, Paul Hession, and many others.

CIVVIE // is an experimental trio improvising on amplified bassoon, cello, and weaving loom. Based in Winnipeg, Civvie creates arresting soundscapes using extended techniques and digital effects, stretching the sonic possibilities of their instruments. The percussive sounds of the weaving loom are layered, its incidental cadence suggesting the pulse of an increasingly industrialized world. The bassoon and cello respond to the woven rhythms in a haunting dialogue, both concerned and hopeful for the future that unfolds. Drawn to the variability of spontaneous compositions, their musical conversations evoke a natural world under the siege of human progress.

Sunday, November 12 at Aka artist-run / PAVED Arts Event Space
Two free film & video programs curated especially for this years theme of Dialogues.
• Light <> Sound: A selection of works presented by Winnipeg Underground Film Festival
• Spirit Guide to Low Tech: A selection of works presented by Panospria
Sponsored in part by BlackFlash Magazine.

Spirit Guide to Low Tech // Presented by Panospria, curated by Constantine Katsiris (Vancouver, BC) 
   1. Zodiacal Light (8:54), Leyla Majeri & Katherine Kline. Montreal, 2012
   2. Wavedrifting No.1 (6:47), Gary James Joynes. Edmonton, 2011
   3. 3 x 2 (2:38), Erin Sexton. Montreal, 2011
   4. My Travels in Palestine (15:10), Jean Bourbonnais, Alexander Moskos & Blake Hargreaves. Montreal, 2009
   5. Vertigo Digression No.3 (12:03), Julie Gendron & Emma Hendrix. Vancouver, 2016
   6. Sweeper (16:58), crys cole. Winnipeg, 2009

ONGOING: Film / Video / Sound Installations
November 6 - 12
At PAVED Arts: Sara Ouazzani, Chat-huant, sound installation, 7.30min
In french, the tawny owl is also called Chat-huant. The english translation would literally be booing-cat or hooting-cat. Tawny owls, nocturnal bird of prey, don't have visible ears. They, however, hear better than men, thanks to their two asymmetrical ears. The forest. The night. Chatter. A dialogue between voice and analog synthesizer. This piece links organic and analog sounds, human and animal shouts. The human voice slowly taking pleasure in shouting.

November 9 - 11 at The Storefront (325 21 Street West)
Light <> Sound: Presented by Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, curated by Aaron Zeghers (Winnipeg MB)
   1. Univverrsal Picturessssss (.5min), dir. Jan Mensen
   2. Horizontes (3.5min), dir. Miguel Aparicio
   3. Dingbat's Revenge (7min), dir. Scott Fitzpatrick
   4. (I)FRAME (10.5min), dirs. Karissa Hahn + Andrew Kim
   5. Parallel Inquiries (9.5min), dir. Christina C. Nguyen
   6. Burning Star (4min), dir. Joshua Solondz
   7. Crop Duster Octet (5min), dir. Gregg Biermann
   8. BLOPS (3min), dir. John Klacsmann
   9. Answer Print (5min), dir. Mónica Savirón
  10. Hacked Circuit (15min), dir. Deborah Stratman

Spirit Guide to Low Tech: Presented by Panospria, curated by Constantine Katsiris (Vancouver, BC) 
   1. Zodiacal Light (8:54), Leyla Majeri & Katherine Kline. Montreal, 2012
   2. Wavedrifting No.1 (6:47), Gary James Joynes. Edmonton, 2011
   3. 3 x 2 (2:38), Erin Sexton. Montreal, 2011
   4. My Travels in Palestine (15:10), Jean Bourbonnais, Alexander Moskos & Blake Hargreaves. Montreal, 2009
   5. Vertigo Digression No.3 (12:03), Julie Gendron & Emma Hendrix. Vancouver, 2016
   6. Sweeper (16:58), crys cole. Winnipeg, 2009

ECHOING (SILENT) MACHINES

Eric Mattson's curatorial project, entitled Echoing (silent) machines, presents the installation and performance work of ten multidisciplinary artists for whom sound is conceived of as wholly material. Invited artists are distinguished by their use of unusual tools for the development and creation of sound, and an idiosyncratic process of material invention characterizes their respective performances in sound, music or noise. The notion of mechanisms is the core of this event, literally as well as figuratively. Visitors are exposed to mechanical sculptural processes which generate sound, sometimes in relation to images. The presented works are the result of hybridization between analog and digital production techniques. These creative attitudes, which break with the agreed upon or familiar use of artistic tools, allow us to explore and discover unknown or inaccessible spaces. Other projects plunge us into a sensate reflection upon memory and the understanding of the physical spaces around us.

THOMAS BÉGIN

Both in his installations and performances, Montreal artist Thomas Bégin brilliantly combines the goals of scientist who aspires to the realization of these, to the playful overflow of the artist who can get lost in the maze of creation but who also aspires to an exemplary finality of the work. Multidisciplinary artist, he wonders and distorts by minimizing the active ingredients in the sciences that study meticulously. he offers his own theorems in fields such as mechanics and optics to ultimately develop its own cybernetic and art.

STEVE BATES

Steve Bates is an artist and musician living in Montréal. His work listens to boundaries and borders, points of contact and conflict. Thresholds are explored, stretched and, at times, completely broken. Information and signal feed back onto themselves creating new situations and events. The sonic is the starting point for his projects which are evocations of communication networks and systems, or expressions of spatial and temporal experience. He frequently uses sound material that is site-specific in an attempt to uncover place and how the sonic effects our experience of site. Time can be measured, stretched, pulled at, ignored, and extended. He is currently developing a multi-year project investigating historical and contemporary aspects of auditory hallucination. He releases music both solo and collaboratively, often through his own small scale publishing and curatorial project, The Dim Coast. His work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Europe and Senegal. He works in the field, on the air, in museological/gallery and performance contexts. These shifting territories reflect the content of his practice.

WEBSITE

DIANA BURGOYNE

Burgoyne has performed at The Franklin Furnace, New York, Gianzzo Live Berlin and Soundwaves San Francisco in addition to many others. Her work has been exhibited in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Reim (France), Eindhoven (Holland), and Auckland New Zealand. She has been an artist in residence at the The Banff Centre, San Francisco’s Exploratorium, New Zealand’s Colab and Symbiosis in Mexico.  She has also participated in several new media conferences and has been teaching a class entitled “Creative Electronics” at Emily Carr University since 1998.

TOD EMEL

For his latest project Arboreal Audio, Tod Emel turned his ear towards Western Canadian forests decimated by a recent Mountain Pine Beetle infestation. The affected trees were Lodgepole Pine, over-matured from a forest fire management plan that for many years extinguished naturally occurring forest fires as a matter of course. Added to this was successive years of warmer than normal winter temperatures and arid summer conditions attributable to anthropogenic climate change. His approach to this project reflects upon this causal relationship between human actions and their far-reaching, often unforeseen effects.

Although the scale of the disaster is immense and the implications for the global ecosystem are significant and profoundly dire, acknowledgement of the situation outside of the region is disproportionately lacking. Through Arboreal Audio Emel has not only drawn direct attention to the magnitude of the problem but has seeked to reclaim sonic traces of what was lost as those expanses of forest died off. Over a two week period in spring 2016, Emel assembled an extensive sound library created within a forest riddled with beetle-killed trees. These sounds have been used as raw material in creating a new body of improvised electroacoustic work. I think of This project is a sonic silviculture of sorts. Instead of harvesting physical trees and milling them into lumber for construction applications, Emel has selectively harvested tree sounds to be repurposed in constructing immersive sonic architectures. Far from creating a soporific “sounds of nature” relaxation soundtrack, these works constitute a disruption of the pastoral imaginary by presenting something much more uncanny: a reclaimed and artificially reanimated forest, bearing the unmistakeable stamp of human interference.

WEBSITE

NIKKI FORREST

Nikki Forrest is a Montreal based artist whose practice includes video, sound, drawing, installation and performance projects. Her current work explores the improvisatory flow of ideas, materials and process emerging from a multidisciplinary studio practice, looking in particular at the intersection of perception, memory and technology. Nikki’s work is included in the collections of The National Gallery of Canada, The Saskatchewan Arts Board and Concordia University.

In her production residency Nikki Forrest will continue to explore the interaction of the senses and technology that dominates her practice. In particular she will investigate the use, misuse and idiosyncratic adaptation of cameras, microphones and external recording devices to generate audio and video material. This material will be processed and edited to produce the installation loop and remixed live using a combination of digital and non-digital devices in the performance. The artist is interested in the creative potential arising from the transformation of sensory information through technology, performance and improvisation as well as the possibilities offered by recording devices to detect and capture information that is not ordinarily apparent. Technical devices used in this way do not replace or necessarily extend the human sensorium but operate in conjunction, in parallel or in conversation with it. 

ANNE-F JACQUES

Anne-F Jacques is a sound artist based in Montreal, Canada. She is interested in amplification, erratic sound reproduction devices and construction of various contraptions and idiosyncratic systems. Her particular focus is on low technology, trivial objects and unpolished sounds. She performs regularly, has many ongoing collaboration projects (with Tim Olive, Miguel A. Garcia, Takamitsu Ohta and Nicolas Dion, to name a few) and makes soundtracks for Julie Doucet’s animated films. She has presented sound installations in many artist-run centers in Canada and sound performances in North America, Europe and Japan. Anne-F is also involved with Crustacés Tapes, a postal sound distribution project.

KATHERINE KLINE + LEYLA MAJER

Katherine Kline, aka Celine Bion, makes music with synthesizer, tape and field recordings of psychic channeling sessions.  She plays in the Powers, collaborates with Montreal artist Leyla Majeri, and is one half of Dreamcatcher.  She is currently doing her doctorate in Communication Studies at Concordia where she studies the psychoanalytic unconscious and ecological theory.       

Leyla Majeri est une artiste visuelle originaire de Montréal. Sa pratique s’est développée autour de la sérigraphie pour éventuellement s’étendre au film expérimental d’animation déployé sous forme d’installation et de performance cinématographique. En filiation avec l’animation « directe » et « sans caméra », son travail associe la sérigraphie à des procédés filmiques sur pellicule, détournant ainsi l’image imprimée de son aspect statique pour en révéler l’énergie cinétique et le potentiel sonore. Son travail a été présenté au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe, dans le cadre d'expositions collectives et d’événements dédiés à la musique expérimentale et à l’art vidéo. Elle termine actuellement des études à la maîtrise en arts visuels et médiatiques à l'UQAM.

ELLEN MOFFAT

Ellen Moffat is a media installation artist whose work focuses on sound and space, image and text in independent, collaborative and interdisciplinary projects. Rooted in the vocabulary of sculpture - space, the body and materiality - her primary media is sound. Her audio projects range from multi-channel installations, to electroacoustic instruments, to performance and live actions, to community projects. Recurring elements in her work are constructed and found interfaces, transducers, real-time processing and experimental sound-making using high-low technology and aesthetics. Her investigation is a poetic and conceptual inquiry into sound and space, experience, communication and social relations.

Her work has been presented throughout Canada and internationally in Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Venice, Paris, Brooklyn and Florida. As a cultural worker, she has completed contracts as sessional instructor, community resident artist and writer. Born in Toronto, she is based in Saskatoon where she is a Professional Affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan. 

ALEXANDRE ST-ONGE

Alexandre St-Onge is an audio artist, a musician/improviser (bass, voice and electronics) and a sonic performer. Philosophiae doctor (PhD) in art (UQAM, 2015), he is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach to the ungraspable and he has released over ten solo albums including Semblances (Avatar), viorupeeeeihean (Oral),Entités (Oral) and Kasi Naigo (squintfuckerpress) amongst others. He founded squintfuckerpress with Christof Migone and he plays in quite a few bands which released several albums : Et Sans, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Klaxon Gueule, Pink Saliva, mineminemine, Shalabi Effect, Les esprits frappeurs and undo. As a composer he has worked for interdisciplinary company kondition pluriel, as well as composing for artists such as Marie Brassard, Karine Denault, Lynda Gaudreau, Line Nault, Jérémie Niel, Maryse Poulin and Mariko Tanabe.

CARSTEN STABENOW

Carsten Stabenow (1972) works as free curator, producer, communication designer, and artist at the intersection of artistic production and mediation. He studied communications and postgraduate interdisciplinary studies in Berlin, and is the initiator of diverse festivals, formats, and initiatives within the context of new media, art + science, and sound art. Stabenow is the founder of the German media art festival garage, initiator and artistic director of Tuned City, and co-founder of the Berlin art and media production platform DOCK. As a member of the Staalplaat Soundsystem and solo, he has realized several installations and performed worldwide. In his work he is interested especially in physical, social and political parameters of space.

WEBSITE

BURDEN

Burden is Caitlin Hutchison, Doreen Girard, and Shelagh Pizey-Allen. Their collaboration emerged from working together at Negative Space, a collectively-run venue and art space. Where they released two tapes independently in 2014. Burden is a trio that creates composed and improvised works for the amplified piano soundboard. Using handmade tools and found objects, the artists manipulate its strings and frame to create dark warm drones and immersive soundscapes. Removing the piano's dampers had created a resonant instrument that requires an intimate form of collaboration. 

Eric Hill

Eric hill is a self described dabbler. He has worked in various mediums such as film, video, projection, installation, music, and sound art. Lately, he has worked to combine these separate interests into participatory or interactive events for both performer and audience. Through the assistance of the Holophon Mentorship program, he was able to create such an event with new software and techniques.This Must be the Space (Naive Technology) is an exploration of the space between audio and video. Using MaxMSP, video information is turned into audio and through the use of CoGe is then turned back into video information. As well, sci-fi sounds and samples are part of the mix, adding to the tumbling feedback loop.

Karl fouesek

Karl Fousek is an emerging electronic sound composer and performer. Recently his work has focused exclusively on analogue voltage controlled modular synthesizers, culminating in 2014 with the release of his debut album on Relative Position of Figures on Danish imprint Phinery. Fousek has been developing a live electronic performance system based on the aleph sound computer designed by monome and Ezra Buchla (son of synthesis pioneer Don Buchla). The aleph acts as control device for a small analog voltage controlled synthesizer by generating user controlled, probability based control signals, while acting as a virtual tape splicing machine, reorganizing the synthesizers audio output in real-time. The system as a whole skirts the borders of generative composition and live free improvisation

Kyle armstrong & mark templeton

Kyle Armstrong and Mark Templeton have collaborated on a 30 minute film/record released as a 12” LP and DVD in tribute to Canadian media visionary Marshall McLuhan. The audiovisual elements include both original and sampled film and audio inspired by the media visionary. Their live approach is an improvised audiovisual performance, using both digital and analog tools. 2015 marks the 104th birthday of Canadian visionary Marshall McLuhan. With each passing year the revelatory nature of his prophetic vision becomes more evident. The global village is becoming a distinct reality in this technological age

bEn grossman

Ben Grossman is a hurdy-gurdy player, percussionist, composer and improviser. He performs both as a soloist and as part of various ensembles. Grossman’s work is featured on over 80 CDs. He has also been recorded for film soundtracks, radio dramas, as well as for television shows and commercials.  His performance for Sounds Like, Invitation, explores the borders between installation and performance, and seeks to create an invisible audio sculpture from nothing but sine waves and room dimensions

DAVID JENSENIUS

David Jensenius has developed a mobile application network, FoundSounds, for recording and sharing sounds. Each recorded sound is geotagged, allowing users to interact with a map and see where sounds are recorded. Users can also collage geographically located sounds together to create an artificial sound environment informed by what other users have recorded. Finally, FoundSounds allows users to go for a sound walk. nearby sounds get louder or softer as you physically navigate towards or away from their recorded location, creating a sort of temporal collage. For Sounds Like, an installation of FoundSounds, with sound collected in Saskatchewan, will enable audience interaction through both installation and app

A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; in isolation in the majestic wilderness of Northern Finland; and during a concert as the singer and guitarist of a black met al band in Norway. Marked by loneliness, ecstatic beauty and an optimism of the darkest sort, A SPELL is a radical proposition for the existence of utopia in the present. Starring musician Robert AA Lowe (best known for his intense live performances under the name LICHENS) in the lead role, A SPELL lies somewhere between fiction and non-fiction – it is at once a document of experience and an experience itself, an inquiry into transcendence that sees the cinema as a site for transformation

launch party feature performer panospria djs'

For over a decade and counting, Panospria has received international recognition and critical acclaim as purveyors of experimental, electronic, and improvised music through their expansive catalog of eclectic releases as well as countless events held in cities across the country and abroad. Initially based in Montréal, the label was launched in 2004 to showcase the strange sounds of a core collective of Canadian artists, as well as music by their friends and other international guests. Following showcases at renowned festivals such as Mutek and Suoni per il Popolo, the label became an official branch of No Type Records in 2007, just prior to its relocation to Vancouver where it has since flourished as an integral component of the weirdo music community on the west coast.

LISA BIRKE
Semiotics of the {Postfeminist} Kitchen (after Martha Rosler)

Semiotics of the {Postfeminist} Kitchen (after Martha Rosler) explores how our view of women – high heels still firmly planted in the kitchen – has evolved over the nearly 40 years since Martha Rosler’s seminal and morose Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975).  Taking its cue from Desperate Housewives, The Real Housewives reality TV syndicate, and the popularity of celebrity chefs such as Rachel Ray, the performance is a parody of “hometown domesticity”.  An overt sexuality is played out amidst a plethora of electric and digital devices that produce a cumulative, deafening cry of their own.

Lisa Birke is a multi-disciplinary artist who situates between the tradition of painting, digital video and performance art.  Her interest lies in the follies of the human condition; specifically how the self navigates both natural and virtual realities.  Lisa Birke is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Waterloo (2013) where she was awarded an Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies distinction.

Peter Flemming
Stepper Motor Choir

Stepper Motor Choir consists of 12 stepper motors rotating on panes of glass.  The vibrations of the motor resonate in the glass, which acts as a mechanical amplifier, producing a ringing tone.  The pitch varies with motor speed and can be precisely controlled.  Skylight-mounted solar panels feed power to the motors and an MMMSE.  The motors sing according to available light.  At rest, the silent motors eat light and store energy.  Upon full charge, they commence singing.  As the stored voltage dies, pitch and volume slowly drop.  After several minutes they must stop and rest again.

Peter Flemming is a Canadian artist based in Montreal.  His work makes use of improvisational kinetics and intuitive electronics, most recently exploring the idea of resonance through electromagnetically activated materials, mechanical performers, and makeshift amplification devices.  Past work has included lazy machines, solar powered artwork, and hypnotically repetitive automata.  He has exhibited extensively internationally and been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies, and in 2013 was long-listed for the Sobey Art award for Quebec.

 

Shawn Pinchbeck
Container

Container is a live quadraphonic audio performance that explores a wide range of sonic experiences from ambient soundscapes to noise to electroacoustics, taking the listener on a journey with many destinations. Pinchbeck creates this work by improvising with sounds from his library of self-recorded materials accumulated over several years. Those recordings consist of environmental sounds, noises and pre-processed sounds in combination with found and circuit bent noise making objects. The piece is improvised and takes a large amount of inspiration from the audience, the space and the moment. No show is the same as Pinchbeck spins an intricate web of sonic layers live mixed, processed and manipulated using his custom designed software for that purpose, creating a deep listening experience.

Shawn Pinchbeck is an Edmonton, Alberta based electroacoustic music composer, new media artist, performer, installation artist, teacher, curator, and sound engineer.  Shawn’s performances, works, and installations have been presented widely at numerous festivals across Canada and Europe.  He collaborates extensively, creating works with artists of all backgrounds, most recently focusing on music for contemporary dance and Live Cinema performances.  He currently teaches sound and interactive art at the Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary), the Baltic Film School (Estonia), and the Art Research Lab at the University of Liepaja (Latvia).

Alexandre Berthier
MOMENTUM

MOMENTUM is a slowly mesmerising horizontal dive into the gaps between slices of a seemingly ordinary yet remote life.  The projected image, an enticing long take filmed from a train in India, gradually leads the viewer to face the strange mundanity of what he is witnessing.  The traveling shot operates as a stylus, playing back the temporality of scenes, incredibly human yet so harsh for our eyes saturated with comfort.

Alexandre Berthier is a multidisciplinary French artist living in Quebec City.  He evolves among 3 different fields: visual art, new media art and scenic art.  Over the past ten years most of his artwork has been made in collaboration with Karl-Otto von Oertzen under the collective nameMarswalkers.  They have collaborated with centers like CIANT in Prague, The Public in Birmingham and Wimbledon School of Art in London.  Their work has also been shown at the 6thInternational Exhibition of Video and Electronic Art in Montreal, the Rockport Center for Contemporary Art in the USA, the art center l’Œil de Poisson in Quebec, and the art center TUPAC in Peru.

Myriam Bleau
SOFT REVOLVERS

Soft Revolvers is a music performance for 4 spinning tops built with clear acrylic by the artist.  Each spinning top is associated with an ‘instrument’ in an electronic music composition and the motion data collected by sensors – placed inside the tops – informs musical algorithms.  With their large circular spinning bodies and their role as music playing devices, the tops strongly evoke turntables.  Inspired by hip hop beats, the music explores rhythmic manipulations such as ‘groove interpolation’, creating shifting patterns between rhythmic consonance and dissonance.

Myriam Bleau is a composer, digital artist and performer.  Exploring the limits between musical performance and digital arts, she creates audiovisual systems that go beyond the screen, such as sound installations and performance-specific musical interfaces.  Her presence on the popular music scene influences her hybrid electronic practice that integrates hip hop, techno, experimental and pop elements.

Darren Copeland & Ashton Francis

Audio-artist Darren Copeland will be undertaking a senior artist production residency with PAVED Arts in the weeks directly preceding the Sounds Like festival. As part of this residency Copeland expressed an interest in working with an audio artist from the Saskatoon arts community, in order to develop a collaborative, experimental project, one that would culminate in a live performance. PAVED Arts has nominated Ashton Francis to undertake Copeland’s workshop series in conjunction with the residency and festival. Hence, the Sounds Like Audio Art Festival will feature a collaborative performance that incorporates Darren Copeland’s “Spatialization” experiments in tandem with Ashton Francis’ work with generative synthesis.

Darren Copeland is a Canadian sound artist active in Toronto since 1985.  He is also the founding and current Artistic Director of New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA).  Key interests of his work include multichannel spatialization for live performance, fixed media composition, soundscape studies, radio art, and sound installations

ashton francis

(Vector Futon) is an electronic musician and sound designer who has been providing a precious few ‘in-the-know’ with beep-boop loops for several years now.  In addition to self-releasing various tracks, EP’s, and remixes,  VF has also scored for theatre, participated in noise jams, designed controller-based performance rigs, and has recently introduced audio-reactive video into his work.  His current primary focus, however, is in the development of a compositional standard for generative music-making using Ableton Live.  This unique and exciting approach to the development of musical AI is called “The LiveSong Standard.”

Ivan Reese

CO-PRESENTED WITH SOUNDASAURUS FESTIVAL OF MULTIMEDIA SOUND ARTS

A Shrinking Feeling is an autonomous algorithmic composition of music written and performed by a computer in real time. Inspired by the Gamelan music of Indonesia, which features dramatic surges in tempo and beautifully intricate arrangements of bell-tones and beating frequencies, A Shrinking Feeling explores mathematical infinity, a concept often seen in image and read as text but scarcely heard. The algorithmic system uses the passing of time to gradually shift, cycle, and transform each of the principal elements of music: melody, rhythm, tone, and texture.

Ivan Reese is a Calgary-based programmer, musician, and educational game designer.  Reese has deep roots in the performing arts, lending an element of theatricality to all of his work. At an early age he befriended a mathematical savant who inspired him to use computer code as a tool for creative expression, and to see math as more than just formulae and theory.  Combining these disparate backgrounds, Ivan crafts unique computer algorithms to discover new ways of using art and audio to present the beauty in math, to tell new types of stories and create otherwise impossible works of vision, sound, and interaction.

 

SCOTT SMALLWOOD
HIDEOUT

hideout is a quiet, immersive soundscape based on environmentally-empowered sound circuits, evoking the structural acoustics of hidden, safe zones in nature and architecture.  The piece is also subtly interactive, as the sounds are directly responsive to the presence of light in the space and changes of light distribution through the presence of shadows, reflections, and absorption caused by movement through the space, as well as sunlight and mixed with the artificial lighting of the gallery.

Scott Smallwood is a sound artist, composer, and sound performer who creates works inspired by discovered textures and forms, through a practice of listening, field recording, and sonic improvisation.  His work has been published by Deep Listening, Static Caravan, Autumn Records, and Wowcool Records.  He has been active as an educator for over 20 years, and currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where he teaches composition, improvisation, and electroacoustic music at the University of Alberta.

MEHTA YOUNGS

Acousmatic music, or compositions existing purely as sound without any perceivable origin, is perhaps the most common medium for sound art and even music in general.  Unfortunately, most presentations of recorded sound lack the context for appreciation, and so the content of the work is reduced to the most obvious elements in order to grasp at a potential listener’s attention: for example, a mainstream radio station playing background music in a shopping centre could technically be considered an acousmatic presentation. Even in “audio art” there is a common impetus to conceptualize sound as a technique, emotion, setting, etc.  While there is nothing invalid about background music at the mall or conflating compositions with personal experiences, it is important to appreciate work which focuses purely on the sonic content without any need for external support.

Youngs performed an acousmatic piece using synthesis and concrete technique; in a completely darkened space the audience is free from visual distractions enabling a focus on content.

Mehta Youngs has been working with music and sound since 2003, initially as a member of various ensembles but recently more often as a solo artist. 

GARY MENTANKO - DUBLIN, IRELAND

PRESERVES

With Preserves, a selection of video works from the recently digitized archive of Video Verite and PAVED Arts serve as leaping-off points for audio artist Gary Mentanko as he engages in a collaborative intermedia dialogue, remixing and reinterpreting audio from the films. Opening up the archive in this way moves the works included therein out of the realm of museological stasis and inaccessibility into an expanded and active field of creative potential. Co-curated by Erin Griffin and Tod Emel, Preserves takes up a discourse around the mutability inherent to memory, history as encounter, and the effects (or affects) of creative mediation.

Gary Mentanko is a Dublin, Ireland based sound artist working in hacked and handmade electronics. Born in the late 70’s in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, his project Depatterning attempts to recall the haze of a rural childhood through electronic interludes, rhythmic decay and the sound of farm equipment. Through exhaustive sound collecting and audio manipulation his goal is to catalogue a sort of “culture of lost Canada” and present it in ways nearly remembered. This is balanced with an examination on the effect modern civilization has had on rural life in the 20th century, artistically portrayed in strangled noises and blank spaces of sound.

Video works by past PAVED/Video Verite members Shona Dietz, Shawn Fulton, Clark Nikolai, and Susan Shantz were screened at the Roxy Theatre as Mentanko presented a live audio performance he developed in response to the films.

Adam Basanta, Julian Stein & Max Stein - Montreal, QC

MUSIC FOR 12 LAMPS

• Music for 12 Lamps is an installation and performance work for 12 sound and light emitting lamps. Each lamp is discreetly outfitted with a surface transducer speaker, turning the lamps into both light and sound emitters. As a result, each lamp possesses its own voice and sonic character through the interaction between surface transducers and the materials and constitution of each lamp. Each lamp may behave as an individual, or as part of a larger ensemble, manifesting various behaviors in light and sound.

By pulling apart aspects of their everyday performance and re-combining them in a novel manner using digital technology, this work   investigates the potential of domestic objects to recall their quotidian functions and – through aesthetic transformation – transcend them.

KEN GREGORY - WINNIPEG, MB

This clip is an stereo channel excerpt of a 5.1 work presented by Ken Gregory on July 26th, 2013 for the Sounds Like Audio Art Festival.

Winnipeg artist Ken Gregory has been working with DIY interface design, hardware hacking, audio, video, and computer programming for over 15 years. His creative performance and installation work has shown publicly in Winnipeg, other parts of Canada and many international media and sound arts festivals. Anything is part of Gregory’s palette, and by using cut-and-paste techniques, random juxtapositions, and careful manipulations, he crafts unique art works. These works are presented in the form of gallery installations, live performances, live radio broadcasts, and audio compact discs. A recent career highlight amongst others is the exhibition of wind coil sound flow, a large sound installation at San Jose’s City Hall Rotunda as part of the 2010 01SJ Biennial. 

RUTGER ZUYDERVELT - ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

When visiting a classical concert, before the start of each performance the orchestra players ensure that they are in tune with each other. When this is determined the exact same note (A) is played from every instrument, creating a clear harmonic tone, in perfect unison. This is the starting point for the Stay Tuned project. Zuydervelt fantasized about a dream orchestra composed of entirely his favourite artists. For the project Stay Tuned, Zuydervelt asked various artists of different instruments and styles to record an “A” note. Zuydervelt will use the spacial environment and diverse recordings to create a virtual orchestra in which the audience may move freely.

cHRISTOFF migone - tORONTO, ONTARIO

is an artist, curator and writer. Hit (duo) features two volunteer participants who lie face down on the ground where they proceed to pound a surface with microphones for an extended period of time. This piece is an offshoot of Hit Parade and this will be its first presentation. 

Christof Migone’s work and research delves into language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy, complicity, endurance. He obtained an MFA from NSCAD in 1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He has released seven solo audio cds on various labels (Avatar, ND, Alien 8, Locust, Oral). His installations have been exhibited at the Banff Center, Rotterdam Film Festival, Gallery 101, Art Lab, eyelevelgallery, Forest City Gallery, Studio 5 Beekman, Mercer Union, CCS Bard, Optica. He currently lives in Toronto and is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery.

Ian Campbell & Ernie Dulanowsky - Regina, Saskatchewan

The Floating World Remix
A collaboration by Ian Campbell and Ernie Dulanowsky

The Floating World is a short film by Ian Campbell. All of the visual elements of this improvised performance are derived from the original film; reordered, remixed, filtered and “played” in real time. All of the audio elements of the performance are improvised live by Ernie Dulanowsky using a variety of techniques including analog synthesis. Our goal is to create a live cinematic collaboration that allows space for give and take between sound and image.

Gary James Joynes - Edmonton, aLBERTA

Joynes is an award-winning sound and visual artist that has been active in the international electronic and experimental music performance community for years. He has more recently embarked on a broader artistic exploration using his analog synthesizers and custom made machines to create “visual-sound” as photograph/drawing/sculpture hybrids along with immersive and unending installation environments.

His latest live cinema work Peregrination was recently included in the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art. The most recent chapter in Joynes’ visual catalog presented a solo exhibition entitled Topographic Sound at Edmonton’s dc3 Art Projects in early 2013 and featured his critically acclaimed work Ouroboros which had its world premiere at Toronto’s Koffler Centre of the Arts in September 2011. Recent performances include the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), Koffler Centre (Toronto), Electric Fields (Ottawa), Mountain Computer Music Festival (Montana), Roulette Mixology Festival (New York), Soundasaurus (Calgary), Mutek_10 (Montreal), Banff Centre and the 2008 Leonard Cohen International Festival. 

The inaugural evening of  Sounds Like…. was on July 26th, 2012, and the three-evening festival of audio art was a collaborative presentation of AKA Gallery, PAVED Arts and
Holophon.

WARBLERS

Musician/audio artist Jeffrey Allport (SK) explores sound through composition, installation, performance, and recording, focusing on its comprehensive characteristics. Allport performed in AKA gallery, amidst his recent collaboration with Kara Uzelman, WARBLERS. He was joined by Gil Arnò (NYC) and Rob Pederson (BC). Pederson has worked in group as well individual sound performances. Electronics have been a recent focus, incorporating existing circuits salvaged from tape players and radios and building instruments and preparing speakers for performances. Gill Arnò engages sound and light with notions of memory, presence and time in complex constructions and presentations. Arnò works in improvisation and phonography as in his project mpld, featuring sequences of modified found slides while processing and amplifying the projectors’ mechanical sounds.

MINIBLOC

PAVED Arts is proud to present an evening of sound with the experimental Montreal based collective minibloc: Anne-Francoise Jacques and Nicolas Dion. This presentation is the culmination of a month long residency in which minibloc conducted a workshop series with a number of Saskatoon based audio artists. For the Sounds Like... festival minibloc and workshop participants Terry Billings, Joel Carignan, Constantine Katsiris, Dallas Kruszelnicki, Tanjalee Kuhl and Jon Vaughn will present a series of performances that reflect the collaborative and experimental work that they have produced. The evening will commence with a special live performance of Dallas
ruszelnicki’s “Forrest Man”.

HOLOPHON

For Sounds Like..., Holophon presents the second 2012 remounting of Front by Jon Vaughn and Constantine Katsiris, working with concepts from the same-named CD by Jon Vaughn and Max Haiven, released in 2003. Also featured in the concert is Ryan Hill, presenting new work with resonant metal plate and extreme temperature variation.

Constantine Katsiris
VANCOUVER, BC

Katsiris’ performance developed for Sounds Like… forefronts the interaction between man and machine, generating sound in real time utilizing oscillators in digital software. The sounds are honed and sculpted gradually through slow transformations and subtle modulations directed by the movements of his hands over the faders, knobs, buttons and joystick of the interface controls. A MIDI controller incorporating a gyroscope and accelerometer translates gestural movements into transformations of sound waves.

Focussed on researching psychoacoustics, waveform anomalies and various audio phenomena, Katsiris’ compositions are experiments in abstract electronic music with influences including ambient, lowercase, microsound, noise, glitch and drone. Since the early 1990’s Katsiris has developed solo performances, as well as collaborations and improvisations with other sound and video artists, including presentations at La Société des Arts Technologiques (Montréal), Whitechapel Art Gallery (London, UK) and Brut Konzerthaus (Vienna). He has organized countless events both locally and abroad, featuring performances by artists from across Canada, Sweden, Norway, Italy,
France, Ireland, UK, Japan, USA and Mexico.

Ellen Moffat & Jeff Morton
Saskatoon & Regina, SK

Strung is a collaborative instrument using constructed interfaces, musical and industrial materials, and analogue and digital technology. Four 8-foot long horizontal soundboards are equipped with strings and resonant materials and objects. The artists will perform the instruments directly and set up the conditions for the instruments to perform themselves through sympathetic resonance and excited systems. Their exploration is enharmonic sound – sound that is natural to the system.

Ellen Moffat is a Saskatoon based media artist and educator. Her work uses sound, interactivity, physical interfaces and multi-channel sound to explore space, composition, language and social relations. She is interested in off-site locations and projects with community groups.

Jeff Morton is a Regina based musician, composer and facilitator that has conducted numerous workshops in schools and artist run centres and has worked as an installer for public galleries. His work includes performance, installation and on-site recordings

Joshua Fraser
Calgary, AB

The Suicide Bomber – solo performance
Grounded in the discourse of psychotherapy and Primal Therapy, Fraser presents us with an experience that both repeats and processes the effects of trauma. Musically, it is a pursuit of the most extreme sounds: sounds that beckon impulse and provide kinesthetic “instructions” on how to respond. Each performance constitutes an attempt at accessing the most primal aspects of the artist’s being, with all of the implications of physicality and unpredictability such earnestness demands.

A multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Calgary, Joshua Fraser engages his audience in participatory acts of sensory excess towards a focused goal: the codification of raw, visceral emotion. Since 2008, Fraser has performed as Suicide Bomber in various centers across the country. He is currently completing a BFA in Painting at the University of Calgary.

Jeff Morton
Regina, SK

Jeff Morton’s performance consists of compositions and improvisations with lamellophone instruments, contact microphones, and original MaxMSP programming. The temperament, or key, of the composition is found in the physical objects themselves, representing a graphic score metaphor such that the score is expressed as a physical object from which the composition is derived. The physicality of objects also necessitates a physicality of performance through percussionists’ techniques and subtle levels of expression related to the body in performance. The combination of live performance, improvisation, graphic/physical scores, and found objects as points of departure position this work in the tradition of electroacoustic music. Morton refers to his particular process here as object composition [his term]; creating a folk-electronic expression of physical interaction and live exploration of sound.

ERIN SEXTON
MONTREAL, QC 

Sexton’s work with analog, embodied processes serves to expand our notions of interactivity and explore the impact of technological interface; demonstrating the endless complexity and potential existing in the simplest things. Other Dimensions is a site-specific sound performance motivated by theoretical physics: considering light and sound spectra that we cannot perceive or detect, inconceivable forces and entities that are passing by and through us at every moment, the existence of an endless number of universes, with entirely different laws of physics, inhabiting the same space as us, perhaps within every atom. Sexton moves throughout the room, placing handheld oscillators and contact mics on various surfaces, finding zones of phase and interference, tones activating the room and resonating throughout. With simple wire radios, electromagnetic fields and the occasional distorted broadcast are received and modified by touch, transforming exposed air ducts and heating pipes into large-scale antennas, her body part of the circuit.  Her use of simple, analog electronics allow for a truly direct performer–audience engagement, with the minimum interface separating source from sound, gesture from impact.

Montreal sound artist/improviser Erin Sexton is excited by limitation, pulling apart and stripping down any process she encounters, often arriving at the opposite extreme. Breadboards, oscillators, amplified surfaces, a tangle of wires intercepting electromagnetic waves… through these raw materials she invokes an experience both embodied and sublime, moving through immediacy into the beyond. Her latest double CD release ‘horizon’ (2011, les encodage de l’oubli) features a solo album and a series of duos with prominent Quebec sound artists Magali Babin, Martin Tétreault, Érick d’Orion, and Hélène Prévost. The last 7 years have contained many collaborations, performances, and video works, reaching back to her first solo album ‘aircraft’ (2004, independent).

Alain Lefebvre
Montreal, QC

How Can I Tell the Difference? – solo performance
Alain Lefebvre contends with noise as a music of space, texture and atmosphere. His aim is to reveal the sheer materiality of sound towards the goal of creating an experience for his audience which is direct, physical and immediate. Lefebvre is interested in the inherent sonic qualities of analog systems: unpredictable, organic, often noisy and densely textured. These characteristics lend themselves to performances intended to disrupt established codes, discourses, expectations and aesthetics, creating beautiful, yet destabilizing experiences.

Alain Lefebvre’s workspace features an array of contact microphones and various objects placed on a table amongst effect pedals and other electronic devices. Manipulating live wires in real time, the performance is essentially theatrical. The loud and unpredictable clamor that emerges reflects traces of a work-in-progress; inevitably punctuated with many uncontrollable silences, but always coming back to the harsh noise, the disruptive, the sublime.

Alain Lefebvre works in the genre of live noise performance. In 2002, he started Total Music as en experimental recording project. These experimentations yielded a body of work totaling eleven self produced CD-R’s. Since 2007, his mostly collaborative performances have combined both visual and sonic elements in a single integrated form. Lefebvre’s approach is inspired by synaesthesia (the mixing of the senses).

VYXSYMS (Jon Vaughn, Will Kaufhold, Mehta Youngs)
Saskatoon, SK

VYXSYMS focusses on the dialogue between organic, analogue and digital sound production. The over-arching strategy at work in the project is the combination of different, seemingly contradictory elements in the creation of a novel assemblage in both material and immaterial realms. They create hyper-complex textural sound works that unfold over time through a shared sensitivity to interactive processes. For this performance, the artists will collaborate to produce a cycle of compositions based on graphic notation, the interaction between recorded, live, and synthesized sound; with particular attention paid to the placement of instruments, surfaces, and performers.

Jon Vaughn is an audio and visual artist from Saskatoon, SK. As an audio artist, Vaughn plays a number of instruments and electronics, including no-input mixing in a duo with VJ Carrie Gates, called J+C Feedback Factory, as well as contributing prepared guitar and vocals with noise veteran Greenmist in the viscerally-named Slime Street. He also keeps busy running his own music label Pop Quiz that releases cool dance tunes and quirky jams and has made well over one hundred of his own albums and dj mixes.

Will Kaufhold is classically trained in violin and trombone and plays guitar. He composes, produces and teaches. Kaufhold experiments with sound using electronics, familiar and more obscure instruments as well as various traditional Tibetan and Chinese instruments.

Mehta Youngs has been composing music since 2001. He is interested in unusual orchestrations, prepared instruments, and electro-acoustic experimentation. More recently, his focus has shifted towards techno and house production.

Michael Waterman
St. John’s, NL

The Mannlicher Carcano Radio Hour – collaborative radio art performance
Michael Waterman’s art is rooted in live improvisational performance for which he frequently creates custom-made instruments out of found objects and circuitry. Process oriented and Fluxus- influenced, his work is a playful experiment in anarchistic collaborative creativity. For almost 25 years, Waterman, has been a part of Mannlicher Carcano, an improvisational audio collage group. The core members are Waterman AKA Porter Hall, Really Happening (Los Angeles, CA), and R.F. (Gogo) Godot (Winnipeg, MB). MC’s sound has affinities with post-punk DIY experimentalism, avant-garde classical, experimental turntablist and plunderphonic traditions. Since 1998, the group has been producing The Mannlicher Carcano Radio Hour, a collaborative weekly telephone and Skype-linked live radio program/webcast. For Sounds Like… Waterman will develop a performance and live broadcast of the MCRH in collaboration with other festival participants, complicating definitions of presence and absence.

Michael Waterman is an audio and visual artist who works both with electro-mechanical sound installations and through live performance. He has shown work at the Sound Symposium, Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, Send and Receive Festival and the Los Angeles’ Museum of Jurassic Technology.