Symposium Session 1

Kurt James Werner – New Developments in 1-Bit Sound Synthesis and Audio Effect Design – In this talk, I present new designs for 1-bit synthesizers, audio effects, and signal mixers which transcend classical limitations of the (historically, very limited) format, creating new possibilities for musical expression. After reviewing some of the classical examples of 1-bit music, I will describe my novel approach to designing novel 1-bit musical tools. These include, e.g., 1-bit stochastic wavetables, resonant and comb filters, artificial reverberation, advanced multiplexor- and digital-logic-based signal mixers, and advanced binary bitcrushers. Special emphasis will be placed on a new variant of sparse noise I developed called “Crushed Velvet Noise,” which is especially useful for 1-bit music.

Adam Pultz Melbye – The FAAB is a feedback double bass with embedded signal processing, developed as a collaboration between Adam Pultz Melbye and Halldór Úlfarsson in 2019. This presentation will discuss the development of the instrument with a focus on performance. As an instrument exhibiting semi-autonomous behaviour in both the analogue and digital domains, the FAAB challenges traditional notions of performative proficiency. As such, developing a performance practice with this instrument affords a context for exploring concepts such as virtuosity, resistance, mastery and failure along with instrumental and machine agency.

Jacob Eriksen – Sound as artistic knowledge production – Recently sonic thinking has developed in the academic fields between philosophy, sound studies and media studies asking how to think through sound rather than about sound. This sonic turn is paralleled by artistic research theories and practices, which do not consider knowledge production exclusive to traditional academic disciplines. Instead, knowledge is generated through artistic practice and, therefore, differ from conventional understandings of knowledge.
This paper asks: What knowledge do sonic arts produce? How can sonic art practice be understood as research? How does sound artistic research differ from artistic research in other art genres?

C.A.N.V.A.S. – A presentation in collaboration between Olan Monk and Lugh O’Neill—as co-founders of C.A.N.V.A.S. as a record label and event series—on the ideas which inform our continued efforts to work collectively as part of an ever-expanding community of artists/musicians. We intend to use this presentation as an opportunity to openly consider some of our impetus for instigating and continuing this work in a context which allows feedback through open dialogue on the ideas behind the project outside of our continued processes of performance/release.

Leandra Lambert – Experimental processes and hybrid improvisation in three solo works: Cut-up Tragedy, Lori Yonï, and Lea Luxfera– Cut-up Tragedy is a multiple nomad process that experiments, transforms, and generates sound materials, images, words. It depends on free walks, in a state of increasing “unruling of the senses,” collecting fragments and vestiges. It is about spaces expanded by temporal and phantasmal layers.With the LORI YONÏ project I’ve started to seek shamanic and transformative experiences using singing and other vocal possibilities, electronics and free improvisation to make a kind of sonic witchcraft. From those two processes, emerged a third one: it is a kind of synthesis of the previous practices, plus the creation of a performance persona called Lea Luxfera. In this new work I emphasize the improvisation with poetical texts, with a taste for the non-conforming, the otherness, the alien: xenophilia.