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SONIC PHARMAKON

SONIC PHARMAKON
Post Genre Instruments, Drone, and the Limits of Guitar
TWO DAYS at THE NEW SCHOOL
PERFORMANCES, LECTURES, and PANEL DISCUSSIONS
https://www.facebook.com/events/2316967985194701/

April 27 1030 AM – 6PM
Kellen Auditorium 66 Fifth Avenue

April 28 12 Noon – 7pm
Starr Lecture Hall, UL 102 63 Fifth Avenue

PARTICIPANTS
Juan Azulay   Ezio Blasetti   Jason Brogan       Wendy Eisenberg
Sandy Ewen   Tanya Kalmanovitch   Martin Keith   Ed Keller
Clara Latham   Matteo Liberatore   Joe Ravo   Aron Sanchez
Elliott Sharp   Ola Strandberg Kazys Varnelis
and with
The Limits of Guitar Design students

“If you want to play it, it’s a good guitar. If it does you harm, it’s a bad guitar. Some guitars are both good and bad at the same time.’
Markus Reuter

“The end goal is identifying every music maker in the space and their works past and present… accelerating and improving collaboration …” The future of Mycelia is about “decentralised, open governance, looking to nature and viable systems thinking for direction… it’s about earning, adapting, sharing… as a self-sustaining organism.” Imogen Heap

“The mechanisms of cognitive capital rely on a totalizing capture of modes of affect. Ballard thought we were passing through the death of affect. He was to some extent wrong, as that was temporary, or a partial characterization of affect. We have entered a new epoch of total affect. Drone/ambient is a musical practice which in part relies on somatic activation of modes of affect deeply embedded in the neurophysiological regions which today’s cognitive capitalism also operates on. Some forms of drone could be understood to resist these inarticulate mechanisms of capital…” – Ed Keller

What forms of sound, what types of musical instruments, will be uniquely able in our contemporary world to support a radical philosophy of music, going beyond current limits of aesthetics and politics in sound? The potential neurophysiologies of drone can be understood as a catalyst toward a fundamental pulse; a collective practice of musical cognition, both conscious and sub-conscious. We have entered a new epoch of total affect.

SONIC PHARMAKON brings musicians, luthiers, composers, guitarists, theorists, designers, and technologists together to explore the sonic landscapes that might be invoked to resist the inarticulate mechanisms of capital.

SONIC PHARMAKON SCHEDULE
[some lineups may change]

April 27 1030 AM – 6PM
Kellen Auditorium 66 Fifth Avenue

1030 AM doors open
1045 welcoming remarks Ed Keller, Tanya Kalmanovitch

11 AM- 1 PM Luthiers and Instrument Designers Panel
Martin Keith [talk], Aron Sanchez [talk], Ola Strandberg [talk]
with Joe Ravo, discussant

1PM- 145 PM demonstration performances on instruments

145 PM – 215 PM break Instrument Design Students, setup and ambient intervention
215 – 3PM Instrument Design Students, selected demonstrations / performances

3 – 430 PM Panel on Form, Instrument, and System design at network/planetary scale
Ed Keller [Planetary Affect]; Juan Azulay [near future of networked sound on blockchain],
Ezio Blasetti [formally coding complex systems]; Elliott Sharp [talk: The Implicate Drone]
Panel discussion leads into E# solo set.

430-530 PM Elliott Sharp on Strandberg guitars: performance
Elliott Sharp solo

530 PM – 615 PM
TBC: ‘Strandberg Array’ guitar excursion with 4-5 gtrs. and hands on deck

April 28 12 Noon – 7pm
Starr Lecture Hall, UL 102 63 Fifth Avenue

12 Noon doors open
1215 PM Welcoming remarks: Ed Keller, Tanya Kalmanovitch

1230 – 2 PM Noise, Sound, Drone, Cognition Panel
Talks by Tanya Kalmanovitch, Kazys Varnelis, Clara Latham
Sandy Ewen and Jason Brogan discussants

2-3 PM performances Sandy Ewen, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Clara Latham

3 – 330 PM COFFEE break

3PM- 4 PM Instrument Design Students, setup and ambient intervention

4-530 PM The Instrument at the Limit
Talks by Matteo Liberatore, Wendy Eisenberg
Tanya Kalmanovitch, Joe Ravo, Elliott Sharp discussants

530-630 PM Solo performances Matteo Liberatore, Wendy Eisenberg

630-730+ Ensemble performs Elliott Sharp APERTA HORTIS composition
Lineup TBC: Clara, Matteo, Sandy, Joe, Wendy, Tanya, Ed, et al.

Sponsored by The Innovation in Education Fund; The Center for Transformative Media;
Strandberg Guitars; RealityCode

SELECTED PARTICIPANTS in ‘LIMITS / FUTURE of GUITAR’ events since 2013 have included: Marco Capelli, Perry Hall, Fred Hand, Ratzo Harris, Charlie Hunter, Sharon Isbin, Saul Koll, Gary Lee, Allan Marcus, Michi Matsuda, Ava Mendoza, Dom Minasi, Michael Newman, Laura Oltman, Ken Parker, Joe Ravo, Gyan Riley, Barry Salmon, Aron Sanchez, Elliott Sharp, Ned Steinberger, Ola Strandberg, Harvey Valdes, Florian Vorreiter, and Charles Yang.

Previous and related projects:
Keith Rowe: Extended
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/keith-rowe-extended-tickets-50536574254#

Women of Guitar: https://www.facebook.com/events/241430152928947/
NY Guitar Festival at CTM: https://www.facebook.com/events/465588216971467/

The Future of Guitar Design Workshops:
http://ctm.parsons.edu/matsuda-vorreiter-the-future-of-guitar- design-workshops-2015/

The Limits of Guitar symposia and performances: http://ctm.parsons.edu/the-limits-of-guitar/

Parsons with New World Symphony collab https://parsonsnws.wordpress.com/
Future of Guitar collab http://futureguitar.tumblr.com/

Agent Intellects SYMPOSIUM

AGENT INTELLECTS SYMPOSIUM
Sentience, Sapience & Thalience on the Planetary ledger
Saturday, December 8th, 11 AM – 6 PM
Starr Lecture Hall, UL102, 63 Fifth Avenue, NY [corner of 13th St. and 5th Ave]
The New School

OVERVIEW

This symposium brings together leading AI developers, designers, artists, philosophers, urbanists, musicians, historians, systems thinkers, ecologists, and educators, to discuss the near and long term implications of ubiquitous artificial intelligence as it evolves on a blockchain ecosystem.

The symposium is framed via a set of provocations:
We might begin by questioning the limits of our concepts of intelligence and of mind, considering the range of non-human or non-standard models of intelligence, to better adjust any designed artificial intelligence to a scope of both human and non-human constituents.

Intelligence is frequently linked to models of information processing, feedback loops, thought, and ‘agency’. Sentience and Sapience are gradients of these feedback loops. If we consider forms of mind across radically diverse scales [from the nanometer & nanosecond all the way to the light year and beyond] what kinds of intelligence will we be compelled to recognize? What design options are available across these scales? What is natural or artificial intelligence at each of these scales? How can this way of thinking impact a pragmatic, everyday way of approaching ‘designed AI’? Are there ‘universals’ of intelligence that can be mapped and extrapolated?

At what level is irreversible data structure necessary for emerging forms of mind and AI? Are there correspondences between key concepts in blockchain architecture [proof of work, proof of stake, proof of history, proof of location, etc.] which we might find mirrored in ‘natural’ systems of complex organization, from atomic structure, to molecular, to
the layerings of DNA, to cities, ecosystems, planetary tectonics, or cosmological structures?

To what degree can we compare the ‘intelligence’ of a bacterial colony, or a microbiome, with the functioning of a single CPU, or a network of millions of computers? Subatomic or scale-free? Patterns and Graphs? Quark or galactic structure? What kinds of ‘mind’ might be already present at these levels, or deployable through ‘artificial’ acts of design? How do these profoundly non-human scales of space and time connect back to the lifeworlds of humans, of cultures, of ecosystems?

Can cities and forests ‘think?’ If so, what kind of intelligence is afforded them, and across what timescales? Does a planet have ‘mind’ or ‘computational capacity?’ If so, what kinds of information processing takes place, what networks are folded into that, and how can we work as designers to access those flows of information and energy?
Is it possible to discover computational or cognitive models at the scale of a solar system or a galaxy? Where do abstract systems of mathematics fit in these scales? Does the Hermetic concept ‘as above, so below’ hold for ‘universal structures’ and scale free models, and if so to what extent can that be leveraged toward a philosophy of design and theory of mind?

Is thought about thought necessary for intelligence? [Watts, Shaviro, Hayles] If so, how can it be achieved and optimized? What is the role of the human in an ecosystem of artificial thought, and how can we imagine beneficial AI across all scales, from a single human, to a population of humans [or animals, or plants, or autonomous AIs] across multiple lifetimes- up to the future of human civilization and the survival of mind itself?
— Ed Keller

SCHEDULE
1030 AM coffee and meet and greet

1100 AM – 1230 PM Intro and panel ONE
TIME and THOUGHT
Ed Keller, Diann Bauer, Elliott Sharp, Gary Tomlinson
Ben Goertzel, moderator

1245 PM – 215 PM panel TWO
THOUGHT and MEMORY: SYSTEMS at SCALE
Liz Barry, Jillian Crandall, Andrea Morales Coto, Anthony Dunne
Ed Keller, moderator

++Student projects/manifesto

215 PM – 245 PM break for snacks and coffee [on site]

300 PM – 430 PM panel THREE
COSMOPOLITICS and UNIVERSAL MIND
Ben Goertzel, Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Dan Mellamphy, Dana Martens, Sven Travis
Ed Keller, moderator

430 PM – 600 PM final panel, all speakers

Please note: speakers order subject to change

The Agent Intellects symposium is part of a Parsons course and workshop series, the fall 2018
‘Hive Minds’ collab, sponsored by SingularityNET and the Center for Transformative Media at The New School.

PARTICIPANTS
Liz Barry, Public Laboratory
Diann Bauer, Laboria Cuboniks
Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Western
Jillian Crandall, Parsons
Anthony Dunne, Dunne & Raby
Ben Goertzel, SingularityNET
Ed Keller, Parsons
Dana Martens, Parsons
Dan Mellamphy, Western
Andrea Morales Coto, Consensys
Elliott Sharp, Zoar Music
Gary Tomlinson, Yale
Sven Travis, Parsons

More Than Personal: Self-Portraiture & Auto-Perceptive Screens

A lecture by Nadine Boljkovac, CTM Fellow

“Inscribed within Chantal Akerman’s 2015 No Home Movie, Michael Haneke’s 2012 Amour and Philip Hoffman’s 2001 What These Ashes Wanted are experiences of transience and home, illness and mourning. And yet, poignantly persistent throughout these works are also flashes and images of enduring life and duration that emerge via instances of filmic self-portraiture and self-perception. These particular moments function as temporal cracks or materialised disruptions. While they render visible invisible strains and dimensions of pain, grief and loss, the brief fissures embody living portraits of both the deceased and the ‘living’ (the late filmmaker/motherless daughter, grieving partner, beleaguered widower) that attest not only to cruel actual separations between loved ones but also an endless process of distanciation from one’s former self. Such momentary glimpses of other worlds within the films, as enacted via seconds of self-portraiture and self-perception, reveal possibilities for difference as they envision alternative trajectories and futures – especially for the women of these works – with reverberations that long linger. Through an auto-perceptive screen, these processes materialise, fragment and liberate these already dead and endlessly dying women…”

Nadine Boljkovac is Senior Lecturer in Film at Falmouth University. She is an August-October 2018 Visiting Fellow of the Center for Transformative Media at Parsons The New School for Design, and the recipient of a University of Cologne 2018-19 Research Fellowship (Morphomata International Center for Advanced Studies). Boljkovac was a University of New South Wales 2015-17 Postdoctoral Fellow (Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia), the Brown University 2012-13 Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellow (Pembroke Center for Teaching & Research on Women), a University of Edinburgh 2010 Postdoctoral Fellow (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities) and University of Aberdeen 2009-10 Film Teaching Fellow. Her monograph examining affect and ethics via Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, Untimely Affects: Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema (Edinburgh University Press 2013), was reissued in paperback in 2015. A second monograph is in progress, Beyond Herself: Feminist (Auto)Portraiture and the Moving Image. Most recent peer-reviewed works appear in ‘Materialising Absence in Film and Media’ (a 2018 Special Dossier, co-editors Saige Walton and Nadine Boljkovac for Screening the Past: A Peer-Reviewed Journal of Screen History, Theory & Criticism); The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory (editors Tom Conley and Hunter Vaughan, 2018); and On Style: Transdisciplinary Articulations (editor Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank, 2018).

Event took place on October 16 at 6pm at Parsons 25 East 13th street, ‘Glass Box’ room E206, second floor.

In Service to Nothing: Intellectual Inquiry in the Open

In Service to Nothing: Intellectual Inquiry in the Open
Symposium at The New School
The Center for Transformative Media and punctum books
November 7 11AM-6PM
66 West 12th Street, room A404
https://www.facebook.com/events/1671272699787129/

“In Service to Nothing: Intellectual Inquiry in the Open” is a symposium, co-hosted by the Center for Transformative Media, Parsons School of Design and punctum books, that takes as its launching pad three new and forthcoming titles by CTM+punctum authors–

• Michael Berger, ed., “Ravish the Republic: The Archives of the Iron Garters Crime/Art Collective” (Dead Letter Office, punctum books, 2015)

• Gavin Keeney, “Knowledge, Spirit, Law, Book I: Radical Scholarship (CTM Documents Initiative, punctum books, 2015)

• Marc Lafia, “Image/Photograph” (CTM Documents Initiative, punctum books, 2015)

— in order to think through what it might mean, currently, to practice radically speculative forms of scholarship that work to evade, escape, and critique neoliberal and institutional-bureaucratic capture, or, as Keeney puts it in his book, that would work “against neoliberalist anomie and the preservation of postmodern différance as means to atomize consciousness and instill … a society of control.” Further, Keeney writes,

“Why is the speculative confined to the arts, or—worse still—to cultural studies (the circularity of endless discourse present there mimicking knowledge production based on citation and interpretation of received wisdom)? How have the arts been isolated and rendered toothless since the inception of modernism, when revolutionary-critical and productive work was one of the key operative elements of the “architecture” of modernism (if not modernity)?”

How, also, for those of us working the veins of so-called “academic” discourses, can we resist what Sarah Schulman has called “the gentrification of the mind,” working instead, in the words of Michael Berger, “to make unprecedented collaborations between art and theory, spirituality and labor, crime and love, writing and noise”? Further, of the work of the Iron Garters Crime/Art collective, Berger writes,

“The unquestioned divisions between genres and modes and forms could no longer be tolerated. The Academy would have to be thrown into the street. Theory would have to be disrupted by economic brutalities. Culture would have to be rewritten by the powerless. Sexuality and desire would have to be undermined by artistic frenzy and mystical devotion. Above all, we would have to be reckless yet cunning like the most devoted outlaws, protectors of a Wild Outside that has no real analogue in human rationality.”

We can look back to Foucault’s Preface to Deleuze and Guattari’s “Anti-Oedipus,” to see the situation framed this way: “How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action? How can and must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more intense in the process of overturning the established order?”

“In Service to Nothing” will gather together authors and publishers who are working to foster and enact speculative, avant-garde scholarly praxes that resist the business-as-usual of the Public Research Institution, the Digital Humanities, Academic Publishing, Neoliberal Capital, and the like, in order to reinvigorate the question of intellectual creation outside of its intensive “management” as “property” within the contemporary university. Further, speakers have been selected because of the ways in which their work productively emerges at the intersections between the Institution, the University, the so-called Street/Outside, the Studio/Workshop, the Gallery/Museum, etc.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

11:00am-11:30am
COFFEE/TEA

11:30am-12:00noon
Welcoming/Framing Remarks by Eileen Joy + Chris Piuma (Co-Directors, punctum books)

12:00noon-1:00pm
Alison Kinney (author of HOOD, forthcoming from Bloomsbury in Jan. 2016) + Michael Berger (Iron Garters Crime/Art Collective)

1:00pm-2:00pm
LUNCH BREAK

2:00pm-3:00pm
Karen Gregory (Digital Sociology, University of Edinburgh) + Gavin Keeney (Agence ‘X’)

3:00pm-3:30pm
COFFEE/TEA

3:30pm-4:30pm
Marina Zurkow (Multimedia Artist + Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts) + Marc Lafia (Photographer/Filmmaker + author of IMAGE/PHOTOGRAPH)

4:30pm-5:30pm
Joseph Nechvatal (Multimedia Artist, Paris + author of DESTROYER OF NAIVETES) + Ed Keller (Center for Transformative Media, Parsons School of Design)

Matsuda & Vorreiter: The Future of Guitar Design Workshops 2015

The Future of Guitar Design Workshops 2015
October 26, 27, 28 2015
A 3 day workshop with luthiers Michihiro Matsuda and Florian Vorreiter
Center for Transformative Media [CTM] at The New School
Sponsors: Parsons School of Design & Mannes School of Music
Free and Open to the Public

The Center For Transformative Media hosts a three day workshop with internationally renowned luthiers Michi Matsuda and Florian Vorreiter. The event includes afternoon round table discussions/panels and playing salons with Matsuda, Vorreiter, and invited NY area luthiers and guitarists; and evening lectures and performances with the instruments.
Organized by Ed Keller, Director, CTM.

Performers to include Michael Newman, Joe Ravo, Liz Hogg, Matt Leece, Thiago Pimental, and more TBA.

Monday Oct 26th
• 12 Noon- 3PM Meet and Greet
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor
Roundtable, meet and greet, playing ’salon’

• 7PM-10.30PM Matsuda and Vorreiter: Lectures
Performers TBA
Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, ground floor
Lectures, performances, discussion

Tuesday Oct 27th
• 1PM-5PM Round table, Techniques
Klein Conference room, A510, 5th Floor, 66 West 12th Street
Round table discussion; techniques demonstration, playing ‘salon’

• 8PM-11PM ‘Limits of Guitar’ discussion and performances
Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, ground floor
Presentations focused on instruments that inspired the luthiers; what might constitute the ‘limit of the guitar’; performances, round table discussion

Wednesday Oct 28th
• 1PM-5PM Wrap up discussion
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor
Roundtable, discussion, playing ’salon’

In 2013-15, CTM presents a series of lectures, workshops, & performances focusing on the cutting edge present and future of guitar and instrument design. Curated and organized by Ed Keller, co-sponsored by Parsons School of Design and Mannes College of Music, functioning as a platform to build cross divisional collaboration at The New School, and opening exclusive external collaborations, this series has brought internationally renowned luthiers, designers, builders, materials innovators, composers, performers, theorists, and sound designers together to explore points of connection between the traditions of musical instrument design and sound production, and new forms of design thinking facilitated by materials science, emergent materials, parametric design, the internet of things, physical computing, networked sound, and the politics of ‘noise’.

Guests have included Ezio Blasetti, Marco Capelli, Perry Hall, Fred Hand, Ratzo Harris, Charlie Hunter, Gary Lee, Allan Marcus, Ava Mendoza, Dom Minasi, Michael Newman, Laura Oltman, Ken Parker, Joe Ravo, Gyan Riley, Barry Salmon, Aron Sanchez, Elliott Sharp, Ned Steinberger, Ola Strandberg, and Charles Yang.

The Limits of Guitar

The Limits of Guitar
Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20th
Wollman Hall 65 West 11th Street Room B500, New York, NY 10003
Free and Open to the Public.

The Limits of Guitar at the New School is a two day event, hosted by The New School’s Center for Transformative Media [CTM] and Mannes School of Music. Curated and coordinated by Ed Keller, Director, CTM.

On June 19 and 20, guitarists, Mannes, Parsons and New School faculty, instrument builders and luthiers will meet to discuss the history and future of the guitar in a symposium/panel/demonstration format, along with two evenings of performance.

The event features composer/guitarist/instrument builder Elliott Sharp and bassist/painter Perry Hall [CTM Artist Fellows 2014-15]; guitarist Marco Capelli; guitarist and instrument collector Jeff Doctorow; luthier Gary Lee; guitarist Ava Mendoza; guitarist/faculty Joe Ravo; instrument designer and performer Aron Sanchez; and more TBA.

SCHEDULE:
Friday June 19
performances and discussion 7:00-10 p.m.

Marco Capelli
Ava Mendoza
Elliott Sharp
_ more TBA

Saturday June 20
Saturday afternoon panel discussion 2:00-5.30 p.m.

Marco Capelli
Jeff Doctorow
Perry Hall
Ed Keller [moderating]
Gary Lee
Ava Mendoza
Joe Ravo
Aron Sanchez
Elliott Sharp

Saturday evening performance 7:00-10:00 p.m.
Marco Capelli
Perry Hall
Joe Ravo
Elliott Sharp
_ more TBA

The event continues a two year program on guitar and instrument design organized by CTM and sponsored by CTM and Mannes School of Music, featuring luthiers and musicians including Ken Parker, Charlie Hunter, Ned Steinberger, Charles Yang, Barry Salmon, Ola Strandberg, Allan Marcus, Gary Lee, Fred Hand, Michi Matsuda, Florian Vorreiter, and Gyan Riley.

Perry Hall: Painting Far From Equilibrium

Perry Hall: Painting Far From Equilibrium – Lecture
Auditorium A404, 66 West 12th Street, NY NY
Monday April 6
7.00PM – 9.00PM
Free and Open to the Public

Perry Hall approaches painting as a time-based medium similar to choreography or improvising music. He creates the traditional line form color surface but also adds painting behavior- ways in which paint transforms and moves over time. His artworks, which integrate painting and filmmaking, are created by using natural dynamic forces (turbulence, thermodynamics, magnetism, gravity, chemical reactions) instead of digital processes or “static” painting techniques. His ongoing project explores the relationship between painting, nature and technology.

Perry Hall: Sound Drawings – Lecture
Klein Conference Room A510, 66 West 12th Street, NY NY
Monday April 20th, 7.00PM – 9.00PM
Free and Open to the Public

In his Sound Drawings, he channels sound from an electric bass into vessels containing paint and by changing the qualities of the sound he “plays” the paint like a musical instrument. The artist discusses his innovative work, which is a meditation on synesthesia, painting, technology and the dynamic systems found in nature. The talk will include a screening of Alive Violet Frequency, a collaboration with Parsons CTM fellow Elliott Sharp; the commissioned work, which combines sound drawings with live musical improvisation, recently premiered at the 2015 Adelaide Festival in Australia.

Perry Hall 2014-15 Artist/Fellow
www.perryhallstudio.com
Perry Hall’s unique painting films have been exhibited internationally in venues including the Smithsonian National Design Museum in New York, Artists Space in New York, The New World Symphony in Miami, The Tokyo Art Fair in Tokyo, Japan and are part of the permanent collection of the Centre FRAC in Orleans, France. His artwork can be seen in the Academy Award winning Robin Williams film What Dreams May Come and more recently in Scarlett Johansson’s eyes in Luc Besson’s motion picture Lucy. He is also a wildly imaginative electric bassist who has performed with drummer Matt Chamberlain (of Tori Amos / David Bowie fame), composer Paul Dresher, and written music for choreographer Margaret Jenkins. His sound and music has been heard at the United Kingdom’s Blinc Festival, the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum in New York, The American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, Theatre Artaud in San Francisco, The San Francisco Art Institute and in Sonified, a video camera which translates visual information into sound; Perry creates all the music for these projects entirely on electric bass. In his paintings he uses a set of experimental techniques that draw upon the organizing principles found in nature; his Livepaintings (time-based paintings) are created by stimulating paint with temperature changes, vibration, turbulence and various substances, transforming paint flows into compositions he captures onto film. In his Sound Drawings, sound waves from electric bass are channeled into a vessel containing paints, and by changing the qualities of the sound he “plays” the paint like a musical instrument and creates visual compositions. His innovative work is a collaboration with “material intelligence” and a meditation on the dynamics found in nature.

Previous CTM Fellows have included Nandita Biswas Mellamphy & Dan Mellamphy [2012-13]; Evan Calder Williams [2013-14]; and Elliott Sharp [2014-15].

Cinema of Ethics, Ethics of Cinema: Nadine Boljkovac

‘A Secret Called Happiness’:
Cinema of Ethics, Ethics of Cinema

Saturday, December 13 at 6:00pm – 8:00pm

T. Lang Hall, 55 West 13th Street, NY NY

‘And then the earth, present to the point of filming it up close, at root level. How many times do the characters confront the earth, the mud, the original clay of which they were made, from which they seem not yet to be free, and chose to bury themselves in it’. (Marker, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, 1999)

‘Here we catch a glimpse of a future in which all mysteries are resolved. [. . .] this will come about because these readers, each working on his slice of universal memory, will lay the fragments of a single secret end to end, a secret with a beautiful name, a secret called happiness.’ (Resnais with ‘Chris and Magic Marker’, et al., 1956)

‘Forensic medicine,’ Claire Colebrook observes, ‘has its own functions and styles of inhuman observation.’ Prior to the 2015 paperback re-release of Untimely Affects, this presentation draws upon the text to undertake its own process of excavation and observation. It casts its gaze at relations between cinema and life – ethics, time and future, demarcations between material bodies (chemical, biological, social or political), and the production of affects – to speak of the unspeakable, ineffable, imperceptible and unthinkable.

Via traces that Chris Marker and Alain Resnais have left, ‘traces with which one can work, and contours to help draw up the map’ (Marker), this talk grasps at an interconnectedness among all assemblages of life, human and otherwise, to consider memory fragments in terms of the geography of a nomadic subjectivity. Such is to contemplate ‘the eternity of the lifeforces, not the perennity of death’ (Rosi Braidotti). Through multiple filmic excerpts and close readings, the talk will encounter foldings and doublings that engender subjectivities beyond the human. The excerpts will aid in an analysis of ‘beauty’ and an exploration of ways for seeing and thinking beyond destruction and extermination.

As it thereby attempts to trace what is beautiful and intangible, what is not in fact a ‘what’ but rather this, thisness, sign or ‘trigger’ (Steven Shaviro), the talk will obsess over ‘things that quicken the heart’ (Marker) … while questioning how temporal perceptions and sensations, as glimpsed through the moving image, affect ‘our’ perceptions, environments, and planet.
– Nadine Boljkovac

‘To think is to reach a non-stratified material, somewhere between the layers, in the interstices. Thinking has an essential relation to history, but it is no more historical than it is eternal. It is closer to what Nietzsche calls the Untimely: to think the past against the present—which would be nothing more than a common place, pure nostalgia, some kind of return, if he did not immediately add: “in favor, I hope, of a time to come”.’ (Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, Deleuze)

Nadine Boljkovac (PhD, Cambridge) is Postdoctoral Fellow of Visual Culture & the Moving Image, Centre for Modernism Studies, UNSW. She was the Brown University 2012-13 Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellow, a University of Edinburgh 2010 Postdoctoral Fellow, and University of Aberdeen 2009-10 Film Teaching Fellow. Untimely Affects: Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) will be released in paperback in 2015. A second monograph in progress, Beyond Self and Screen, explores filmic instances of women’s self-portraiture.

Matsuda & Vorreiter luthiers’ lectures

Michihiro Matsuda and Florian Vorreiter

a luthiers’ double workshop / lectures / performances in two sessions
with performances featuring Elliott Sharp and Gyan Riley

October 23rd
• 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: workshop
• 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM: lectures and performances

both events will take place at the
Mannes Concert Hall
150 West 85th Street, NY NY
Free and Open to the Public- Eventbrite registration is required
https://matsuda-vorreiter-luthiers.eventbrite.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/792230964151636/

In an afternoon roundtable session, 3.30 – 5.00PM, master luthiers Matsuda and Vorreiter will conduct a hands on exploration & informal discussion of recent groundbreaking guitars from their workshops: Matsuda’s experimental archtop, and Vorreiter’s 8 string, ‘fusion’ classical guitar. Both instruments radically stretch the boundaries of the design envelope. The luthiers will present key design aspects of these instruments and host a discussion on construction methods, materials, and design philosophy with guests.

This workshop will be followed in the evening at 7.00 PM – 9.30 PM by a formal double lecture and
performances on the instruments. Elliott Sharp, CTM Artist Fellow 2014-15, will play Matsuda’s
experimental archtop; performer TBA for the Vorreiter instrument. A panel discussion with Matsuda,
Vorreiter, Sharp, et. al. will conclude, moderated by Ed Keller.

matsudaJazzGtr
Michi Matsuda
http://www.matsudaguitars.com/
Pairing traditional woodworking skills with an innovative sense of design and construction, Matsuda builds around ten to twelve guitars each year at his lutherie studio in Oakland California. His instruments integrate fine materials with organic shapes and graceful lines.

florian
Florian Vorreiter
http://radikalguitars.wordpress.com/
http://www.vorreiterguitars.com/
The emphasis in Florian’s work is on traditional construction methods and state-of-the-art knowledge from research as well as elaborate measuring procedures (Chladni-modes, FFT-Analysis, deflection measurements). The unique sound of Vorreiter Instruments is accomplished by combining intuition
and scientific procedures.

* * *

In 2013-15, CTM presents a series of lectures, workshops, & performances focusing on the cutting
edge present and future of guitar and instrument design. Curated by Ed Keller, co-sponsored by Mannes College of Music, functioning as a platform to build cross divisional collaboration at The New School, and opening exclusive external collaborations, this series has brought internationally renowned luthiers, designers, builders, materials innovators, composers, performers, theorists, and sound designers together to explore points of connection between the traditions of musical instrument design and sound production, and new forms of design thinking facilitated by materials science, emergent materials, parametric design, the internet of things, physical computing, networked sound, and the politics of ‘noise’.

Guests have included Elliott Sharp, Perry Hall, Ken Parker, Charlie Hunter, Ned Steinberger, Charles Yang, Ola Strandberg, Allan Marcus, Gary Lee, Fred Hand, Joe Ravo, and Ezio Blasetti.

http://ctm.parsons.edu/the-future-of-guitar-and-instrument-design/

Superpositions- A Symposium on Laruelle

October 10 & 11, 2014

‘Superpositions’ refers to the non-philosophical practice of conjugating distinct strata of academic discourse on the model of quantum interference rather than classical logic, which entails a distinctive ‘equalization’ of the standard hierarchies of disciplines and knowledges. The outcome of such a practice remains largely unknown. Perhaps similarly unknown is the work of François Laruelle, inventor of what has been most recently called ‘non-standard philosophy’. Laruelle, once named “the most important unknown philosopher working in Europe today” (Ray Brassier, 2003) has developed an innovative and powerful repertoire of concepts across an oeuvre spanning four decades and dozens of books. His work will undoubtedly come to have a significant impact on the critical practices of the humanities; this symposium explores Laruelle’s work across its possible relations to contemporary issues in philosophy, critical theory and media studies.

Excerpts from event at UStream:

SCHEDULE:
Detailed schedule- PDF
Friday, October 10, 2014: 7:30-8:30 pm
Reception and Introduction: Opening Lecture, Alex Galloway
Dorothy Hirshorn Suite, Room I205
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street

Saturday, October 11, 2014: 9:30 am – 6:00 pm
Symposium
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Room 202
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street

Superpositions
Non-Standard Perspectives on Critical Theory, Philosophy and Media Studies
A Symposium on Laruelle and the Humanities

List of Speakers:
Alex Dubilet (Berkeley, University of California)
Alexander R. Galloway (New York University)
Rocco Gangle (Endicott College)
Julius Greve (University of Cologne)
Katerina Kolozova (University American College-Skopje)
Dave Mesing (Villanova University)
Benjamin Norris (The New School)
Anthony Paul Smith (LaSalle University)

Organizers:
Rocco Gangle (Endicott College)
Julius Greve (University of Cologne)
Ed Keller (The New School/CTM)

Michihiro Matsuda and Florian Vorreiter

Excerpts from event at UStream:

SCHEDULE: Detailed schedule- PDF Friday, October 10, 2014: 7:30-8:30 pm Reception and Introduction: Opening Lecture, Alex Galloway Dorothy Hirshorn Suite, Room I205 Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street

Saturday, October 11, 2014: 9:30 am – 6:00 pm Symposium Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Room 202 Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street

SCHEDULE:
Detailed schedule- PDF
Friday, October 10, 2014: 7:30-8:30 pm
Reception and Introduction: Opening Lecture, Alex Galloway
Dorothy Hirshorn Suite, Room I205
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street

Saturday, October 11, 2014: 9:30 am – 6:00 pm
Symposium
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Room 202
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street