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.

Hacking Feminism: May 9 & 10, 2015

Hacking Feminism

A two-day symposium on Saturday May 9, and Sunday May 10, 2015, The New School (NYC)
Hosted by CTM The Center for Transformative Media (Parsons, New School) and co-sponsored by CTM, The Graduate Center (CUNY) and Punctum Books. Co-organized by Patricia Clough (CUNY), Nandita Biswas Mellamphy (Western), Dan Mellamphy (Western), Svitlana Matviyenko (Western) and Ed Keller (CTM).

Participants List in alphabetical order
Anne Balsamo, School of Media Studies, The New School, USA
Shannon Bell, York University, Canada
Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Western University, Canada
Zach Blas, University of Buffalo, USA
Sarah Choukah, University of Montreal, Canada
Patricia Ticineto Clough, CUNY, USA
Lucca Fraser, Dalhousie University, Canada
Alexander Galloway, New York University, USA
Nancy Gillespie, Independent Scholar (NY-FLAG)
Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, School of Visual Arts, USA
Margret Grebowicz, Goucher College, USA
Karen Gregory, CUNY, USA
Eileen Joy, Punctum Books, USA
Ed Keller, Parsons The New School for Design, USA
Svitlana Matviyenko, Western University, Canada
Dan Mellamphy, Western University, Canada
Luciana Parisi, University of London, UK
Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University, USA
Joshua Scannell, CUNY, USA
Oyku Tekten, CUNY, USA
McKenzie Wark, The New School, USA

To hack:

to cut with heavy blows in an irregular or random fashion;
to embarrass, annoy; to disconcert, confuse;
to cope with, manage, accomplish; to tolerate, accept; to comprehend;
to hesitate in speech; to stammer;
to break into a computer system by hacking;
to make a hack of, to put to indiscriminate or promiscuous use; to make common, vulgar, or stale, by such treatment;
to cut or chop up or into pieces, to chop off;
to make a clever, benign, and ethical prank or practical joke.

‘The body’ has been a central concept and site of power and subjectivity in the histories of feminism, and yet, in the age of ‘big data’ and ubiquitous computing, we are compelled to ask whether ‘corporeality’, ‘materiality’ and ‘embodiment’ have morphed into something beyond the conceptual boundaries of the ‘organic, fleshy, lived body’. Hacking Feminism seeks to gather together scholars and practitioners who are interested in exploring how the virtualization and informationalization of bodies have impacted — even challenged — central feminist concepts and tropes such as embodiment, materiality, corporeality, affectivity, and experientiality. How have widespread technical developments in Cybernetics and theoretical developments in Post-Humanism pushed feminist theorizations of the body away from the dialectics of individual phenomenological subjects and objects, towards multi-sensory design interfaces, trans-individual ecologies, and technically mediated embodiments? How is the rise of ambient and affective computing changing how bodies, especially ‘data bodies,’ are being measured? Is there a ‘messiness’ that escapes the ‘measurability’ of bodies? Or is this escapism itself a kind of romanticism? Can we still talk about a specifically feminist approach to theorizing both phenomenological (organic) and virtual (data) bodies?

SATURDAY MAY 9ᵗʰ: 66 West 12th street. Room 510, with alternate/spillover space in A404- check with front desk.

10.30 Seating open

10:45 OPENING REMARKS
—Ed Keller (co-organizer with D_Mellamphy, N_Biswas_Mellamphy, P_Clough and S_Matviyenko).

11:00–12: AUTOMATION AND SEX
—Luciana Parisi (11:00–11:30), Nandita Biswas Mellamphy (11:30–11:50),
Q&A (11:50–12:20).

12:20–12:30 COFFEE BREAK

12:30–1:50 THE NON-HUMAN UNCONSCIOUS:
THE PSYCHE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
—Patricia Clough (12:30–1:00), S Matviyenko (1:00–1:20),
Q&A (1:20–1:50).

1:50–3:00 LUNCH offsite.

3:00–4:20 CONTRA-INTERNET
—Zach Blas (3:00–3:30), Eileen Joy (3:30–3:50),
Q&A (3:50–4:20).

4:20–4:30 COFFEE BREAK.

4:30–6:10 THE LIVELINESS OF DATA
—Karen Gregory (4:30–4:50), Joshua Scannell (4:50–5:10),
Sarah Choukah (5:10–5:30),
Q&A (5:30–6:10).

6:10–6:30 COFFEE BREAK (performers prepare stage).

6:30–7:30 THE CHILDREN OF THE MERCY-FILES (performance).

8:00 DINNER.

SUNDAY MAY 10ᵗʰ: 65 West 11th Street, Wollman Hall, 5th Floor

12:00 Seating open.

12:30–1:50 INHUMANIST BIOPOLITICS:
PREHENSIVE GENDERING IN OCCUPATION
—Jasbir Puar (12:30–1:00), Alex Galloway (1:00–1:20),
Q&A (1:20–1:50).

1:50– 3:00 LUNCH offsite.

3:00–4:20 HACKING THE LACK
—Shannon Bell (3:00–3:30), Nancy Gillespie (3:30–3:50),
Q&A (3:50–4:20).

4:20–4:30 COFFEE BREAK.

4:30–6:30 HACKING HARAWAY
—McKenzie Wark (4:30–4:50), Margret Grebowicz (4:50–5:10),
Thyrza Goodeve (5:10–5:30), Anne Balsamo (5:30–5:50),
Q&A (5:50–6:30).

6:30-6:35 BREAK.

6:35–6:55 WRAP-UP OVERVIEW & SUMMARY, CLOSING COMMENTS—Ed Keller.

7:30 DINNER.

___
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE [pdf]: HACKING FEMINISM schedule

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.

Elliott Sharp: CTM 2014-15 Artist Fellow lectures

Elliott Sharp: CTM 2014-15 Artist Fellow lectures
• Natural Models As Compositional Inspiration and Strategy September 18th
• Algorithmic and Self-Organizing Systems: Lecture/Demonstration Sept. 29th 7- 10 pm
• New Approaches To Graphic Notation October 9th 7- 10 pm
• Socio-Acoustics – Soundmaking in the Real World by Real People December 8, 7PM

All events are Free and Open to the Public

Socio-Acoustics – Soundmaking in the Real World by Real People
December 8, 7PM – 10PM
Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue
A complex of equations with many hidden variables make up human interaction when involved in the production and perception of music. Socio-acoustics functions as a feedback loop within a system defined by a dynamically shifting balance of spatiality and time-based actions. Can the many elements that define this system be identified and quantized? The relationship between sound-producers and their audience is one factor. Another is the relationship of sound-producers with their materials. Finally, there exists the mutual relationship between multiple sound-producers working simultaneously (for example, a group of improvisers or a jazz ensemble) and how it affects the sonic output. One can imagine any combination and permutation of the above factors – the unpredictable relationship between a musical performance and its perception. This lecture and discussion will present both questions and answers.

New Approaches To Graphic Notation
October 9th 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Mannes Concert Hall
150 West 85th Street, NY NY

In this lecture, Sharp will describe his 1972 work with graphic notation and how, in his return to this approach in 2003, he found new pathways to the synesthetic. Sharp will present the scores Seize Seas Seeths Seen, Foliage, and Mare Undarum, and describe graphic techniques used to create them, mirroring processes he might have used to process in real-time the sounds produced by musicians. With Sylva Sylvarum from 2014, the score is now an animated movie whose derivation will be discussed. The event will include the presentation of projected scores and recorded examples from selected realizations.

Algorithmic and Self-Organizing Systems: Lecture/Demonstration
Sept 29th 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Mannes Concert Hall
150 West 85th Street, NY NY

In the first half of this event, Sharp offers definitions and discusses the genesis and development of his composition “SyndaKit”, music as organism. Composed in 1998 for the composer’s ensemble Orchestra Carbon, “SyndaKit” utilizes a collection of biological metaphors to create an ever-shifting rhythmic and timbral matrix. Improvisatory and algorithmic but not improvisation, “SyndaKit”s essence is a transformative organism consisting of 144 composed cores on 12 pages divided among the 12 players with a set of simple rules for their use through processes of imitation, addition, recombination, transposition, and mutation. These actions are based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids. Every performance of “SyndaKit” is unique though the identity of the piece remains constant with each manifestation. For the second part of this evening, Sharp will workshop “SyndaKit” with an ad hoc ensemble and present a number of iterations of the piece in performance.

Natural Models As Compositional Inspiration and Strategy
Elliott Sharp, lecture
September 18th, 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Klein Conference room [510] 66 W 12th St New York, NY 10011
Beginning with his Hudson River Compositions of 1974, composer Elliott Sharp has drawn upon various aspects from natural forms and processes, using them to create conceptual and algorithmic approaches to composition and improvisation. In this lecture, Sharp describes inspirations from fireflies to genetics, and displays the results. Working with Fibonacci numbers in the 1980’s, Sharp built tuning systems as well as rhythms and entire sonic architectures. In his pursuit of ways to mirror seemingly chaotic processes, Sharp found resonance and further inspiration in the fractal geometry of Benoit Mandelbrot which led to a variety of compositions ranging from Tessalation Row for Soldier String Quartet to pieces for his proto-math-rock noise-band Carbon.

Later, composing for his ensemble Orchestra Carbon in the 1990’s, Sharp refined the work with self-organizing systems to include models from flocking birds, RNA replication, Fibonacci numbers, and cellular automata to develop the composition SyndaKit. As much a set of rules or a construction set as a piece of music, SyndaKit creates an every-shifting matrix of rhythms and textures – a composition that is never the same in its manifestation yet always identical in process. This construction set was put to good use to create the orchestral work Calling for the RadioSinfonie Frankfurt and premiered by them at the 2002 Darmstadt festival.
Sharp will present scores and audio examples.

* * *

Elliott Sharp 2014-15 CTM Artist/Fellow
A central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City for over thirty years, Elliott Sharp leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane, and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. Winner of the 2015 Berlin Prize in Music Composition and a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship, Sharp has composed for Hilary Hahn, Ensemble Modern, RadioSinfonie Frankfurt, and JACK Quartet. His work has been featured in the Darmstadt (2002) and Donaueschingen (2007) festivals, at the Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale (2007), and the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007, 2012). His wide range of collaborators have included Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Kronos Quartet; Debbie Harry; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette, and Sonny Sharrock; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka, Morocco. His work is the subject of the documentary “Doing The Don’t” and he has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.

* * *

In 2013-15, CTM presents a series of lectures, workshops, & performances focusing on the cutting edge present and future of guitar and instrument design. 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 Michi Matsuda, Gyan Riley, Florian Vorreiter, Elliott Sharp, Perry Hall, Ken Parker, Charlie Hunter, Ned Steinberger, Charles Yang, Ola Strandberg, Allan Marcus, Perry Hall, Joe Ravo, Gary Lee, Fred Hand, and Ezio Blasetti.

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)

SIGNAL PATH: The Present and Future of SOUND and NOISE [or, Fury]

‘Focusing and defocusing of a signal passed through a random turbulent atmospheric medium.’

SIGNAL PATH: The Present and Future of SOUND and NOISE [or, Fury]
Friday, May 30, 9 AM- 5PM
T. Lang Conference room, 55 West 13th Street, second floor, New York City
Free and open to the public

SPEAKERS / PERFORMERS
Elliott Sharp, Perry Hall, Joe Ravo, Eldritch Priest, Marc Couroux, Quinn Dougherty,
Brendan Byrne, Joe Saavedra; Danil Nagy, Lisa Ekle, Yuval Borochov;
Punctum Records Artists: Roger Sellers, Topher Sipes, Andrew Stevens
Organized and introduced by Ed Keller, Director, CTM.

[speaker bios: https://www.facebook.com/events/475157329283875/permalink/484687074997567/ ]

Excerpts from the event at UStream:

More symposium footage at UStream event channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/signal-path-symposium

SYMPOSIUM OVERVIEW
‘What is the signal path- the ‘information flow’ through ‘instruments’? What models and disciplines might be useful to invoke when asking this question? Looking to computation, the way that memory is articulated is illustrative of the specific challenges faced when we contrast a more static form of storage, such as a flipped bit [or a printed page]- against a more dynamic form, such as delay line memory, a 1950s technology that used sound waves propagating through tubes of mercury. These examples underscore what might be at stake when we translate theories of noise to the sonic disciplines, and musical and sonic concepts to disciplines as diverse as geology, economics, material science, architectural design, and geo-politics.

This symposium offers an invitation to explore the space of research and practice in sound that is keenly attuned to the value of ‘noise’. The intention is to reveal approaches both pragmatic as well as platforms theoretic, across the political/arts/sciences spectrum. We ask: what kinds of exchange exist between these domains, and what evidence can be offered to ‘prove’ the existence of those exchanges? How can we re-imagine our concepts and definitions of ‘noise’ to suit the unique geo-bio-political situation we find ourselves in today?’ – Ed Keller

SUGGESTED THEMES [a partial list]
Pragmatics: evidence from designers, builders, software makers, players, composers working with noise.
Noise and various forms of cryptomorphology situated against the potentially monotonic nature of various forms of temporality/capital [see Pasquinelli’s work on entropy]
• Models of different kinds of noise/time to re-situate sound practice, performance, composition
• Role of noise in cybernetic models of emergent and complex systems
Theoretical component- study of examples [both inside and outside music] who are thinking this through.
Parallels [apophenias] between concepts found in the discipline of cryptography, and sounds and patterns in the resonant world.
How does sound and noise manifest through geologies and geographies- thinking the post human; large time scales in relation to sound; deep time recording and industrial landscapes [Andy Weir].

CHALLENGE CONCEPT [an OBLIQUE STRATEGY]:

“To give the statement life and colour, let me anticipate what will be explained in much more detail later, namely, that the most essential part of a living cell- the chromosome fibre may suitably be called an aperiodic crystal. ” Schrodinger, ‘What is Life?’, 1944

“The principal internal storage in the Univac I system is the 1000-word acoustic delay-line memory, consisting of 100 10-word mercury registers. Twelve additional 10-word registers function as intermediate storage for input and output; six more are spares. With modified circuitry, seven more channels control the temperature of seven mercury tanks, and one more channel is used for the 10-word Y- register. The total of 126 mercury channels is contained in the seven mercury tanks mounted on the backs of sections MT, MV, MX, NT, NV, NX, and GV. Each tank is divided into 18 channels. Physically, each of the 10-word register circuits is made up of three sections:

_ The acoustic delay, consisting of a channel in a column of mercury, with receiving and transmitting crystals mounted at opposite ends.
_ An intermediate-frequency (i-f) chassis, electrically connected to the receiving crystal, and containing amplifiers, a detector, and a compensating delay. The i-f chassies are mounted on the shell of the mercury tank which they serve.
_ A recirculation chassis, containing a cathode follower, a pulse former and retimer, a modulator, which drives the transmitting crystal, and input, clear, and memory-switch gates. These chassies are mounted in the sections adjacent to the mercury tanks.”
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-univac-mercury-memory.html

ABOUT THE EVENT
On May 30 2014, CTM presents two events engaging sound in both the performative and theoretical dimensions.

_ ‘SIGNAL PATH- The Present and Future of Sound and Noise [or, Fury]’, a one day symposium
_ ‘The Lost Weekend’, an evening of performances with Punctum Records

The SIGNAL PATH symposium is part of a year long CTM series, ’The Future of Guitar and Instrument Design’, that 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. A full day symposium will include scholarly presentations, research papers, and instrument demonstrations; informed by materials science, emergent materials, parametric design, the internet of things, physical computing, networked sound, and ultimately considering the politics of ‘noise’.

‘The Lost Weekend’, an evening event with Punctum Records. will provide an opportunity for performance by symposium participants, and showcase some of Punctum Records’ artists:
Marmalakes, Taft, Battle Bend, Bridges, Roger Sellers, and David Moss; for the full ‘Lost Weekend’ lineup and program/venues: http://www.punctumrecords.com/lostweekend/
CTM and Punctum Books/Punctum Records formed an imprint/event partnership in 2013.
For more information on the books and recordings published and forthcoming, and the CTM
Future of Instrument Design lecture/performance series, please visit:
http://ctm.parsons.edu/the-future-of-guitar-and-instrument-design/
http://futureguitar.tumblr.com/
http://ctm.parsons.edu/publications-2/publications/
http://punctumbooks.com/imprints/
http://ctm.parsons.edu/a-rogue-frequency-book-and-record-launch/

VENUES
SIGNAL PATH: The New School T. Lang Center, 13th Street: all day event
https://www.facebook.com/events/475157329283875/

LOST WEEKEND: Wollman Auditorium, 11th Street, Punctum Records evening event
https://www.facebook.com/events/640671442654124/
Lost Weekend is organized by Punctum Records/Books [Eileen Joy, Dan Rudmann]; with
Ed Keller, CTM.

Hacking Feminism

SATURDAY MAY 9ᵗʰ: 66 West 12th street. Room 510, with alternate/spillover space in A404- check with front desk.

SUNDAY MAY 10ᵗʰ: 65 West 11th Street, Wollman Hall, 5th Floor

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