CIME/ICEM 2023 – Electroacoustic Music Days 2023

concerts: A1 A2 / B1 B2 B3 / C1 C2 C3 / D1 D2 D3 / E1 E2

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Concert D1

Mengjie Qi, Peng Huilong Pu Sa Man (2023) 6.30 EMAC
Fang Wan Song Yun (2023) 6.00 EMAC
Jinshuo Feng, Hua Sun Living Room Drama (2023) 6.30 EMAC
Miłosz Kowalewski Noisebox 1 (2023) 6.55 PSeME
Ewa Trębacz Umbrae (2023) 11.30 PSeME
Connor Scroggins Impetus (2018) 8.30 UNT/CEMI
Jon Christopher Nelson Ripples in the Fabric of Space-Time (2022) 7.50 UNT/CEMI

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Pu Sa Man (2023)
QI Mengjie (Maggie), Peng Huilong [EMAC – China]
fixed media: 8 channels
duration: 6.30

There are a lot of dancing and music painting in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Many of dances are from foreign countries, the only domestic dance is called the traditional dance, in which the dance image of Dunhuang girls is the most important theme. This work was inspired by the painting in Dunhuang Mogao Caves. The violin, visuals and electroacoustic music represent poetry, dance and music from the painting. Three parts blended with each other and keep their personalities distinctively, this combination vividly depicts the elegance and changing in the movements, and conveys the Buddhism emotions from the dance. Composer: QI Mengjie Maggie. Visual: QI Mengjie Maggie, PENG Huilong

QI Mengjie (Maggie) is assistant professor at China Conservatory of Music and postdoctoral researcher at the Central Conservatory of Music. She serves as the Vice President and At-large Board Director of International Computer Music Association (ICMA). As a composer and sound artist, her music and installations have been presented at many international festivals, including ICMC, Audio Arts Festival, WOCMAT, CIME General Assembly concerts, International Electronic Music Festival of New York, SEAMUS, ISCM, NYCEMF, SPLICE Festival, Cube Fest, SICPP, Beijing Modern Music Festival and MUSICACOUSTICA-Beijing. She received her master and doctoral degree in electronic music at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She studied at the City University of New York during the doctoral study.  As a curator, she is devoted to the promotion of the exchange in culture, music, and the inter-media of art and technology. She has served as International Coordinator for MUSICACOSTICA-Beijing since 2012. She has curated for a number of concerts, contemporary art exhibitions and festivals. She served as reviewer on ICMCs and IEEE conferences. In 2020, she founded the Ensemble Phoenix Beijing which dedicates to the exploration and presentation of the works of multiple music styles, cultural elements and media languages.

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Song Yun (2023)
Fang Wan [EMAC – China]
computer system performance
duration: 6.00

Song Yun is an interactive composition for Kyma and data-driven instrument. The main sound materials are derived from various audio recordings of Chinese traditional instruments and voices. The data-driven instrument used in the composition captures and analyzes the performer’s movements, postures, and gestures, which are then mapped into sound parameters. Song Yun merges new technologies with traditional culture, offering the audience a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in Chinese traditional culture in a novel manner. Song Yun is supported by Zhejiang Conservatory of Music (2022KY002).

Fang Wan is an intermedia composer and performer. Fang’s primary research interests are sound design and interactive composition. Her compositions have been performed internationally including performances in Asia, North America, and Europe, and at major music festivals, such as the Future Music Oregon Concerts (FMO), the Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS), the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, MUSICACOUSTICA-BEIJING, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), Turn Up Festival, and the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) where, in 2017, she was awarded the top prize for a student composition. The quality of Fang Wan’s musical composition was again acknowledged when her work Origin for Wacom tablet and Kyma was selected to be in SEAMUS compact disc series. Fang received her BA in Electronic music from Xinghai Conservatory of Music, a MM in Intermedia Music Technology, and a D.M.A. degree in the Performance of Data-driven Instruments at the University of Oregon. Fang is currently teaching at Zhejiang Conservatory of Music.

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Living Room Drama (2023)
Jinshuo Feng, Hua Sun [EMAC – China]
computer system performance
duration: 6.30

Living Room Drama is an avant-garde musical work suffused with futuristic elements. Its uniqueness lies in its transformation of an ordinary living room into a virtual theater, inviting the audience to become deeply engaged in an interactive theatrical experience. Advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithms, coupled with state-of-the-art imaging technology, enable AI cameras to precisely identify objects, movements, and spatial coordinates, thereby facilitating real-time physical interaction with items within the scene and instantaneously generating both audio and visual components. This results in a dynamically rich virtual theater performance.
The narrative of “Living Room Drama” is divided into three acts: “Reform,” “Participate,” and “Perform.” In this conceptual future, Augmented Reality technologies are ubiquitously employed in theatrical productions, effectively extending the enchantment of traditional theater into everyday domestic spaces. Audiences are no longer passive spectators but become active participants in the narrative, fully immersed in a new reality of virtual role-playing.

Living Room Drama” represents an innovative confluence of music, visual arts, and experiential reality, offering audiences an unprecedented feast for the senses. Through this imaginative and experimental vision of future theater, we unearth a novel form of performative arts, contributing to a groundbreaking cultural and entertainment experience. In this musical odyssey, the audience assumes the leading role in their own virtual narrative, creating their very own legendary theatrical tale.

Feng Jinshuo. Composer, Ph.D., Lecturer at the Communication University of China. His research and composition interests include interactive music, sound design and dance music composition. He graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in China and was a visiting scholar at the University of Oregon in the United States in 2014-2015. he was funded by the China National Arts Fund as a composer in 2022. Jinshuo’s compositions are often performed in China. his representative compositions include the Chinese dance drama “Bai Nian Zhengyangmen”, “Cao Xueqin”, “If Only Life Were Like First Seeing”, “Dongpo”, and the interactive art installation “All Things Coexist.” In addition, his compositions have been performed internationally, including presentations at ICMC, Musicacoustica-Beijing, Beijing Modern Music Festival,  CIME/ICEM, SEMUS.

Hua Sun, a Chinese electronic musician, audio engineer and sound designer in China National Opera and Dance Drama Theater. Hua’s research includes interactive device design for music performance, sound design for drama, electronic music composition for stage. Hua received Master of Music at University of Oregon in United States, His works include opera “Liu San Jie”, “Phyllis Lin”, “Sparks of Fire”, Musical “WingTsun”, “The legend story of a White-Snake”, and dance drama “Dawn”, “Like A Dream”, “Zhaojun Outside the Frontier”, “Confucius”, “Sacrifice”. Hua’s music presentation includes International Computer Music Conference, Kyma International Sound Symposium, Beijing Muiscacoustica Festival, Electronic Music Midwest of United States, and Digital Audio China (Shanghai).

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Noisebox 1 (2023)
Miłosz Kowalewski [PSeME – Poland]
fixed media: 8 channels
duration: 6.55

The piece creates a story based on hum and noise. It was created on a self-constructed electro-acoustic instrument called noisebox. During its construction I was guided by the idea of upcycling, which is why I used trash and other objects making interesting sounds, which I found in antique stores, fairs and in my garage.

Miłosz Kowalewski. Born in 1999 in Gdansk, Poland. Studied Composition and Theory of Music, specializing in composition, at the Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk in the class of Prof. Krzysztof Olczak, Ph.D.; at the Grazyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Lodz (bachelor’s degree) in the class of Prof. Krzysztof Grzeszczak, Ph.D. His works have been exhibited in Poland and abroad – Klaipeda Carillon Festival in Lithuania; Ravekjavik festival of electronic music and visual arts; MUSICA MODERNA Festivals at the Music Academy in Lodz; Film Music Concerts at the Music Academy in Gdansk. He is interested in creating his own instruments, combining them with electronics and interdisciplinary activities. His portfolio includes versatile productions – compositions for theatrical performances, art installations and animations etc. He is currently continuing his studies at the Academy of Music in Lodz for the second degree under the supervision of Dr. Olga Hans, Professor of Music.

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Umbrae (2023)
Ewa Trębacz [PSeME – Poland]
fixed media: 8 channels
duration: 11.30

Umbrae was sparked by a glitch of personal memory, seeded by a 1920 poem by Bolesław Leśmian titled ‘Odjazd’ (‘Departure’). I’ve played a perilous game of moving a magnifying glass through my personal latent soundspace. I found it filled with glitches of corroded memories, inaccessible to another human being. A half-forgotten poem escaping translation from the language of my childhood; a disembodied scrap of a musical phrase erroneously preserved by my violinist muscle memory.
Long dark shadows falling, indefinitely. Should one never abandon anything forever? Is this loss?
Source sound material was recorded by the composer with a variety of Ambisonic microphones (Soundfield ST-250 – 450 series, CoreSound Tetramic and Octomic). The piece was realized in 3rd order Ambisonics with the use of the Ambisonic Toolkit (ATK) software package and mixed at the University of Washington Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) sound studios.

Ewa Trębacz (pronounced Eva Trembatch) is a Polish American composer and interdisciplinary artist living in Seattle, USA. Her works range from instrumental solo, chamber, symphonic and electroacoustic compositions, to soundtracks for animated films, to stereoscopic video. Exploring the unique interaction between the human subject and their acoustic environment, she often uses space as a catalyst for improvisation, working through Ambisonic recording sessions in acoustically inspiring spaces. By overlapping such recordings on live performances, she strives to create an illusory continuum between real and synthetic spaces. Trebacz’s works have been presented, performed and broadcast in over 30 countries on four continents, and have been featured in Organised Sound, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and major Polish music magazines. She holds a Master’s degree in Music Composition from the Kraków Academy of Music, and Ph.D. in Digital Arts and Experimental Media, University of Washington, where she currently works as a Research Scientist. https://ewatrebacz.com

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Impetus (2018)
Connor Scroggins [UNT/CEMI – USA]
fixed media: 2 channels
duration: 8.30

Connor Scroggins is a composer who is currently seeking a PhD of Music Composition from University of North Texas. He recently completed a Master of Music from Bowling Green State University in 2022 and previously received a Bachelor of Music from Arkansas State University in 2020. He was a finalist for the 2023 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission. Among the performers of his work include Robin Meiksins, Chiara Franceschini, Ensemble Suono Giallo, The Rhythm Method String Quartet, Hypercube, New Thread Quartet, Apply Triangle Trio, and Unheard-of//Ensemble. His music has been performed in the United States and Europe at ilSUONO, ICMC, NYCEMF, SEAMUS National Conference, SPLICE Institute, NSEME, and the Saarburg Music Festival. He currently studies with Panayiotis Kokoras.

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Ripples in the Fabric of Space-Time (2022)
Jon Christopher Nelson [UNT/CEMI – USA]
fixed media: 2 channels
duration: 7.50

Ripples in the Fabric of Space-Time When two black holes collide, collapsing into one another, they create a highly deformed new black hole that emits gravitational waves from its equator. This gravitational wave moves up and down in frequency a few times before it dies, creating “chirps.” This composition imagines a sound world filled with chirps that disrupt our temporal expectations. These disruptions result in rapid transformations between allusions to acoustic instruments, sonic environments, and percussive noises that are animated and playful.

Jon Christopher Nelson (1960) is currently a Professor of Composition at the University of North Texas where he is as an associate of CEMI. Nelson’s electroacoustic music compositions have been performed widely throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has been honored with numerous awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Commission. He is the recipient of Luigi Russolo (1995), Bourges Prizes (1996, 1997, 1999, 2002 and the Euphonies d’Or prize in 2004) and the International Computer Music Association’s Americas Regional Award (2012) and Music Award (2020). His works can be heard on the Bourges, Russolo Pratella, Innova, CDCM, NEUMA, ICMC, and SEAMUS labels.

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