(Grinstead 128 is in the inside hallway going north from the foyer to Hart Recital Hall.)
- Sarah Belle Reid
Manifold: Accessible Approaches to Quadraphonic Diffusion and Collective Listening
(20+10 mins) - Timothy W. McDunn
Technique and Meaning in ‘Be Still’
(20+10 mins) - Ka Hei Cheng
CHINESE CALLIGRAPHIC DANCE (CCD) AND GENERATIVE ARTS: PHANTOM OF UTOPIA
(20+10 mins) - Victor Zheng
qFlo
(20+10 mins) - Hubert Howe
Creating Inharmonic Spectra by means of Frequency Shifting
(20+10 mins)
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Sarah Belle Reid
Manifold: Accessible Approaches to Quadraphonic Diffusion and Collective Listening
Manifold is a quadraphonic composition and research project exploring how spatial sound can be experienced collectively and accessibly outside specialized environments. Written for trumpet and electronics, the original version of the work was a live performance piece that used real-time processing in Max/MSP to transform live acoustic input into a continuously shifting four-channel sound field. In this piece, spatial movement functions as a core element in the compositional structure rather than a “finishing” element added in post-production.
After a year of performing Manifold live, I wanted to be able to share a recorded version with a wider audience, facing me with the question: how can the embodied and social experience of multi-channel performance be preserved and shared beyond the concert hall?
To investigate this, Manifold was adapted into a series of accessible listening formats in collaboration with Los Angeles–based label Smartdumb. The release includes a quadraphonic/stereo encoded file using the QUARK (Quadraphonic Universally Accessible Resource Kit) system, a Dolby Atmos mix, and a community-focused web application that allows listeners to recreate a quadraphonic system using everyday mobile devices. Each participant’s phone acts as one speaker, transforming personal technology into a shared spatial listening environment.
This talk presents Manifold as a case study in accessible approaches to spatial music diffusion. It considers how commonplace technologies can facilitate collective listening experiences and how notions of “liveness” and “togetherness” might persist through improvised, DIY, or participatory diffusion setups. If feasible, the presentation will include a live demonstration of the web-based playback system. Through Manifold, spatial sound provides an opportunity for gathering and shared listening, inviting new ways of thinking about sound as both a compositional and social experience.
Sarah Belle Reid is a performer-composer who plays trumpet, modular synthesizer, and an ever-growing collection of handcrafted electronic instruments. Her unique musical voice explores the intersections between contemporary classical music, experimental and interactive electronics, noise music, and improvisation. In addition to her performance and compositional work, Reid runs an online music education company dedicated to teaching sound synthesis and electroacoustic composition to professional and hobbyist musicians, and serves as an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.
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Timothy W. McDunn
Technique and Meaning in ‘Be Still’
Forays and Fantasies in Transpositional Symmetry and Maximal Evenness
Timothy W. McDunn (b. 1994) is a composer and theorist with an international profile. He specializes in just intonation and electroacoustic composition. His music and research is regularly presented and performed at major peer-reviewed conferences and festivals including the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States National Conference, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the International Computer Music Conference and others. His background in classical languages and literature strongly influences his work as a composer. He holds a DMA in Composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a Biennio Degree in Composition from the Verdi Conservatory of Milan. His education also includes a Bachelor of Music in Composition and a Bachelor of Arts in Greek and Roman Studies. McDunn currently teaches music theory and composition full-time at Wheaton College. He resides in Glendale Heights with his wife, Jasmine—the most selfless, supportive, and objectively beautiful woman in the world. His music is influenced by elements of philosophy, faith, and spirituality.
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Ka Hei Cheng
CHINESE CALLIGRAPHIC DANCE (CCD) AND GENERATIVE ARTS: PHANTOM OF UTOPIA
Motion Tracking and Live Performance
The intricate elements embedded in the pictorial, ideological, and semantic
facets of Chinese characters find their origin in simple calligraphic gestures. This generative arts research and creative work elevates traditional two-dimensional Chinese
calligraphy into a multidimensional realm in extended reality (XR) by translating it
into a three-dimensional dance movement, integrating music and visual media. This
transformation is achieved by decomposing the words into gestures and somaesthetic
movement/interaction, encoding the collective bodily expressions into a manifestation
termed Chinese Calligraphic Dance (CCD). Within this dance form, the fusion of categorized and uncategorized gestures/movements is sonified through a motion tracking
system, giving rise to generative music and visual arts. Categorized gestures are derived from the stroke elements of Chinese words, while uncategorized gestures draw
inspiration from dance movements influenced by the pictorial shapes/contours, cultural
and philosophical semantics of Chinese characters. The system is crafted to offer immediate visual and sonic feedback, effectively converting gestures into a dynamic canvas
for expressive dance movements. Motion tracking data is harnessed to inform the composition of generative music, creating a symbiotic relationship between movement and
sonic expression within the CCD framework.
Ka Hei Cheng graduated from PhD in Music (Experimental Music and Digital Media) at Louisiana State University, and she studied at Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Bowling Green State University. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Cheng approaches a diversified culture and philosophy that extend her musical dimensions and nourishes a similarly diverse approach to her artworks by “brush strokes” with sonic palette. In 2020, she wrote a chamber orchestral piece, Nibiru, for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and she was commissioned to write a commercial promotional music for the video from the CNA Group. Her work, The Entangling Turner and COVID-19 Genomic Navigator, was performed in NIME 2021 and 2022 (The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression) and was presented in ICAD (International Community for Auditory Display). She was the presenter and the project developer of her research papers related to data sonification in NIME, ICAD and NYCEMF. Apart from data sonification, she has been developing projects in digital fabrication, extended reality, motion tracking and EEG sensors. She has written pieces for laptop orchestras, and one of her pieces, “Who is the Leader?”, was commissioned by the EdUHK. She collaborated with three other artists in the project, “Shifting Datum” and the work was displayed in Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. She also collaborated in a project called, “Contingent Dream”, which adopts a collaborative robot to draw an algorithmic composition derived from audio recordings, rendering the sounds of the city in sumi-e ink, which was presented in the 17th International Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI23). One of her paper on digital fabrication, “Resonance: Collaborative Musicking Through Tactile Ecologies” got accepted by TEI 24. The Phantom of Utopia series got accepted by Seamus, NIME, and ICMC, and NYCEMF respectively.
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Victor Zheng
qFlo
This workshop will present the ongoing collaborative process between myself and my collaborator, serving intersecting roles as composer, live sound designer, and software developer. Our collaboration has involved several collaborative works all using an integrated software, qFlo, designed to facilitate efficient interaction between performer and computer in controlling live electronics in performance.
We will first introduce our devised framework codifying the general needs of live-performed electroacoustic music as a genre, from musical, technical, and practical standpoints, and demonstrate how our software addresses each of these obligations in a way that interfaces well with existing performance and compositional practice. We will then perform excerpts of works that have successfully used this software to showcase it in action. Participants will be invited to operate the software themselves and ask questions or provide feedback.
A link to a paper is provided for adjudication purposes. I published this paper at a different conference – this workshop will not be a presentation of the paper. The paper will serve to give context for the software – the workshop will demonstrate the software but focus on the collaboration aspect of the compositional process.
Victor Zheng was born in Beijing, China and raised in Portland, Oregon. He holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM, BA ’16), the University of Massachusetts Amherst (MM ’18), and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (DMA ’23).
Victor explores the intersection between electronic composition and human performance in his work, using algorithmically assisted composition and interactive electronics to power custom designed instruments or featuring as a live companion to acoustic instrumentalists. He has had his music and research featured at events including MOXSonic, Electronic Music Midwest, SEAMUS, NYCEMF, the SCI National Conference, and ICMC, as well as in publications including Art On My Sleeve, Willamette Week, and Oregon Arts Watch.
Victor currently serves on the faculties at North Central College in Naperville, IL and the University of Illinois Springfield in Springfield, IL, teaching composition, music theory, music technology, and music history.
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Hubert Howe
Creating Inharmonic Spectra by means of Frequency Shifting
I will make a PowerPoint presentation showing how frequency shifting can be used to create inharmonic spectra and describe the properties that these spectra can contain. I will then show many demonstrations of frequency shifting, including several from my compositions. Finally, I will play one of my works using frequency shifting with a description of how it is used in each section of the work.
Hubert Howe was educated at Princeton University, where he studied with J. K. Randall, Godfrey Winham and Milton Babbitt, and from which he received the A.B., M.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He was one of the first researchers in computer music and became Professor of Music and Director of the Electronic Music studios at Queens College of the City University of New York. He also taught at the Juilliard School from 1974 to 1994. In 1988-89 he held the Endowed Chair in Music at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. From 1989 to 1998, 2001 to 2002, and Fall 2007, he was Director of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. He is a member of the Society of Composers, Inc., the American Composers Alliance, the International Computer Music Association, SEAMUS, the Long Island Composers Alliance, and the New York Composers Circle. In 2009, he founded the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and he continues as Director. Recordings of his computer music have been released by Capstone Records (Overtone Music, CPS-8678, Filtered Music, CPS-8719, and Temperamental Music and Created Sounds, CPS- 8771), Ravello Records (Clusters, RR 7817 and Improvisation on the Undertone Series, RR8043) and Centaur Records (Harmonic and Inharmonic Fantasies, CRC 3579).
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