Workshop: “Digital Audio Worldstation. Electronic inter/actions for musical creativity”

Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
plus Dec, 0913 2014

9-13 December 2014
Workshop


11 December 5.30 pm
Keynote lecture by Joseph Auner (Tufts University, Boston) – “Music’s Other Voice: the Place of Listening in Sound Studies and Sound Art”.


13 December 2014 (from 4 pm)

Public presentation by Teho Teardo of the participants’ creations during the five-day workshop.
Free admittance while seats last.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice


Digital Audio Worldstation is a workshop for eight young musicians (aged 18-35), selected after a public call for applications in July 2014. Organised by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute for Music with the support of the Veneto Region, the workshop sets out to explore all the possible variations of the set of artistic practices that are bundled together under the definition “electronic music”. The special relationship of these forms of expressions and sound research with technology might suggest an individualistic conception of the creative work. But in fact in this context the dimension of the shared musical experience is highlighted as a means of establishing relations and responses between musicians themselves and between the musicians, audience and setting. This initiative begins from the need to give creativity a preeminent role as the result of an interaction between diverse sensibilities in a specific place in time and space.


Programme

From 9 to 13 December 2014 the eight young musicians will embark on an intense week of work. Designed by Teho Teardo, the programme, the workshop core and main commitment, will be accompanied by historical outlines and theoretical reflections on space as a compositional dimension in various repertoires, led by the coordinators (Alessandro Bratus and Alessandro Cecchi) and the teachers (Giacomo Albert and Marco Lutzu).

The theoretical activities will end with a keynote lecture by Professor Joseph Auner (Tufts University, Boston) entitled Music’s Other Voice: the Place of Listening in Sound Studies and Sound Art. The lecture will focus on the sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard and his audiovisual work Aion, in which a crucial role was played by the soundscape of a very specific site – Chernobyl. Prof. Auner will also provide a general overview of how the listening experience in specific places is of fundamental importance for sound art research.

Prof. Auner’s lecture on Thursday 11 December at 5.30 pm, will be open to the public: anyone wishing to attend is required to apply to musica@cini.it.

To end the workshop proceedings on the afternoon of Saturday 13 December (from 4pm), Teho Teardo will give a public presentation of what the participants will have achieved during the five-day workshop. This will consist of a series of pieces composed individually, followed by a collective work highlighting the collaboration created during the week. Moreover, the presentation will provide an opportunity to make some final reflections on the Digital Audio Worldstation, also with a view to holding similar events in the future.


The selection

The cultural and educational programme formulated with the Digital Audio Worldstation was greeted with a very positive response. Around forty candidates from all over Italy replied to the call for applications published on the Fondazione Cini website in July. The assessment of the applications led to the selection of a group of eight participants. During the workshop they will be able to make use of the eight-channel amplification system in the Sala degli Arazzi on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The decision to create a small group was dictated by the need to make the Digital Audio Worldstation an effective theoretical and practical workshop, with a combination of pauses for reflection, work sessions on composition, and recordings of sound materials, coordinated by Teho Teardo.

The successful candidates
The work group was chosen by the workshop teachers and the director of the Institute for Music, Gianmario Borio. In assessing the applications, several criteria were taken into account: the importance of the curriculum (the candidate’s educational background, previous experience, and recordings of compositions with record companies on physical or digital media); the relevance of the motivations expressed in the personal statement to the educational objectives of the workshop; and the quality and originality of the musical samples sent in. On this basis, the following candidates were chosen:

Luca Bonaccorsi

Michele Braga

Federica Furlani

Alberto Ladduca

Flavia Massimo

Lorenzo Tomio

Giulia Vismara

Anna Giulia Volpato