The Icebreaker » Collaborators

Collaborators

Project Coordinator/Author: Owen Chapman - Owen Chapman / Opositive is an Assistant Professor in Sound Production and Scholarship in the department of Communication Studies at Concordia University . He is also an audio artist who’s work ranges from intermedia performance (incorporating original music, video projection and live scratch DJing) to studio-based composition. He has written on audio sampling for a variety of academic publications. His audio work has been commissioned internationally for radio, video and contemporary dance. His research and production projects have been funded by the FQRSC, Hexagram and the Canada Council. Dr. Chapman’s PhD dissertation was the first research-creation project to be successfully defended in his domain in Canada (2007) and was completed through Concordia, UQAM and UdM’s Joint PhD Program in Communication.

The artistic concerns and approaches to creation articulated by the Icebreaker stem from my evolving practice as a research-creation based academic focused on sound production and scholarship. My creative production explores mnemonic responses to water, sound, light and other media on the part of both audiences and creators. Performance is an integral component of my artistic research practice as it allows for the construction of affective feedback loops between listening audiences, spaces and collaborators. Digital projection, physical/theatrical/instrumental interpretation, scratch djing as well as live audio sampling and remixing are all part of my repertoire. I also create stand-alone sound and intermedia work through the use of a portable digital studio, the Internet, field recordings, photographs, as well as many “antiquated” technologies such as vinyl records, vintage electronics and other “lost” media found in thrift shops.

This project involves a community of research-creation experts. Each will provide a different component to the current research stage around the sonic, performative, and interactive possibilities of the Icebreaker. These people are the following:

Tara Rodgers - Tara Rodgers is a composer and writer from upstate New York and now based in Montreal. As Analog Tara, she has performed electronic music, released recordings, and led recording workshops over the last 10 years.

Tara earned an MFA in Electronic Music at Mills College in 2006. Her recent projects use the programming language SuperCollider to make metaphoric connections among data, oscillations, and patterns of living. She has exhibited sound and video art in galleries and concert settings across the U.S. and Canada. “Butterfly Effects,” her quadraphonic composition in SuperCollider based on butterfly migrations, was awarded a 2006 Frog Peak Experimental Music Prize, and the 2007 New Genre Composition Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music.

Tara also founded the critically acclaimed website Pinknoises.com, a resource for women who make electronic music and sound art. She is editing a related anthology of interviews, under contract with Duke University Press. Tara was a Visiting Professor of Sound at the Museum School in Boston in 2004-05, and a Canada-U.S. Fulbright scholar in 2006-07. She is a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill University.

I am working with Rodgers on a SuperCollider interface for the instrument–one that highlights some of the electromagnetic interference elements of its sound output, as well as developing algorithmic reactions within the system that work with melting ice, dripping water, etc as metaphors. I have also commissioned from Rodgers 10 minutes of background sounds and/or compositions for diffusion during performances/installations of the Icebreaker.

Anna Friz - Anna Friz is a sound and radio artist who divides her time between Montreal and Toronto. Since 1998 she has predominantly created self-reflexive radio art/works for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. She also creates dynamic, atmospheric sound works for theatre, dance and solo performance that are equally able to reflect upon public media culture or to reveal interior landscapes.

Anna has created sound design for theatre, dance, locative media, and outdoor happenings in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Past productions include Turandot 127 (Alexandra Diebel, UBC, 1997), Telling She (Sean Dorsey, MainDance, Vancouver, 1999), Testing: the memory of a nation (Sharon Feder, Norman Rothstein Theatre, Vancouver, 2002), The Harvey Christ Medicine Show (Fringe Festival, Montreal and Winnipeg, 2005). Since moving to Toronto, Anna has worked with Mark Cassidy as part of the Deep Wireless Radio Theatre troupe (2005, 2006), and as sound designer on Theatre Direct’s The Demonstration (2006). She designed sound, characters, script and interactions for the mobile game The Haunting for the Mobile Digital Commons Network (2006-2007), and is working in the Future Cinemas lab at York University consulting on sound for augmented reality projects. She is currently designing the sound system for the Public Recordings’ production open field study (all together now) for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche on September 29, 2007.

In her sound art practice, Anna has presented installation and performance works across Canada and in international media art contexts such as the Third Coast Audio Festival, Chicago; PS122, NYC; Digitales, Bruxelles; Radiophonic 07, Bruxelles; Club Transmediale, Berlin; Tesla, Berlin; die Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Ars Electronica, Linz Austria; Observatori, Valencia Spain; the Fifth International Biennial of Radio, Mexico City; and Arte Nuevo Interactiva, Yucatan. Her radio art/works have been commissioned by national public radio in Canada, Austria, Germany, Danmark and Mexico, and heard on independent airwaves in more than 15 countries. Anna is a free103point9.org transmission artist.

I will develop compositions for the Icebreaker with Friz in conjunction with working with Rodgers. I have also commissioned two original 10 minute compositions from Friz for blending with live sounds during performances of the Icebreaker.

Karmen Franinovic - Karmen received the Laurea degree summa cum laude from Istituto Universitario di Archittetura di Venezia, and the Master’s degree from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. She is a PhD candidate in the School of Computing, Communications and Electronics at University of Plymouth, and pursues her research through Z-node at ZHdK. She has worked as an architect on large public buildings with AltenArchitekten, Studio ArchA, Arata Isozaki and Associates, and Arup. Karmen’s research is increasingly focused on sound and movement in enactive interfaces. She leads related interaction design research for a European Commission NEST (New and Emerging Science and Technology) project called CLOSED: Closing the Loop of Sound Evaluation and Design. The project, developed together with colleagues at Ircam, TU-Berlin and Uni-Verona, researches new approaches to interactive sound design that are robustly adapted to human perception and cognition. Recently, Karmen was appointed to be a Swiss delegate to the new European COST Network on Sonic Interaction Design which she proposed with colleges across Europe and Canada.

In her practical work, Karmen focuses on the critical and playful uses of interactive technology embedded in architectures and artefacts of everyday life. Through creative and tangible interactions, people engage in producing social and sensorial changes of their surroundings, and by doing so, challenge their own habitual uses of places and artefacts. Karmen’s organization, Zero-Th develops concepts and projects which aim to explore and influence the evolution of the multidimensional urban fabric, together with the presence and condition of its inhabitants. Her work has been presented at and commissioned by Ircam/Centre Pompidou (Paris), SF Camerawork (San Francisco), Fondazione Sandretto (Torino), MoMA Ljubljana, Far Eastern Memorial Foundation (Taipei), DEAF (Rotterdam), The Junction (Cambridge), Interstices - Hexagram (Montreal) and others.

I will be working with Franinovic on developing the architecture of the instrument and expanding my ideas as to how it can work as an “enactive” interface, focusing on touch, the use of space and the development of the interactive potential contained within ice. I have also commissioned from Franinovic two original 5 minute compositions for background diffusion with the installation.

George Stamos – George Stamos has evolved his aesthetic and professional dance practice as a contemporary dance nomad over the past 14 years. In 1993 Stamos graduated from The School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. From 1993-1998, he lived mostly in New York City where he was commissioned by PS122 to choreograph his first full-length piece Red Light Roosters. George created and performed solo work throughout New York’s downtown theatre circuit. He also danced for several choreographers in the downtown scene.

Since establishing a residence in Montreal in 1998, Stamos has danced with choreographers Jose Navas, Benoit Lachambre, Roger Sinha, Danielle Desnoyers, Martha Carter, Mariko Tanabe, Isabelle Van Grimde and is currently a collaborator in projects with Sara Shelton Mann (San Francisco company Contraband).

In 2001 George completed a year long choreographic apprenticeship with Benoit Lachambre and in 2006-2007 has attended 3 separate Choreographic Labs with mentors, Mark Tompkins (Tanz im August, Internationales Tanzfest, Berlin), Ted Robinson (Banf Center For The Arts) and Beppie Blankert (Jacobs Pillow). Stamos has created twenty choreographies thus far. His recent work Reservoir created as part of the CanDance Creation Fund Commission toured across Canada to positive acclaim in 2006 and he will premier new work at CDF June 2008.

I will be working with Stamos on developing choreography and a repertoire of movements for performing with the Icebreaker as a form of interactive instrument. Stamos’ own practice feeds the project as a source of inspiration, even though the media are different (i.e., the Icebreaker is not a dance piece). His choreographic consultations will in part be focused on finding movements that distill a state of softness with the instrument, which has the potential to quickly become a cacophony of percussive noise.

Yvan Cazabon – Yvan Cazabon is an Associate Professor at Carleton University’s School of Architecture where he teaches Architectural Design, Architectural Technology, Design/Build Studios and Theatre Production/Set design/Lighting Design workshops. His Theatre production
workshop, in association with Algonquin College’s Theatre program, has produced numerous plays in the Ottawa area including Waiting for Godot (NAC 4th Stage), Dreaming and Dueling (Bronson Centre), Marion Bridge (Algonquin Theatre) and The Servant of Two Masters (Carleton PIT). Cazabon has been a member of the board of directors for the New Theatre of Ottawa since 1995 and with this group designed the sets for Brothers of the Brush in 1998. Other set designs include Gigi presented by the Ottawa Little Theatre in 2003.

Cazabon has worked as an architectural designer and project job captain in numerous architectural firms in the Ottawa area since 1988 on projects ranging in scale from residential to commercial and institutional. In 1991 he was hired by Cite Collegiale to assist in the program definition and competition guidelines for their new campus complex in the city’s east end. More recently, on a design team with Martin Conboy Lighting Design and Graham Murfitt Architect, he assisted in the program development and schematic design strategy for La Nouvelle Scene theatre on King Edward Ave. Cazabon continues to volunteer his time and expertise to the Development committee of the Arts Court Foundation and its Board of Directors since 2004. Cazabon also takes-on occasional residential design projects with his partner in the design firm Dwell-O established in 2003.

I will work with Cazabon on an interactive lighting design for the Icebreaker, exploring different environments and contexts (such as indoor or outdoor exhibitions, performances on-stage, and room-sized installations). This research will build on initial meetings and investigations with Cazabon from February 2007, and will take place during a 25 hour residency in the Carleton Architecture department’s theatrical space “the Pit” in April 2008 (see timeline). Cazabon has presented many possibilities for mixing light, water, ice and sound in the context of this research, and also brings theoretical, architectural and material expertise to the project.

Rami Nuseir, an M.A. student in Media Studies at Concordia University with a specialization in sound and intermedia production will be providing technical assistance with equipment and recording during residencies.

Other Previous Collaborators

Research Assistants

“The Ice Xylophone - Design/Build”
Bradley Hindson (Student, Masters of Architecture, Carleton University)

Sound, Post-production Video Editing
Dave Madden (Student, M.A. Media Studies, Concordia University) http://myspace.com/miracling

Sound Contributors
Andra McCartney (Assoc. Professor - Communication Studies, Concordia University) http://andrasound.org

Tim Hecker (PhD Candidate, Communication Studies, McGill University), http://www.sunblind.net/

Video Contributors
Liz Miller (Assist. Professor - Communication Studies, Concordia University)