The Upgrade! Montreal :: The In & Out of the Sound Studio conference

The Upgrade! Montreal
presents the In & Out of the Sound Studio conference on gender and sound
technology, in collaboration with Concordia University. Featuring performances
by artists Sylvie Chénard, Ellen Waterman,
Airi Yoshioka, Shona Dietz & Éveline
Boudreau. With hosts Liselyn Adams & tobias c. van veen.
http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca | www.andrasound.org

07:00pm – 07:10pm:
Introduction to The Upgrade!
07:10pm – 07:40pm: Ellen Waterman
07:45pm – 08:15pm: Sylvie Chénard
08:20pm – 08:50pm: Airi Yoshioka
09:00pm – 09:30pm: Shona Dietz & Éveline Boudreau
10:00pm – 00:00am: [MixSessions]

Ellen Waterman
Ellen Waterman is Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art and Music at
the University of Guelph. Waterman is a professional flutist specializing in
improvisation and contemporary music, and her research is at the intersection
of performance studies, ethnomusicology and critical theory. Her anthology Sonic
Geography Imagined and Remembered (Penumbra 2002) provides the first cultural
critique of acoustic ecology. She is founding co-editor of the open access electronic
journal Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation
(http://www.criticalimprov.com).

(Wo)männlicher
Radio

Radio art has recently
been described as “the preserve of nerdy, technically savvy boys”
(Zeleke, 11). Yet women have long been at the forefront of radio art in Canada.
It seems that, beyond empirical evidence about women’s participation in
radio art there is a persistent perception that radio art per se is performatively
masculine (if not “nerdy”). Historical narratives that position radio
art as an outgrowth of 20th century avant-gardism tend to support this position
(Kahn and Whitehead, Lander).

In this paper and
performance I will explore gender performativity in radio art through campus
community radio, documenting my own intervention in the longstanding male radio
art collective Männlicher Carcano (named after the gun Lee Harvey Oswald
putatively used to assassinate Kennedy). I will draw upon both performance studies
and gender studies to interrogate received notions about the ‘masculinity’
of radio art. Through an analysis of my own and other women’s radio art,
I will suggest ways in which radio art may resist binary gender coding, inflected
by crosscutting issues of race, place, class, and sexuality.

Sylvie
Chénard
Sylvie Chénard has been a multidisciplinary artist for more than twenty years,
mostly as an electric guitar player, a singer and a poet. She produced “Les
projets de la baleine” (1989-2005), researches, creations and experimental and
improvised musical happenings, hybrid and socially engaged in their forms and
in their spirit. She released several CDs, in solo and in partnerships, including
“Hybride”, which was about the human rights declaration, “Manifeste” to protest
against violence towards women, “Océan à vendre/for sale” which talks about
the urban fables of science fiction in the totalitarian everyday life. In 1994,
she published “Chansons et chroniques de la baleine” at Éditions Tryptique.
From 1998 onwards, she developed the site dedicated to “Les projets de la baleine”
(http://www.lesprojetsdelabaleine.net)
. Since 2003, she creates interactive and feminist multimedia and improvisation
projects, which allow her to revisit and actualize her sound and video works
on a constant and simultaneous basis, with her electric guitar, her voice, digital
tools, pictures, images, videos and poems. She held an artist residency at Studio
XX in 2004, “DIY: Brouillage cyprine”, and presented her shows at Salon des
Femmes branchées and at UQAM’s Agora for March 8, Women’s International Day
(http://www.lesprojetsdelabaleine.net/Cyprine.htm).
Recently, she finished a school project, the gameware “Culture et féminisme:
pour changer le monde” and its complementary text (http://www.lesprojetsdelabaleine.net/Culture.htm).
Last year, she obtained her Master degree in Communication (Interactive multimedia)
from UQAM.
She currently works at creating a multidisciplinary project featuring the “Chansons
et chroniques de la baleine 1999-2004”, “Anamnèse Script Amérique” and she participates
in the Zone Grise collective.

Revisiter la
culture / To revisit the culture / Revisitar la cultura

Sylvie Chénard
presents a solo sound and multimedia improvisation performance: Revisiter
la culture/To revisit the culture/Revisitar la cultura. This performance
will be followed by a mini-conference and a discussion with the audience, in
French, regarding sound and music improvisation with today’s means in
interactive multimedia, and intents of feminism, which introduce new cultural
paradigms.

The performance
will simultaneously present a sound and music improvisation using electric guitar,
voice, electronic instruments, and a match on the feminist educational gameware
“Culture et féminisme: pour changer le monde”, projected on
giant screen.

Sylvie Chénard
created this gameware while completing her Master degree in Communication (Interactive
multimedia) at UQAM, mostly in 2002.

Airi Yoshioka
Bio:
Airi Yoshioka has concertized throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and
Canada as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. She is the founding member
of Damocles Trio and Modigliani Quartet. Her orchestral credits include performances
with the American Sinfonietta and engagements as concertmaster and soloist with
the Manhattan Virtuosi and concertmaster of one of the festival orchestras at
the Aspen Music Festival. An enthusiastic performer of new music, she was one
of the original members and concertmasters of the New Juilliard Ensemble and
has performed annually in the school’s FOCUS! Festival as
well as with the ModernWorks!, Continuum, and RUCKUS. A winner of a concerto
competition at the Juilliard School, she holds M.M and D.M.A. from The Juilliard
School and B.A. from Yale University, and currently teaches at University of
Maryland Baltimore County as an assistant professor of violin.

Abstract:
I have been funded by the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where I am
an assistant professor of violin, to record a CD of works for violin and electronics
by women composers. I will present these works in a recital or lecture-recital
format at the “In and Out of the Sound Studio”. The works on the program
are: Karen Tanaka’s Wave Mechanics II, Linda Dusman’s magnificat
III: lament, Alice Shields’ Kyrielle, Milica Paranosic’s yet untitled
work, and excerpts of a work by Tania León. With the exception of Karen
Tanaka’s Wave Mechanics II, all the works are commissioned by and written
for me.

My interest in
electro-acoustic works by women composers began five years ago when I discovered
Karen Tanaka’s Wave Mechanics II as a part of my dissertation research.
While the focus of the dissertation was finding a unique and original voice
in Japanese composers, I was subsequently led to investigate another group of
underrepresented composers. Since then, it has been a meaningful journey to
seek out women composers and watch them realize their voices in an electro-acoustic
medium.

Shona Dietz
& Éveline Boudreau
Shona Dietz is a practicing multimedia artist living in Saskatchewan, who has
been involved in performance, intervention and technological creativity for
the past ten years. She often works collaboratively with other women artists
exploring gender and social identities through the narrative. Many of her installations
combine sound or video work with more traditional art forms, challenging both
history and contemporary methodologies. As a result, her works inevitably investigate
the validity of memory, both human and technological. In the cultural community,
she has been involved in numerous arts organizations and is currently active
as the CARFAC Sask Provincial Representative.

Éveline
Boudreau’s artistic background is grounded in clay and ceramics. Over the past
decade she has become increasingly involved in video, and installations which
include multi-media and performance. Her favorite topics include language, identity
and women’s issues. Of Acadian origin from New Brunswick, she is currently pursuing
her career as an artist in Saskatchewan while tutoring French part time and
being active in local, provincial and national artist organizations. She always
finds ways to involve her audience in her art work.

En confidence

Technology transcends
language and social classes. It pervades our modern lives, to the point of seeming
essential to our very existence. We live every moment in an electronic space
where science promises to fashion, comfort, protect and emancipate us. But does
it?

How free are we
when the cell phone rings – do we answer it or not – is there even a choice?
Can we be located by simply answering? How safe are we if the caller is “ID
unknown”? Does technology’s perfect memory help us or inhibit us? Have
we grown into a false sense of security? Does privacy still exist?

Using sound technology
with visual performance, we investigate the use of the cellular phone by women
and for women in times of crisis. We question the validity of its freeing powers
in cases of abuse. We question its ability to remember without error. We also
question our own ability to use it successfully when it is needed the most.
Do we need to step outside this technological box to truly feel human again?
Our electronic accessories are not human, they cannot feel…or can they?