[Webcast Only] HKNME | Sonic Ecology Digital Conference Three-day Digital Conference
VIEW EVENT DETAILSDecember 4th-6th, 2020
A three-day digital conference, keynote speakers and guest artists will share with international audience with paper presentations and workshops from a wide variety of interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives, focusing on innovative sound-based projects that address environmental awareness and engagement to realize sound-based initiatives that facilitate new artistic connections with the natural world, or to address - directly or conceptually - pressing environmental issues.
Art, Ecology and Destruction in Wang Chau Village: A Walk with Entanglements
Talk by Michael LEUNG, Artist and designer
Saturday, December 5th, 2020 | 2:00pm - 2:30pm
Michael Leung is an artist/designer, researcher and visiting lecturer. He was born in London and moved to Hong Kong eleven years ago to complete a Masters in Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His projects range from collective agriculture projects such as The HK FARMers' Almanac 2014-2015 to Pangkerchief, a collection of objects produced by Pang Jai fabric market in Sham Shui Po.
Leung is a visiting lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University where he teaches social practice (MA). He is currently researching the colonial residue and (non-)indigenous entanglements in the New Territories through his solidarity with Wang Chau villagers, who are currently being evicted by the Hong Kong government. (More Details)
ARIA: a song of air beyond the Anthropocene
Talk by Eugene Birman & Kingsley Ng
Saturday, 5th December, 2020 | 2:30pm - 3:00pm
Eugene Birman, A composer of music of “high drama” and “intense emotion” (BBC), “at once, ingenious, hypnotic, brave, and beautiful” (Festival Internazionale A.F. Lavagnino), Eugene Birman (b. 1987) has written for symphony orchestras (London Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orquestra Gulbenkian), choirs (Theatre of Voices, BBC Singers, Latvian Radio Choir), and leading ensembles and soloists (Maxim Vengerov, Maurizio Ben Omar, etc.) across four continents in venues ranging from London’s Southbank Centre to Carnegie Hall to above the Arctic Circle. His highly public career, with appearances on CNN, BBC World TV, Radio France, Deutsche Welle, and others, is characterized by a fearless focus on socially relevant large-scale compositions covering the financial crisis, Russian border treaties, and more. Commissioners and partners for Birman’s work extend beyond the concert hall to major international bodies such as the European Union, the Austrian Foreign Ministry, and the Hong Kong SAR, as well as through prominent fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2018) and the US Department of State’s Fulbright Program (2010-11). Most recently, he was awarded the 2017 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize, leading to a season-long residency at the Southbank Centre and world premiere with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall, and appointed the sole Artist-in-Residence of the 2018 Helsinki Festival, Finland’s biggest yearly cultural event. In 2021, he takes up the position of Artist-in-Residence at the Manchester International Festival. A D.Phil recipient from the University of Oxford, he also holds degrees from Columbia University, the Juilliard School, and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana.
Kingsley Ng is an inter-disciplinary artist and designer with a focus on conceptual, site-specific, and community-engaging projects. He believes that art helps us to mediate our environment, whether as viewer or as participator. Like the grazing of the wind against grass, it is also about the experience as well as emotions. It reveals the invisible, gives shape to the intangible. These principles are driven not by a self-indulgent romance of art, but a belief that art can be socially relevant. Art provides a language to render social issues alive and meditate ideas and impressions that can engage across a larger public.
PATANGIS-BUWAYA and the Politics of Space: New Music and the Transformation of Landscapes in Late Capitalist Modernity
Paper Presentation by Dr Jonas BAES
Saturday, December 5th, 2020 | 3:00pm - 3:30pm
Jonas Baes, composer, ethnomusicologist, and cultural activist studied with Jose Maceda at the University of the Philippines and with Mathias Spahlinger at the Staatliche Hochchule fὒr Musik in Freiburg, Germany. He earned his doctorate in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines, with the dissertation "Modes of Appropriation in Philippine Indigenous Music: The Politics of the Production of Cultural Difference". His music compositions for traditional Asian instruments and vocal techniques, explore the aesthetisation of philosophies and social theories and constantly searches for the involvement the participation of the audience; these major works have been performed in various international festivals and sound installations in Asia, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. His writings about marginality and the sociology of music among indigenous peoples like the Iraya-Mangyan and the Dumagat are published in international peer-refereed academic journals. Baes has been invited as guest professor in the United States, Malaysia, Japan and Germany. In 2008-2009 he was awarded an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship by the Nippon Foundation. In 2009 he founded the Manila Composers Lab, which annually organises workshops for young composers in Southeast Asia. (More Details)
Listening to Ecosystems from Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Keynote presentation by Dr Leah BARCLAY, Sound artist, designer and researcher
Saturday, December 5th, 2020 | 3:30pm - 4:15pm
Dr Leah Barclay is a sound artist, designer and researcher who works at the intersection of art, science and technology. Barclay's research and creative work over the last decade has investigated innovative approaches to recording and disseminating the soundscapes of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to inform conservation, scientific research and public engagement. Her work explores ways we can use creativity, new technologies and emerging science to reconnect communities to the environment and inspire climate action.
Barclay has been the recipient of numerous awards and her work has been commissioned, performed and exhibited to wide acclaim internationally by organisations including the Smithsonian Museum, UNESCO, Ear to the Earth, Streaming Museum, Al Gore’s Climate Reality and the IUCN. Barclay’s augmented reality sound installations have been presented across the world from Times Square in New York City to the Eiffel Tower in Paris for COP21.
Barclay leads several research projects at USC in Australia including "Biosphere Soundscapes" and "River Listening" that focus on advancing the field of ecoacoustics. The design of these interdisciplinary projects are responsive to the needs of collaborating communities and involve the development of new technologies including remote sensing devices for the rainforest canopy and hydrophone recording arrays in aquatic ecosystems. (More Details)
For more upcoming programs, please visit https://asiasociety.org/hong-kong
香。校變奏 | 史嘉茵 [分享講座]
Saturday, 5th December, 2020 | 5:00pm - 5:30pm
史嘉茵
藝術家 香村創辦人
香港出生及成長,畢業於香港演藝學院,主修音響設計及音樂錄,在學期間音曾參與蘇格蘭皇家音樂及戲劇學院交流生計劃。。自2008年參加本地及海外舞台或藝術工作,作品曾在加拿大、夏威夷,瑞士,孟加拉,泰國、中國、台灣、日本及韓國等地展出。
史氏於2016年創辦非牟利音樂組織「香村」,以舉辦連結社區故事與環境之音樂計劃為主軸,透過與不同音樂人與社區合作,誘發更多元的音樂文化活動。於2016年出策劃並出版《香村》本地村民與音樂人共創之概念大碟,以音樂唱說來自村落的故事,2019年策劃《有你有我有田有山有水有意》村校校歌展及第一屆《香村音樂節》。
Listening to Ecosystems Workshop
Workshop by Dr. Leah Barclay
Saturday, 5th December 2020 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm
This workshop will involve a demonstration of different kinds of field recording technologies. Recent years has seen a rapid increase in scientific fields monitoring environmental change through sound. Digital acoustic recordings of the environment have the potential to address major gaps in our knowledge about ecosystems by using accessible non-invasive technology to monitor species and document temporal and spatial changes. This interactive workshop will allow participants to ask questions about different recording approaches for both artistic and scientific purposes and will close with a Q&A. (More Details)