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LEARN 2009



(GO TO the archives for the rest of the 2009 MEGAPOLIS Festival in Boston)

An Unlikely Monument - Dirk Adams

This participatory audio tour explored the making of a public work of art in a neighborhood near Harvard Square.

Dirk Adams is an artist living in Rosindale, MA and one half of the Gang Clan Mafia.

Audio (De)construction - Gregory Whitehead

Participants sat down with award-winning audio artist Gregory Whitehead for a personalized review and critique of their audio work-in-progress, project idea, and/or completed work.

Creating a Third Reality: The Visual in Sound Art - New School Faculty & Students

Panelists from The New School’s Media Studies department moderated a seminar-style discussion exploring how the visual realm is utilized in sound art works. Aural / visual coincident themes were discussed, such as: visualizing radio, device design, audio tours, soundtrack and scoring, live performance, and web radio stations.

Full presentation:
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How Art and Music Can Change the World - Jean Smith & David Lester (Mecca Normal)

Through this lecture, art exhibit and performance event that has toured through university classrooms and bookstores, Jean Smith and David Lester of the underground literary rock duo Mecca Normal intend to inspire audiences towards considering political content in their creative self-expression.

Logan’s Walk: Urban Cartography in the Flyzone - Pejk Malinovski & Ian Gray

Disembarking at Logan, Pejk and Ian approached the city like every other traveler, but did it at their own speed — walking. The workshop traced the findings of this movement as an audio slideshow, performance, and conversation.

Pejk Malinovski is a writer and a radio producer, and an associate producer with WNYC’s Studio 360.

Ian Gray is a sometimes radio producer, but frequent walker.

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Lost Film Fest - Scott Beibin

A fun mix of live performance and rare short films featuring pranks by culture jammers like The Yes Men, sexy-smash-it-up riot footage, illegal art, media archaeology, clips censored by the mainstream media, and video re-mixes.

VJ Scott Beibin is the co-founder of the Evil Twin Booking Agency which he runs with partner Liz Cole, organizing tours for Bill Ayers, Vandana Shiva, Dead Prez, and many more.

Music for Circumstances - Benjamin Chaffee

A sound piece by Benjamin Chaffee for listening to on personal headphones while riding the MBTA Red Line from Park Street to Alewife. For the best coordination with the train, start the piece when the train starts moving at Park Street. The piece is available for free download from musicforcircumstances.com.

Benjamin Chaffee is an artist living and working in Boston, MA.

Not just for Writers’ Al-maniacs: Thinking Poetically about Radio - Dennis Conrow & Jesse Dukes


Photo credit: Amber Cortes

Producers Dennis Conrow and Jesse Dukes led a workshop creating a sound art toolkit by examining the poet’s tools of the trade.

Dennis Conrow is the assistant producer of the nationally syndicated public radio literary program New Letters on the Air.

Jesse Dukes is an independent radio producer and an Associate Producer of With Good Reason, a Virginia-based public radio program.

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Practical Perceptual Ergonomics for Audio - Aaron Soloway

A practical guide to auditory perception is laid out through telling the specific story of binauralairwaves.com - a recording project that seeks to deliver the most perceptually realistic recordings in the world.

Aaron Soloway is an engineer at a Cambridge-based start-up that invents technology to reverse engineer mammals’ (humans, dolphins, bats, etc.) hearing systems for a wide variety of applications, including gunshot detection.

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Sonic Ethnography, or Documentary without Words: From Field Recordings to Recording Fields - Ernst Karel & Stefan Helmreich


Ernst Karel. Photo credit: Rich Orris

This session presented audio work for listening and for a discussion of how audio can function in a documentary or ethnographic way without narration or voiceover.

Ernst Karel is a musician, sound recordist, and composer, whose work has ranged from acoustic to electronic and from improvisation to installation.

Stefan Helmreich is a Professor of Anthropology at MIT, where he teaches courses in science, technology, and society.

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Unsound Mind - Nick van der Kolk


Photo credit: Amber Cortes

A surreal audio tour and listening party inside an abandoned mental health ward, hosted (remotely) by a world-famous psychiatrist. This session was originally busted by security, but attendees reconvened at 2am that night to finish the tour.

Nick van der Kolk is an audio maker and co-director of the Megapolis Festival. He lives in the Bronx, NY.

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Q&A (recorded at 4am):
QandA

WFMU’s Free Music Archive - Liz Berg & Jason Sigal


Photo credit: Rich Orris

Liz Berg and Jason Sigal gave a tour on the history of copyright and the newest project by freeform station WFMU, the Free Music Archive, an interactive online library of high-quality, curated audio with progressive licensing.

Liz Berg is the Assistant General Manager of WFMU.

Jason Sigal is WFMU’s Licensing Director, and curates the station’s contributions to the Free Music Archive.

Your Phone is Your Mic: Stories and Sounds Shared Over the Phone - Laura Kwerel, Walker Mettling & Dial-A-Stranger

Using the telephone to peek into private lives: why and how. Part instruction manual, part listening party, four presenters let you in on the intimacy (and sometimes cruelty) of using Ma Bell as your mic.

Zachary Kent and Mercedes Martinez started Dial-A-Stranger to highlight the stories of everyday people and to be the excitement they wanted to see in the world. They live in Austin, TX.

Laura Kwerel is a public radio producer. She lives in Fairfax, VA.

Walker Mettling is an artist/curator who drags as many people into his projects as he can. He lives in Providence, RI.

Full presentation:
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