people working in Studio AProfessor Brent Lee (in red) works with research assistants with the Noiseborder Ensemble in designing Supernatant, a new work that involves the tracking of objects in a video feed and mapping the data to graphics generation, sound processing and sound spatialization in real time. Photo by Sigi Torinus.

Series to spotlight artistic collaboration

A series of presentations and performances over the next few days will showcase collaboration between the University of Windsor’s Noiseborder Ensemble and guest artists from Concordia University’s matralab.

In/fuse 19 is that latest in a series of multimedia performances and runs Saturday, March 29, through Tuesday, April 1.

Matralab is a research node for interdisciplinary, intercultural, intermedia art; director Sandeep Bhaghwati holds the Canada Research Chair for Inter-X Art. The Noiseborder Ensemble creates works featuring a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments as well as live processing and mixing of sound and video.

Saturday will see a symposium and demonstrations from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Lambton Tower’s Studio A, capped with a multimedia performance by matralab associates Jen Reimer, Max Stein and Adam Basanta at 11 p.m. in the Centre for Engineering Innovation’s Industrial Courtyard.

The other events are all in Studio A:

On Monday, March 31, Reimer and Stein will deliver an artists’ talk entitled “Sounding the City” at 1 p.m. and a multimedia performance at 7:30 p.m. will feature members of both groups

On Tuesday, April 1, professor Bhagwati will deliver his lecture “Towards a Post-Exotistic, Glocal Music” at 1 p.m. and the culminating program at 7:30 p.m. will include works by each of the ensembles as well as a piece developed in collaboration.

Ensemble member Sigi Torinus says this type of collaboration takes practice.

“We will all learn something new,” she says. “Each of us knows something the other one doesn’t.”

Her work centres on creating a dialogue between sound and image. She says event attendees will have different levels of appreciation depending on whether they are new to this type of art or involved in its creation themselves.

“We try to keep in mind what it is we are attempting to communicate, but one thing is for sure: if you come, you will see what people are doing at the cutting edge of these fields.”

All of the events are free and open to the public.

The interactive piece “Prana,” which projects a video image in response to the amplitude of the sound generated by wind instruments, is on the program for Tuesday’s performance. Video and interactive design by Sigi Torinus; in the clip above, Trevor Pittman on clarinet.