Synesthesia + The Soundscape – Fall 2023

Back by popular demand, this coming fall we’ll be offering our sound and video synthesis course, Synesthesia on Monday evenings. In addition, we’re excited to be offering The Soundscape course for the first time since the pandemic. Course descriptions for both classes are below.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:   This studio course takes students on a sonic and visual journey into the exciting world of sound and video synthesis.  Beginning in the 1960’s through the present, sound and video synthesis techniques have been used by countless musicians, video artists, television studios and designers to create immersive, psychedelic and engaging multimedia projects in realtime.  Topics include sound and video synthesis concepts, hardware and software modular synthesizers for audio and video, projection mapping, generative art, audio reactive visuals, cameraless video and live performance.

Course Description:
This course provides an introduction to field recording and field recording composition (phonography), acoustic ecology and concepts of deep listening through the exploration of multiple acoustic environments throughout Baltimore City and its surrounding counties. The class will also take an anthropological approach and consider how different cultures, urban development and humans have influenced our sonic environment throughout history while considering its positive and negative effects.

Topics covered will include soundscape theory and history, microphones and recorders, in field techniques and tools for recording sound, working in a variety of locations, basic sound editing and composition, working with Natural VLF (Very-Low-Frequency) phenomena, microsound, aural architecture, noise, hydrophones for underwater recording, building contact microphones and acousmatic composition.

In addition to multiple creative projects the class will also produce a future edition of Framework, a weekly sixty minute international radio program dedicated to field recording and its use in composition.

The Vigil 2022

Join us for the 12th annual VIGIL. This year’s event will broadcast live on our TWITCH channel April 22 and 23. Both nights will begin at 6pm and wrap around 2am. We have an amazing line up again this year with student performances from the Live Electronic Music and Sound Art courses. In addition to our special guest musicians from around the globe.

SOUND ART TWITCH CHANNEL

Do to the ongoing pandemic, we’ll be on TWITCH TV again this year but are hopeful we can return to our normal face to face, live event next year.

Poster design by MICA Sound Art student Maya Halko.

Interactive Arts + Sound Art Open House

Undecided about your major? Are you into maker culture, sound, electronic music, performance, robots, immersion, video synthesis, interactive installation art, etc ? Come visit the Interactive Arts + Sound Art Open House this Wednesday from 3-4pm. We’ll answer all your questions 🙂
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Dolphin Bldg – 2nd Floor and/or Brown Center Recording Studio 207
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For current MICA students only.
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Music by Sound Art student @davidbarba_

New release by MICA Sound Art Student Bao Nguyen

Sound Art student Bao Nguyen has just released their new E.P. Vong.

Bao writes: “Vọng means to yearn, to miss, and to recall. It also describes sonic reverberation. The EP “Vọng” includes a series of songs that remix other Vietnamese songs written mainly during the 1900s. “Vọng” is an encounter, a reunion, a search for new meanings and feelings for songs that are written in the past, but not old.

The 2020 Virtual Vigil

Due to COVID-19, the 2020 MICA Vigil – All Night Music Festival had to be cancelled. But the students in Jason Sloan’s Live Electronik Musik course performed and recorded their live sets remotely for this special 3 hour mix we call The Virtual Vigil. So kick back, chill out and enjoy.

Esther Jiao – 0:00 – 16:48
Jennifer Lee – 16:49 – 21:50
Gabriel Chez – 21:51 – 34:49
Uriel Cruz – 34:50 – 38:05
Dev Valladares – 38:06 – 58:50
Ashton Redman – 58:01 – 1:07:00
Lila Church – 1:08:00 – 1:25:00
Simon Shankweller – 1:26:00 – 1:35:00
Nick Kolasny – 1:36:00 – 1:56:00
L’Avenir (Jason Sloan) – 1:57:00 – 1:59:00
Amber Roberts – 2:00:00 – 2:16:00
Xi Yu – 2:17:00 – 2:30:00
Uriel Cruz – 2:31:00 – 2:40:00
Simon Shankweller – 2:41:00 – 2:47:00
Uriel Cruz – 2:48:00 – 2:53:00

Alan Licht at MICA

Sound Art at MICA presents a conversion about Sound Art with Musician and Author Alan Licht. Licht has lectured widely on sound art and served as faculty in the Music/Sound department at the Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He is a contributing music editor at BOMB magazine and writes frequently for Artforum, Art Review, Parkett, Organised Sound and the WIRE.

His new book Sound Art Revisited was published last year by Bloomsbury Academic and can be purchased at all good book retailers. Alan will also have copies available for sale after the talk.

Sound Art Revisited at AMAZON 

Free Admission
7pm
Fred Lazarus IV Center Auditorium
131 W North Ave
Baltimore, MD 21201

Soundscape 2019

We’re excited to be offering a new Sound Art course this coming Fall 2020: The Soundscape

Course Description:
This course provides an introduction to field recording and field recording composition (phonography), acoustic ecology and concepts of deep listening through the exploration of multiple acoustic environments throughout Baltimore City and its surrounding counties. The class will also take an anthropological approach and consider how different cultures, urban development and humans have influenced our sonic environment throughout history while considering its positive and negative effects.

Topics covered will include soundscape theory and history, microphones and recorders, in field techniques and tools for recording sound, working in a variety of locations, basic sound editing and composition, working with Natural VLF (Very-Low-Frequency) phenomena, microsound, aural architecture, noise, hydrophones for underwater recording, building contact microphones and acousmatic composition.

In addition to multiple creative projects the class will also produce a future edition of Framework, a weekly sixty minute international radio program dedicated to field recording and its use in composition