Category: talks

Symposium: Harnessing Energies in the Arts & Humanities

Energies in the Arts, the new collection edited by Professor Douglas Kahn (UNSW Art & Design) and published by MIT Press, explores the pluralistic concepts of energies—scientific, cultural, spiritual, ecological – as they occur in the arts, history and theory. To celebrate the release of this book, a symposium of scholars whose research intersects with, utilises, and explores various concepts of energy, will present and discuss their work with the public. The symposium is convened by Dr Heather Contant and moderated by Mitchell Ryan.

The symposium will be followed by a book launch by Joyce Hinterding (Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney) and performance by Peter Blamey.

Thursday, 12 September 2019
Symposium – 1:00pm to 5:00pm

Black Box@ UNSW Art and Design
Corner of Oxford Street and Greens Road

This event is sponsored by the Sound, Energies and Environments (SEE) Research Group and UNSW Art & Design.

Image: Peter Blamey, UTS Gallery, 2017. Photo: David Lawrey, courtesy UTS Arts

Forces in Music – From music to sound to energy to music: a deeper ecology

If John Cage argued that all sound can be music, and if sound is but one form of energy among others, then what of energies and music?

In this lecture Douglas Kahn investigates how composers and artists have engaged the sounds of natural radio; the electromagnetic energies of the Earth first heard twenty years before Marconi. Kahn discusses the concept of energy music as it applies to contemporary music; including sonic arts, contemporary classical, and free jazz. This provocative lecture raises questions regarding the nature of performance, composition and musical practice.

Direct links are also formed between the nature of sounds and energies, and the health of our planet. The lecture will be followed by a performance by Peter Blamey that explores the transformation of electromagnetic energy into sound. To conclude Alister Spence will interview Dougals Kahn and Peter Blamey seeking to link this field of sonic exploration to conventional musical practices. There will be time for audience questions.

Interviewer: Dr Alister Spence, Lecturer at UNSW, School of Arts and Media. Composer and improviser.

22 Feb 2019, 3pm – 5pm
Robert Webster Building (G14), Studio 334, UNSW Kensington Campus
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