Experimental
sound art and environmental preservation meet through
the actions and publications of EcoSono. We
create conduits for the expression
of free imagination through new media, pursuing commonalities
between innovative musical creation and ecological awareness.
EcoSono
challenges social assumptions about music by encouraging sonic nonconformity.
We embrace a creative philosophy of human expression in symbiosis with
the spaces that surround us -- imaginative multimedia sound art for a
sustainable future.
Projects
include interactive ecologies, human-computer-environment interaction,
ecoacoustics, and experimental multimedia.
By
involving the arts in environmentalism with the assistance of
science, the EcoSono Institute cultivates peaceful, sonorous relationships
between people and beautiful places on our planet.
EcoSono
Institute Alaska is a partnership with Alaska Pacific
University. Participants study ecoacoustics, Alaskan ecology,
environmental recording, computer music and sound art composition
while exploring the beauty and culture of Alaska’s Chugach
Park and Kennai Peninsula regions.
Psyche
Music, the Belgian Publication for “Real Progressive / Creative
Psychedelic /Chamber Music/ New Music Crossovers” has published
an extensive feature on the EcoSono catalog. Some highlights from
Gerald Van Waes’ review about Agents Against Agency:
“The rhythms have something natural as if being moved by the
wind, at the same time the patterns dance quietly into the environment.
Nice to watch! It makes the natural environment more human, as if
these areas are intermingled… Detached from the situation,
but like one with pleasure of having done this project. …It
is a sonic investigation of the machine, showing well-fit image/sound
interaction….Nice to listen to this interactive composition
with a whole auditorium of (some 250) PC’s, with surprising
details in the evolution. …black and white night visions of
moving clouds, mixed with a bar code-like image distortion and in
the end some early morning images of the sea.”
This is
a compelling selection of art that is both engaging to the ears
and to the eyes.” Alexandra Gardner,
New Music Box
Agents
Against Agency explores the power of emergent systems and
human group improvisation in dialog with nature. Each piece on
this DVD decenters human individualist expression -- i.e. "agency"
-- in an interesting way. The collection opens artistic perception
to phenomena of emergence and improvisation, exposing us to dynamic
and spontaneous forms of beauty, in collaboration with nature.
featuring
12-dog Cycle, Christopher Burns, Matthew Burtner, Ted Coffey,
David Dinnell, Emergence Collective, EMMI, Rosalind Hall, IMRG,
MICE, Pinko Communoids and Yuri Spitsyn
Agents
Against Agency at Technosonics XII --"Light"
Ted Coffey and Aaron Henderson's "Parabolic Fountain Music"
and Christopher Burns/David Dinnell's "Before the Seiche" will
be featured at the Technsonics XII Festival, September 23, 2011
EcoAcoustics:
The World Song: Matthew Burtner featured on "Here
On Earth, Radio Without Borders"
"Lava, wind, sand, ice, snow and occasional radio frequencies: this
is the stuff out of which Matthew Burtner creates his soundscapes. A native
of Alaska, Burtner makes wildly evocative compositions inspired by the
natural environment." - Jean Feraca
EcoSono presents
the global circumnavigation tour of the Mobile Interactive Computer
Ensemble (MICE). Traveling 30,000 miles by ship around the world,
MICE performed an ambitious series of concerts engaging with diverse
environments and cultures of the world. MICE employs interactive
acoustics and a networked human/computer ensemble to create deep
collaborations between ecologies, human musicians and computer
systems. This album features select compositions from the tour.
2/10/10: Sandprints
reached #19 on the Indie Music.com Electronica Charts!
Susanna
Glaser of The WIRE lists the MICE World Tour album among her top 10 albums
of 2009.
Reviews
of "MICE World Tour"
"Curious and
striking…could serve as a healing music, so relaxing, soothing,
yet elevated and artistically sounding a playful note. It is inspired
and exhilarating. The use of natural sounds is not cliche and nothing
is “dance/ambient", despite the computer drones or percussion
rhythms. The sounds push and push and swing slowly and relax there. Folk
and jazz weave themselves among the sensitive natural soundscapes, and
folklore yields to sounds, voices and samples. Yet no music in the traditional
sense can be heard here. Rather, an impressive audio noise builds, one
that casts its spell and displaces any crisis, any stress. There is no
kitsch harmony, no release, and no commonplace chumming. MICE plays real,
real music for the mind and body."
- Volkmar Mantei, Ragazzi Magazine, Germany
“MICE have played
all around the world, using their laptops and a variety of instruments
and sound sources… sand sources even. Sandprints has a nice, poppy
touch to it… an electro-dance piece with great childlike rhythms.
Great. 'World Strings' processes all sorts of string instruments together
in a nice piece. Quite a varied album." - FdW, Vital Weekly in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Reviews
of "Signal Ruins" "
Matthew Burtner plays with beauty, coolness and space. Halfway between chamber
music and sound sculpture! Dialogues, modulations, swirl, noise, dissonance,
metallic roar, crackle: nothing can break the expressive unity." -Sonhors e-Zine, Rennes, France, April 2009
"there
is a strong sense of circular causality, the players and instruments, now
strewn with tin foil, colluding or at least co-constituting each other in
the seemingly blind surge into a dissonant, almost ecstatic anti-chorus
of metallic shrieking, stresses, and crackle...a most trenchant experience
in ritual." -
Max Schaefer, Further Noise, London, UK more
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Reviews
of "Signal Ruins"
