a symposium on music & sound art with participating audiences
Friday 5 April 2024
9:25am to 5pm
at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
It is true that in any kind of performance or exhibition, the audience is participating, exactly by being an audience – listeners, spectators.
But, in some works, the audience participates in a more ‘visible’ way. Sometimes, the work does depend on actions by the audience to happen. The audience can even be seen as… a performer!
This symposium brings a full day of talks, performances, artworks demonstrations, and discussions focused on music and sound art works which have the participation of audiences as essential part of their artistic concept.
Our guest speakers include scholars, composers, performers and sound artists who are among the leading figures on this topic.
This event is free, but we ask kindly that attendants register for research purposes.
This event is linked to the project music as an invitation – liveness in digital piano performances through participating audiences, a Marie Słodowska-Curie Postdoctoral research led by Késia Decoté, generously funded by the European Union.
Programme
9:00 – 9:25: Arrival – tea & coffee
9:25 – 9:30: Welcome
9:30 – 10:30: Sara Carvalho (Senior lecturer at Aveiro University, Portugal and Research Fellow INET-MD / Portugal, she/her): Audience participation in live new music pieces: from the score to the performance(talk and performance. Performance contributor: Késia Decoté)
10:30 – 11:15: John Sloboda (OBE, FBA. Emeritus Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he/him): Engaging audiences in live “high-art” concerts: the “Understanding Audiences” Research Programme (talk)
11:15 – 11:30: coffee break
11:30 – 12:00: Késia Decoté (Marie Slodowska-Curie Fellow, University of Bergen, she/her): music as an invitation: an experience of co-creating an online concert (talk)
12:00 – 12:45: Mike Blow (Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at Yamanashi Gakuin University, Japan, he/him): One Trick Ponies and Magical Mysteries; Increasing Audience Engagement in Participatory Work (online talk)
12:45 – 13:30: lunch
13:30 – 14:30: Raheel Khan (Independent Artist). Devotion through communal experience – shaping space through body and voice
14:30 – 15:15: Jill Halstead, (Professor of Music at the Griegakademiet – Institutt for musikk, Universitetet i Bergen, she/her): Unruly Listeners: Collaboration, participation, and the undoing of auditory norms (talk)
15:15 – 15:30: coffee break
15:30 – 16:30: Xenia Pestova Bennett (she/her, freelance composer and performer) – Birds, seascapes and plastic debris: the audience as co-creator in environmental music (performance and talk)
16:30 – 17:00: wrap up roundtable with guest speakers
