WFAE Up Front News
Welcome
WFAE Board Report
WFAE Affiliate News
Welcome!
This is the fifth edition of the monthly online supplement to Soundscape:The Journal of Acoustic Ecology. Our goal is to make available in a timely manner, a calendar of events, announcements and latest news from the WFAE Board, WFAE Affiliates, and other organizations related to the field of acoustic ecology.
The success of this newsletter is dependent upon contributions by WFAE affiliate organizations, members, and others in the field of acoustic-ecology. See the Contributions section on how to submit material to this newsletter.
Deadline for the December Edition: November 20, 2004.
WFAE Board Report
Introducing Your WFAE Board: The WFAE Board is composed of an elected representative from each of the seven international affiliate organizations.
This month we introduce Albert Mayr. Albert is the Forum Klanglandschaft (FKL) representative.
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| Albert Mayr (second from the right, back row) with a group of Italian FKLers in the garden of the Canadian Embassy in Rome (September 2003). The occasion was the informal seminar "The Tuning of Italy", held to celebrate Schafer's 70th birthday and to evaluate his influence in Italy. |
I studied composition at the Conservatories in my home-town and in Florence, where I also worked some years in the studio S2FM, founded by the lonely pioneer of electro-acoustic music in Italy, Pietro Grossi.
While staying in Canada, first with a Canada Council Fellowship, then teaching at McGill (1969-73) I happened to meet R. Murray Schafer. To be honest, at first I could not make much out of The Vancouver Soundscape, but in Spring 1975 I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Cembra part of the Five Village Soundscape, which deepened my understanding of the WSP's work and my interest in it.
Back in Italy I taught electronic and experimental music at the Conservatory until 1991. In 1976, in collaboration with the non-profit art space Zona, Florence, and the Centro Internazionale di Brera, Milan, and with the help of my students, I organized Suono Ambiente, to my knowledge the first series, this side of the Atlantic, devoted to the theoretical, social and artistic aspects of the soundscape.
When, in the mid-nineties, mainly thanks to Justin Winkler's initiative, the Forum Klanglandschaft (FKL) began it's initial steps, we decided to form an Italian section, which has been growing slowly but steadily since then.
In 2001 I edited the book Musica e suoni dell'ambiente (grown out of a series of seminars held at the University of Bologna), which seems to have contributed a bit to the increased interest in soundscapes issues around here.
In the seventies and eighties I did several installations and sound action based on the interaction with environmental sounds and rhythms, more recently my focus has shifted to the theoretical aspects.
My other field of interest and activity is time, more precisely an artistic approach to everyday times and rhythms, and one of my utopian projects is a unified esthetic theory and practice for all types of low-frequency phenomena (from audio frequency downwards to biological and social rhythms).
WFAE Affiliate News
FKL News
Preparations for FKL's Potsdam conference, April 2005, are under way and we hope to soon provide more detailed information.
In the meantime another soundscape conference is in the making, organized by the Sicilian Soundscape Research Group (a new sub-affiliate so to speak) in co-operation with FKL, the University of Palermo and other institutions.
It will be held April 28-30, 2005 (right after Potsdam) in Palermo. Speakers include R. Murray Schafer, Helmi Järviluoma, Stephen Feld, Paolo Emilio Carapezza, Giuseppina La Face Bianconi, the "Er-hören" group of Wiesbaden, Pascal Amphoux, Albert Mayr, Gregg Wagstaff, Stefano Zorzanello. Information is available from Stefano Zorzanello: ne12662@iperbole.bologna.it
Another member of SSRG, Stefania Perna, is starting a project at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sassari. The project focuses on memory and the city as a sound-producing entity and on how sounds contribute to fill the void caused by losses. Information is available from: stefaniaperna @libero.it
AFAE News
The AFAE held it annual AGM at the end of October. It was a small affair as usual. The AFAE executive is now:
President: |
Jim Barbour |
Vice-president: |
unfilled - pending |
Treasurer: |
Nigel Frayne |
Secretary: |
John Campbell |
WFAE Rep: |
Lawrence Harvey |
WFAE Board Representatives:
