POSTED: 01/01/05
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 07/15/05

SYMPOSIUM:
" Play!: Contemporary Composition, Technology and Listening"

It has been almost 50 years since John Cage defined experimental music in terms of the contemplation of sound and the use of technology. All sound--and even silence-- could and should be the stuff of music for everyone, listeners and composers alike. The tape recorder was a means of not only storing sounds, but of engaging them in new and direct ways. Meanwhile, at almost the same moment, Milton Babbitt delimited composition as serious and rational, the composer as a specialist, and technology as the handmaiden to determinacy.

Matt Malsky and David Claman, the directors of the Extensible Toy Piano Project, invite paper proposals for a symposium as part of the project's Festival on November 5-6, 2005 (for more information, see <http://www.clarku.edu/xtp/xtp.html>). Presentations will be 30 minutes long. Possible topics on the themes of the festival might include (but are not limited to):

- musical (post)modernism: aesthetic contemplation vs. intellectual endeavor.
- overwhelming noise & disturbed silence: entertainment & the relationship of electroacoustic music to mass culture.
- music and technoculture: musical creativity and technological possibility.
- fun and form: toys as expressive objects and their listening subjects.
- multimedia and new music:the intersection of new musical instruments in diverse media.
- the political economy of contemporary composition: the composer and our division of musical labor.
- the (impossible) concert: music in everyday/public life.
- the live and the canned: performance and listening in the age of the studio.
- post-literacy in music: aurality vs. orality .

Proposals should be no more than 500 words and include audio-visual requirements. Please submit your proposal by July 15, 2005 via email to <mmalsky@clarku.edu> or by surface post to:

The Extensible Toy Piano Project
Clark University
Department of Visual and Performing Arts
950 Main St.
Worcester, MA 01610 USA