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Week-long Festival Brings New Sounds To Downtown This month, the sound-art institution Experimental Intermedia brings to Downtown its distinctly idiosyncratic approach to music sound and noise with its 18th “Festival With No Fancy Name.” The eight-day series of performances brings together dozens of artists from around the world. “It goes from acoustic to laptop,” said Katherine Liberovskaya, who is curating a portion of the festival. “There are composers coming from the academic side or there are people coming from more of a noise background.” But within—or perhaps because of—their differences, these artists all have something in common, Liberovskaya noted. “They all belong to a certain broad family of an approach to music and sound-making. They’re not based in the classical background, but neither are they based in popular culture. They’re exploring new ways to go at this.” Also, while the sound and music in the festival is all experimental, it is for the most part not improvisational. “We tend to lean towards composed work, though exactly what that means is fairly elastic,” Liberovskaya said. Artists will perform compositions using sounds ranging from audio-tape and found sounds to trombones and analogue synthesizers, but the emphasis will be on new and unusual ways to make and organize sound. Miya Masaoka, a Japanese artist living in New York, will combine video and Super-8 loops with performances on the koto, a classical Japanese stringed instrument. Masaoka says the piece will be inspired by “the impassioned search for the last living natural stream of water in Lower Manhattan.” In the past Masaoka has combined lasers, ultrasound machines, and MIDI interfaces with her koto to bring new life to the instrument. In other previous work, Masaoka has used ordinary plant activity to derail a model train and has created musical compositions structured around insect movement and plane flight schedules. For the fourth year, one evening of the festival will be devoted to “Screen Compositions,” a series of collaborations between video or film artists and sound artists. “We’ve found that a lot of times the artists doing this kind of work don’t attract much attention in the musical world,” Liberovskaya said. “The public that’s interested in this music and sound community often has more to do with video art, so it’s a natural space for collaborations.” Festival events take place at 224 Centre St., near Grand St., from March 11 to March 20. Performances begin at 9 p.m. Tickets: $4.99. For a schedule, visit www.experimentalmedia.org
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