Noise and the Possibility for a Future

Conference
March 6th – 7th 2015
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Free Admission. Limited Seating. Attendance is first-come, first-served.
Info +1 3235253388
info@losangeles.goethe.org

A two day conference curated by Warren Neidich with the cooperation of the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.

Music is prophecy.
It's styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code.
It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things. (Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music)

Noise is prevalent in our post-industrial society; whether it be the cacophony of the factory and the war machine that initially inspired Futurists such as Luigii Russolo, the dissonance of the public space which encouraged indoor living in earlier times, the noise barriers along the highway today, or that excess which diminishes efficiency in communication network systems, the so-called Shannon’s Theorem or the noisy –channel coding theorem.

Noise gets a bad rap as something considered offensive and that needs to be controlled or mitigated.

However, noise has another side that is more positive and emancipatory.

This conference utilizes the history of noise and music to stake a claim for noise as a liberating mode of production while at the same time understanding its dystopian possibility of “that mode of productions baleful mirror image.” (Frederic Jameson, Introduction in Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music)

This cross disciplinary intervention links the fields of visual art and music, especially the theories of the avant-garde to other fields of study such as performance studies, social constructivism, critical theory, gender and queer studies and political philosophy in order to understand an expanded notion of noise as a discursive apparatus.

Of special importance will be a conception of noise as it relates to the emerging field of communicative and cognitive capitalism; noise as a phenomena that resonates both inside and outside the skull and is essential for the development of complex and facile enacted and extended brains and minds.

Conference participants include:
Victor Albarracin, Andrew Berardini, David Burrows, Luciano Chessa, Mathieu Copeland, DJ Spooky (AKA Paul Miller), Corey Fogel, Simone Forti, Paul Hegarty, Sarah Kessler, Ulrich Krieger, Gregory Lenczycki, Mattin, Daniel Munoz, Renee Petropoulos, David Schafer, Marcus Schmickler, Susan Silton, Gabie Strong, Karen Tongson, Susanne Winterling.

Preliminary Schedule:
At the Goethe-Institut

Friday, March 6th

9:30 – 10:00 am Coffee

10:00 am - 1:00 pm Morning Session

1:00 - 2:15 pm Lunch Break

2:00 - 4:00 pm Afternoon Session 1

4:00 - 4:30 pm Coffee

4:30 - 6:00 pm Afternoon Session 2

6:00 - 7:00 pm Dinner Pause

7:30 - 10:00 pm Film and Sound Event

Saturday, March 7th

9:30 – 10:00 am Coffee

10:00 am – 1:00 pm Morning Session

1:00 - 2:00 pm Lunch Break

2:00 - 5:00 pm Afternoon Session

At USC
Saturday, March 7th 7:00 - 9:00 pm

The Schoenberg Soundways

Free of charge, but RSVP is required.

Information on attending this separate event can be found here:

http://web-app.usc.edu/web/eo4/event/detail/909669?calendar_id=113

 Schedule "Noise and the Possibility for a Future" (PDF / English / 180KB)

This conference is a collaboration of the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and Warren Neidich and was made possible by the generous support of the following partners:
Herb Alpert School of Music, The Office of Aesthetic Occupation, and Andre Balazs Properties, The Standard Hotel Hollywood.