2009 Outer Ear Festival of Sound
25 Acres of Coins: Sound installation by students from the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute
Wednesday, November 4 - November 25
Presented in conjunction with the Poetry Center of Chicago and the Learning Modernexhibition at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Poets: Bill Allegrezza, Ray Bianchi, Justin Cabrillos, Steve Halle, Philip Jenks, Simone Meunch, and Lina Ramona Vitkauskas. Sound Artists: Matt Bourque, Ian Chan, Becky Grajeda, Elon Katz, Lucas Lasky, Jordan Scrivner, Aaron Zarzutzki, Ben Chaffee, Kelly Morrison, Kendra Calhoun, and Orla McHardy.
Melissa St. Pierre: Prepared Piano Performance and Workshop
Sunday, November 8
Workshop: 4-6pm: Prepared piano workshop, for pianists, composers, musicians, and experimenters interested in altering the piano’s innards. Presented in partnership with Links Hall.
Reactor and Countdown: two sound installations by MW Burns
Monday, November 9 – Wednesday, December 9
Burns’ uncanny installations take advantage of inaccessible locations, such as locked closets, to tease the listener and call attention to our innate curiosity and desire for inclusion
Chicago Cultural Center
Gesualdo Translations/The Chicago Version: Alessandro Bosetti in collaboration with students from the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute:
Tuesday, November 10, 7pm
Bosetti and his collaborators will record people throughout Chicago singing along to renaissance madrigals by the Neapolitan composer Gesualdo da Venosa. The resulting recordings will be transformed into a polyphonic electro-acoustic performance that superimposes languages and histories.
Claudia Cassidy Theater, Chicago Cultural Center
Variable Area: Hearing and Seeing Sound, 1966–78
Thursday, November 12, 6pm
Curated by film scholar Michelle Puetz, this program presents films that investigate the visual and aural possibilities of 16mm optical audio, as sounds perform images and images become sonic scores. Works by Peter Kubelka, Chris Langdon, Robert Russett, Paul Sharits, Barry Spinello, and a live accompaniment by musicians Art Lange, Guillermo Gregorio, and Brian Labycz to Richard Lerman’s Sections for Screen Performers and Audience (1974).
Gene Siskel Film Center
Brett Ian Balogh: Chora
Friday, November 13 - Sunday, December 13
Chora is a computer-controlled installation incorporating video projection and multi-channel audio. Inspired by the Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean, an area of great geologic instability, Chora establishes an immersive environment of video and sound constantly and unpredictably transformed by the computer’s algorithms.
Audible Gallery at ESS
Tremendous Ferntuity: four-channel sound installation by Jeff Kowalkowski
Sunday, December 6, 2009 – Tuesday, March 31, 2010
Tremendous Ferntuity combines electronically processed voice and instrument recordings into a calmly ambiguous, peaceful environment within the Fern Room, intended as a meditation on good luck in life.
Fern Room, Lincoln Park Conservatory
2491 N. Stockton Drive. Exhibition hours: daily 9am-5pm. Free
2008 Outer Ear Festival of Sound
Mark Booth: Spanish Still Life or a Large List of Merged Animals
Sunday, October 26 - January 2009
A walk-in installation that seeks to provide a physical and psychological contemporary exploration of the Baroque painting Still Life with Game Fowl (1600/1603) by Juan Sánchez Cotán, currently in the collection of the San Diego Art Museum. The presentation will include drawings, digital projection, enamel paintings and a 10-channel audio component that, when combined, transfer an eerie still life painting into a multi-dimensional study of organizational strategies.
Fereshteh Toosi: Red Crystal Palace
Monday, October 27, Thursday, October 30, and Friday, October 31
Fereshteh Toosi’s radio piece is based on a live public performance and investigating political involvement, malaise, and optimism. Red Crystal Palace was a mobile tent with a crystal ball inside, operated by a nurse seeking predictions about the future from people on the street. In exchange, the nurse shared free tea and red crystals with participants. Interviews were recorded in 2007: March 26 and July 21 in Chicago, April 7 in Los Angeles and May 6 in Washington DC.
Olivia Block, Shawn Decker, Ryan Ingebritsen, Lou Mallozzi: Train Time
Saturdays & Sundays, November 1 & 2, 8 & 9, 10am-10pm - FREE
Commissioned by and co-presented with the 2008 Chicago Humanities Festival.
Missing in Action: Sounds of Silence, Interruption, and Displacement
Monday, November 3 – Sunday, December 7
An on-line exhibition from the ESS Collection of the Creative Audio Archive presented on vocalo.org
Harold Mendez: So long as we can say this is the worst, this is not the worst
Friday, November 5 - Sunday, November 30
The Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago.
Co-presented with the UBS 12×12 New Artists/New Work exhibition series at the MCA.
Hal Rammel and Olivia Block: electro-acoustic improvisations
Sunday, November 9, 3pm
The Cassidy Theater, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Randolph.
Deborah Stratman: O’er the Land
Thursday, November 13, 6pm
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N State Street.
$9 / $7 students / $4 AIC students, faculty, and staff / $5 Film Center members.
Hal Rammel: Regional Light: Both Near and Far
Friday, November 14 - Sunday, December 14
Audible at ESS, 5925 N Ravenswood.
Seth Nehil: Flock and Tumble
Friday, December 5, 8pm
Heaven Gallery, 1550 N Milwaukee.
Jenny Gräf Sheppard: Osmosymbiotic Echo
Sunday, December 7, 2008 - February 2009
Open daily, 9:00am - 5:00pm
Lincoln Park Conservatory, 2391 N. Stockton Drive.
Social Networks 
