A weekend of new electronic music and ideas comes to JHU.

March 3-5, 2017

The sounds of electronically produced music are the most common sounds one hears in popular culture and media. What was once rare and only available to avant-garde composers and music industry producers, is accessible to millions in the form of thousands of synthesizers, samplers, software and phone apps. New Forms, New Paths is a weekend-long event sponsored by the JHU Digital Media Center, which focuses on new directions and ideas at the cutting edge of electronic music. The potential of digital distribution and the excitement of intuitive software and hardware “hacking” offer the chance for artists to engineer their own technology – bending and stretching the outer limits of sound and style. But what does this mean for musical culture and have we reassessed music history in the brave new world? How have electronics shaped our minds and bodies? What is “new music” in this complicated present? How are we finding new forms and paths through our digital reality?

New Forms, New Paths will feature a diverse group of artists and researchers ranging across age, race, and gender. Rather than focusing only on tools and technological concepts, New Forms, New Paths also considers personal history, identity, and global economic and political changes as the combined materials of contemporary musical innovation. Including a concert, a circuit building and composition workshop, and a panel discussion, this event will connect JHU students and Baltimore’s art community with emerging ideas in contemporary electronic music regarding style, aesthetics, politics, and personal growth.

New Forms/New Paths Events:
Evening Concert: Friday, March 3rd, 8-10:30pm, Mattin Center, Jones Building 101
A night of mind-expanding sounds pushing the edge of improvisation, jazz, avant-composition and virtuoso instrumental performance.

Bonnie Jones (electronics) and Suzanne Thorpe (electronics, flute); Convergence and Divergence, 3 Movements
Sarah Hennies (solo percussion, computer, sine waves)
Mind over Matter, Music over Mind w/Thomas Stanley (computer), Jamal Moore (Tenor Sax, electronics), and Bobby Hill (turntables, electronics)

Sounding Points of Light Workshop: Saturday, March 4th, 1-4pm. Mattin/Offit, DMC MakerSpace.
Limited to 8 – 10 JHU student participants, register with BookIt.

Spend the day with TECHNE https://technesound.org/ creating and musically experimenting with your very own light controlled oscillator instrument!

In a 3.5 hour workshop, participants will learn how to make a simple oscillator that is controlled by light via a photoresistor. Knowledge of basic circuitry and signal flow will be explored, with ample opportunity to experiment with different components. No prior knowledge of electronics or sound/music is necessary. We encourage anyone interested in experimenting with sound, light, and electronics to join us and explore!

TECHNE was co-founded in 2010 by internationally active and critically acclaimed electronic musician/composers Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones. We are a national arts education organization tasked with a mission to give rise to distinct and divergent female voices in the realms of technology and the arts. We accomplish our goal via a series of programs that introduce young women and girls to technology and creative music making.

Panel Discussion: Sunday, March 5th, 2-4pm, The LaB, JHUnions, 3003 N. Charles St
Enjoy an in-depth discussion with some deep thinkers and electronic music performers from Baltimore and Washington!

Bonnie Jones and Suzanne Thorpe of TECHNE
Thomas Stanley, PhD
Tara Rodgers, PhD

TECHNE is heading to Mills College for three days of workshops, concerts and lectures. We’ll be creating light controlled oscillator instruments with students as part of the Sounding Points of Light workshop, then presenting a concert with the students and a duo of Bonnie Jones & Suzanne Thorpe.

More concert details below!

BONNIE JONES AND SUZANNE THORPE
(David Tudor Composers-in-Residence)

Saturday, November 5, 2016 8:00pm
Littlefield Concert Hall

Part 1:
SOUNDING POINTS OF LIGHT
presented by Mills College students

Mills students will present an improvised piece using electronic instruments developed in a workshop with Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones. The piece uses light controlled oscillators and field recordings of found sounds sourced from Mills campus. This part of the program will be presented in the Greek Theater outdoors behind the Concert Hall.

Part 2:
BONNIE JONES AND SUZANNE THORPE
(David Tudor Composers-in-Residence)

Confluence & Divergence, 3 Movements
featuring
Bonnie Jones (Electronics) and Suzanne Thorpe (Flute, Electronics)

Techne has officially kicked off their 2015 Girls Rock Camp Workshop fundraiser!

Last summer TECHNE brought their DIY electronic music workshops to over a hundred young women at Girls Rock Camps and nonprofit art centers in Nashville, Washington DC, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Charlottesville and more and the tour was a huge success!

This summer we’re heading to sunny Southern California and Texas! We’ve got special workshops planned for the Girls Rock Santa Barbara sleepaway camp, and contact mic building in San Diego Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and Austin!

In addition to the workshops we’ll be performing a concert in each city, featuring Bonnie & Suzanne in duet, and fellow local female artists. These events will provide much needed modeling of women electronic musicians practicing their craft.

We’re asking for your support to bring TECHNE workshops to hundreds of young women this summer! Please donate to our Indiegogo campaign and become a crucial part of the Techne revolution!

ARISE: A Dynamic Musical Environment for Change  is an innovative electronic music program created by arts organization TECHNE, founded by musicians Bonnie Jones & Suzanne Thorpe. ARISE is an ecosystem of interconnected music, technology, and arts events that explore social identity through electronic music and improvisation.

Working in collaboration with local Girls Rock Camps and concert venues, TECHNE is giving workshops in DIY electronics, alternative instrument building and improvisation, and co-curating concerts featuring Bonnie and Suzanne in duo, plus local female artists. The workshops and performances, together, create a network of encounters that dynamically inform one another in the moment, and beyond, rippling outward to enhance the roles of women in technology and electronic music.
ARISE will be taking place in several US cities this summer. The tour includes workshops at Girls Rock Camps and local nonprofit arts organizations, and concerts held at local venues.

Workshops are only open to Girls Rock campers with the exception of the Bridge PAI workshop in Charlottesville, VA. All concerts are open to the public.
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7/1 BATON ROUGE, LA
https://www.facebook.com/GirlsRockCampBatonRouge

7/2 NEW ORLEANS, LA (concert at Mudlark Theater)
7/3 NEW ORLEANS, LA (concert at Mudlark Theater)

https://www.facebook.com/events/259361694269093/?context=create&source=49

https://www.facebook.com/girlsrock.campnola

7/12 CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (public workshop Bridge PAI)
7/13 CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (concert at Bridge PAI)

https://www.facebook.com/TheBridgePAI

7/14 CHARLESTON, SC (concert John Rivers Communication Museum)
7/15 CHARLESTON, SC

https://www.facebook.com/girlsrockcharleston
https://www.facebook.com/groups/311881458905143/

7/17 WASHINGTON, DC
https://www.facebook.com/GirlsRockDC

7/18 BALTIMORE, MD (Concert at Worlds in Collusion, Artscape)

http://redroom.org/calendar/#733

7/21 PHILADELPHIA, PA
7/22 PHILADELPHIA, PA (concert Bowerbird at the Rotunda)

https://www.facebook.com/girlsrockphilly
http://www.bowerbird.org/newsite/

7/25 NASHVILLE, TN (concert, Abrasive Media)
http://sgrrc.com/
http://abrasivemedia.org/

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

SUZANNE THORPE (flute, electronics) is a musician/composer who works in a spectrum of modalities, fixed and improvised, installed and recorded. She plays electro-acoustic flute through an ever-evolving array of analog and digital effects, incorporating laptop upon whim. Her way is to listen for just-the-rightsounds and timbres, and the appropriate moments to introduce them to each other. Her composed works tend to be site-specific sound pieces that speak of, and with, their environment with an amalgam of sound sources, bringing forth moments of possibility and multiplicity. Her work has been shown and performed internationally, including All Tomorrow’s Parties (UK and U.S.), Roskilde (DK), The New Museum (NYC), Issue Project Room’s Floating Points Festival (NYC), Activating the Medium Festival (San Francisco), No Idea Festival (Austin), High Zero Festival (Baltimore), and exhibited at Klieo Gallery (NYC), Exit Art (NYC), Mills College (Oakland), California College of the Arts (Oakland) andmore.www.suzannethorpe.com/

BONNIE JONES(electronics) is a Korean-American writer, improvising musician, and performer working primarily with electronic music and text. Born in 1977 in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. Bonnie creates improvised and composed text-sound performances that explore the fluidity and function of electronic noise (field recordings, circuit bending) and text (poetry, found, spoken, visual). She is interested in how people perceive, “read” and interact with these sounds and texts given our current technological moment. Bonnie has received commissions from the London ICA and has presented her work in the US, Europe, and Asia and collaborates frequently with writers and musicians. She received her MFA at the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College. http://www.bonniejones.wordpress.com/