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SARC PhD composers win top prizes at the SHUT UP AND LISTEN! AWARD 2011

http://sp-ce.net/sual/2011/sualaward2011_en.htm

Cormac Crawley and Christopher Haworth, two composers working in electroacoustic music at the Sonic Arts Research Centre secured two out of the three prizes in this international competition. The selection process was anonymous and the jury was composed of Belma Bešlic-Gál (Composer/Pianist. Co-Curator of shut up and listen! 2011), Wolfgang Seierl (Composer/Visual Artist. Founder of the Mittersill Composers' Forum, and of ein klang records, Austria) and   Germán Toro-Pérez (Composer. Head of the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology, Zurich University of the Arts).

Cormac Crawley (IE):  'Port of Call'

 http://soundcloud.com/cormac-crawley 

Port of Call: The port, as an interface, offers access from land to water, from water to land, north to south and east to west. It is the beating heart of many cities, towns and villages. With a broad band of sound such as the roaring of the ocean our ears often play tricks with us. We may imagine sounds; plucked from its vast spectrum of frequencies.The piece offers a chronological description of how the port has had an ongoing effect on the lives around it. Also presented is the effect that those around the port have had on this once tranquil soundscape; previously only disturbed by nature itself. A montage of sounds emerge from the ocean and develop from natural and harmonious to unnatural and sometimes dissonant depicting human interference and pollution of the soundscape. The struggle between human and environment is portrayed as a sway of events throughout the piece; natural and unnatural.

Christopher Haworth (UK): 'Correlation Number One'  

http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/sarc/People/PhDstudentsatSARC/ChristopherHaworth/

Christopher Haworth's work explores psychoacoustic phenomena and perceptual idiosyncrasies to call into question common assumptions and received ideas about listening and sonic experience. His recent piece, entitled 'Correlation Number One', uses high frequency tones to generate 'distortion-product otoacoustic emissions' (DPOAEs) in the listener's ears. This means that, in effect, the ear itself becomes an instrument, which the tones coming out of the speakers 'perform' in certain ways to produce sound. What you hear is thus totally subjective, creating a paradoxical situation in which the listener listens to himself listening. 

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