[June 1] Electronic Music: Powered by Girls Workshop

Harvestworks Artist in Residence Suzanne Thorpe and co-composer Bonnie Jones will present Electronic Music: Powered by Girls, a 3-hour workshop for young women on June 1st at the Lower East Side Girl’s Club located at 56 East 1st St. NYC. – This event is part of 2013 New York Electronic Art Festival, in partnership with Lower East Side Girls Club and Techne.

Suzanne Thorpe, Bonnie Jones
Saturday, June 1 2013, 4pm Presentation

Location: Lower East Side Girls Club 56 East 1st St. NYC.

Time: Public Presentation at 4 pm

The workshop uses the creative arts of sound and improvisation to introduce young women to technology. The participants will learn how to build oscillators and contact microphones to turn everyday objects into instruments. Once participants have constructed their sound and instruments, Thorpe will lead them in a group improvisation. The workshops are followed by a public presentation by the composers using analog and digital technologies. The presentation contextualizes electronic music being composed by women who are often a minority in the field of electronic music.

Lower East Side Girls Club

The Lower East Side Girls Club is a place where girls and young women can learn, have fun and develop confidence in themselves and their ability to make a difference in the world. By delivering strong arts, literacy, science, health and leadership programs the club provides girls with the vision to plan – and the tools to build – their future.

Techne

Techne is an arts education organization offering a modular set of workshops that combine art, technology, thoughtful practice, and improvisation. Our workshops source organic, analog and digital realms as tools for expression, and foster confidence in art, science and technology. In our workshops, students learn to listen, dialog, share and vocalize. Students build confidence, self-awareness, group-awareness, problem solving techniques and peer support skills. Techne was started in 2010 Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones, educators and musicians active in electronic music communities in the US and abroad. Techne’s mission is to democratize technical tools within a safe environment for exploration, risk taking and creative expression. http://technesound.org/

Electronics Building Workshop:

Techne was started in 2010 by http://technesound.org/who-we-are/ Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones, educators and musicians active in electronic music communities in the US and abroad.

Techne’s mission is to democratize technical tools within a safe environment for exploration, risk taking and creative expression.

Website: http://technesound.org/

Funded in part through New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections program.
Leadership support for New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections program is generously provided by MetLife Foundation. Additional support is provided by ASCAP, BMI Foundation, Inc., Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Jerome Foundation, mediaThe foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Foundation and the Virgil Thomson Foundation, Ltd.

Suzanne Thorpe

Suzanne Thorpe – http://www.suzannethorpe.com – is a musician, composer, educator and curator. She performs with an ever-evolving set-up of analog and digital components, and composes site-specific works that employ psychoacoustic phenomena, aural harmonics and tuned filtering systems. Her work has been presented at Issue Project Room (NYC), Diapason (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Activating the Medium Festival (San Francisco), la botanica (Houston), No Idea Festival (Austin, TX), Pyramid Atlantic Center for the Arts (Silver Spring, MD) and L’envers (Montreal, Canada).

As an improviser, Thorpe has performed with Chris Brown, Pauline Oliveros, Gino Robair, Miya Masaoka, Fred Frith, Zbigniew Karkowski, Anti-Matter, Phillip Greenlief, Miguel Frasconi, Bonnie Jones, Philip White, Stephan Moore, Maria Chavez, Shelley Burgon, and Zeena Parkins among others. She is a founding member of Mercury Rev, with whom she earned a gold record for 1998’s Deserters’ Songs. She has appeared on over 20 recordings on Sony, V2, Beggars Banquet, Geffen, Specific Recordings, and Tape Drift, and most recently on J Mascis’ Several Shades of Why and Pauline Oliveros’ Primordial Lift. Thorpe teaches at Marymount Manhattan College, were she focuses on digital audio workstations, field recording, sound theory and the art of listening. She is also co-director of Techne, an educational outreach program designed to familiarize young women with technical tools through electronic music.

Bonnie Jones

Bonnie Jones 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 by dairy farmers in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, MD. 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 including Ric Royer, Carla Harryman, Andy Hayleck, Joe Foster, Andrea Neumann, Liz Tonne, and Chris Cogburn. She received her MFA at the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.http://www.bonniejones.wordpress.com