2×4 Live with Carol Genetti at Constellation

Join Carol Genetti and me for a duo performance, one of four pairs of musicians playing improvised music in Chicago tonight.

When: Wednesday, August 28 – Doors: 8:00PM | Show: 8:30PM

Where: Constellation, 3111 N Western Avenue, Chicago IL 60618

Tickets: https://wl.seetickets.us/event/2×4/616709?afflky=ConstellationChicago

2×4: Four pairs of artists play improvised sets.

Berman/Roebke 
Josh Berman – cornet  
Jason Roebke – bass  

Hunsinger/Kowalkowski
Robbie Hunsinger – reeds 
Jeff Kowalkowski – piano 

Hatcher/Hatwich
Gerrit Hatcher – tenor saxophone  
Anton Hatwich – bass  

Genetti/Leonardson
Carol Genetti – voice 
Eric Leonardson – springboard 

Which Elephant Is in This Room? Strategies for Safe Spaces and Collective Listening in Ecological Crisis

Ex \\ Immersio VI - Soundscapes in Change. On Listening and Sustainability

Synopsis: I am invited to give a talk titled “Which Elephant is in This Room? Strategies for safe spaces and collective listening in ecological crisis,” for Ex \\ Immersio VI – Soundscapes in Change. On Listening and Sustainability, a 2-day symposium in Dieburg, Germany.

What: Among the positive outcomes of the 2023 ‘Listening Pasts – Listening Futures’ conference is the ‘Survey on Global Perspectives in Acoustic Ecology’. My presentation addresses ways that its five broad themes enable deeper understanding and strategic planning for not only artists but researchers and educators of all disciplines on much needed work involving Community Engagement, Environmental Interactions and Soundscapes, Technological Advancement in Research, Interdisciplinary and Future-Oriented Vision, and Inclusive and Global Perspectives.

Ex\\Immersio is a series of international symposia launched in 2019 under the scientific and artistic direction of Prof. Sabine Breitsameter. Its aim is a critical discourse on the concept of immersion. This year’s focus is on the emergence of a new listening culture in the changing soundscape of the present, combined with the question of how listening can productively contribute to ecological change. The conference language is English.

When:  Friday, July 12, 1:30 p.m., until Saturday, July 13, 2024, 3:30 p.m.
Location: Museum Schloss Fechenbach, Eulengasse 8, 64807 Dieburg

See full schedule

Who: Among others, Eric Leonardson (Chicago), Klaus Schüller (Groß-Umstadt), Claudia Tittel (Gera/ Valencia), Sabine Breitsameter (Dieburg/Berlin), and Lasse-Marc Riek (Hanau). 

Soundwalks At Severson Dells Nature Center

Sounds of Spring: Science Saturday

April 6 10am-2pm

Severson Dells Nature Center
8786 Montague Road
Rockford, IL 61102

Soundwalks with Alex Braidwood, Deirdre Harrison, Eric Leonardson, and Jakob Heinemann. Free to the public.

No registration required. Details at https://www.seversondells.com/calendar/scisatspring2024

Acoustic Ecology Workshop At Indiana Dunes Learning Center On March 23

Join indigenous artist, environmentalist and educator Billie Warren and me, Eric Leonardson, for an acoustic ecology workshop and guided soundwalk at the Paul H Douglas Center for Environmental Education in Miller, Indiana.

Time/Date: 10am-11:30am Saturday, March 23.

Address: 100 North Lake Street
Gary, IN 46403

Cost per person $10, ages 12+

This event is co-organized with the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) and the Dunes Learning Center, Indiana Dunes National Park.

Click for Registration & Details.

Billie Warren is a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and is Bear Clan. Billie has been an educator, environmentalist, humanitarian, and beadwork artist for more than twenty years. Recognizing the climate change urgency, she is the founder of the nonprofit organization Jibek Mbwakawen Inc., which aims to improve the environment by connecting people to the land from an indigenous perspective. She holds a BA degree from Indiana University Northwest and is currently pursuing a graduate degree.

April 2024 Performances With Carol Genetti

I’m pleased to announce that Carol Genetti, an extraordinary vocal artist, performs in two concerts with me, in Northbrook and Chicago, Illinois.

7pm Monday, April 15 we perform at Northbrook Public Library Auditorium, 1201 Cedar Ln, Northbrook, IL 60062

Carol and I share the bill with Ratchet: Chad Clark, Jeff Chan, and Mike Perkins. Register for free. Music starts at 7pm, doors open at 6:30pm. All ages welcome.

7pm Tuesday, April 16 at Color Club, 4146 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Sharing the bill with Ratchet: Chad Clark, Jeff Chan, and Mike Perkins. $10 at the door. Music starts at 8pm, doors open at 7pm. All ages welcome.

Organized by Resonant Arts.

Carol Genetti and Eric Leonardson performing in the Triage Series at Elastic Arts, Chicago 2008.

Carol Genetti and I began improvising together in 1997. Carol is a multi-talented media artist whose practice is grounded in free improvisation. Quoting from her bio, “…with a desire to unlock subconscious ideas and unexpected outcomes. She has performed widely as an experimental vocalist, with synthesizers, various objects and video projections. Her videos of dream-like imagery are processed along with audio through an analog A/V synthesizer in real time producing rhythmic layers of flickering and vibrating patterns for hypnotic effect.”

The electroacoustic Springboard is central to my instrumentation augmented by electronic instruments.

Carol and I last performed at Constellation Chicago with Birgit Ulher from Hamburg, Germany, to celebrate our trio’s CD release of horizontal shift, on Amalgam Music.

Learn more about Carol and listen on her website.

Presentation in Budapest on Organizing & Listening Beyond

Reflections & Documentation from 2023 Beyond Listening Symposium on Art, Agency, and the Environment

The Beyond Listening symposium on art, agency, and the environment was a wonderful and moving opportunity to connect with well-known sound scholars, artists in Europe, South America and India. Thanks to the SAIC Dean of Faculty’s travel support, I enjoyed reconnecting with Sam Auinger, Peter Cusack, Jacek Smolicki, Robin Parmar, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Csaba Hajnowy, Liz Miller, and many others. I finally met artists and researchers whom I’ve followed for many years, Hannah Kemp-Welch, Gascia Ouzounian, and Budhaditya Chattopadhyay. Plus, my new friends Kristine Diekman, Ben Pagac, and Mary Edwards from the Listening Pasts – Listening Futures conference last March, at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA).

I came to the beautiful city of Budapest to share my organizing experiences, upon the 30th anniversary of the founding of the WFAE, with the organizers of Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies (CENSE), and this symposium.

On the closing day, November 25, I delivered my “Summary of 2023 WFAE Conference at Atlantic Center for the Arts.” I’m sharing the presentation slides and link to the 30-minute talk on the updated Beyond Listening site.

You may watch for more recordings from the conference to be posted on Vimeo soon, hopefully.

The summary segued into the closing round table discussion on the future of the CENSE. Beginning with a long moment of silence, we openly verbalized our concerns and hopes. So many challenges are the same as faced 30 years ago. What has changed is the speed of technological change—neither a benefit nor a loss perhaps—while the dire conditions of climate heating and genocidal wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and elsewhere around the globe proliferate, outpacing human ingenuity and political capacities for action. I think the roundtable raised similarly difficult questions as we have been asking over the past 30 years ago or longer. One difference may be that our planet’s total ecological collapse is more imminent, with the legacies of imperialism and colonialism presenting in much starker relief.

The symposium offered me an audience for a new creative soundwork made at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. On November 22, for the opening reception I was honored to premiere, “Auditory Respiration.” Although it felt very unfinished when I arrived, my new 8-channel work, played as a stereo reduction, was very well received.

Launch of Acoustic Ecology Review (Vol. 1 – WFAE 2023 Conference Proceedings)

I’m deeply pleased to inform you of the publication of proceedings of ‘Listening Pasts – Listening Futures’, the 2023 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference. This is the first publication of Acoustic Ecology Review, an international journal and publishing platform for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and the international sound studies community.

This open access online platform extends and enhances the work of Soundscape: The Journal for Acoustic Ecology, started in 2001. I hope this new platform will support a broad range of voices through their own platforming of sonic ecologies, especially ones in which the cost of access poses an obstacle. The recent Beyond Listening symposium in Budapest would, I believe, exemplify one of the latest cases for the need for such support.

I’m also pleased to note that the proceedings of ‘Listening Pasts – Listening Futures’ conference includes my paper describing my piece, “The Frequent Listener,” performed by Alex Braidwood and Lisa Schonberg at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Welcome – About This Site

Welcome: About This Site

Welcome to the new iteration of “Sound Thinking,” a website about my work as a Chicago-based audio artist and teacher. Its first iteration launched in 1998. Designed, hand-coded, and launched by my friend Spencer Sundell. Yes, that was when the World Wide Web was quite new, perhaps radical; when few working artists had websites even. Rather than dwelling on that period in techno-cultural history, long before “web 2.0,” the existence of social media, and AI, let me first give thanks to Spencer and the other people who have helped to make this site possible. 

“Sound Thinking” was the title chosen by Spencer, who generously and uniquely designed my first site, hosted on tezcat.com, then one among the original privately-owned Internet Service Providers in Chicago. I still find the title choice a curious fit for my sound-based practice. As the animated gif presents it, the title flips back and forth, reading as “thinking sound.” This is important because, if one is willing to be open to the influence of more-than-human actors, it leads to a more ecological understanding of what sound and listening mean for us all in our day-to-day lives. It’s important for everyone, not only for scholars and other professionals.

In terms of intent and functionality, then as now, I intend for this site to be as much of a resource as a vehicle for promoting my creative practice. My plan for the old ericleonardson.org site is to keep it as an archive and resource for fellow artists, students, makers, etc.

For this inaugural post, I’d like to thank Sparky Price and Steven J. Pearson who completed the final steps prior to its launch. Professor Michael Chase and his IT students at DePaul University for their work on developing this site in 2020, when the pandemic started. Much has happened since then, personally and professionally. I chronicled the professional end of that as best as I could on the old “what’s new” page. To the best of my ability, I will preserve that content.

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