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ICAD 2006 Concert Call for Submissions

ICAD 2006 Concert
Call for Sonifications

Title : Global Music - The World by Ear
A Concert of Sonifications at ICA London

Concert Chair: Alberto de Campo
http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/research/imc/icad2006/concert.php

The 'Global Music - The World by Ear' Concert will take place on June 21st, 2006, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA - http:// www.ica.org.uk) London, as part of the International Conference on Auditory Display in London from 20-23 June 2006 (ICAD 2006 - http:// www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/icad2006/). It is open to the general public and will be promoted and listed by the ICA.

The concert program will be sonifications based on global data. A basic dataset serving as a starting point for these sonifications is provided and you are invited to participate by submitting a piece of music driven by this data and your chosen additions to it.

Motivation
Werner Pirchner, Ein halbes Doppelalbum, 1973: "The military costs every person still alive roughly as much as half a kilogram of bread per day." <http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/icad2006/ EinHalbesKilogrammBrot.mp3>

Global data are ubiquitous - one finds them in every newspaper, and they cover a range of themes, from global warming to increasing poverty, from individual purchasing power to the ageing of the world's population. Obviously these data are of a social nature: They describe specific aspects (e.g. ecological or economic) of the environment in which societies exist, which taken together determine culture, i.e. the way people live.
Rising awareness of these global interdependencies has led both to fear and concerns (e.g. captured in the notion of the risk society, see Beck 1986, Giddens 1990, 1999), as well as hopes for eventual positive consequences of globalization. Along with developments like the scientization of politics (see Drori et al 2003), this growing understanding of global issues has re-defined the context of the political discourse in modern societies: As modern societies claim to steer their own course based on self-observation by means of data, an information feedback loop is realized.
Alternative choices of data that are important to consider, which data should be set in relation to each other, and a consideration of how to perceptualize these data choices meaningfully can enrich this discourse.

Closing the feedback loop by informing society about its current state and its development is a task that both scientists and artists have responded to, and this is the key point of this call:

* You can contribute to the discourse by perceptualizing aspects of world societal developments,
* search for data that concern interesting questions, and devise strategies for investigating them, and
* demonstrate that sound can communicate information in an accessible way for the general public.


Constraints
As a common reference point, we have compiled a basic dataset which includes 190 countries with geographical data (capital location, area), population numbers, and are extended by several basic social indicators such as GDP, access to sanitation and drinking water, and life expectancy.
Using this reference dataset is mandatory: All submissions must include countries, capital locations, population and area data. This dataset can be extended with extra dimensions, and in fact this is strongly encouraged; the extensions included in the reference dataset (such as GDP) are given as examples only. Easily accessible sources for possible extensions to the dataset are given in the Resources section; if you need advice on these, please feel free to ask us: <icad.concert -AT- dcs.qmul.ac.uk>

Submissions should last between 3-10 minutes.


Likely Questions
Missing values for some countries and some dimensions are to be expected, and this is a common problem in social data. Pragmatic handling of some sort will be necessary here.
The countries/regions represented have very different sizes and population numbers; one result we hope for is that very different strategies for representing these frame dimensions will be applied in the submissions.
Our reference data set is a snapshot of the year 2005; participants may choose to introduce time and to explore development issues.
If you are unsure whether your idea for a submission would comply with the rules, please feel free to ask us: <icad.concert -AT- dcs.qmul.ac.uk>



Data Background and Resources
The reference dataset <http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/icad2006/ ICADConcertData.csv> has been compiled from official UN statistics and the CIA World Factbook (links below).
There are a number of openly accessible resources which can be used to extend the basic dataset:

1. Social Indicators of the United Nations Statistics Division
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/default.htm
This webpage offers first insights in the distribution of some selected indicators. Though these indicators are not very highly sophisticated, the advantage is that the files comprise data from almost all nations represented in the UNO.
The Statistics Division also offers other data files to be found via their main pages:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp

2. Statistics Portal of the OECD
http://www.oecd.org/statsportal/0,2639,en_2825_293564_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
The OECD offers a lot of interesting data, e.g. patent statistics or
statistics on the purchasing power, but their files are often restricted to member-states. However, missing data might be found via webportals of other national or even international statistics organizations.

3. CIA Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
Offers a multi-faceted collection of facts for more than 220 countries/regions. This factbook might also be used for getting additional background information on specific countries in the course of working on a sonification/submission.

4. International and National Statistics Agencies
Of course, there are a lot of international and national organizations hosting databases. Though they might restrict their data sets to certain nations, they often provide rather sophisticated indicators and measures. Provided that the indicators follow the same definition (which were first defined by the UN in 1989), it is also possible to merge data from different organizations. Just to mention some of them:
- EUROSTAT, the statistics agency of the European Union: http:// epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/
- UK National Statistics: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
- STAT-US/Internet, which concentrates on economic data: http:// www.stat-usa.gov/
- Stanford University Library provides a long list of links to African statistical bodies: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/ africa/statistics.htm
- UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund : http://www.unicef.org/ infobycountry/
5. The economic historian Angus Maddison has spent decades researching, reconstructing and estimating basic population and economic data for the past 200 years in his book: The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, published by the OECD Development Centre in 2001.
http://www.theworldeconomy.org/publications/worldeconomy/


Submission Details
* Panel
An international panel of sonification experts, composers, and sociologists will select 8-12 entries for the concert, based on scientific and aesthetic criteria.

* Deadline
All submissions must be uploaded or received by mail by April 30th 2006.

*	Submission Checklist
	Valid submissions must include:
		A set of soundfiles (details below),
		a short paper (2-4 pages) documenting your sonification,
		and your contact information (name, e-mail);
		you can submit either on CD by mail, or upload
		as one .zip file by ftp.

* Submission Formats and Technical Description
The sound system provided will be a symmetrical ring of 8 speakers.
The submission format is WAV soundfiles at a samplerate of 44.1 kHz, 16 bit linear.
You should submit 8 files spatialized for a symmetrical ring of 8 speakers,
numbered <YourNameOrNames1>.wav, < YourNameOrNames1 >.wav, etc.

Feel free to include any other information of relevance to the technical realisation/rendering of your submission, and when in doubt, contact us at: <icad.concert -AT- dcs.qmul.ac.uk>.

* Documentation of Sonification Details:
A short paper on context and background of your data choices,
mapping choices, strategies, etc. etc.
Please use the ICAD06 paper template at
<http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/research/imc/icad2006/submit.php#papers>

* In case your submission needs to be accompanied by visual cues, screen projection can be made available. Please include information on why your submission benefits substantially from visual support, and technical details.

* Participants will be asked to make a short statement (3-5 min)
on their work within the concert, also with screen projection if desired.


Send CD-ROM submissions to:
Alberto de Campo,
Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) Graz,
Inffeldgasse 10,
A-8010 Graz, Austria

For online submissions, an ftp site is available at
<ftp://sonenvir.at>.
Participants will not be able to see (their own or other) submissions. Please send an e-mail to us at <icad.concert -AT- dcs.qmul.ac.uk> when you have submitted, so we can check your submission and send a confirmation e-mail as soon as possible.


Call and data edited by Alberto de Campo, Christian Daye, and Christopher Frauenberger.


References:
Beck, Ulrich (1986): Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt am Main.
English edition: 1992, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. New Delhi.
Drori, Gili S., John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, Evan Schofer (2003): Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization. Stanford.
Giddens, Anthony (1990): The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford.
Giddens, Anthony (1999) : Runaway World. A series of lectures on globalisation for the BBC, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/ english/static/events/reith_99/