Cosmic Tones: Mapping the Musical Multiverse in Documentary
Cosmic Tones is a semester-long arc of public programming organized by MDOCS in collaboration with campus partners to be presented throughout Spring 2019. The season presents nonfiction works in an array of genres and media to explore connections between music, scientific and non-scientific belief systems, and the idea of “the cosmic.” Keynote events are listed below, click here for full series schedule.
Documentary Film Screenings
MDOCS has partnered with a number of other departments and programs this semester to bring a series of documentary films and their makers to campus. Click here to see what's screening!
Upcoming Events
MDOCS hosts a variety of events throughout the academic year. Most events are all free and open to the public.
FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH
Thu, Mar.21 @ 6-7pm - SPA, Case Center
Live monthly storytelling series. Hosted by Storytellers' Institute Director Sarah Friedland, the night will highlight live storytellers and musicians telling stories and playing music inspired by the nightly theme. The theme of the evening is Spring Break, Broken Hearts, Broken Bones, and all things broke.
COSMIC TONES: LISA SCHONBERG + SECRET DRUM BAND
Workshop: Thu, Mar.28 @ 4pm - Tang Teaching Museum
Concert: Thu, Mar.28 @ 9pm - Falstaffs
Lisa Schonberg is a scientist and composer whose projects bridge environmental awareness, natural history documentation, and experimental sound. She records the sounds of endangered taxa as a way of learning from them and raising awareness about their plight, abstracting and incorporating her recordings into performances by the ferocious Secret Drum Band. Presented in collaboration with Lively Lucy’s, SEC and Biology.
"Las Vegas in 16 Parts"
Mon, Apr.8 @ 6pm - Somers Rm, Tang Teaching Museum
Dives into the endless spectacle of an organic machine fed with fear and desire. Instead of trying to extract from Las Vegas a model to critique our “connectivity to the real”, Las Vegas is considered a “liquid ever-changing mirror.” The filmmaker explores humans’ bittersweet desire to belong to something, to be a significant part of the tradition that will narrate history, to find our reflection in a shining symbol. “Las Vegas in 16 Parts is generous, funny, apocalyptic, full of moments of embarrassment and intimacy that, once seen, cannot be forgotten. There is ravishing beauty amid desolation, an uncanny sense of rhythm, framing that electrifies, and dramas at once microscopic and overwhelming.”
The feature film will be proceeded by a work-in-progress short film, Border (25 min), about the border between the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base and Cuba and a Q&A with Director Luciano Piazza.
Sponsored by MDOCS, Skidmore Departments of World Languages and Literatures, Latin American and Latinx Studies, and the Tang Teaching Museum.
From The Horse's Mouth
Wed, Apr.10 @ 6-7pm - SPA, Case Center
Live monthly storytelling series. Hosted by Prof. Erica Wojcik, the night will highlight live storytellers and musicians telling stories and playing music inspired by the nightly theme. The theme of the evening is still TBD.
Cosmic Tones: David Dunn's "PLACE"
Fri, Apr.26 @ 2-7pm - Tang Teaching Museum
An early work by composer and bioacoustician David Dunn, PLACE is an extended interactive performance that utilizes voices, instruments, electronics, bodies, and materials found on site to build a dialogue with a particular place’s soundscape, ecosystem, and topography. Participatory performance, facilitated and led by Null Point Ensemble (Buffalo, NY). In coordination with TangWaves IV, a daylong low-power broadcast.
SKIDS choice Awards
Sat, May 4 @ 6pm - Falstaffs
An awards night dedicated to honoring student creation across medium and genre, with a focus on documentary and storytelling grounded in the liberal arts. We invite students to submit any and all work produced in the last year to be considered. Faculty-selected works will come directly from Doc Studies courses and independent projects will be self-nominated and selected by a student panel.
PAST EVENTS:
Cosmic Tones: oyster
Sat, Feb.2 @ 7pm - Filene Concert Hall
A biographical multimedia opera on the life of renowned ethnomusicologist and folksong collector Alan Lomax. Lomax’s “cantometric” system proposed to locate deep truths about human cultures through the computer analysis of their songs--analyses which the audience hears interpreted in video, dance, and live singing alongside an imagined lecture by Lomax. Get your tickets today!
In partnership with the Skidmore Theatre Dept
From The Horse's Mouth
Tue, Feb.12 @ 6-7pm, SPA - Case Center
MDOCS' live monthly storytelling series. Hosted by Prof. Erica Wojcik, the night will highlight live storytellers and musicians telling stories and playing music inspired by the nightly theme. The theme of the evening is Lovers and Haters.
SoundMind #15 feat. Ensemble Connect
Wed, Feb.13 @ 5-7pm - Tang Teaching Museum
SoundMind is a workshop that combines meditation, sensory awareness, and aesthetic activation of the breath, body, and voice. Guests from Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect will lead workshop attendees in a participatory realization of The Witness, a score for untrained voices and bodies, composed by Pauline Oliveros.
In partnership with the Tang Teaching Museum
Warm-Up Wednesday feat. MDOCS
Wed, Feb.20 @ 12-2 - Intercultural Center
Join MDOCS staff and DOCLab students as they talk about the ways in which they bring the tools of audiovisual media and documentary storytelling into the Skidmore curriculum and the local community.
Cosmic Tones: Milford Graves Full Mantis
Wed, Feb.27 @ 6pm - Tang Teaching Museum
A feature film portrait of the legendary percussionist, herbalist, martial artist, and Black Arts Movement icon, in which the integration of his varied life practice leads him to work in the emerging science of heartbeat rhythms. Presented in coordination with the Tang’s Whole Grain film series.
Presented in coordination with the Tang’s Whole Grain film series
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