Department of Music

TechnoSonics XVIII:  DIY

Concert I, Old Cabell Hall features guest composer Leititia Sonami as well as works by Matthew Burtner, Alexander Christie, Leah Reid, and Judith Shatin. Also featured are three installations by guest composer Sasha Leitman.

TechnoSonics is an annual themed festival that showcases digital music & intermedia and brings high profile artists to collaborate with UVA composers and faculty performers. Technosonics XVIII’s over-arching theme is DIY and will feature Laetitia Sonami, Sasha Leitman, and Nicolas Collins as well as instllations and works by UVa McIntire Department of Music faculty composers. Computer controlled fabrication tools, conductive fabric, YouTube tutorials, micro-controllers, and DIY networks are bringing commercial production techniques to individuals. What possibilities do these tools afford musicians and composers? What sounds emerge in experimenting with these semi-automated modes of making? Technosonics No.18 will explore the space between amatuer and professional, artist and engineer, punk and popstar, art and Art, lo and hi, public and university, commercial and cult, critical and collective.

Supported by the Office of the Provost and the Vice Provost for the Arts.

Guest Bios

Sasha Leitman

Sasha Leitman is a composer, artist and inventor from California.  She has been making musical instruments, new interfaces for musical expression and sound art installations for the last 15 years.  After spending over a decade teaching courses and managing the Max Lab - an Interface Prototyping Lab, at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), she decided it was time to try out the other side of the Pacific.   She recently began a PhD program in Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand where she is exploring the design of computer music controllers inspired by the nuanced control of acoustic instruments.

Laetitia Sonami

Laetitia Sonami is a sound artist, performer and researcher.

Sonami's sound performances, live-­‐film collaborations and sound installations focus on issues of presence and participation.  She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place and objects.

Best known for her unique instrument, the elbow-­‐length lady's glove, which is fitted with an array of sensors tracking the slightest motion of her hand and body, she has performed worldwide and earned substantial international renown. 

Recent projects include the design of a new instrument, the Spring Spyre, based on the application of neural networks to real-time audio synthesis; an improvisation duo, Sparrows and Ortolans, with James Fei; and Le Corps Sonore, a fully immersive sound installation on six floors of the Rubin Museum, NYC in collaboration with Eliane Radigue and Bob Bielecki.

Upcoming projects include Peripheral Vision, a text based performance piece and a new live film project with Sue-C based on Italo Calvino Cosmicomics.

Sonami has received numerous awards among which the Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Awards. 

“...she sometimes looked like a human antenna searching the air for sounds, or like a deity summoning earth-shaking rumbles with a brusque gesture”. NY TIMES

“Experimental music is rarely this visceral and engaging” – Los Angeles Times

“Working since the 1980s, Laetitia Sonami continues to serve as an important figure for female artists working with technology. Her lady’s glove made her a well-­‐known name within the performance art scene, particularly because she was one of a few women experimenting with sound and technology.“ Complex Mag- One of 10 San Francisco personalities you should now in 2014

Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA's historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda (map). Parking is available in the Central Grounds parking garage on Emmet Street, in the C1 parking lot off McCormick Rd, and in the parking lots at the UVA Corner.  Handicap parking is available in the small parking lot adjacent to Bryan Hall.

All programs are subject to change.