Sea of Sound - Edmonton Intermedia Arts Festival³

June 24th to July 6th
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

This third installment in the Edmonton Intermedia Arts Festival will be an exploration of electroacoustic music and sonic art. Presented by the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) and The Edmonton Works Art & Design Festival, and curated by veteran Edmonton electroacoustic composer Shawn Pinchbeck, this festival will bring together a collection of electroacoustic music and sound art performances, immersive audio installations, and informative workshops and artist talks.

The theme of this event, "Sea of Sound," refers to the symphonic dirge of sounds happening around us that we take for granted on a daily basis. To take this analogy a little further, if you were standing on a beach listening to the sea, it sounds like roaring noise. When you step a little closer, nuances make themselves heard: rolling waves, washing water across pebbles and sand, the sizzling foam of the surf on the beach, the crying gulls and perhaps the voices of people enjoying it all. The Sea of Sound Festival hopes to act like a 12,000 km oil change and tune-up for the ears, re-tuning the way we listen and hear the world around us. It is our hope that through the concerts, installations and workshops; audiences take with them a new appreciation for the world of sounds around them, and for local artists, an understanding of some of the tools required to explore this realm.

This will be the fourth major sound festival presented by BEAMS in its 15-year history and the third under the banner of the Edmonton Intermedia Arts Festival. Past festivals include Radio Unbound (June 1995), Edmonton Intermedia Arts Festival - The Body (September 1996), and the Edmonton Intermedia Arts Festival - The Interface (August 1998).

This festival is made possible thanks to support from the Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society, the Works, the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta (FAVA), and the Canada Council for the Arts.