Dr Gascia Ouzounian
Dr Gascia Ouzounian
Lecturer in Music
Email: g.ouzounian@qub.ac.uk
Tel: +44 28 9097 5203
Office: Music Building
Address: School of Creative Arts, Music Building, Queen's University Belfast,
BT7 1NN
Key Roles
Director of Performance Studies
Teaching
Twentieth-Century music; Experimental Music; Performance; Ensemble Performance; Women & Music; MA Thesis, MA Independent Study, and MA Performance supervision
Achievements and Distinctions
Gascia Ouzounian is a musicologist and violinist. Her research is focused on experimental music and sound art traditions after 1950, with particular interests in site-specific sound, sound installation art, and intermedia composition. Gascia’s writings have been published in numerous academic journals including Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Visual Culture, Computer Music Journal, Organised Sound, and the book Paul DeMarinis: Buried in Noise (Kehrer, 2010).
As a violinist, Gascia has performed extensively in North America and Europe, appearing with such diverse ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at Carnegie Hall, Sinfonia Toronto at the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts, and Theatre of Eternal Music Strings Ensemble at the Dream House. She has recorded the music of La Monte Young and Morton Feldman with cellist Charles Curtis, and has been an Artist-in-Residence at S.T.E.I.M. and Banff Centre. Gascia is a member of a bio-music ensemble, Biomuse Trio, the improvisation trio Pale Gates of Sunrise, and directs the experimental choir Bird On A Wire. Recent performances include Belfast Festival, BEAM Festival (Uxbridge), BioRhythms (Dublin and NYC), CHI (Atlanta), DRHA (London), Green Man Festival (Cardiff), ICMC (Nashville and Belfast), NIME (Pittsburgh) and Sonorities (Belfast).
Gascia studied performance and computer applications in music at McGill University, where she was a student of violinist Denise Lupien. She earned a PhD in critical studies/experimental practices in music from the University of California, San Diego, where she was awarded a University Humanities Fellowship. Her dissertation, Sound Art and Spatial Practices: Situating Sound Installation Art Since 1958, explored the history of sound installation through the lens of critical spatial theory. Gascia was appointed to Queen’s in 2008, and leads the performance programme in the School of Creative Arts.
Selected Publications
Ouzounian G. (forthcoming 2013). 'Sound Installation Art: From Spatial Poetics to Politics, Aesthetics to Ethics,' in Georgina Born and Tom Rice (eds.) Music, Sound, and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience.
Ouzounian, G., Knapp, R. B., Lyon, E., and DuBois, L. '"To be inside someone else's dream": On Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds.' (forthcoming 2012). Proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2012).
Ouzounian, G. 'The Biomuse Trio in Conversation: An Interview with R. Benjamin Knapp and Eric Lyon'. (forthcoming 2012). eContact! Journal of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Special issue on bio-technologies, ed. Marco Donnarumma
Ouzounian, G. (2010). 'Interview with Paul DeMarinis'. Computer Music Journal 34(4): 10-21.
Selected Compositions and Installations
Ouzounian, G. with R. Benjamin Knapp and Eric Lyon. 'Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds' (2011).
An ensemble of 4 performers who wear custom-designed EEG monitors generate an immersive sound environment through their brainwaves as they rest, sleep, and awaken over the course of one night.
View programme notes and essay 'On Music as a State of Being' (2011) by G. Ouzounian
View Excerpt (Introductory video)
Ouzounian, G. and Conan McIvor, 'If The Root Be In Confusion Nothing Will Be Well Governed' (2010).
A multi-channel audio and video installation of 'Paragraph 7' from Cornelius Cardew's 'The Great Learning' (1969) featuring Bird On A Wire. In the installation, two different recordings of 'Paragraph 7' from are screened simultaneously on opposing walls in a darkened room. Each screen shows 4 simultaneously recorded videos inter-weaved to appear as a single, continuous shot.
Installed at Ormeau Baths Gallery 'Arrivals' Exhibition curated by Ciara Hickey (29 July - 11 September 2010)
View Excerpt (single wall projection only)
Ouzounian, G. and Chloe Griffin, 'EDEN EDEN EDEN' (2009).
An overnight audiovisual composition for 13 musicians and film projections. The ensemble continuously constructs and deconstructs a 26-part chord, a 13-part natural harmonic series that always beats in near-unison with itself. A projector shows three superimposed films prepared as continuously extending loops. Members of the audience, who are invited to sleep during the performance, shift between waking and dreaming states.
View Excerpt from the premiere at Basso (Berlin, 15-16 April 2009)
Selected Conference Presentations
- Ouzounian, Gascia. 'The Body's Music: Physiological Interfaces in Musical Performance." Performa, University of Aveiro, Portugal (May 19-21, 2011).
- Ouzounian, Gascia and R. Benjamin Knapp. "Bodies as (Critical) Instruments: BioMusic and its Discontents." Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, Paris (October 26-29, 2009).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. "History, an Exit Strategy: Race, Haunting, and Memory in kara lynch's Invisible." American Musicological Society, Nashville (November 6-9, 2008).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. “Conceptual Sound Forms: The Event, Action Music, and Performance-Sculpture, 1958-1980.” Performance Studies International, New York University (November 8-11, 2007).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. “Imagined States: Anna Friz’s Radio Utopias.” Feminist Theory and Music, Montreal (June 6-10, 2007).
- Ouzounian, Gascia. “Becoming Media: Post-War Electronic Music and the Politics of Informationalism.” Society for American Music. Eugene, Oregon (February 16-20, 2005)
Invited Lectures
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Institute for Creativity, Art and Technology. May 2012.
- Keynote Lecture. Conference on Temporality: Issues of Change and Stasis in Music. Graduate Musicology Association, California State University at Long Beach, 21 April 2012.
- Stanford University, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, April 2012.
- New York University, Department of Music. March 2012.
- Concordia University, Department of Communication Studies & Department of Music, February 2012.
- F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, Northern Ireland. November 2011.
- Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast. Lecture & workshop with the Biomuse Trio. January 2011.
- PLACE, the Architecture and Built Environment Centre for Norther Ireland. Roundtable discussion on 'Sound and the City'. 6 May 2010.
Research Grants and Fellowships
- Canada Council for the Arts, Grants to Professional Musicians - Individuals (2012)
- Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Support for the Individual Artist Programme (2011)
- Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), 2 year Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (2008, declined due to accepting teaching post)
- Banff Centre, Fellowship for Artist-In-Residence program (2007-08)
- UC San Diego, Graduate Student Teaching Fellowship (2006)
- UC San Diego, Center for Humanities, Dissertation Fellowship (2005)
- Canada Council for the Arts, Grants for Individual Artists (2004)
- UC Institute for the Arts, Special Projects Grant, co-recipient with Teknika Radica (2003)
- UC San Diego, University Humanities Fellowship (2001-05)
PhD Supervision
Isobel Anderson
Steve Davis
Una Monaghan
Imogene Newland
Nicholas Ward
