Soundbox 7: May 19-21, 2024

PULSE: Improvising Collective Future(s)

Soundbox 7 is a 3-Day Intermedia Festival at Oregon State University
Memorial Union, Room 109 + Select Online Programming

This year, Soundbox 7 is excited to feature works, live performances, emergent art(s), and improvisational practices that embody DIY approaches, offer real-time solutions, and utilize improvisation as a vital tool for addressing pressing global issues identified by the United Nations, including Environmental and Global Health, Gender Equality, Humanitarianism, and Technology and Innovation.

We are especially interested in submissions that utilize improvisation as:

Improvisation as Method
Improvisation as Action
Improvisation as Research
Improvisation as Critical and Creative
Improvisation as Human Liberatory Practice

Festival Events Include:

  • 2D and 3D Art by OSU students
  • 8-channel concert of original music by OSU students
  • Electroacoustic concert
  • Improvisation workshop with OSU faculty, students, and guests
  • Live bands and original music showcase with students and community
  • Live coding and electronic music performance
  • Live drawing with OSU faculty
  • Online YouTube showcase
  • Spoken word
  • Vintage synthesizer performance

Featured Artist: Christopher Lock

Christopher Lock is a computer musician, creative programmer, and film composer currently based in Cambridge, MA. He creates densely textural electronic music which slowly mutates and morphs over time and is often saturated with dark imagery or phantasmagoria. His musical practice stems from a tradition of Baltimore area noise music, where he first started experimenting with sound. Throughout his education Christopher has been fortunate to study with such musical visionaries as Esperanza Spalding, Meredith Monk, Vijay Iyer, Claire Chase, Thomas Dolby, Chaya Czernowin, Hans Tutschku.

Christopher has released his music on labels such as Geryon (NYC) and Idolatrous Records (Cambridge). He has worked with world renowned ensembles such as Ensemble Recherche, Tak Ensemble, Ensemble WasteLAnd, Switch~ Ensemble, Elision Ensemble, Line Upon Line, and Wet Ink. In the spring of 2022 Christopher was the appointed Teaching Fellow for Esperanza Spalding’s Songwright's Apothecary Lab at Harvard University where he worked with Prof. Spalding and the students intimately during the semester to develop a concert program of new original works.

Christopher is an active composer of film music and has worked with artists such as Ezekiel Goodman (I Know What You Did Last Summer) and Robert Eng (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Corroline). In January of 2022 Christopher composed original music for Giovanna Molina's "Deer Girl" which was an official selection for the Sundance Institute's Ignite x Adobe Fellowship. In the summer of 2019 his audio/visual work, in collaboration with his grandmother (also called Chris Lock), was screened at the Venice Biennale from May 8 to June 4. The video was projected in the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava as part of the UK's Alive In The Universe project. Christopher is currently a Ph.D candidate in Music (with supporting courses in Computer Science) at Harvard University. He holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Music from Harvard, a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Music from Johns Hopkins University (Peabody Conservatory), and a second Bachelor's degree in viola performance (also from Hopkins).

Listen to Christopher Lock's "Heavy Drone Works".

Schedule TBD:

All events take place in the Memorial Union, room 109 unless otherwise indicated.

Check schedule for select online programming.

Submit your work

OSU students, faculty, staff, alumni, and creative practitioners worldwide are invited to submit intermedia and interdisciplinary works. We welcome submissions utilizing sound, text, music, radio art, VR, games, computer science, AI, video art, performance art, social media art, visual art, graphic design, digital installations, and more. Please complete the submission form and submit a link to your work by midnight (PST), Sunday, March 24, 2024.

Submit your work

Submission Guidelines

  • Digital and individual performance works should be no longer than 10 minutes. Provide an UNLISTED YouTube link for viewing and downloading, with a Creative Commons license and proper credits.
  • Include a 100-word description of your work, including your full name, title, duration, and contact details.
  • Provide a 100-word or less short bio.
  • Ensure all work is original and copyright infringement-free, with 12-point Calibri font.
  • Copyright your work and license under Creative Commons.
  • The Soundbox 7 2024 student and faculty committees will review all submissions. Notifications of accepted work will be sent by email by April 7, 2024.
  • For questions or inquiries, contact Soundboxvii@gmail.com.
  • By submitting your work, you authorize OSU and Soundbox 7 festival organizers to stream or share it during the festival on various social media and digital platforms. Some of your work may be included in a festival highlight reel as part of the permanent public archive, at no charge to OSU. If submitting a photo of a physical object, note that you are responsible for drop-off and pick-up.

Organizers

  • Artistic Director: Dana Reason (SVPDA: Contemporary Music Industry)
  • OSU Faculty Curation Committee:
    • Jason Fick (SVPDA: Music Technology & Production)
    • Michael Gamble (SVPDA: Contemporary Music Industry, and Popular Music)
    • Johnny Beaver (SVPDA: Visual Art)
  • OSU Student Curation, Production, Social Media, and Design Team:
    • Joshua Philips (Contemporary Music Industry)
    • Annabella Eisner (Spanish Language and Culture, and Contemporary Music Industry)
    • Sage Jarvie (Digital Communication Arts, and Music Technology and Production)
    • Mackenzie Ruff (Human Development and Family Science, and Music Technology and Production)

Additional support and special thanks to College of Liberal Arts, Dean Larry Rodgers, Peter Swendsen, Director of School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts, and PRAx.