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Salon: TIME, May 8 2025
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large group at CSC Salon talk series

TOPIC: TIME, moderated by Matthew Burtner.

What is time and how do we know it? Music is a time art of vibration, and composers structure sound in time, perhaps like sculptors shape material in space. In this salon, we will listen to a couple of sound experiments to consider perspectives and contexts of time. My research explores sonic environmental temporalities, sometimes outside the frame of human perception, such as melting glaciers, atmospheric profiles, reef regeneration, or moth hearing. I hope that by considering time in an interdisciplinary forum, we can raise questions about the complex intersections between time, being, physics, phenomenology, and sound.

You do not need to prepare anything to attend the salon, but if you have time, feel free to listen to “Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier” from the album Glacier Music, https://open.spotify.com/track/2huGqncXgMaOl2c5BIjTzb or wherever you find music.

ABOUT MATTHEW BURTNER
Matthew Burtner is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and eco-acoustician whose work explores embodiment, ecology, polytemporality and noise. A leading practitioner of climate change music and ecoacoustic sound art, he serves as Eleanor Shea Professor of Music in the Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) program at the University of Virginia. He co-directs UVA’s Coastal Future Conservatory and is founder and director of the non-profit organization, EcoSono.  His music has been performed in concerts around the world and featured by organizations such as NASA, PBS NewsHour, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the BBC, the U.S. State Department under President Obama, and National Geographic. His work has won prizes such as the IDEA Award for the climate-change opera Auksalaq, an Australian IMPACT Award for THAW with Legs on the Wall, an EMMY Award for Composing Music with Snow and Glaciers for Alaska PBS, and an NEA Art Works Award for The Ceiling Floats Away with poet Rita Dove.

ABOUT SALON
Salons are monthly open dialogues on cutting-edge research related to contemplation and flourishing with UVA and local community members in the Contemplative Commons, hosted by CSC's CIRCL: Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab. Centered on a single word, these gatherings bring together scholars, scientists, and practitioners from diverse perspectives to exchange ideas, generate knowledge, and seek solutions to global challenges. View all Salons here.

Date
-
Target Audience
Open to All
Contemplative Commons 404 (The Great Hall)

Contemplative Sciences Center
403 Emmet Street S.
Charlottesville, VA 22903
United States