Soundasaurus is a multimedia sound art festival in Calgary that has just finished a successful third season.
Tammy McGrath along with her colleague Jennifer Johnson at the the EPCOR Centre developed the festival as a way to service Calgary’s thriving sound art scene.
“What’s interesting is that there is a very strong sound art community here for decades, but the reason more people don’t know about it is because there is no permanent venue,” says McGrath. “There were one-offs and spurts of activity, but nothing ongoing.”
This year’s festival included a total of 19 international and local artists, amongst them Prairie Tales artist Kyle Armstrong.
“It’s very diverse. For example, Tristan Perich, who is from New York, performed 1-Bit Symphony, a piece that was completely digital with a visual component; Sculpture, from the U.K., did a live sound piece with animation on a turntable; and Constantine Katsiris is from Saskatchewan did his piece in complete darkness. And we had many local artists as well, including the arb institute who did a video and sound piece about the environment and wildlife.”
Reception to the works was very positive, with some unexpected growth in some demographics, says McGrath.
“We had some really amazing artists, and we found there was a built-in community to participate and attend. We had people of all ages come– we were quite surprised to have a lot of children, everything from a toddler to 12 year olds.”
