The third edition of the Naviar Haiku Fest took place at The Old Church in Stoke Newington, London. We started this day's event with a haiku workshop in the morning, followed by two-panel discussions focused on creative online communities and multidisciplinary projects. NHF III ended in the evening with the performances of five members and friends of Naviar’s community.
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Haiku 2.0
A conversation with poets Kala Ramesh, Mark Gilfillan, and entrepreneur Dhru Karwa on the evolution of haiku and the impact of technology on this form of traditional Japanese poetry.
Speakers:
Kala Ramesh
A poet and editor, Kala Ramesh writes and teaches haiku, tanka, haibun and renku to children, undergrads, and senior citizens. Kala is the Editor at Under the Basho (USA), Cattails (USA), and World Haiku Review (UK) and is part of the editorial team of Living Haiku Anthology and Living Senryu Anthology (USA).
Dhru Karwa
Dhrupad Karwa (Dhru) is the 26-year-old co-founder and CEO of HaikuJAM, a mobile app for writing haiku with people around the world. HaikuJAM aims to provide smartphone users with a tool for creative expression, meaningful connection, and stress relief: a stimulating, interactive, and nourishing experience.
The app is used in over 100 languages and has been profiled in Forbes, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and many other international media outlets. Alongside the app, HaikuJAM runs events around the world and has attracted audiences as large as 3000 people.
Mark Gilfillan
Mark has been British Haiku Society committee member without portfolio for the past three years. He has been writing haiku and senryu for around seven years, His first collection Ghost Moon received positive reviews from the esteemed American haiku Journal Frog Pond and the British Haiku Society’s Blithe Spirit. He’s just completed his second collection “So Slow The Moon’s Rise”. Mark’s haiku and senryu have been published in haiku journals all around the world
Online communities 2.0
There are hundreds of online creative communities around the globe, each one of them offering a digital space for creatives where to connect and create. Communities that would find it difficult to survive in the physical world can thrive in the digital realm, free from the geographical barriers that prevent people from connecting. Most of the time the results are fascinating: worldwide networks of individuals gathering together, attracted by a common interest or purpose, and creating something meaningful to themselves and others.
Why are online communities important and their role in the present and future of the creative world, is the topic of this panel discussion.
Speakers:
Tony Doyle – Women in Sound Women on Sound
Tony Doyle is a composer/academic based in Lancaster UK. Doyle has a PhD with research focused on spatial audio development and multichannel composition. He is the founder of the new Lancaster Laptop Orchestra and is collaborating on a research project with physicists, artificial intelligence researchers, and social scientists on the development of interactive audio-visual works representing astrophysical phenomena. He is also the editor of the Interference Journal, a journal of audio cultures. http://www.tony-doyle.com, wwwinterferencejournal.org
Doyle is a core member and developer of the website for the WISWOS (Women in Sound Women on Sound) organization. His particular focus has been on the development of the online learning space, Research in a Box: Activating Women in Sound, with Rebecca Collins, Linda O Keeffe, and Diana Chester. The purpose of the ‘box’ is as a loanable toolkit for teachers and students at secondary schools in the UK. He recently co-wrote a paper with Chester for The Eaves on this online space.
Stuart Fowkes – Cities and Memory
Stuart is a sound artist and field recordist from Oxford, UK, and is the founder of Cities and Memory, a global collaborative sound project encompassing field recording, sound art, and sound mapping – remixing the world, one sound at a time.
From a background of more than ten years using field recordings to give context to musical composition, he created Cities and Memory in 2014. He has recorded many of the field recordings produced many of the project’s reimagined sounds, and curated contributions to and collaborations with the project from all over the world. Cities and Memory has been exhibited both in the UK and internationally, and Stuart has spoken on sound and related issues at conferences across Europe.
THE PERFORMERS:
halF unusuaL https://soundcloud.com/half-unusual
According to Jane Reichhold, the ‘hai’ part of ‘haiku’ translates to ‘joke’, ‘fun’, or ‘unusual’. halF unusuaL is Darren Bourne, whose musical career to date has included international sound engineering, production, performing, and writing credits across a variety of genres and platforms from pop to film music and sound design to contemporary dance and theatre. His current obsessions are chance and the boundary between music and non-music.
Tomas Nordmark https://soundcloud.com/tomasnordmark
Artist and composer Tomas Nordmark makes contemplative and somewhat cinematic music based partly on ancient northern European hymns, with a minimalistic phase-shifting compositional technique. Inspired by the writings of cultural theorist Mark Fisher and the concept of a lost future, Nordmark uses the ancient textures with a critical perspective layered with a notion of bypassing the contemporary stasis.
Nordmark recently released the first track from his upcoming album via the NYC based label Valley of Search (www.valleyofsearch.com).
ikjoyce https://soundcloud.com/ikjoyce
ikjoyce makes electronic ambient and drone music using modular synthesis to explore themes of nature, space, isolation, man/machine interaction, and the borders of the sleep/wake cycle.
Audio Obscura https://soundcloud.com/audio-obscura-music
Audio Obscura performs Lap-top-based electronics for the ears, haunting the wide spectrum of electro-acoustic music with a firm footing in the ambient realm. The sound also strays towards the experimental; musique concrète, idm with post-classical minimal leanings occasionally push through.
Neil has summed up the Audio Obscura sound as thus;
“Light is, to the camera obscura, as sound is to Audio Obscura”
https://audioobscura.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-airports-in-the-age-of-climate-change
Simon McCorry https://soundcloud.com/simonmccorry
Simon is a cellist & composer based in Stroud, Gloucestershire. After playing in several bands as a bass player in the 90s he started making music and sound design for theatre, contemporary dance, and film. He has worked with visual artists creating soundscapes for installations and exhibitions, defining space and feeling with sound. Also releases work as ‘amonism’ combining influences of modern classical, free improvisation with electronics & field recording.
“Live at The Old Church“, a live album with music fom the Haiku Fest, was published in October ’18.