The March 8 Maker Day is cancelled. For information about future Maker Days you can check out the Digital Media Students Association on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/DMSAYorkU/about/
The Digital Media Student Association invites you to its Winter Maker Day!
[caption id="attachment_99964" align="alignleft" width="450"] Digital Media Student Association Maker Day. Photos: Julienne Rennnie[/caption]
This fun-focused event is a drop-in “make” session. York U community members are invited to come and build toys and gadgets from a wide array of DIY (Do It Yourself) kits. These electronic kits encompass a range of skill levels, from complete beginner to seasoned metalworker. Solar-powered cars and robots are just some of the contraptions you can create. (Some kits require soldering skills.)
Maker Day provides a strong, open platform for socialization and collaboration. It’s creative. It’s fun. And it’s free!
Refreshments are provided. And best of all: you get to take home anything you make.
The event is open to all students, in any major.
[caption id="attachment_99961" align="alignnone" width="700"] Digital Media Student Association Maker Day. Photo: Julienne Renne[/caption]

We’re bringing Central Perk to you! Enjoy a tasty beverage, something sweet and a few performances to start off your week. Winters Café is here and we’re providing you with a cozy environment to chill out and listen to a variety of performers: musicians, comedians, playwrights, poets – you name it!
Interested in performing? Email us at wcmaster@yorku.ca or drop-in to the Office of the Head (121), or the Junior Common Room (012), Winters College and sign-up. Drop-in performances are also allowed if there are open spots!

It’s getting colder, which means it’s time to get cozy! Keep warm at the second Winters Café next Monday, October 29th. We’re offering warm beverages, sweet treats and board games. Plus, we’ll have live performances from your student peers. Interested in performing yourself? Sign up HERE!

We are excited to bring you a new tradition to celebrate the end of a semester, and another year. The first ever “Winters Frolic” at Winters College, with a theme of “Havana Nights”! A formal dinner party event where Cuban-inspired dinner and drinks will be served along with exciting performances by both musicians and dancers. We will be raffling away fantastic prizes, with all proceeds going towards our Winters College student scholarships and funds. Follow us on Instagram: @WintersCollege for a sneak peek of the big day and the prizes we will be raffling off!
Doug Van Nort with special guest Anne Bourne
In this on going series Doug Van Nort performs with curated and invited guests.
This first event will feature an electronics and cello duo with Doug Van Nort and longtime friend and collaborator, Anne Bourne.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space.
Dispersion Relation #4: Doug Van Nort with the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra
In this on going series Doug Van Nort performs with curated and invited guests.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space. The lab door will remain open, and people are welcome to come in late or leave early during the show. (Please remove shoes before entering!)
The fourth event welcomes a special performance with the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra. Two pieces will explore new modes of composing for attentional strategies that blend Soundpainting conducting, cross-performer shared sound processing, interactive spatialization and lighting.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space.
Music to Play in the Dark #1
In this on going series Doug Van Nort performs with curated and invited guests.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space. The lab door will remain open, and people are welcome to come in late or leave early during the show. (Please remove shoes before entering!)
An immersive, spatial audio-haptic concert in total darkness for the Winter Solstice!
This concert will feature existing pieces by invited composer Darren Copeland and Doug Van Nort that are re-imagined for the 28.2 audio and 56-channel haptic floor of the DisPerSion Lab. It will also include a new piece by lab member Rory Hoy created for this event.
Copeland’s piece will feature a small amount of light in order to see his performative gesture-based spatializations sound. Van Nort’s piece, originally composed in 2012, will be the first full use of the haptic floor that he has created over the past few years. Hoy’s piece will be a new construction created in the space leading up to the event.
About the guest composer:
Darren Copeland is a Canadian sound artist who has been active since 1985 and lives in the country outside the village of South River (Ontario). His work encompasses multichannel spatialization for live performance, fixed media composition, soundscape composition, radio art and sound installations.
His fixed-media compositions have explored both abstract and referential sound materials. Many of these works are released on the empreintes DIGITALes label and have received mentions from Vancouver New Music, Phonurgia Nova, Luigi Russolo, and other competitions.and lighting.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space.
Dispersion Relation #5: Doug Van Nort with guest Michael Palumbo
In this on going series Doug Van Nort performs with curated and invited guests.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space. The lab door will remain open, and people are welcome to come in late or leave early during the show. (Please remove shoes before entering!)
The fifth event welcomes special guest Michael Palumbo.
All are welcome to come and listen in this immersive sonic space.
Hollywood Old and New: ReDesigns for Student Engagement in eLearning with Gillian Helfield & Dan Becker
Thursday, March 12
12:00 – 1:30 PM
AMPD Faculty Lounge (GCFA 214)
Free
RSVP
Join us for this lunchtime talk about the evolution of “Hollywood Old and New”, a fully online class that offers students an understanding of Hollywood film genres from a historical and social perspective. In this talk, the presenters will discuss their pedagogical strategies for the new course redesign to facilitate student engagement in a large format class. This course is offered by the Department Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design.
Gillian Helfield lectures at York University, in Cinema and Media Studies in AMPD, Humanities in LAPS, and Canadian Studies at Glendon College. Though she has specialized in Canadian and Quebec Cinemas, other areas of academic interest include Genre Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Cinema, National Cinemas, Diasporic and Exilic Cinemas, Middle Eastern Cinemas, and Rural Cinemas. In 2006, her book Representing the Rural: Space Place and Identity, in Films About the Land, was published by Wayne State University Press.
In collaboration with AMPD, Gillian has developed and redesigned two large-enrolment online film courses, which have earned recognition from international eLearning associations (IELA) and the Teaching Commons at York University (York’s nomination for the STLHE Brightspace /D2L Innovation Award). In 2017, she received the AMPD eLearning Teaching Award.
Dan Becker is the Educational Designer and Developer for the Faculty of Education. He works extensively with instructors to operationalize educational theory and current research within courses that utilize technology. Dan develops learning experiences that engage students, build communities of inquiry and employ meaningful assessment strategies, while avoiding excessive effort on the part of the instructor. His approach of simplicity and depth has produced a variety of courses that are enjoyed by instructors and students alike.
Dispersion Relation X…where X = you
Dispersion specializes in carving out a virtual space of community, allowing for remote connections of listening and sounding.
To this end, the Dispersion Relation series continues over the Zoom teleconferencing platform. Doug Van Nort will perform each week on Zoom. Please join him and fellow collaborators for a truly unique musical experience.
Event Information
Saturday, April 4, 2020
6:00pm-7:00pm
Zoom Event Link
The April 4th performance will feature:
Alex Ring – Violin
Maurice Rickard – Guitar + Max/MSP
Erin Corbett – modular synths
Dispersion Relation X
Dispersion specializes in carving out a virtual space of community, allowing for remote connections of listening and sounding.
To this end, the Dispersion Relation series continues over the Zoom teleconferencing platform. Doug Van Nort will perform each week on Zoom. Please join him and fellow collaborators for a truly unique musical experience.
Event Information
Saturday, May 2, 2020
6:00pm-7:00pm
Zoom Event Link
Password: 237478
The May 2nd performance will feature:
Viv Corringham – Voice
Rory Hoy – Processed Bass, drums
Danny Sheahan – Voice
Matt Wellins – Laptop
Doug Van nort – greis/electronics
Electro-Acoustic Orchestra @ Dispersion Relation X Continues!
Dispersion specializes in carving out a virtual space of community, allowing for remote connections of listening and sounding.
The Electro-Acoustic Orchestra (dir. Doug Van Nort) is an ensemble comprised of a mixture of acoustic and electronic performers. It is an emergent sonic organism that evolves through collective attention to all facets of sound, and soundpainting-based real-time composition.
The conducting language used with the group is based on Soundpainting, with modifications and additions by Van Nort for the electro-acoustic context. In the words of the language’s inventor: “The Soundpainter (the composer) standing in front (usually) of the group communicates a series of signs using hand and body gestures indicating specific and/or aleatoric material to be performed by the group. The Soundpainter develops the responses of the performers, moulding and shaping them into the composition then signs another series of gestures, a phrase, and continues in this process of composing the piece.”
The EAO functions as a year-round resident ensemble for the DisPerSion Lab, and also runs as an undergraduate and graduate course during the Fall terms. EAO integrates members from YorkU, the larger Toronto electroacoustic and improvising communities, and the international community of electro/acoustic improvisers via performances over the internet.
Event Information
Saturday, August 22, 2020
6:00pm-7:00pm
Zoom Event Link
More Information: Dispersion Lab Facebook Page