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12 events found.

Thinking Spaces

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  • October 2024

  • Fri 25
    Thinking Spaces graphic for Melissa Noventa "Movement Across Borders." Friday, October 25, 11 AM, ImprovLab. An image of Melissa leading a dance class is placed inside a blue polka dot. The green poster is highlighted with playful images of dots and squiggles.

    Thinking Spaces: Melissa Noventa, “Movement Across Borders: Improvisation, Diplomacy, and Transcultural Dialogues”

    October 25, 2024 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

    In a world with ever increasing migration and cultural exchange, dance holds a unique power to facilitate dialogue across cultural and political boundaries. Combining an informal talk with an interactive movement session, we’ll dive into how movement can act as a tool for diplomacy, offering new ways to engage with people from different backgrounds and experiences. Participants will be encouraged to engage with the nuances of improvisation as both a personal and collective practice, experiencing how movement can communicate across borders. Whether you are a seasoned dancer, or someone just curious about how the body communicates, come ready to move, experiment and reflect. No prior experience is required—just a willingness to move and explore new ideas!

    Free
  • November 2024

  • Fri 15
    Thinking Spaces graphic fo Phil Mullen: "Ways into Improvisation." Friday, November 15, 12 PM, ImprovLab. Colourful text is set on a green backgrond. An image of Phil is spotlighted—surrounded by squiggly lines and polka dots.

    Thinking Spaces: Phil Mullen, “Ways Into Improvisation”

    November 15, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    *** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***

    In this participatory workshop, Dr Mullen will look at three approaches to group improvising—1) improvising with pulse and rhythm, 2) using stimuli such as text, visuals and thematic starting points, and 3) the Search and Reflect methodology as pioneered by Phil's mentor John Stevens, a key figure in European Free Group Improvisation. Please bring an instrument if possible.

    Free
  • Fri 22
    Thinking Spaces graphic for Priya Zalis, "Clinical Improvisation in Music Psychotherapy." Friday, Nove,ber 22, 12PM (ImprovLab).

    Thinking Spaces: Priya Zalis, “Clinical Improvisation in Music Psychotherapy”

    November 22, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    *** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***

    In this workshop, Priya will introduce her approach to music psychotherapy in the context of adult mental health, inviting attendees to participate in exploring the role that clinical improvisation can play in accessing and processing emotions, building social connection, and developing personal insights and growth. 

    Free
  • December 2024

  • Thu 5

    [Postponed until Spring 2025] Thinking Spaces: Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat, “Statesman of the Piano: A Conversation on the Politics of Archiving, Curating, and Music Making”

    December 5, 2024 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    *Postponed until Spring 2025* Please join co-editors Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat for a conversation around and about Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (MQUP, 2023). The book “sparks new conversations about Hooper's legacy while shedding light on the cross-border travels and wartime experiences of Black musicians, the politics of archiving and curating, and the connections between race and music in the twentieth century.”

    Free
  • January 2025

  • Tue 21
    Thinking Spaces graphic for Justine Woods, "Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research Creation." Tuesday, January 21, ImprovLab, 12:00 PM–1:30 PM. Free. A black and white image of Justine is backgrounded with colourful design elements such as squiggles, swirls, and dotted lines.

    Thinking Spaces: Justine Woods, “Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research-creation”

    January 21, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    In this combined presentation and workshop, Justine Woods will discuss garment-making as research-creation with particular focus on the role garments play in resisting settler colonial displacement of Indigenous ontologies and bodies to place. Informed by her PhD dissertation research, Justine will expand upon the concept of ‘re-stitching’ as both a theoretical framework and embodied practice in exploring how the act of garment-making done by the Indigenous body can regenerate Indigenous ontology and re-stitch new worlds and futurities.

    Free
  • February 2025

  • Tue 11
    Thinking Spaces graphic for, Andrew Goldman "The Cognition of Musical Improvisation: Theories and Experiments." February 11, 12:00 PM–1:30 PM, ImprovLab, Free. A black and whote image of Goldman is punctuated with colourful dots and squiggles.

    Thinking Spaces: Andrew Goldman, “The Cognition of Musical Improvisation: Theories and Experiments”

    February 11, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Improvisation is a challenging topic to study using the theories and methods of cognitive science owing to the difficulty of defining it, and the diversity of improvisatory practices. I share my theoretical frameworks for engaging this challenge as well as the results from some behavioral and neuroscientific studies. Ultimately, I draw upon improvisation as a case study for exploring the difficulties of using science to understand music more generally.

    Free
  • March 2025

  • Tue 4
    Thinking Spaces graphic for Fron Reilly "Acoustic Innovation: Is there anything left to invent?" Tuesday, March 4, 12:00PM–1:30 PM, ImprovLab, Free.

    Thinking Spaces: Fron Reilly, “Acoustic Innovation: Is There Anything Left to Invent?”

    March 4, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    This talk will tell the story of four innovative acoustic musical instruments that Fron have created over the past few years. It will focus on the creative process in which he accesses his lifelong fascination with sound and delve into his background in physics to invent new ways of connecting the vibrations of strings to the human ear and brain.”

    Free
  • June 2025

  • Tue 10
    A close-up portrait of a person smiling at the camera.

    Improvnetics: Post-anthropocentric performance and improvisational modes for human-AI play, or: What we talk about when we talk about Intersentient empathy. | IMPR Colloquium by Michael Bergmann

    June 10, 2025 @ 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Please join us on Zoom or in the ImprovLab for a hybrid presentation of an IMPR Student Colloquium by Michael Bergmann! Michael Bergmann is a Canadian artist and scholar. He is a tenured Associate Professor in Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research-creation work explores the integration of AI and robotics into performance and storytelling,…

    Free
  • October 2025

  • Tue 7
    Poster for Moth Garden Thinking Spaces event, featuring a blue background with vertical dashed green lines, a QR code, colourful dots, an orange circle with the greyscale image of a moth over top. Text is replicated in the event listing.

    Thinking Spaces: Lucy Rupert, Lisa Hirmer, and Christina Kingsbury “Interdisciplinary Improvisation & Ultrasonic Moth Songs”

    October 7, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    In August 2024, dancer Lucy Rupert, musician Ben Finley, as well as artists Christina Kingsbury and Lisa Hirmer, collaborated on the interdisciplinary performance Ultra-sonic Moth Songs. Audiences present that magical summer evening experienced improvised music and movement among the moths at the Moth Garden! Join us to watch some of the beautiful archival video of the event and talk about the process of creating this environmentally inspired, multi-disciplinary improvised performance.

    Free
  • November 2025

  • Tue 18
    Poster for Steve Sladkowski's Thinking Spaces presentation. Dark blue background with colourful dots and squiggly lines, featuring light blue and green text describing the event. An orange-filtered circular inset portrait of Steve Sladkowski is present in the bottom right, below an orange circle with the date, time, and location of the event contained in blue and white text within it. Sponsor logos for IICSI and SSHRC are present at the bottom of the poster, against a white background.

    Thinking Spaces: Steve Sladkowski—”‘What Can I Get Away With Here?’: Improvisation in Punk Rock Performance and Community Making”

    November 18, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    IICSI is pleased to present a Thinking Spaces presentation by Steve Sladkowski—guitarist for renowned punk band PUP, and U of G alumnus—in ImprovLab at 12 PM on Tuesday, November 18th! As with all of our Thinking Spaces events, this presentation is free and open to all. Here's how Steve describes his talk, and himself: "Over…

    Free
  • February 2026

  • Wed 4
    Poster for Thinking Spaces event featuring Alex Chesney & Dr. Nathan TeBokkel. Blue vertical rectangular background with white, navy, and black lettering providing event information. Green, orange, and red wavy lines and dots decorate the image. Blue and orange filtered circular inset images show Dr. Nathan TeBokkel and Alex Chesney.

    Thinking Spaces: Alex Chesney and Dr. Nathan TeBokkel—Storied Social Practice: Improvisation in Farming and Food

    February 4 @ 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Growing and making food are ancient practices yet also scientifically advanced, necessary for everyday living yet often inaccessible but to experts, interdisciplinary yet highly specialized. Considering the role of improvisation in farming and cooking, especially in our chosen subfields of beekeeping and dietetics, fruitfully foregrounds these tensions. With improvisation as our watchword, we bring to…

    Free
  • March 2026

  • Wed 25
    Poster for Thinking Spaces event featuring Kate Story and Ryan Kerr. Blue vertical rectangular background with white, navy, and black lettering providing event information. Green, orange, and red wavy lines and dots decorate the image. Orange filtered circular inset photo shows Kate Story and Ryan Kerr striking dramatic poses against a dark background.

    Thinking Spaces: Kate Story and Ryan Kerr—Death in Reverse: Performance in Precarious Times

    March 25 @ 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
    ImprovLab MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    Artists Kate Story and Ryan Kerr will share what it means to create meaningful work within conditions of precarity, and on the unusual, often improvised ways artists find to stay connected with audiences. They will share experiences from curating a contemporary theatre piece marked by setbacks: limited funding, collaborative challenges, shifting resources - while also…

    Free
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