John D. S. Adams Wins Mike Zagorski Award

by Annie Corrigan / 2018 Sound Symposium XIX, All News
July 12, 2018

Craig Squires shows off the Mike Zagorski Award, a noise maker that Craig made from parts inherited from Mike himself.

Congratulations to John D. S. Adams, the winner of this Symposium’s Mike Zagorski Award. This award is given to an artist every Symposium who works at the intersection of technology and sound.

As a member of Faceless Forces of Bigness, John has explored generative composition within the parameters of real time improvisation. The FFoB create music and moving images using analog modular synthesizers networked to cutting edge video authoring tools. John lives in Halifax where he works as a music producer and engineer with Stonehouse Sound.

Dr. Michael Zagorski was a Professor of Psychology at Memorial University, with a focus on psychoacoustics. We often took advantage of his intellectual side at Symposium workshops on the psychology of sound. We all benefitted from his acute and wide-ranging mind.

He was a tinkerer and a creator of gadgets. As a member of Fusion in the early days and The Black Auks in the later days, Mike contributed to our artistic lives in unforgettable ways.

Craig Squires made music with Mike in Black Auks:

I have fond memories of lengthy conversations with Mike about everything from atomic physics, to aleatorics, to tunings, to tazers, to wonky business schemes. He had a wide open mind and a wide open heart. My favourite memories, however, are of making sound with him. His ears were alive and listening and sensitive.

Mike was one of the founders of the Sound Symposium back in 1983. He worked as an organizer and artist up to his death in 2005.

Mike Zagorski Award Winners

2018 John D. S. Adams

2016 Tom Hamilton

2014 Doug Blackley & Andrew Czink

2012 SCAPE: Scott Stevenson, Jesse Frampton, Mitchell Chaulk, Donovan Benoit, Mike Noseworthy

2010 David Rokeby

2008 Gayle Young