FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington arts department is bringing together two pioneering figures in the avant-garde and experimental music world to demonstrate how sound and all of its forms have no boundaries.

Composers, performers, artists and innovators Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood will offer a series of UMF Sound Forum events that reveal how sound, silence and noise shape the aural landscape of our lives.

These events take place from Nov. 18-21, and are free and open to the public:

11:45 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18:

A panel discussion on sound will be held featuring Oliveros; Lockwood; N.B. Aldrich, a new media artist and educator; and Gustavo Aguilar, composer and associate professor of experimental performance at UMF. The panel will be moderated by Steven Pane, UMF professor of music. It will be held in the Emery Community Arts Center.

Nov. 18 to 21: 

Lockwood presents her sound art exhibit “A Sound Map of the Danube.” Recorded over three years and five trips to Europe, this soundscape traces the second longest European river’s run from the Black Forest in Germany to its delta into the Black Sea. This exhibit will be on display in the Flex Gallery in the UMF Emery Community Arts Center. Lockwood will give a presentation at 3:45 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 19.

7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19:

A “Deep Listening” workshop by Oliveros will show how there’s more to listening than meets the ear. Deep Listening explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature – exclusive and inclusive of listening. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, interactive performance, listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination and dreams and listening to listening itself. Lockwood will also present a short talk on her last work “Wild Energy.” The workshop will be held the Emery Community Arts Center.

A composer, performer and innovator, Oliveros is a powerful figure in American avant-garde music. Her 50-year career has focused on opening her own and others’ sensibilities to the universe and facets of sound. She has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual.

Born in New Zealand, Lockwood is a composer whose work often involves recordings of natural found sounds. During the 1960s she collaborated with sound poets, choreographers and visual artists, and also created a number of works such as the “Glass Concerts,” which initiated her lifelong fascination with timbre and new sound sources. Later on in her career, she turned her attention to performance works focused on environmental sounds and life-narratives. Her progressive ideas range from the microtonal, electro-acoustic soundscapes and vocal music.

These events are sponsored by the Office of the UMF Provost; UMF Dept. of Sound, Performance and Visual Inquiry; the UMF Divisions of Social Science and Business, Natural Science and Humanities; and the Emery Community Arts Center.