Performances Night / Festival multimedia GAMERZ 04: Confipop – 4 bits Gameboy Live :: February 6, 2009; 9:00 pm to midnight :: Aix-en-Provence, France.

Confipop – 4 bits Gameboy live: Confipop is a chipmusic Marseille based artist who makes music with a Gameboy and some modified sound toys. Native from the techno free party, he has been making music under different pseudonyme since 1996. As the best dancefloor’s friend, Confipop makes a happy and groovy dancing music, which goes from reggaeblip to technoblop, with the specific 4 bits sound of the gameboy: a modern music with old forgotten gamesound, very appropriated to have fun. Building his own toys/instruments, Confipop is an adept and a teacher of “circuitbending”, which consists in modifying toys in order to make music rather than buying expensive instruments. Continue reading

Sonic Arts @ GASP proudly presents: Beat de-constructions, circuit bending sound alterations by wizards of the Berklee College of Music Electronica Club with Zachary Lipkins, Jack Côté, Johannes Bochmann, Soffie Viemose, Elephant Feed Monkey :: December 5, 2008; 8:00 pm :: GASP Gallery, 362-4 Boylston St., Brookline, MA.

Gasp attempts to create a space for artistic exchange where artists will explore and propose new possibilities for contemporary practices, a site for collaboration between disciplines and fields in the contemporary cultural landscape.

CIRCUIT BENDING – FROM START TO FINISH with Peter Edwards (Casperelectronics) :: November 8 + 9; 2008; noon – 6 pm :: Harvestworks :: $350 [one price].

Over the course of two intensive workshops we will focus on all aspects of circuit bending from basic circuit modification to complex interface design. Each student will leave with a finished, well built instrument as well as an abundance of valuable info and experience which will help them in their future bending endeavors.

To sign up, or if you have questions, call Hans Tammen at 212-431-1130 x130, or sign up at the Harvestworks webstore under “Classes”. Continue reading

Smart Project Space presents: Bliep – An excursion into the experimental 8-Bit spectrum with BAHK (Korg Electribe SX); Gameboys a Gogo (Gameboy – FX – Synths); Peter Quistgard (Toys – Laptop – FX); Hakki Takki (Laptop – Midi – FX); VJ – Ronnie Rakete :: October 30, 2008; 9:00 pm :: Auditorium- Level 1.

The proliferation and user friendliness of gameboys and other game controllers has spawned a culture of music and video production quite separate from it’s intended use. Several distinct styles of the wide range of sounds encompassing noise and atmospherics will be explored and created on consoles, circuit-bent phones, toys and other devices. In collaboration with the Plattegrond Label. Continue reading

GASP Gallery Presents: Sonic Arts :: Friday, June 6, at 8:00 p.m. :: GASP Gallery, 362-4 Boylston St., Brookline, MA.

Cyber-musician and Berklee faculty member Neil Leonard is organizing another evening of the latest in sonic arts at GASP, a space devoted to promoting collaboration between disciplines and fields in the contemporary cultural landscape. Sonic Arts @ GASP features beat de-constructions, circuit bending noise and realtime video by Berklee Music Synthesis students and alumni. Performers include London laptop maestro Gadi Sassoon, Somerville’s own guitar player and electronic artist Katie Amaral, and New Hampshire-based sound artist Eric Miller.

It all happens this Friday, June 6, at 8:00 p.m. at the GASP Gallery, 362-4 Boylston St., Brookline, just one block from the Brookline Hills stop on the Riverside branch of the Green Line. Suggested donation is $10, or $6 with a valid student ID. Email galleryinfo@g-a-s-p.net or call 617.418.4308 for more information.

Masayuki Akamatsu has taught sound/media arts at IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences/Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences, Gifu, Japan) since 1997. He has exhibited multimedia electronic installations and performed throughout the world, and is also a member of The Breadboard Band, a group that performs electronic music made from circuits on solderless breadboards. His numerous installations incorporate sound, visual manipulations, and many other forms of mixed media. Continue reading

Hardware-Hacking & Circuit-Bending Workshop – An Interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop with Nicolas Collins :: Artcenter / South Florida, 924 Lincoln Road Mall, Room 203, Miami Beach :: Dates: March 28, 2008; 10 am – 6 pm – Part 1: contact mikes, coil pickups, tape heads, bending radios and toys :: March 29, 2008; 10 am – 6 pm :: Part 2: make an oscillator from scratch :: March 29, 2008; 7:30 pm – free outdoor performance on Lincoln Road Mall. Continue reading

Spatial Z by John Bowers, Ann Rosén and Sten-Olof Hellström :: February 17, 2008 2:00 pm :: Fylkingen, Torkel Knutssonsgatan 2, Münchenbryggeriet, Stockholm, Sweden :: Part of the Stockholm Music Festival.

Spatial Z is a collaborative composition, jointly written and performed by experimental instrument maker John Bowers, sound artist Ann Rosén and composer Sten-Olof Hellström. The piece explores the spatiality of sound and problematises music as a physical and perceptual phenomenon. What is the connection between music and space? Between instruments and the environments they find themselves in? Between the spaces in which performers interact with their instruments and each other and the audience’s listening space? How wide and high is an abstract sound? What is the relationship between the concert (architectural) space and the (imaginary) spaces suggested in the music itself? Continue reading

Immersion – Alex Mein Smith, Con Brio, Gabriel Da Piaz, grohs, SS_R, and Suero :: February 7, 2008; 7 – 11 pm :: The Flea-Pit, 49 Columbia Road, London.

Immersion is a free-entry experimental music / sound-art event featuring a soundtrack of electronic atmospheres, noisescapes, pulses / rhythms and tones / drones. Immersion is an arena for new and established international artists performing live experimental electronic music; using laptops, synthesizers, field recordings, circuit-bent electronics and prepared/processed instruments. All sounds are partnered by stimulating projected visuals processed live and tailored for each performance. Continue reading

Mr. Resistor is an innovative class in which students are taught how to create musical instruments from found electronics and other objects. Armed with two toy robots named Freddy and Teddy, a violin with a bow made out of cassette tape, and a synthesizer assembled from a 1960s electric guessing game, last weekend students at Parsons the New School for Design took to the stage to perform rock songs they created out of these and other found objects.

The performance took place at The Openhouse in SoHo and was born out of a burgeoning DIY music movement where artists take the debris of everyday life, for example an amp made from a Ritz cracker box and instruments made from Gameboys, irons and electronic toys, and turn them into musical instruments to play at events such as Handmade Music Night and Music for People and Thingamajigs. Continue reading