This one-day event explores emerging possibilities of distance and interaction in music. As new network-based technologies have facilitated and amplified human communal interaction, musicians have simultaneously embraced these for live performance. [Ø] [zerospace]—consisting of an afternoon colloquium with performances, and an evening concert—will explore several musical trends in distance and interaction in music.

NOMADS (Network-Operational Mobile Applied Digital System) :: Participatory Colloquium and Performance :: 3:30 p.m. in Curtin Hall 175 :: with Interactive Media Research Group/IMRG (UVA), Chris Chafe (Stanford), and Scott Deal (IUPUI); panel discussion moderated by Christopher Burns (UWM)

Evening Concert : 7:00 p.m. at Music Recital Hall ::Telematic interactive performances between UWM and UVA, IUPUI/Indianapolis, CCRMA/Stanford, and UMKC/Kansas City, featuring music and performances by Burtner, Chafe, Deal, Michael Drews (IUPUI), Aurie Hsu (UVA), IMRG, IUPUI Telematic Collective, Steven Kemper (UVA), John Mayhood (UVA), MICE (UVA), MiLO (UWM), Chryssie Nanou (Stanford), RAT (UMKC), and David Topper (UVA). Featured performers in the IUPUI Telematic Collective include Chuiyaun Meng, technical director; Nick Hartgrove, percussion; Brendon Rhia, Kara Commons, and Ben Rogge, technical support; and Margaret Dolinsky, VRT Navigation ::

More Info http://www4.uwm.edu/c21/pages/events/abstracts/11spring/zerospace.html

Lemurs Over Laptopia: Will new performance interfaces rejuvenate live electronic music? asks Thomas Bey William Bailey on Vague Terrain:

For roughly 160 years since Richard Wagner published his Artwork of the Future, Western audio culture has been forced to take sides on the issue of music and its relation to the other arts: should music be just one element in a fully-integrated artistic program, or should ‘absolute music’ unfettered by lyrics (let alone other sensory effects) run the show? … the ‘total artwork vs. absolute music’ debate has only accelerated in recent years, in which multi-functional and compact (yet visually bland) tools like laptops and digital samplers have muscled in on the territory previously commanded by ensembles of ‘mono-functional,’ yet visually arresting, acoustic instruments. Following Wagner’s suggestion for architecture to be built with music performance in mind, all the plastic arts have been mobilized to enhance the concert stage. More recently, electronic instruments or control interfaces have also been designed to that end, rather than just working as efficient sound generators.

Read on as this article describes the JazzMutant Lemur, a multitouch and modular controller that musicians can use to to design or download customized GUIs that match the color schemes and ‘mood’ of any given performance program; and Toshio Awai’s Tenori-On, which can
communicate to audiences using synesthetic ‘translations’ of light signals into audio data — both of which seem designed to deal with the perceived problems of acousmatic music.

The Audio Cubes: Tangible Interface for Audiovisual Creation workshops are about exploring the possibilities of tangible interfaces for audiovisual artwork, in particular in sound design, music composition and live performance.

The participants will be introduced to the AudioCubes musical interface and its applications. AudioCubes are a new way to create audiovisual work through gestures and phsyical interaction with a network of intelligent wireless objects.

In the practical afternoon session of the workshop, participants will work on their personal projects using AudioCubes with the assistance of the designer.

Who: Professional artists with experience in music composition, sound design or live performance and an interest in technology, computers, human interfaces and software.

URL: See http://www.meetup.com/AudioCubes for workshop description and details. Or contact: Bert Schiettecatte, +32 477 931 533 or bert (at) percussa (dot) com

Featured artworks - The Knitting Scanner by Azusa Murakami reads patterns in knitted garments and translates them into music; Chromophone by Benjamin Newland allows people to make music from the colours that they see; Fabien Cappello turns type into beautiful music using a modified traditional typewriter; an installation of porcelain bowls by Jozephine Duker people play using their hands or everyday objects like a pen; a comfortable lounge chair by Vahakn Matossian houses an audio processing ‘brain,’ microphone, joystick and sound horns; Giuseppe Guerriero’s instrument has fifty sensors around its surface to allow body movements to compose and play music; Lucia Massari turns an ordinary book into an extraordinary musical instrument; Matthew Plummer-Fernandez has created a wind-up human-powered electronic instrument; Yiting Cheng and Ting-Chung Cheng have devised a wearable instrument with which body movements execute a symphony of buttons, zip fasteners, velcro and pins. Related: itSpace by Peter Traub.

Mind Body Brain is an evening concert exploring noise (music) through research into new interfaces for musical expression and perceptions of noise. The evening will be split into two segments. In the first segment each artist will give a synopsis of their current work and research. The second segment will be a live concert. This event brings together artists from music, computing, design and psychology. Through the course of the evening you may hear ghost voices and mains electricity through Disinformation; a brain playing music through Mick Griersons’ brain computer interface, and strobe-ing lights and sounds with John Bowers’ infra-instruments. Curator: Ryan Jordan.

Through his ground-breaking Disinformation project (active since 1995),noise DJ and installation artist Joe Banks pioneered the use of electromagnetic (radio) noise from sources such as live mains electricity, lightning, industrial and IT hardware, laboratory equipment, trains, magnetic storms and the sun as the raw material of musical and fine-art publications, exhibits and events. Disinformation
has been the subject of ten UK solo exhibitions, experienced by over 100,000 people and described by The Guardian as some of the most beautiful installations around.

Robert Atwood has been experimenting with improvised performances on improvised instruments for several years, first as part of Toronto’s “Urban Refuse Group” and subsequently as a solo project in London, UK. He also has explored improvisational music with traditional instruments and effect-processed instruments with Toronto’s “Brain Harmonic”, and has used and developed sound feedback and sequencing software for performances with London’s “Openlab” collective, and live-coding feedback patches for Loss-Livecode. His broad theme of sound performances is the improvisational reaction to generated feedback, in electronic circuits or in software synthesis. In this performance he will use Feedback Machine #1, consisting of a discarded 8-inch woofer cone with a homebuilt amplifier rig and some pedal-effects. The feedback loop is completed by the performer’s hands which conduct sound directly from the speaker cone to a pickup microphone. The result of this feedback is further process led by a specially-developed sequencer program, which samples segments of the sound, sequences them into a loop, and also feeds the output of the loop back into the individual samples. Thus there are two feedback loops on different time scales which the performer will attempt to control, with only partial success, resulting in an unpredictable polyrhythmic performance.

Mick Grierson is an experimental artist specialising in real-time interactive audiovisual research, with specific focus on cognition and perception. He works in film, music, and software development, both inside and outside industry, designing, developing and producing new approaches to creating audiovisual experience. In addition to working in traditional roles in film and television, he has designed commercial audiovisual software for the entertainment industries, which has led to several high profile commissions, including title design and digital audiovisual installations for the hit TV show Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind. In January 2008, he collaborated with the Sonic Arts Network to create a freely available interactive audiovisual interface for use by the deaf and hard of hearing. In addition he is lead developer on the Mabuse Audiovisual Composition Software Environment. He is currently working on a three year fully funded AHRC project on audiovisual cognition at Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios.

slub is a live coding band with Dave Griffiths, Alex McLean and, occasionally, Adrian Ward. Grifiths writes programs to make noises, pictures and animations. He lives in London where he makes film effects software and computer games. McLean has been triggering distorted kick drum samples with Perl scripts for far too long. He is a PhD student of Arts and Computational Technology at Goldsmiths College. Griffiths and McLean are both members of the Openlab free software artists collective and the TOPLAP organisation for live algorithm promotion.

JOHN BOWERS & LIAM WELLS

Bowers and Wells will simultaneously perform GforGuitar (Wells) and GforGround (Bowers). The performances will be accompanied by computer generated sounds and images derived from multiple cross-modal feedback processes. All material will be tuned in relation to harmonics and sub-harmonics of the AC supply frequency 50 Hz, our fundamental, G.

John Bowers works with home brew electronics, self-made instruments and reconstructions of antique image and sound-making devices, alongside contemporary digital technology. He is concerned with making performance environments that combine sound, vision and human gesture at a fundamental physical level. Recent work includes projects to build a music synthesizer using 19th century techniques (The Victorian Synthesizer), explorations of random circuitry (Ohm-My-God), a miniaturisation of Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville’s Dreamachine (My Little Dreamachine), and a reconstruction of early television technology (This Nightlife Instrument). He was recently artist in residence at Fylkingen in Stockholm. He is co-founder of the Onoma Research label and also plays electric guitar in the fundamentalist noise rock band Tonesucker. John Bowers is part of the Interaction Research Studio, Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Liam Wells is a UK based artist working in a number of improvised practices, which explore repetition & irregularity in multiple layered non-linear audio/ visual works. Through a number of linked practices including drone-based noise compositions/ improvisations, installation, video-performances and networked/ net art, he explores textural detail and difference within immersive environments. He is a postgraduate student at theUEA’s Electronic Music Studio and is currently Course Leader of Norwich University College of the Arts’ (BA Hons) Film and Video. Previously he has been involved in the creation of networked improvisational environments through involvement with a variety of organisations,including the co-curating of various multi-site works with n0media (www.n0media.net) and has recently performed audiovisual works at DIT (Ireland), Fylkingen (Sweden), Norwich Gallery (UK) and City Gallery (Lithuania). Wells is also one third of neo-noise–prog outfit TRANSEPT who have recently been awarded an Arts Council England Escalator Grant for New Music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeHkyjoKj9U

This work applies the philosophy from “tai chi”: “It is neither existing nor not existing.” The interactive factors and feedback answer the philosophy aptly. It is based on the simple principle that the rolling of a bead will lead to reduction in friction. When the player makes the physical objects move a sliding effect of acceleration and centrifugal force is created to compute the audio and visual effect in the installation. More info can be found on the official website.

The latter has been used in two live performances by the Sicilian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima. Using the sequencer Sollima is able to record audio or voice samples and organize them in variable length loops. These samples are associated with physical objects (a few simple blocks of wood) while the interface is an interactive surface bounded by a sheet of paper. Moving the blocks of wood on paper (each of which is labeled with specific signs), the musician is able to “play” his own instrument (the cello for Sollima), without a monitor: the orientation is determined by the position of the object on the sheet. A standard computer “watches” the position of objects with a webcam while the d-touch vision system (entirely coded in C++ under Linux) is able to localize them precisely. The information about the position and orientation of blocks of wood is used to control a digital audio synthesis, thus, ultimately, to give voice to a musical instrument or a virtual singer. In live performances a closer shooting of the interface is projected on the screen behind the artist, allowing the audience to share the performer’s interaction with the odd objects designed by Costanza. Another interesting element is the use of extremely cheap components, which characterize the Physical Sequencer performances to a greater extent. — Vito Campanelli, Neural. Video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEW2g4vNK7Y

The Telephone Game: Oil/Water/Ether is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc…). The students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can they create?; how can they physically control these sounds?; how do they compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do they organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network?

In its first year of PLOrk’s existence, composers and performers from Princeton and elsewhere developed new pieces for this unprecedented ensemble, including Paul Lansky (Professor of Music at Princeton), Brad Garton (Director of the Columbia Computer Music Center), PLOrk co-founders Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, and several graduate students. They have made extensive use of a new music programming language created by Princeton graduate student (now assistant professor at Stanford University|CCRMA) Ge Wang, called ChucK, which allows the performers to develop new code in performance. In their first major performance (April 2006, Richardson Auditorium) we were joined by the renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, legendary accordianist and composer Pauline Oliveros, and the exciting young percussion quartet from New York City, So Percussion. PLOrk was featured in the April issues of the MIT Press Technology Review and Wired Magazine, and performed at the Dartmouth College “Orchestras of Sameness” festival in May 2006.

TABLACENTRIC is thrilled to present Ajay Kapur, whose work revolves around one queston: “How do you make a computer improvise with a human?” Using the rules set forth by the north Indian classical tradition, Ajay strives to build new interfaces for musical expression by modifying the tabla, dholak and sitar with added microchips and sensor systems, while building robotic musical instruments which can be programmed to perform along with the human performer.

Ajay Kapur is the Music Technology Coordinator at California Institute of the Arts. He received an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2007 from University of Victoria combining Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Music and Psychology with a focus on Intelligence Music and Media Technology. Ajay graduated with a Bachelor in Science and Engineering Computer Science degree from Princeton University in 2002. He has been educated by music technology leaders including Dr. Perry R. Cook, Dr. George Tzanetakis, and Dr. Andrew Schloss, combined with mentorship from robotic musical instrument sculptors Eric Singer and the world famous Trimpin. A musician at heart, trained on Drumset,Tabla, Sitar and other percussion instruments from around the world, Ajay strives to push the technological barrier in order to make new music.

Online submission: Web entries accepted from around the world for the Web showcase. Limited entries will be chosen to compete live — To compete for the prizes, those entries must be present at Yuri’s Night Bay Area, Saturday, April 12. Submit DIY music performance projects – using custom software and/or hardware – for a live performance battle at the Yuri’s Night Bay Area party on April 12, sponsored by Yuri’s Night and createdigitalmusic.com. Compete for awards including a Yamaha Tenori-On grand prize.

BACKGROUND: In science fiction and science fact, music has been central to finding a common language to speak to the universe. Music from Bach to gamelan has traveled into space on the Voyager spacecraft. In the digital age, musical interfaces are also often the best way to understand how to interface with technology and information.

Musicians have led many of the most innovative digital technological breakthroughs — the first digital synthesizer (at Bell Labs in the 50s), breakthroughs in modular electronic systems (modular synthesizers of the 60s), pioneering advances in digital storage and processing, unusual wireless interfaces and gestural controls decades ahead of the Nintendo Wii, and touch- and multi-touch tools years before the iPhone and Microsoft Surface. But that’s all in the past. This is a design challenge for the future. We want to hear the best, most forward-thinking, generally coolest, Second Space Age-worthy instruments and digital music interfaces. If aliens land — as they did when met by a classic ARP synthesizer in Close Encounters — we want to be able to give them a great show.

How to enter: We’re looking for designs of “instruments” — whether self-contained, electrically-powered devices or hardware interfaces for computers. That can include tangible interfaces, physical computing, hacked hardware, custom-built synths and electronics, and other gadgets. These must use at least some custom software and/or hardware.

You are limited to one computer and one input device — but the “input device” can be as complex as an interactive table. If that sounds vague, just remember — ultimately, the judges and audience decide. Wow them, and all will be well.

Artists must sign up in advance. We will have a limited number of slots. The best proposals will be chosen by the staff of createdigitalmusic.com to compete in San Francisco at Yuri’s Night.

Set up, plug in. You’ll have a limited set up time.

Play. You have three minutes to perform.

JUDGING: A panel of judges with expertise in music and interaction design will judge the entries — and are encouraged to be biased by crowd response. (If you’ve got friends, tell them to cheer really loudly.)

AWARDS: Winners will be announced at Yuri’s Night, with a grand prize winner and honorable mention awards for each category.

http://yuricdm.com
http://yuricdm.com/2008/03/19/futuristic-music-design-challenge/
http://yurisnightbayarea.net/