Grow your ideas for the next generation of musical instruments at Georgia Tech’s Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.

An annual event to find the world’s best new ideas in musicality, design and engineering, Wired magazine has called the competition an “X-Prize for music,” and contestants have likened it to a TED Conference for new musical instrument designers.

Submissions are being accepted online until October 15, 2011. Preliminary and final performances will take place in Atlanta February 16-17, 2012, where contestants will battle for $10,000 in cash prizes.

This year, winners will be selected by an expert jury panel comprised of Atau Tanaka, media artist and researcher, and Cyril Lance, chief engineer at electronic musical instrument manufacturer Moog Music.

The event calls for entries in the following categories:

Mobile: musical instruments that take advantage of the unique interface elements and extreme portability of either standard smartphone platforms or custom-made hardware devices to revolutionize how and where music is made.

Robotics: mechanical devices that play an existing acoustic instrument or contain such an instrument within their design, facilitating the performance of novel music and/or creating novel collaborations with other musicians while they demonstrate the potential for musicianship in the robotic realm.

Repurposed: musical instruments that are inspired by existing non-musical objects, building upon their design to show the latent musicality we regularly encounter but might not otherwise notice.

Augmented: musical instruments inspired by existing acoustic instruments, building upon their existing design, playing technique and performance practice with new elements that extend their expressive capabilities.

Controllers: novel hardware interfaces that can be readily connected to other software or hardware via a standard protocol, immediately expanding the expressive performance capabilities of anything with which they are linked.

Prizes will be awarded to Best in Show, Best in Category, Best Student Submission and People’s Choice.

In celebration of the conclusion of a wonderful 2010-2011 season, the Stanford Laptop Orchestra performs on Wednesday with a full-scale laptop orchestra concert. You are cordially invited to an evening of all new works for the full ensemble of humans, laptops, hemispherical speaker arrays, and crazy new instruments!

Featuring new works and performances by Linden Melvin, Nick Kruge, Hyung Suk Kim, MK Li, Chang Yea, Mike Rotondo, Ben Roth, Chris Beachy, Ben Olson, Jason Riggs, Spencer Salazar, John Granzow, Hongchan Choi, Jieun Oh and Ge Wang.

For details, visit here.

“The music changes and evolves based on your chosen path within the park,” says Ryan Holladay, one half of the band. (His brother, Hays, makes up the other half of the outfit.) “To do this, the app uses the phone’s built-in GPS capabilities.” The app features a map of the Mall that shows what locations are tagged with sound.

The album, titled The National Mall, contains about three hours of music that the brothers composed while traipsing around the area. “It was certainly the most amount of exercise I’ve ever gotten while making an album,” Holladay says.

The disc will not be available for standard download as a musical piece, since it will only work when one is standing in the Mall.

For more, go here.

Moori, by Haeyoung Kim, is an interactive audience participatory audio-visual performance. By incorporating multiple modes of messaging on a mobile phone, users tell their stories to guided questions by the performer. User data is processed to generate algorithmic audio and visuals while creating a larger narrative. This collaboration creates dialog among the performer and audience members and suggests new possibilities that can exist through the combination of algorithmic animation, audio and language.

Through text inputs, buttons, and multi-touch pads, user-data is processed to generate algorithmic audio and visuals. iPhone, iPod, and iPad users are encouraged to download the Mrmr application prior to the concert. The set up guideline can be found here.

Moori from haeyoung kim on Vimeo.

The UrbanRemix platform consists of a mobile phone system and web interface for recording, browsing, and mixing audio. It allows users to document and explore the obvious, neglected, private or public, even secret sounds of the urban environment. Participants become active creators of shared soundscapes as they search the city for interesting sound cues. The collected sounds, voices, and noises provide the original tracks for musical remixes that reflect the specific nature and acoustic identity of the community.

In collaboration with the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program, UrbanRemix will host a series of events in Times Square. Throughout April and May 2011, the public is invited to capture and contribute sounds from Times Square using the free UrbanRemix apps for iPhone/iOS and Android. Then, using the web site, anyone-anywhere can explore the contributed sounds online, view them on a virtual map of Times Square, and mix and share their own soundscapes. On May 12, New York-based electronic musicians Travis Thatcher and Damon Holzborn will perform live remixes of the collected sounds in a free performance in Times Square.

We look forward to your participation!

Urban Remix from Matt Gilbert on Vimeo.

1. DOWNLOAD the free mobile app:

iOS App: http://bit.ly/gWxGoO

Android App: http://bit.ly/esEuIe

2. LAUNCH the app and sign-in

(username: TimesSquare and password: TimesSquare)

or create your personal user account at http://urbanremix.gatech.edu

3. GO TO TIMES SQUARE, record sounds and take photos, then hit “upload” to share them.

4. Visit http://urbanremix.gatech.edu to see what others have shared and to make your own remixes online.

IF YOU CAN’T GET TO TIMES SQUARE, you can still use our web site to explore and remix the sounds that have been contributed: http://urbanremix.gatech.edu/content/times-square

Adding location awareness to music apps is fast becoming a major mobile trend, as is evident by a rash of new mobile music apps hitting app stores of late.

Use of location technology is taking many forms. Many, if not most, are designed to let users tag a location with a song. The result can be a localized, crowdsourced playlist, add context to the discovery of a new song or even be used as a way to find concerts and live shows. Other apps flip it around a bit by letting users in the same area determine what the venue should play.

Here are some of the apps available today that blend music with location:

SoundTracking lets users check into a location and tag that check-in with whatever song they’re listening to at the moment, along with a photo and a comment by the user. That song can then be shared with other SoundTracking users, as well as more broadly via Facebook, Twitter and even Foursquare, offering 30-second samples and links to buy on iTunes.

SuperGlued
The app helps users find concerts in their area and interact with other users at those shows by posting comments, photos, and checking in via Foursquare. Users can see which friends also using the app are planning to attend what concerts. It also recommends shows based on user activity, provides links to buy tickets, and so on. Recently, it began holding contests for participating artists, asking fans to do things like post videos of themselves singing to a band’s sontg on YouTube, or review the show, etc.


Herd.fm
Designed to let artists, labels and publishers tag their songs (or “traks”) to certain locations, where other Herd.fm users can then listen to it when checking in. Users can also tag a location with a song, but only from a list of songs included in the app, by joining the participating artist’s “Herd,” or followers. Users discovering new songs via the app can also view artists profiles, see a map of where that artist’s songs have been dropped by other users, and get information on promotions and new content. All songs can be streamed on-demand.



Soundtrckr:
Creates localized playlists based on songs users tag to a given location. Rather than streaming on-demand, the app randomizes the songs much like an Internet radio service. Those playlists can be shared with other users worldwide. Users can also see what playlists others nearby have created and tagged to the same location.



Loudie:
Music-based social network designed to let users see what people are saying at concerts around the country in real time. Users can check into shows, find other shows in their area, invite friends to join them at concerts, add concerts to their calendar, buy tickets, read news, and send personalized messages to other users.



Spotisquare:
lets users attach a Spotify playlist to a Foursquare venue. Other users checking into the venue can add their own songs to the playlist, essentially crowdsourcing the venue’s unique song list. It requires a premium Spotify account (where that service is active) as well as a Foursquare account.



Roqbot:
With a venue participating, the app lets users chose the playlist at a local bar by voting on what song plays next. The venue owner selects a list of songs for patrons to choose from, and then puts the control into their hands. Users purchase which song they want to hear next (like a jukebox) and others rate them to determine the order of play. Users can share the songs they chose via Facebook and Twitter, and can earn badges through certain accomplishments. The app won the music portion of the SXSW BizSpark Accelerator contest.




For more on location-based mobile music platforms see the April 2, 2011 Billboard magazine story “SoundTracking And SuperGlued” by Antony Bruno.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/the-location-based-mobile-music-app-explosion-1005093702.story

Nancy Garcia’s interdisciplinary practice incorporates choreography, music/sound, video, performance, image making, and new media. Often slinging the viewer to the edges of performative events, Garcia draws attention to the exultant body, considering it as a site as well as a vehicle for sound and movement. For her first solo exhibition in Miami, Garcia shows a new body of work incorporating photography, a new video entitled Power Trio, and a concept audio compilation, Lover’s Alarm Clock, for which she asked artist friends to “create a sound you want your lover/s to wake up to.” Each track will be downloadable and sharable as a smartphone ringtone at www.loversalarmclock.com, and be available for listening in the gallery.

To coincide with O, Miami Poetry Festival, Garcia is creating an audio walk, an experiential sound journey guiding listeners through a select Miami location. The audio file will be playable on most smartphones and portable media players, and will be available along with a walking guide at www.omiami.org, www.basfisherinvitational.com and www.nancygarcia.org on April 15.

Nancy Garcia was born and raised in Miami, and has been based in New York since 2000. Her work has been shown at the Sculpture Center, Long Island City; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Roulette, NY; D’Amelio Terras Gallery, NY; De La Cruz Collection Project Room, Miami; New Langton Arts Center, San Franscico; Greene Naftali Gallery, New York; Movement Research at Judson Church. She has also been featured in festivals such as Images, Toronto; All Tomorrow’s Parties, United Kingdom; and No Fun Fest, New York. As a musician she has performed in the US and abroad with noise band Monotract, toured as a solo performer, collaborated with various artists including Thurston Moore, and released a solo album entitled “Be the Climb” on the Ecstatic Peace record label. In 2009 Garcia produced an epic interdisciplinary performance combining online video, and music from her album with choreography for the proscenium stage, commissioned by the Kitchen, NY. She holds a a Master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications program within New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

On the 20th of April, 1914, immediately before the outbreak of the First World War, the premiere performance of a revolutionary noise symphony, Awakening of a City by futurist artist Luigi Russolo took place.

Almost a century later, a group of artists, led by Brighton-based Sound Artist, Joseph Young, come together to respond to the surviving 7 bars of the printed score in a series of ReAwakenings.

In his latest solo work, The End of Listening (ReAwakening of a City #5), Joseph has created an immersive sound installation for iPods at a&e gallery in Cheltenham Place, Brighton.

The sound files will be available online at http://neofuturist.blogspot.com from January 7th til the 23rd. You are invited to download the work at home and then bring along your iPod/iPhone/mp3 player and listen to it in our auditorium; or alternatively, you can pick up a pre-loaded iPod at the door (limited numbers available).

Preview: Friday 7th January 2011 @ 7 - 9 pm with an exclusive performance and artists’ talk by Joseph Young, aided and abetted by Peter Faulkner.

More information: http://www.neofuturist.org

The works played will feature all pieces involving audience participation. One of the pieces by Jieun Oh and Ge Wang invites you to submit images and sounds of your daily life (starting today!) to be used in the performance: see: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jieun5/converge/

This then leads into the Cagean Musicircus, starting at 8pm!:: see: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/ccrma-fall-concert-cagean-musicircus

The International Association of Mobile Digital Artists (iAMDA) will hold its first annual event Saturday & Sunday October 23-24, 2010 at ITP. Artists, app developers and art historians will come together for the first time to discuss the creative possibilities of touch-screen technology on mobile devices. Sessions will focus on technique, technical developments and theoretical discussions of mobile digital media in an art-historical context.

Aside from its value as a creative medium, we will be looking at the social aspect of mobile digital art and its role in creating a diverse international community based on common artistic and technological interests.

The Conference will be attended by a core group of artists who became friends through Flickr, but for the most part, have never met. Other participants will be students from the NYU ITP program and anyone interested in making art, music, animation or other forms of creative expression on mobile touch screen devices. Discussions about combining touch screen art with traditional and non-traditional media will be encouraged. Apple device users are likely to be in the majority, however, the event is open to users of all platforms and brands of devices.

The event is free. To signup, please go to: www.iamda.org

iAMDA promotes and supports artists who utilize mobile digital media to create art ranging from paintings, photography, mixed media and music. Media includes mobile wireless touch-screen devices such as iPhones/iPads and Android devices.