SEAMUS members Linda Antas and Jason Bolte created the audio for an installation entitled NeuroCAVE. It involves interactive brainwave analysis, interactive and fixed audio, interactive color-changing side emitting fiber optics, and video.
The installation consists of six video projectors (Anderson-video/Mast-images), interactive brainwave sonification (Antas), an outer layer of ambient sound (Bolte), and five “cave forms” made of side emitting fiber optic cable over carbon fiber frames (Jellison/Clinton). Brainwaves are read and analyzed in real time (Millman/Fasy). Each individual cave form changes color based on delta wave activity (Huvaere). The interactive audio and fiber optics were done on a Raspberry Pi.
Antas’ interactive audio has two basic states. The first is created by mapping the amplitudes of eight brainwaves onto the amplitude of the first eight partials of the harmonic series. Viewer/participant brainwaves in each fiber optic cave form from are analyzed in real time. When it is detected that an individual’s brainwaves are above the threshold of the entire installation’s average similarity, the sound pulsates. The pulsation is faster the closer the individual viewer/participant is to the group average.
Bolte’s ambient audio places the viewer/participant in a sonic environment which was composed to reflect the activity that may have taken place while prehistoric cave art was being produced. The ambient audio is presented in a quadraphonic environment.
More information at:
https://www.facebook.com/NeuroCave/
A Strange Diversion (co-composed by Stephen Ruppenthal and Brian Belet, 2017), for Buchla analog synthesizer and Kyma digital system (from their ‘BuchKyma Sequence’), was performed at the Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2018), in Santa Cruz, California on September 9. Also at KISS 2018, Belet and visual artist Marianne Bickett presented a paper/demo ” Drawing Sound: Using a Wacom tablet as an independent drawing surface while also controlling Kyma.”
Brian Belet and Stephen Ruppenthal at KISS2018
Marianne Bicket and Brian Belet at KISS2018
John Fielder got hired full time at Expression College in Emeryville, CA teaching electronic music, music theory, interactive audio and fundamentals of acoustics.
John Gibson’s In Flight, for chorus and electronics, appears on an upcoming Innova CD. For a sample track, visit this link. His new fixed-media piece, Almost an Island, will be included in a new release by the American Composers Edition, available November 1.
Marco Buongiorno Nardelli’s “miniature opera” project UNKNOWN, a journey, that you might have seen and experienced at SEAMUS 2018 earlier this year, has been exhibited at the CURRENTS NEW MEDIA festival in Santa Fe, NM, for three weeks in June. You can find some press/blogs entry here: https://www.materialssoundmusic.com/press and videos and description of the project here: https://www.materialssoundmusic.com/miniature-opera-project.
The piece was experienced and performed by ~10000 people, 3000 on opening weekend!
On August 9, Charles Nichols performed his compositions Anselmo, for electric violin, interactive computer music, and processed video, a collaboration with video artist Jay Bruns / nojay, and What Bends, for interactive computer music and processed video, a collaboration with video artist Zach Duer, and played from fixed media his compositions Shakespeare’s Garden, for processed environmental sounds, recited poetry, and video of the Shakespeare’s Garden art installation, a collaboration with directors Amanda Nelson and Natasha Staley, graphic designer Meaghan Dee, lighting designer John Ambrosone, and media engineer Tanner Upthegrove, and Beyond the Dark, for computer music and video of the Dense Space art installation, a collaboration with architects Paola Zellner Bassett and Adam Burke, at the Audio Engineering Society International Conference on Spatial Reproduction, in the 5.1.4-channel immersive audio system of the 100th Anniversary Hall of Tokyo Denki University, in Tokyo, Japan. At the same conference, his Dense Space and Shakespeare’s Garden were played continually in the 22.2-channel immersive audio system in Studio B of Tokyo University of the Arts, August 8-9. His composition Beyond the Dark was also played continually from fixed media at the International Computer Music Conference, on the Lotte Facade jumbotron in Daegu, Korea, August 6-10.
A summer of performances for the Higgs whatever (Miller Puckette and Kerry Hagan) included a residency and installation at MISE-EN_PLACE Bushwick. The installation, remnant (2018), uses recordings of ensemble mise-en filtered through impulse responses recorded in MISE-EN_PLACE as the ensemble members moved through the performance space. The installation opened on July 20, 2018 with a live performance by ensemble mise-en accompanying the installation. The patch, score and instructions will be available in the near future on www.kerrylhagan.net for download. A video of the opening is currently available at http://www.kerrylhagan.net/puckette-hagan/media/remnant-mise-en-web.mp4
MISE-EN_PLACE Bushwick is currently soliciting for more residency applications, and the Higgs whatever recommends the experience wholeheartedly. https://place.mise-en.org/opportunities.html
Catch the Higgs whatever at EABD 2018 in Jacksonville, Florida in November.
Gil Trythall was Guest of Honor at Knobcon, a one-of-a-kind synthesizer convention now in its seventh year in Chicago, Sept. 7-9. He was featured as the after dinner speaker on Saturday evening and with a Q and A on Sunday.
Gil Trythall
Jorge Variego recently published Composición Algorítmica, a book in Spanish that explores the connections between musical composition, science, and technology. The book includes interviews with composers David Cope, Roger Dannenberg, and Rodrigo Sigal, among others.
Adam Vidiksis concluded his time as Composer in Residence for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia with the premiere of Open Spaces in May, a concerto grosso for soloists from the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz, and Contemplation, a work for handbell choir, brass, and organ performed in a joint effort by the Joybells of Melmark and COP musicians. Both of these works were premiered at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Vidiksis’s art song At the Eagle Record Pass, commissioned by Interactive Composers and Interactive Artists, was premiered in Rome at the Accademia Filarmonica Romana in July. His piece Local Equilibrium Dynamics was performed at the NYC Electroacoustic Festival by his trio, SPLICE Ensemble. In August, Vidiksis brought students from his electronic music ensemble, BEEP, to the International Computer Music Conference in Daegu, South Korea, where they performed his work Density Function in collaboration with students from the Education University of Hong Kong. The piece was selected for the short list of best performances at the conference, with the final results of the award still forthcoming. Additionally, Vidiksis taught music technology classes at both the SPLICE Institute at Western Michigan University, of which he is faculty and a founding member, as well as at Temple University’s newly-formed Young Women Composer Camp.
photo by Maxwell Tfirn
Adam Vidiksis with students from Temple University’s BEEP as well as students from the Education University of Hong and their director, Lee Cheng, at ICMC 2018 in Daegu, South Korea after their performance of Vidiksis’s Density Function at the Daegu Art Factory.
Kristina Warren completed an artist residency through the Interfaces Program/ European University Cyprus (Nicosia) in July 2018. Her residency culminated in an interactive installation, States of Intuition, held at the Cyprus Museum of Archaeological Antiquities. The installation integrated acoustic, analog, and digital sound. Warren prepared several self-contained analog synthesizers which encouraged participant interaction and listening. Meanwhile, running on Bela, recordings made in the museum were digitally processed to create an evolving sonic pedal in the space. Visitors contributed greatly to the sonic tapestry by offering unique and unexpected approaches to the analog, digital, and cumulative sound.
Museum visitors contribute to Kristina Warren’s installation
Tom Williams recently created a video for his piece Weighed Down by Light, for contrabass clarinet and fixed media electronics.