One of the first composers to start exploring the possibilities of the K-Bow system is Richard Boulanger at the Berklee College of Music. Boulanger has been involved in computer music composition for many years, and has a long history with alternative controllers — he has premiered his original interactive works at the Kennedy Center, and appeared on stage performing his Radio Baton and MIDI PowerGlove Concerto with the Krakow and Moscow Symphonies. In this video you can see two string performers with K-Bow, as well as some of the K-Apps software projected onto the big screen.

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Also presenting a new installation at the Gray Area Gallery on One Button Objects, is Peter Kirn, curator in conjunction with game art collective Kokoromi; just in time for the Game Developers Conference this week.

LOCATION:
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts
55 Taylor Street
Thursday, March 11th
7PM – 9:30PM

The presenters are:
* VISDA GOUDARZI (Stanford CCRMA), will present Fosotomo/Gestonic/Neuroklang a video-based interface for the sonification of hand gesture for real-time timbre control. The goal of the system is to survey the space of musical possibilities and generating computer music using human movements. The system is build up on top of chuck and processing and uses simple frame difference as the metric.

* Composer CHERYL E. LEONARD will discuss how she creates music with natural objects, materials and sounds. She will demonstrate several of her unique natural-object instruments, including ones constructed with materials, such as penguin bones and limpet shells, that she collected in Antarctica last year.

* SURABHI SARAF will present her recent audio/visual works. She is interested in the dense, layered structure of sound with a focus on creating dynamic physical experiences. Her short performance will involve live singing and digital manipulation of the sound.

* JULIA OGRYDZIAK will present on working with the K-Bow, a new technology from Keith McMillen Instruments, which provides expressive live controls through a specially designed blue-tooth bow, transforming the possibilities of string performance. She will show how the bow works and give a live performance.

In addition, we will have awesome short LIGHTNING TALKS:
* SARAH GRANT says “i will be discussing my latest work using conductive felt as an interface for sound. i am interested in drawing connections between the similar properties of sound and fabric — specifically texture and the malleability and layering of form.”

* PETER KIRN (representing the Kokoromi collective of women and men) on the GAFFTA exhibit of ONE BUTTON OBJECTS: What can you do with one button? In an age of ever-more-complex touch interfaces, we’d like to imagine what a single, tangible, hardware button can mean for a design. To celebrate the arrival of their Gamma game event in San Francisco, art game collective Kokoromi is teaming up with Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion to launch a one night show of objects that respond to this question. The work extends from games to interactive art and musical instruments.

BIOS

VISDA GOUDARZI is a computer musician interested in research in software for computer music, human-computer interaction, gesture-based interfaces, computer graphics, sonification, sound synthesis, and the application of new media in art. She is currently a researcher at Stanford working on an audio-visual feedback device in the Department of Oncology. She received her MA in Music, Science, and Technology at CCRMA in 2009. She also holds an MS in Computer Science from the Vienna University of Technology in Vienna, Austria, which she earned in 2008. Visda began her studies at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran before relocating to Vienna in 1998.

JULIA OGRYDZIAK started the playing the violin at the age of 3 and made her solo debut at age 6. She has performed throughout Europe and North America, including the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Tanglewood Festival, and at Lincoln Center. She studied at the SF Conservatory of Music, receiving their Distinguished Alumni Award, the New England Conservatory of Music, and in Paris. Julia has a Masters with Distinction from Harvard Design School and dual degrees in Music and Physics from MIT, where she received the AMITA award for most outstanding woman graduate and worked in the Hyperinstruments Group at the MIT Media Lab. A vocal proponent of modern music, she is involved as both artist and composer. Her recent projects include BELLA piano trio, collaborations with Capacitor Dance, and shows combining live performance and immersive visuals, such as Dark Blue Sky Dream which premiered at the Chabot Planetarium. Julia is also an award-winning visual artist, Creative Director, and serial entrepreneur. She is the founder of Blacksquare, a digital media studio; she has received multiple Webby Awards and the Vera List Prize, and her work has garnered national media attention and exhibited at MOMA. She is currently working on a new startup: IMHO, a new model for media distribution online, and is thrilled to also represent Keith McMillen Instruments as a K-Bow Artist and Evangelist.

CHERYL E. LEONARD is a composer, performer and instrument-builder whose music investigates sounds, structures and materials from the natural world. Her recent works cultivate stones, leaves, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers and bones as musical instruments. Leonard uses microphones to explore the intricate worlds of sound hidden within these instruments and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices they contain. Many of her projects involve constructing one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments, which are played live onstage. Cheryl also enjoys creating site-specific works and collaborating across artistic disciplines. She has written numerous soundtracks for film, video, dance and theater, and designed sounds for exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Cheryl holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from Mills College. Her music has been performed worldwide and featured on several television programs and in the video documentary Noisy People. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, ASCAP, American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer. Leonard has been awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Villa Montalvo and Engine 27. Recordings of her music are available from NEXMAP, Unusual Animals, Pax, Apraxia, 23 Five, Old Gold, the Lab and Great Hoary Marmot Music. www.allwaysnorth.com www.musicfromtheice.blogspot.com

SURABHI SARAF is a new media artist whose work brings together elements from experimental sound art, classical music, choreography and video art. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 with an MFA in Art and Technology. Prior to that, she obtained her BFA in Painting from MSU Baroda (India) in 2005. Surabhi is the winner of Art vs Design (2009) organized by Artists Wanted, New York and presented her work at the announcement reception at the New Museum, NY. Her work PEEL is the Winner of Celeste Prize (2009), Italy and was exhibited at Alte AEG Fabrik, Berlin. Surabhi’s collaborative work with Nadav Assor, was presented at the NETMAGE 10 International Live Media Festival, Bologna, Italy. Her video Peel was also shown at the 13 International Video Festival, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Vojvodina, Serbia. Surabhi is the recipient of the International Graduate Student Scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her solo and collaborative works have been presented at the Links Hall, Looptopia and Sullivan Galleries in Chicago. She has shown at the Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi and was a part of Peers student residency program at Khoj International Artist Association New Delhi in 2006. Surabhi currently lives and works in San Francisco.

SARAH GRANT is a multimedia artist, developer, and alumni of NYU’s ITP, interested in designing soft instruments and textile-based controllers for sound. Her work brings together sculpture, fiber arts, electronics and experimental sound manipulation and signal processing. Her goals are to connect people to sound through physical means that are more germane to the nature of sound than traditional knobs, sliders and buttons, in order to facilitate more meaningful interactions. She is constantly on the look out for new ways to implement textiles as a means of interacting with sound be it wearable, architectural or sculptural. She often works in collaboration with her sister, Lara Grant. Their work can be found at http://www.fsp.fm….

One-button objects curator PETER KIRN is a composer/musician, media artist, and technologist, as well as writer and editor of createdigitalmusic.com and createdigitalmotion.com. The Handmade Music event series he originated with Etsy.com and Make Magazine is now spreading to other corners of the globe, from Texas to Portugal. He has also written for Computer Music, MAKE, Keyboard, Macworld, and Wax Poetics. He is the author of Real World Digital Audio (Peachpit Press). His own work spans live visuals and computer music, collaborations with modern dance, music for early instruments and voice and ambient techno, working with original software in Processing/Java and other tools. He’s currently teaching visual programming and sound and music design at Parsons The New School for Design and is a PhD candidate in music composition at The City University of New York Graduate Center.

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Pulsing sounds emerged from what seemed like every direction, began to circle my head, I thought I was hallucinating swarms of biological air, Maryanne was standing there looking at me with a knowing smile on her face. I said, “But how do you get the sound to circle my head, to move in back of me as well as in front of me?” She said, coyly, something like, “Well, I really don’t know but I am working on it.” Then we both broke up as if we were stoned.

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This Saturday, 19 December at 14:00 is our first official gathering as [Phasor~].  We’re meeting at Noisebridge’s wonderful new space – 2169 Mission Street.  More details and a link to directions can be found on [Phasor~]‘s information page at:

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Phasor~

Matt Ridenour, Adam Murray, Barry Threw and I have been meeting on a semi-regular basis for some months now, and it has proven to be a terrific productivity boost.  Rather than patching as a solitary activity with camaraderie provided by a snoring and mostly disinterested cat or two, we’ve found communal gatherings to be a solid anchor point for projects and peer input a definite drive booster.  Hanging out and working side by side once a week helps keep the momentum going for the rest of it.  On the theory a larger group will amplify this for everyone involved, [Phasor~] was hatched.

What you should bring:

1) A laptop with the data flow environment of your preference installed.  If you are just getting started, follow some of the links on the information page above and check out the various options.  We have open wireless at Noisebridge, so you can also pull down and install there if you like.

2) A project or idea (or several) to work on.  If your project or idea is to get started and learn the environment, that’s all you need.

3) Drinks and or snacks for yourself.  We’re within a few blocks walking distance of several café’s and many restaurants at Noisebridge, but it’s easiest to bring it with you.

4) Layered clothing.  Depending on our SF weather, Noisebridge can be more or less hot or cold.

When you get to Noisebridge, all you need to do is ring the doorbell and come up to the 3rd floor after being let in.  If you can’t get in, call my mobile at 415 902 1817 and someone will collect you.

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This edition of the pseudo-monthly Overlap Salon brought three powerhouses of electronic sound once again to the Gray Area Foundation for a night of vicious edutainment.

First up was Jeff Stott and Mohammed Mohanna presenting their Subtle Body Project. Various guinea-pigs from our packed house donned the Subtle Body cap ‘o possibility to control video clip selection, hue, and composting in real time depending on their mood.

Jeff and Mohammed showed us their patch, which is the best evidence I have found yet of how much Cycling ’74 cursed us with zoom capabilities in Max 5. The road to hell is paved with un-abstracted code, but at the bottom of this box of programming nightmares exists the hope of creativity catalyzed by postmodern visual metaphor. Viva la patchcords.

Next up was Monome mainstay Edison, who brought the proceedings back to Realidad with triggered samples from his yellow lunchbox-monome. Little did his ex-girlfriend know when she gave him that lunch box years ago that a vibrant torrent of creativity would be unleashed from the relic of their union. Truly our lives are sensitive to initial conditions.

The beat went on for the last set of the night, although the performance of the evening by Bay Area temporal mangler Preshish Moments was best represented by a broken mirror reflecting shards of musical culture into an asymmetrical light show on our soft fleshy consciousnesses. Cliche, hackneyed metaphors aside, Mr. Moments astounded as usual with a description of his integrated hardware/software system for real-time performance. He is one of the few electronic musicians that, were he to die on stage, the music would stop within 10 seconds; we should admire him for it.

We were also impressed with his new electronic technicolor dreamcoat, which triggers bands of LEDs based on musical mappings. It is indeed the 21st century.

Stay tuned to Overlap.org for information on the next episode of our Salon series next month. We have a LOT in store… its an exciting time to be a Max programmer.

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I’ve titled the talk “Baroque Dreams” because the Baroque period was one of incredibly active innovation that spawned new musical genres that have been with us to this day. Since then however, new instruments have only seen limited use in the mainstream art music world. Hopefully, I’ll be able to address some of the reasons why.

In particular, I will be showcasing the K-Bow and the StringPort, our two new technologies that allow traditional string instrumentalists to utilize the open sound world of the computer in ways never before possible.

I’ll be followed by Gil Carnal, a Swiss guitar designer, who has been crafting the more analog kind of new instrument for years.

The event is free, but RSVP is mandatory, by clicking here.

From the Swissnex site:

Traditional musical instruments and traditional performance on these instruments resonate too strongly to be disregarded in the modern musical era. But how can musicians bridge the gap between centuries-old instruments and today’s electronic compositions? Our guests demonstrate the spectrum of adaptation, from refinements to the classical guitar to new techniques for performing computer-generated music.

Gil Carnal, a Swiss guitar designer based in California, who for thirty years has been working on designs for classical guitars, is an expert at coming up with shapes and materials that enhance movement and touch while also upping the ante on how instruments sound. For his presentation at Swissnex San Francisco, Gil decided that theory needed practical demonstration, and thus extended an invitation to perform to Mesut Özgen, a classical guitarist of the highest caliber and a long-time user of Carnal’s forward-looking designs.

An important presence at the forefront of musical technology and digital culture, Barry Threw tackles the question of how to relate the traditions of musical performance and seemingly abstract, computer-based musical creations. He’ll present two products that go a long way towards overcoming the disconnect: the K-Bow and the StringPort, both designed for performative use with classical violins.

As Barry puts it, “Over the years, the development of new technology has been a primary driving influence in the creation of new artistic forms and movements. During the Baroque period, an influx of new instruments created an outpouring of new musical styles that continue to influence music to this day. However, the contemporary classical performing arts world continues to exist primarily by performing centuries old works using even older instruments, even in our era of abundant computer technology. At the same time, electronic composers exploring new forms are often relegated to presenting pre-recorded ‘tape’ music. With no way to re-perform electronic works with multiple musicians, the new music of today lacks the interpretive performance culture that has made music such a rich medium for interaction. How do we close this gap between the virtuoso performer and the near infinite possibilities of the computer? Is ‘remix’ our era’s best answer to a contemporary musical genre?”

Program:

7:00 p.m. Doors open, mixer

7:30 p.m. Presentation by Barry Threw

8:15 p.m. Presentation by Gil Carnal

9:00 p.m. Classical guitar performance by Mesut

10:30 p.m. Doors close

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Update: I would like to thank Andrew Benson for help on the foundations of this project. If you are a Jitter user and haven’t seen his Jitter Recipes, you are missing out.

The Artists’ Reception for Moon Diaries and other artists’ projects at the TV of Tomorrow Show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will take place from 5:30-6:30pm on Tuesday March 10th.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — 701 Mission St (across the street from SF MoMA)
Artists’ Reception — Tuesday March 10th, 5:30-6:30pm

Daniela describes her work:

I suggest that a TV viewing experience can be enriched with the addition of an actual physical object. The Moon sculpture is linked to a TV monitor. As the viewer approaches, the screen senses the interest and narrates a video in real time of lunar exploration in a fantasy non-linear mode. By pressing a button the viewer’s image is immersed into the virtual image as a metaphor for virtual space and zero gravity exploration.

About the TV of Tomorrow show:

The TV of Tomorrow Show 2007 and 2008 were praised by sponsors, speakers and attendees not only as a true “experts’ conference” that attracted a veritable “who’s who” of the interactive TV industry, but as a completely unique and enjoyable experience. We are working hard to ensure that the TV of Tomorrow Show 2009–which is already attracting an array of high-powered speakers and which will feature a line-up of fascinating entertainments–is even better.

The TV of Tomorrow Show 2009 will also feature the presentation of the prestigious annual [itvt] Awards for Leadership in Interactive and Multiplatform Television. The awards, which debuted at the NCTA National Show in 2004, recognize both corporate and individual achievement in the multiplatform interactive TV space.

Also see Michael Ang’s Found Connections at the TVOT show. From his site:

An updated version of my Found Connections project will appear at the TV of Tomorrow conference in San Francisco March 10th and 11th.

Found Connections is an interactive installation where users can explore the social network of television characters in an augmented reality video display. Each user is given a “paddle” with a tracking marker printed on it. A video camera tracks the markers and overlays graphics representing the characters and their relationships from the TV show in the virtual mirror video display. As different combinations of
characters are detected in the space the complex relationship between them is revealed.

This installation presents an alternate way for fans of the television show to discover the relationships between their favorite characters and creates a hybrid virtual/real space where television characters and viewers can exist together.

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We were lucky to have friend, outstanding electronic music composer, and violinist Marielle Jakobsons with us to show off the powerful sonic control the K-Bow provides. Here she is showing off the system to Morton Subotnick. We are excited to think about what peices such as Axolotl would be like with realtime gestural control from the instrument; all of the Subotnick ghost peices are landmarks of eletronic/string composition.

We also had the StringPort on display, and many guitar and other string players dropped by to see how our analysis can control synthesis directly from the instrument. The days of exclusively event based control are over, as are the days of Keyboardists having all the fun; not to mention having to by a hold new instrument to use polyphonic control (cough…DarkFire). Craig Anderton came over to check out our stuff and Keith was around to walk him through the software.

We also had some more friends drop by the booth.

Matt Moldover and Naut Humon.

Don Buchla checking out Synful Orchestra.

Marielle Jakobsons, Wally Scharold, and Bill Wolter.

Here are Miller Puckette and David Zicarelli, two of the fathers of Max/MSP, a visual programming language dear to our hearts; together in one frame.

All in all it was a great show. It was topped off on Saturday night by a set with Richard Devine and Dream Theater Keyboardist Jordan Rudess.

Thanks to everyone that came by! We hope to see you all again next year…

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Obviously, though, my aesthetic choices in the synthesis of my music must create some kind of relationship between the parts. But, as I have said before, the primary concern of my aesthetic is a sense of environment throughout the composition. I believe that the best way to conceptualize this is in a Vareseian way. To get right to the point; to a large degree I don’t compose in linear time. I project sounds into space that collide, penetrate, and trans mutate. The entirety of my compositions are in transition. Ergo, where is A and where is B?

But, you are right, of course I consciously choose the progression in my pieces, even an act of non-action is an action in itself. So what is my motivation? I think the aesthetic in my music has a lot to do with the disembodiment present in a digital society. What do I mean by this? Well, at the core, the very act of digitization is a disembodiment, as it abstracts information from the physical medium where it used to reside, and makes it transferable to any location. The result is pure abstracted data that is mutable, dynamic, and volatile…and in constant transition. As we transfer more of ourselves into the digital sphere, as we identify to a greater extent with our avatars and other personae, as we place more of ourselves into the network and hive mind; what is lost is a sense of space. Of environment. I believe that sound, as something that is simultaneously physical and ephemeral, is an ideal medium with which to engage this issue. This is what I try to bring to my music, a sense of space, of <i>environment</i>.

A good example of this is the work Resolution.1.  In this piece a parameter space is precomposed, and the sounds it manipulates preset, but the actual outcome of the piece is left up to the performance.  No two will be the same, in drastic ways.  However, in listening to several performances, very strong similarities will remain.

A bad example of this is any of the works created by The Posthumous Release.  These works explore a parameter space as well, but they progress through linear time in a very direct way in the composition.  Although recapitulation is possible, it would be very difficult to bring back textural combinations from earlier parts in the works. The improvisatory aspect of these compositions does references an exploration of musical space, but the construction of our performance environment and aesthetic suggests more of an abstract narrative, as opposed to looking through a lens on a sonic world.

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