Merging music and mobile technology indicates promising future developments in a rapidly emerging field. The walkman, the mobile phone, and the iPod have already integrated music into users’ social and geographic erratic locations and they have also reshaped users’ urban landscape experience. With ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for creating, listening and sharing music. But which new forms of music interaction lie ahead in this context? Takuya Yamauchi, reasearcher at Keio University, with his professor Toru Iwatake, a well known electronic media composer, explores one of the possible paths with Sound Jewelry, a sound installation supported by spatial sensing system within a Personal Area Network (PAN). Continue reading

July 5, 2007 – Live Cinema :: Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8, Amsterdam :: 020-626.45.21 :: Open 20.00; Start 20.30 :: entree 12,- excl. membership.

Live Cinema stems from a long tradition of synergetic experiments between music and moving imagery. The contemporary artists in this field are still influenced by pioneers such as Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, John and James Whitney and Jordan Belson. The Live Cinema program on July 5 consists of some beautiful audiovisual performances which have not been showed in the Netherlands before. With Pan Sonic, Thomas Köner & Jürgen Reble, Thomas Brinkmann & Karl Kliem, Olaf Bender, Lokai, aMute.

Not Your Parents MTV: Music Videos from Hell :: June 28 – July 28 :: Postmasters Gallery, 459 West 19th Street (@ 10th Ave), NYC :: Opening: June 28 6-8 pm :: 212-727 -323 – postmasters[at]thing.net

A group exhibition featuring unorthodox music videos and related projects by the following artists: Marissa Olson, Michael Paul Britto, Kenneth Tin Kin Hung, Katarzyna Kozyra, Chris Larson, and MTAA. Olson is showing a new iteration of a piece she originally made with Abe Linkoln for the Whitney Museum’s Artport, called Abe & Mo Sing the Blogs–and along with it, another piece made with Abe, a new headphone sculpture “duet.” Continue reading

Garrett Lynch writes about Always Something Somewhere Else by Duncan Speakman, a sound artist exploring ideas of memory, geography and communication. The work is a GPS based soundwalk that builds itself as you experience it. To create it I worked with Hewlett Packard in Bristol and their new mscape software.

In the work the listener is asked to locate various substances that form the contemporary urban environment (glass, stone, concrete etc.). As they mark the location of each one they begin to hear interwoven stories connecting them to remote locations around the world, soundtracked with a generative music score. The narratives are progressed and concluded as the listener returns to the locations they chose. The piece is reflective and sometimes melancholy, it touches on issues of climate change and global awareness, but ultimately encourages the listener to treasure the moments around them… Continue reading

OPEN n0.9 Sound: Sound in Art and Culture – Open 9 examines the role of sound in the public domain. After all, public space is manifest not only visually, but also, and to a considerable extent, acoustically: its public nature hinges on visibility as well as on audibility. All the same, the accent in cultural or social analyses of the public space still often rests on the visual. Despite sound’s ubiquity and inescapability, it is usually regarded as being merely illustrative, a minor consideration or nuisance. Marshall McLuhan took a critical stance on the dominance of ‘visual space’ as the ‘linear, quantitative mode of perception that is characteristic of the Western world’. In his view, however, this traditional space was being superseded by the ‘global village’, constituted by the electronic media, which he likened to ‘acoustic space’, a mythical, tactile, organic and integral space that is characterized by solidarity. Continue reading

LEMUR’s Summer Art & Technology classes start in July :: Max Intensive: A Multifaceted Multimedia Approach: July 14-15, 12:00-4:30 pm :: Instructor: Dana Karwas – This class will focus on the basics of Max/MSP and is intended for anyone interested in incorporating Max/MSP into his or her work. No prior experience with Max/MSP/Jitter or computer programming is required. The class will feature an overview of digital sound processing, sampling, basic digital sound synthesis, software techniques for communicating with external devices, and interfacing with larger physical and aural environments. The structure of the class will follow a two-fold approach, aiming to provide a sufficient level of programming skills while emphasizing concept by deconstructing representative real word examples. Cost: $300 Continue reading

The Musicians, by Julia Burns [with Ardrian Hardjono and Balint Seeber] :: 17 June – 18 August, 2007 :: Beta_space, Cyberworlds Gallery – Ground Floor – Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Drawing from the work of David Rokeby, ‘The Musicians’ is an early prototype, interactive artwork that utilizes cinematography and sound to engage audiences via invisible touch pads. Users are encouraged to play notes or compose music by directing the two professional musicians as they jam filmically, the audience members directly impacting the artwork via their movements. The aesthetic aim of The Musicians is to visualize the emotional influence the audience members have over the characters onscreen. Amidst witty commentary and pre-programmed repertoires, the musicians play to draw audience members into the museum space and then attempt to hold their attention by empowering the user with the ability to direct their activities. Continue reading

THIS SINGLE NIGHT OF SUMMER :: June 26, 8 p.m. :: $10 :: Gershwin Hotel, 7 East 27th St. btw 5th & Madison.

Dancer, illustrator, and Finnish multimedia impersario Pauliina Silvennoinen is host to a multimedia performance, with the work of Peter Kirn, Elise Knudson, Rebekah Morin, Sari Nordman, Malina Rauschenfels and Corky Has a Band. She describes it this way: “Floating through the changes of time, from ancient Finnish folklore through the 70’s and into the future. Dance, music, and video are the tour guides for this single night of summer, a voyage through the memories of erotic walruses and blind ogres.” Continue reading

MEME: Pat Muchmore, Bill Brittelle, Tuba, Joe Exley, Red Sails, Molly Thompson, and Peter Kirn :: June 27, 7:30pm :: $5 :: Galapagos Back Room, Williamsburg :: Directions.

Peter Kirn is also doing a 20-minute live music/keyboard/visual set at the return of the Meme Music night. Galapagos is in its last days as a Williamsburg space before the big move to Brooklyn. Kirn will be doing some of his more floaty ethereal ambient stuff. He fully expects some of his colleagues to do the opposite. That should mix it up.

Meme’s mission: “Meme Music is a tri-monthly series dedicated to 1. The right to drink while listening to “classical” music, 2. The idea that the words “experimental” and “avant-garde” don’t have to be defined as mindlessly boring, 3. Since nowadays rock musicians and classical musicians are playing the same instruments and writing the same sorts of songs, shouldn’t they get to share billing? 4. Multi-media is neat! And 5. Listening to music should be fun, goddamnit!”

The United Nations Plaza Radio Network, WUNP – 95.2 FM :: Inaugural Broadcast – LIVE INTERNET STREAM :: June 30, 9-11pm CEST (Berlin) :: unitednationsplaza, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a, Berlin 10249, Germany :: followed by a party at Salon Aleman.

WUNP is a radio station produced by neuroTransmitter [Valerie Tevere + Angel Nevarez] for United Nations Plaza. WUNP is a portal for broadcasting audio works and conceptual radio projects. Over the course of the summer and fall of 2007 WUNP will be on air across Berlin (95.2 FM) and beyond through internet stream. We will initiate our broadcast schedule with special in-studio contributions and conversations with: Fia Backström, Regine Basha and Julieta Aranda, Uta Meta Bauer and Piotr Nathan, Karl Holmqvist, Stefan Saffer, and Tirdad Zolghadr. Continue reading