Alex McLean is a programmer and live coding musician. He is co-founder of the dorkbotlondon meetings on electronic art, the TOPLAP organisation for the proliferation of live algorithm programming and the runme software art repository. He is also a PhD student at Goldsmiths College, within the Intelligent Sound and Music Systems group.

From the website:

Sound poetry is poetry free from the usual constraints of syntax and semantics, where only the sounds of words are used to form the structure and feel of the poem. The Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters is one fine example.

Vocable words are used by musicians to describe the sounds their instruments make, while teaching, swapping tunes and during performance. In many cultures formal systems of vocable words have developed, including the bol syllables of the Indian tabla drums, and the canntaireachd of the Highland bagpipes.

Comparative research into the perception of sound and speech has found both differences and correspondences. That there are two conflicting modes of perception is made clear by the phenomenon of sine wave speech. On the other hand scientific research such as that carried out by Aniruddh Patel shows correlations between the rhythm of music and speech in different cultures, as well as between neurological activations of the listeners of music and speech.

Babble sits on the boundary between speech and music, allowing play with the structure and form of simplified phonetics without having our perception hijacked by speech processing.

Under the hood is a physical model of a guitar string (Karplus-Strong synthesis), and a formant filter to produce vowel-like sounds. The different consonants control the excitation and noisiness of the string, and the vowels control the tuning and the formant filter. The result is something like a speech synthesiser, but with the vocal apparatus largely replaced with a single guitar string.

Although Babble’s phonetic system is quite unlike that of English or any natural language, when faced with the text that generates the sound, as well as the vowel-like queues, the listener has the sensation of ‘hearing’ speech as the brain searches for meaning.

Babble is written in the open source HaXe language, which compiles to javascript and flash. The source code is available under the GNU Public License version 3 or later.

Babble a project.arnolfini commission (produced for the exhibition ‘Supertoys‘).

Starting from the text by the famous writer Italo Calvino ‘Le città invisibili/The invisibile cities’, The Sound of the City intends to map the city through a collection of sounds / silence / noises which are typical of specific areas: the suburbs, schools, markets, squares. The project intends to create spatial and functional surveys for the definition of an idea of architecture and space referring to today’s acoustic ecology and sociology. Zafos Xagoraris’ work can be seen both as an architecture and a sculpture in the public space. His sound installation will be presented in the main square of the city Piazza Garibaldi with a transmission of sounds from different port cities.

The cultural agency aMAZElab in Milan presents PORT CITY SAFARI, a journey touching some of the main port cities in Europe and in the Mediterranean area, participating in the project with researches, exhibitions and seminars, organised by local museums, universities and cultural institutions. The project started in Bristol (UK) with the first stopover of the exhibition Port City. On mobility and exchange, including art works by Meschac Gaba, Maria Magdalena Campons Pons, Zineb Sedira, Yto Barrada,Ursula Biemann…

After the site-specific projects, during the Istanbul and Athens Biennials, PORT CITY SAFARI has explored the cities of Rotterdam, Tangier, Marseilles and Palermo. The project was presented in its entirety during the ‘Liverpool Biennial’ 2008 and and will close in Sassuolo (Italy) in Novembre/December 2008 with a series of workshops and exhibitions.

For Sassuolo is organised the first Italian exhibition dedicated to Zafos Xagoraris, artists and curator at the next Biennial of Visual Arts in Athens. The event represents a relevant contribution to the knowledge and promotion of an important protagonist of the international art scene.The city of Sassuolo, the last stopover of the journey, represents a very interesting case for its multifaceted urban and social layering.

An international workshop will fostering cultural exchanges between young students coming from Europe and the Mediterranean area. Video and images collected from different ares of the city of Sassuolo (industrial areas, street markets, schools, periferies, ect…) will be presented at the Cultural Center ‘La Casa nel Parco’.

PORT CITY SAFARI represents an international network of cultural exchanges, exhibitions, a series of publications and art platforms. The project highlights diverse research projects and trajectories dedicated to trade, mobility and productivity in participating port cities.

For Spring 2009, at the end of the entire project, a publication documenting the artists’ works, theoretical essays, images and maps will conclude the long and articulated journey of ‘GOING PUBLIC ‘08. PortCitySafari’.

The project is awarded by the EU Culture 2007 Grant.

Project by: aMAZElab, Milano
Concept and Director: Claudia Zanfi
In collaboration with: Arnolfini, Bristol
With the support of: Foundation Cassa Risparmio di Modena; Cultural Department Province of Modena; The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, Athens; Culture Commission European Community
Patronage: MiBAC Ministry of Culture, Rome

“Music like you’ve never seen before and art like you’ve never heard before.” — Interview magazine

Among the works presented in the exhibition are Gestures (1999), Crossfire (2007), Mixed Reviews (1999 - 2001) and the centerpiece of the exhibition Video Quartet (2002), a large, four-screen projection featuring hundreds of clips from old Hollywood films, with actors and musicians making sound or playing instruments. An elaborate audio-visual collage, Video Quartet is a visually stunning and aurally complex work, which builds masterfully to a proper musical composition.

Christian Marclay explores the fusion of fine art and audio cultures, transforming sounds and music into visible, physical form, through performance, collage, sculpture, installation, photography and video. The outcome is a full sensory experience where the realms of image and sound are combined with a sharp pop-culture sensibility and the traditions of avant-garde artists such as John Cage, Laurie Anderson and the Fluxus group

Christian Marclay was born in California in 1955, raised in Switzerland and now lives in New York and London. His work has been featured in two Venice Biennales and in major exhibitions at the Tate, Pompidou and Guggenheim museums. As a musician and DJ, he has collaborated with groups as diverse as Sonic Youth and Kronos Quartet.

REPLAY was originally presented at the Cité de la musique (Paris) in 2007 and curated by Emma Lavigne.

ALSO NOT TO BE MISSED:

The Sounds of Christmas
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY
December 14 - 20, 2008

After successful presentations at the New Museum in New York and Tate Modern in London among other venues, DHC/ART in collaboration with the Darling Foundry is pleased to host Christian Marclay’s The Sounds of Christmas for 2008. First organised in 1999, this seasonal work is presented annually in a different city during the month of December.

The Sounds of Christmas is an installation of 1200 Christmas LPs made available to the public for consultation, a six-channel video work documenting the album covers and projections of past performances. During the one-week installation, noted local DJs are invited to create remixes of their own selection from Marclay’s Christmas records – transforming sentimentality into experimentation. Part community project, part art installation, this work provides an impressive and exhaustive archive of Christmas music to DJ’s and turntablists, which transform the usually dismal and hackneyed holiday season soundscape.

Darling Foundry, 745 Ottawa Street (corner Queen Street)
, Montreal (Québec).

PERFORMANCES:
Sunday, December 14, 2008
5 PM – 9 PM
Christof Migone
Mitchell Akiyama
With special appearance by Christian Marclay.

Saturday, December 20, 2008
5 PM – 9 PM
Nancy Tobin
Martin Tétrault
Olivier Alary & Raf Katigbak

This project explores the relationship between sound, space and identity as experienced through a cree worldview. By creating a “performative audio map”, L’Hirondelle will negotiate a journey through new territory, developing a nomadic relationship with the land. Her actions/singing will be in direct response to her encounters within the territory - the physical environment she finds herself in and its inhabitants.

During the month of December, the artist will make daily journeys throughout Vancouver and “sing” the landscape she encounters. These encounters will be captured by mobile phone by the artist and whatever other technologies are made available by participating viewers/audience (video, photo, audio).

During the live performances, she will sing, record, upload and tag these audio clips to an online database. Each audio clip will be tagged to one or more of the 16 cree values. The clips will automatically be available to online audiences interactively through a rich online media experience available here.

This interactive experience intends to illuminate the relationship between the spirit or inspiration for the singing (the song, the audio) and the value it corresponds to within a cree worldview while engaging online audiences to interact with the content via a mashup/audio remix style interface.

Unscheduled live performances will begin November 24th and take place daily until December 31st with the interactive website premiering December 7, 2008. Additionally, selected scheduled performance locations during December will be listed on the grunt gallery website

Subscribe to project feed at Twitter.com to learn more about following/participating or tracking daily performances or visit the blog.

Participants are also invited to take part in the daily performances by submitting text, photos, videos or audio material to vancouversonglines@gmail.com for inclusion in the project blog. In addition to this, audiences may contribute sound clips to the remix interface by uploading audio to the website and can additionally link videos to the project’s youtube site.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle is a currently Vancouver-based multi and interdisciplinary mixed blood artist and musician originally from northern Alberta. Her artistic practice is an investigation of the junction of a cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time and space.

Our annual Fundraising Campaign begins now. Once again, we need your support. Several artists have donated prints, posters, books, musical scores and DVDs.

2008 was our most active year yet. We launched 30 COMMISSIONED WORKS on Turbulence.org and Networked_Music_Review; co-presented two exhibitions – MIXED REALITIES (with Ars Virtua and Huret & Spector Gallery) and LUMENS (with Greylock Arts and MCLA Gallery 51); co-presented two symposia – FLOATING POINTS 5: MIXED REALITIES (with Emerson College) and PROGRAMMABLE MEDIA II: NETWORKED_MUSIC (with Pace Digital Gallery); co-presented UPGRADE! BOSTON (with Massachusetts College of Art and Design); and participated in Upgrade! International: CHAIN REACTION (Skopje Macedonia).

What You Can Expect In 2009

1. NETWORKED: A (NETWORKED_BOOK) ABOUT (NETWORKED_ART): we are breaking ground once again with this innovative project that received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently underway is an international competition in which five writers will be commissioned ($3,000 US each) to develop “chapters” that will be open for revision, commentary, and translation by online collaborators.

2. FLOATING POINTS 6: GAME OF CULTURE | ART OF GAMES: the sixth in our annual speaker series with Emerson College, this will be a day-long symposium with world-renowned speakers. We will also be screening Marcin Ramocki and Justin Strawhand’s 8 BIT documentary (March 20-21).

3. PACE DIGITAL GALLERY (New York): three new works by New York artists commissioned especially for this exhibition (spring).

4. UPGRADE! BOSTON: now in its 5th year, our monthly speaker series continues at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

5. TURBULENCE.ORG: new commissions, new works launched.

6. NETWORKED_PERFORMANCE and NETWORKED_MUSIC_REVIEW: we will continue to bring you news, interviews, projects, events, and publications of interest.

If you value these resources and wish to have access to them in the future PLEASE MAKE A DONATION NOW! (tax deductible for US residents).

No amount is too small!

Pay via PayPal on Turbulence or send a check to New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., 124 Bourne Street, MA 02131.

Thanks for your generous support.

Warm Regards,

Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington, Co-directors
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.

We are privileged to present the première of new work from Rob Kennedy followed by a discussion with the artist. The three video works were born out of a series of collaborative projects working with composers Peter Dowling, Giles Lamb, Martin Parker and Sue Tompkins. The emphasis in each of the works is the desire to integrate ideas and methods of improvisation into the video and sound production process. This evolving collaboration and dialogue continually shapes, distorts and then reshapes the direction of the work. Steering away from a reliance on a single directive, this project draws on the experience of each of the individual composers who have a background in improvised music ranging from free jazz through to electro-acoustic and vocal performance.

Each work has at its starting point a need to form some kind of dialogue with the norms and conventions of television production in order to understand, adapt and re-define these codes into a grammar that can subsequently be used to suggest other readings, other outcomes, other problems, than those previously prescribed.

ZooZBeat is a gesture-based musical studio, simple enough for non-musicians to immediately become musically expressive but rich enough for experienced musicians to push the envelope of mobile music creation. Start playing with just a click or select among background beats in a variety of styles. Use shake and tilt movements, tap the screen, or press the keypads to create and modify rhythmic and melodic lines. Based on years of research, our musical engine will interpret your actions into beautiful music that fits your style.

About ZooZ: We are musicians, gamers, coders, and designers. We are a small group of graduates and faculty from the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology who decided to bring some pretty cool projects from our labs to the hands of everyone. We believe that passion for music making is an innate and universal trait. We create technology to unlock musical expression and creative potential for everyone. We believe that passion for game playing is an innate and universal trait. We create technology to facilitate the most intuitive and expressive game experience for everyone. We believe that if more people played music and games, the world would probably be a better place. And this is just our preliminary goal for this quarter.

INSTRUMENTS: Any new musical instrument is eligible for the competition. Instruments may generate sound acoustically or electronically, they may exist in physical or virtual manifestations, and they may be played by humans, robots, or computers. They may modify, improve, or extend existing instruments — including the human voice — or they may offer entirely new design paradigms. New instruments which cross over these categories or which defy any such categorization are also welcome.

PERFORMANCE: Entrants must perform a musical work with their new instrument to demonstrate its musicality, design, and engineering features. Performances may include traditional acoustic and/or electronic instruments alongside the new instrument. They may also include multimedia elements such as video, animation, graphics, text, kinesthetics, hydraulics, dance, or acting. The performed work may be composed by anyone, including the entrant, or it may be an arrangement of an existing work. It may be in any musical style. The duration should be between 2 and 10 minutes. Entrants must be prepared to perform with their instrument at Georgia Tech on February 27th-28th, 2009.

SUBMISSION: Online applications will be accepted beginning on November 15, 2008. Applications must include:

• A URL link to a video recording of the performance. Entrants may post their video on their own private web sites or on video sharing services such as YouTube. Videos must be in Flash or Quicktime formats.
• A high-resolution photo of the instrument in JPEG or PNG format.
• A statement (max 250 words) describing the instrument’s musicality, design, and engineering features.
• A description and credits (max 150 words) for the musical work performed in the video.
• A biography (max 250 words) of the entrant(s).

Applications are due online on Monday, January 5, 2009.

Comprising ambitious works by nine artists — Libero Colimberti, Jan Hendrickse, Simone Izzi, Nitin Lachhani, Luc Messinezis, Maria Papadomanolaki, Vytis Puronas, Mark Shorey and Mark Wright — who employ sound as the principle media of their practice, Audio Forensics demonstrates the breadth of engagement with sound in the arts, and how it can be re-evaluated in the context of an increasingly noisy world. Sound art encompasses a wide range of forms and concerns and has its precedence across many creative fields, yet, as these artists demonstrate, the acknowledgment of sounds significance in the arts is becoming of greater importance as technologies develop, and as the public become ever more aware of the interactions between sound, space and artistic practice. Audio Forensics provides an extraordinarily comprehensive inquiry into how sound, and its manipulation, influences our experience and understanding of our environment.

Audio Forensics is an exhibition and symposium presenting the final work of the first MA Sound Arts graduates of London College of Communication. The groundbreaking work in the exhibition demonstrates the high level of critical debate in sonic disciplines fostered by the university’s Department of Sound Art and Design since 1998. The exhibition is co-curated by Electra and IMT.

Symposium in which Ben Borthwick, Assistant Curator at Tate Modern, and Steven Connor, professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck, address issues of sonic practice raised by Audio Forensics.