Every day for the past year, Morneau has composed and posted a new sixty-second composition. That’s just over six hours of new music in sixty-second installments. For this project, Morneau explored a wide variety of musical styles and techniques, including musique concrète, sine wave synthesis, digital sampling, 8-bit constructions, process music, acousmatic composition, and post-techno beat manipulations. He found the requirement to make a new, complete piece every day an exhilarating challenge, and reveled in the constant variety of ideas the project embraced. This project began as a challenge to compose more, and ended up as an audio diary of the past year.

Morneau chose to compose specifically for the internet because of an interest in its effect on the creation and dissemination of music and art. One-minute compositions are easy to download. The podcast format encouraged listener subscription. 60×365 was presented as a series of shorter pieces over time, in a particular order. However, this order was only one possibility. Some listeners waited until many pieces were posted and then chose their own path through the archive. Some listened with headphones, some with computer speakers of varying quality, some on a mobile device, some listened with friends, some listened alone.

The entire project will remain online at http://60×365.com where listeners can explore the archive by date, by title, and by category. http://5of4.com
http://60×365.com

Selections from 60×365 will be included in a radio broadcast as part of the 2008 Expo Brighton, a festival of sound art and experimental music in Brighton, UK. The festival will take place July 4-6.

His instrument was a wooden wine crate filled with custom-made circuitry and six joystick-like levers. Allen called his tool circuitMusic, and it emitted a throbbing, old-school sound — the sort of sound that’s often called “feedback laden” when in fact it was more like he was exploring the feedback, simultaneously navigating and lending shape to the noise. (There is additional coverage of the event, including photos, in an August 2007 disquiet.com entry.)

The music got more abstract as his set went on, and Allen’s hand-crafted instrument provided a comforting focus throughout. Each of its six joysticks was paired with a single headlight on the front of the box. That trigger system, in a highly economical manner, provided helpful signals to the audience: visual orientation amid the increasingly self-obscuring sounds. In a world of ever more powerful technology, it was downright inspiring to experience the sort of communication that could be accomplished with a simple on-off switch.

It’s no surprise that Allen’s skills in communication in regard to electronics and electronic music are not limited to stage performances. He’s taught classes in such subjects as “Performing Technology,” “New Interfaces for Musical Expression,” and “Sensor Workshop” at New York University and Pratt Institute. And after finishing up an early-2008 residency at Eyebeam in Manhattan (eyebeam.org), he’s relocating to Newcastle, England, to help start a new Masters program in Digital Arts with Atau Tanaka, formerly of Sony Paris. “The Masters,” he explained via email, “will be held in coordination with the Newcastle Culture Lab, headed up by Sally-Jane Norman.” (More info at ncl.ac.uk/culturelab.)

Allen took time recently to talk about the tool he played at Galapagos, the implications of musicians crafting their own instruments, the intersection of academia and the electronic arts, and the politics of 8bit music, among other things.

Marc Weidenbaum: When I saw you perform at Galapagos in Brooklyn last summer, you used one machine for the performance, and it was something you’d designed yourself. I’m very interested in musical instruments created by musicians. Could you describe what it was and how it functioned?

Jamie Allen: The rig you saw is a piece called “circuitMusic.” It’s really very simple — it’s a set of square waves built with raw electronic components, inside an old wine box. I have a few ways of varying resistances in the circuit — photo-resistors, force-sensitive resistors, and regular old potentiometers. Each of the square waves is coupled to a set of very bright light-emitting diode arrays, such that whenever a new oscillator is thrown in, a light comes on. There are six sound elements, and six lights.

I really started this piece out of a frustration with the possibilities for improvisation in electronic music. I wanted something I could get lost in while performing. I wanted something that wasn’t just moving through a set of presets or known “fields” I had created prior to a show; circuitMusic often surprises me, as does the incredibly positive reaction I get to the simple on/off “visualization” it provides the audience.

Weidenbaum: You’ve taught courses related to electronic music at a variety of schools in and around Manhattan. I imagine these schools each has a different take on music and technology, and I was wondering what you’ve learned about different scholarly takes on the field.

Allen: The often surprising thing about music in academia is that the spectrum of motivations is really broad. There are many communities, viewpoints, conferences, styles, and philosophies represented. Coming to accept this as a cultural reality when I first became involved was a bit of a challenge for me, actually. I come out of playing in bands, in bars, etc., primarily for the rawness and fun of it — the blood-and-sweat school of music. So I came to computer electronic music with a kick-ass “let’s fucking do this thing” kind of motivation. I had a real problem accepting any motivation other than those that were a direct reaction to the lack of relevancy I perceived in the computer and experimental music scene. As is often true, I’ve mellowed out a lot, because, as I am now quite fond of saying, “Hell, it’s only music.”

There are scholars who approach technological, musical, and other creative decisions as a kind of scientific “problem” to be “solved.” There are a lot of people out to do a lot of things so they can be “first” at it. There are also far too many music-technology scholars in higher learning who use academia a kind of hustle or dodge, or to bolster a failing “commercial” music career — whatever that means these days.

The best work, and best teaching I think, comes from people who are primarily interested in music as a method of communication, enhanced and elaborated through technology. In Manhattan, like anywhere else, you find that certain schools and departments do have certain emphases in this regard, based on who’s running them and what their personal motivations are.

Weidenbaum: Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share on the whole 8-bit world of music-making — is that at all where your head is at?

Allen: I’ve always loved the sound of the square wave, which is the timbral indicator for what we think of as “low-fi” or “chip” music. It’s also fitting that mathematically, the instantaneous change from one signal level to another — the Heaviside function, the basis of a square wave, really — at least theoretically, contains all frequencies. That thought alone contributes to my understanding of these somewhat harsh tones as very warm, welcoming, and somehow enveloping.

I’m also sure, as I’ve heard many people comment, that there is a kind of flashback adrenaline rush that comes from hearing these sounds. A good portion of our generation grew up getting their kicks with a side order of these square-wave-based game sounds, so there’s a sense in which it’s just taking you back to that time you kicked your brother’s ass at Impossible Mission on the C64. A happy time, indeed.

Anyhow — I’m not much of a scenester, but I do have a duo with Michael Horan called “Season of the Bit” where we remix and DJ Commodore 64 tunes. The Blip Festival just happened here in New York, and I was really hoping to catch way more of it than I did…

Weidenbaum: I agree there’s a flashback quality to those sounds, and the way musicians and artists — from Scott Johnson’s I.F. Stone transcriptions to Christian Marclay’s use of old video footage and record albums — employ sounds of the past definitely expects that as part of the audience’s reaction. But as the years go on, lo-fi, 8bit music is attracting an audience with no first-hand experience with that original sound. The result is a kind of second-hand nostalgia. This new generation grew up on much more advanced games — do you understand what they get out of 8bit?

Allen: You’re right — this “flashback” quality is certainly not the only motivation for low-res soundscape work — just an often-cited one.

If you’re the kind of person that thinks all decisions are political — like me — you can also think of the use of lo-fi hardware and software as somewhat of a subversion of technological culture. That’s certainly one of my motivations for doing this kind of work. Our culture at the moment values technological advancement and refinement at a level that can sometimes feel dehumanizing, overstated, and boring. There’s a slickness, perfection, and inevitability to the trajectory of ever-higher-resolution-everything we’re on right now that is apparently frustrating to a good number of people’s creative process, particularly in music. This is perhaps why a lot of people compare the 8bit scene to the punk scene, in terms of motivation. The elements you get to lay your hands on in “state of the art” music studios can really suck all the play and fun out of making music.

Weidenbaum: And, to follow up, do you see a music movement based on more recent gaming systems, along the lines of machinima — in which footage of video games is edited to create short films — coming along?

Allen: Certainly — a lot of my students are interested in the effects current video-game culture will have on the musical landscape. What I find interesting is that there are generations of people out there assuming that all their media is interactive, malleable, and essentially a dialogue of some sort. Most of the creative music game developers out there — Toshio Iwai and Harmonix, for example — are already using game platforms to deliver high-level musical decision-making to the masses. I would say that Harmonix’s FreQuency (2001) and Nintendo’s Electroplankton (2005) are existing examples of “musical machinima” tools — although there is certainly room for further exploration and openness in these systems.

Weidenbaum: Of all the different music-making devices you’ve created, do you think any of them might have a wider audience among your fellow musicians — that is, would any of make it in the marketplace as manufactured instruments?

Allen: I think one of the real powers of the configurable prototyping systems available to the electronic artist today is that you are freed from these ideas transferability and permanence in the standard sense. You can pretty much make an entire instrument system, play it once, take it apart, reconfigure it and then play it the next night. Perry Cook, a fantastic guy, technologist, and musician up at Princeton, once said, “Make a piece, not an instrument or controller.” This has wonderful repercussions musically, politically, and socially. In music, there is the new idea of a kind of sketchy, design-oriented approach to performance and compositional process. Politically, we may actually help to break down hegemonic and hierarchical music and art structures in the West that have been so dominant for far too long. It is hard get to the heart of what educational pedigree, for example, even means for self-built instruments that are entirely reconfigurable or performance-specific. Socially, we can think of instrument creation as beginning before the level of “player” and oftentimes blurring the ranks of composer, performer, instrumentalist, and audience.

Needless to say, the marketplace affects everyone’s outlook and work in a broad sense, but it’s not at all a part of my conscious thought process in the creation of music or performance.

Weidenbaum: Which comes first, the music or the instrument? Do you create instruments with a certain sound in your head, or do you create instruments and then, when they’re done, see what kind of music they can make?

Allen: I’m really interested in process, first and foremost. There’s a transparency and directness of communication that I strive for in performance and music. Instrument design is often a way of rendering limitations and facilities into a physical object. Objects are also, arguably, inherently performable, so it can be a way of translating and communicating otherwise obscure processes to other people. Like anyone, I have sounds and sequences and patterns that appeal to me for one reason or another, as in the aforementioned case of square waves. What I find most satisfying, though, is the translation of process as a way of sculpting someone else’s experience in real time.

Weidenbaum: If I am overemphasizing the academic aspect of your work, please tell me so, but I want to ask one additional question about that area. One thing that academia has in its favor is continuity. There’s a tradition, a literature, a practice, or a variety of practices, within each field. Are there performance, or computer-science, or music communities, within academia that you particularly see yourself in the tradition of?

Allen: I really think of myself as a life-long student, and so I think I naturally gravitate towards educational environments. I have a serious addiction to learning new things and being exposed to new ideas. I don’t have a lot of academic aspirations in the more traditional sense, so I can’t really say that there’s a particular history I’m interested in trying to get myself written into.

I do think relationships to specific histories in academia, the arts, performance, and music are changing. I find a lot of electronic and digital artists are less and less concerned with their practice as a “modernist” or “minimalist” or whatever — and more and more concerned with project-specific appropriateness, relevance, and context dependence, which is really very positive all in all.

This has a lot to do with the distributed contexts in which creative works exist these days. An artist can have one piece that looks at something from a certain motivation — say, deconstructionist — and another piece that looks at it from another — say, collagist. There’s no conflict because both “communities” can be addressed through the same varied distribution channels available to the artist. This all reminds me of music-listening patterns in the post-digital music age, to some extent. You don’t ask people, “What kind of music do you listen to?” anymore, because listening patterns are so diverse. Similarly, I don’t ask people, “What kind of artist are you?” because I know they’ve likely got a long list of interests.

So… what kind of artist am I? Well I’m a “post-post-modern- avant-garde-romantic-digital- experimental-conceptualist,” with a limp. [posted by Marc Weidenbaum on Disquiet]

Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson chats about chiptunes with a number of artists who performed at the most recent installment of the 8-bit music event Blipfest: Paza Rahm (pazarahm.com, from Sweden), Rugar (rugarandi.com, Sweden), Sabrepulse (myspace.com/sabrepulse, Scotland) and Akira, aka 8GB (myspace.com/8gb, Argentina). Related BBtv episodes and vlog posts:

[posted on Boing Boing]

As her performance began, the room filled with electronic beeps and buzzes of a 1980’s video game pulsing to a danceable beat, as if Mario were hosting a rave. As heads bopped in the audience, Kim proudly held up her instrument: a Nintendo Game Boy.
The performance on a recent Friday was part of Blip Festival, a four-day celebration of music made with obsolete computers and electronics. So-called ”chiptune” or ”8-bit” music is building a cult audience among former Atari jockeys.

Haeyoung Kim, BubblyFish: I started with classical music first, and moved on to electronic music. I have in electronic music and computer music, so experimental music. Classical is more my background. So I picked up a GameBoy, I guess 4 or 5 years ago already, and when I started using it, I just loved the sound of it, and part of the big deal is that there’s a huge limitation that does not require much music production at all. Since there’s such a limitation, I think I can push myself to be more creative, and think differently from the way that I usually create music, with more available tools…” From Interview: Chiptune Artist Haeyoung Kim, BubblyFish by Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired. Also see Interview with Paul Slocum, Tree Wave.

For this project, Morneau is exploring a wide variety of musical styles and techniques, including musique concrète, sine wave synthesis, digital sampling, 8-bit constructions, process music, acousmatic composition, and post-techno beat manipulations. Each daily post brings something new and different, a constant variety. The daily deadline means the works sometimes lose their preciousness as they become explorations in process and method for Morneau—with his form or his audience—as much as they are works of art.

Morneau chose to create a composition specifically for the internet because of an interest in its effect on the creation and dissemination of music and art. One-minute compositions are easy to download. The podcast format encourages listener subscription. 60×365 is presented as a series of shorter pieces over time, in a particular order. However, the listener may wait until many pieces are posted and then listen in any order he desires. You can listen online everyday @ http://60×365.com.

GAMES:AV is a live concert, screening and club night featuring musicians, DJs, VJs, audiovisualisers, 8-bit operators, film-makers, animators and digital artists whose work has been shaped by Video Games culture… plus a basement gallery of wall-sized interactive games… There’s an entire generation of established artists and up-and-coming talent who have been inspired by and influenced by video games; a wealth of grass root musicians and music makers “who are dedicated to the appreciation and reinterpretation of video game music” (VGM) - through numerous online communities; a vibrant scene of 8-bit music makers or ‘chip tuners’ who use the same sound chips as the original games consoles; various digital artist groups whose work explores alternative gaming experiences and the boundaries between gaming and art; and short film-makers and animators from around the world that draw from and are inspired by video game culture.

We want to help the London Games Fringe realise its aim to “explore VG culture in its many manifestations and its relations with other art and media forms” by tapping into and presenting highlights from this rich and diverse seam of creative work.

The line-up will see live performances and DJ/VJ sets from: Ben Osborne v Overlap, The Lost Levels, The Sancho Plan, Vector Lovers and the ZX Spectrum Orchestra and from 8-bit music makers and labels gwEm vs Counter Reset and Jellica (Kittenrock);; as well as contributions from grass-root, online Video Game music communities and 8-bit music makers; multi-player gaming experiences from Handheld and interactive works from digital artist groups such as Boredbrand, igloo and Fijuu and Nipplecat; as well as a Future Shorts specifically curated programme of innovative short films and animations from around the world.

Screen Music is part of the program of the Creativity Festival, an event promoted by the Tuscan Region and organized by Fondazione Sistema Toscana. With an exhibition space of approximately 40,000 square meters, 400 events, 1,600 artists and speakers from over 40 countries around the world, the Festival program includes meetings and debates with great representatives of modern culture, the world of art and design, and the Italian and international music scenes.
In the broad fields of contemporary experimentation, within the new mixed media disciplines / subjects, Screen Music presents a varied group of artists (performers, video artists, musicians and designers) protagonists of the most advanced electronic audiovisual research, in the many of its possible declinations, considering this ear also the possible means of dialogue between “digital” and “material” aesthetics.

The first edition of Screen Music focused on the analysis and description of the most modern forms of electronic audiovisual interaction in terms of projections and live performances; the second edition of this review in the location of the Teatrino Lorenese, wants to point out the need of a reflection on the audiovisual aesthetics of tangible, of effectiveness, of manual character and analogic mechanicalness, in a period of excessive digital over-stimulation and exasperate techno-fetishism. A step backwards, a moment to reflect and stop, a return to physicalness of action, to underline the possible alternative ways of audiovisual creativity that, operating now for many years, assume a reason and a creative and operative value thanks indeed to the deep antithesis that they keep in opposition to the reigning digitalization of artistic instruments and creative aesthetics.

It’s above all the part of Screen Music 2 followed by Marco Mancuso / Digicult, Saturday 27/10 and Sunday 28/10 that focuses on these dynamics, thanks to some audiovisual performances where synaesthesia within music and video is realized through the dialogue between the sound produced with mechanical instruments and electrical and physical processes and the image that visualizes what happens on the stage, staging a direct relation in between the resonant source and the visual perception of the audience.

In this direction moves also the last project Popular Mechanics of the pioneering musician Pierre Bastien produced by Aphex Twin’s Rephlex Label, Italian absolute preview, where a system of motors, filters, paper instruments, pulleys and Mecano pieces build up the rhythmic and hypnotic base of an audiovisual concert in the form of cinema-verité unique in the whole world. And more, the where the electromagnetic camp produced by the two projectors creates the audio backstage when it interacts with the graphical patterns designed by the same artists on special projected slides, for an audiovisual performance in real time completely improvised and absolutely genial. The Americans Lou Objects are instead within the most important representatives on an international level of the circuit bending aesthetics, art of improvising audiovisual situationist performances through circuiting in real time electric and electronic elements, whose screen visualization constitutes a hypnotic element of fascination for the present audience.

The Italian school is represented in Screen Music 2 by Mylicon/En, who characterize themselves visualizing the processes deriving from a set of analogical and mechanical instruments, able to produce sounds digitally sampled and edited in real time. The club part of the two nights is in the end entrusted to two completely different but at the same time fascinating projects: on one side the 8 bit aesthetics of the collective from New York 8BitPeoples, present with its representatives Bit Shifter and Nullsleep with the visuals of the French Otro, that thanks to a wise manual work of hacking and circuiting of Game Boys and old Commodore, Atari and Amiga consoles, will lead the audience to an irreverent dance audiovisual delirium on the sounds and images typical of modern micromusic. On the other side the icon, body art performer and dj Franko B, will measure himself with the software artist and vj Sanch Tv in a live audiovisual set astride between techno music and generative art.

Finally, the opening night of Screen music 2, on Thursday 25/10, followed by Abdrea Mi/Videominute together with the staff of RE::LIFE, will be a night totally dedicated to join and weld the audiovisual connections between the best “old school” of hip hop and dj culture (represented by the sampling percussionist Steinski) and the most promising guard of the electronic scene (excellently represented by the Swiss Dimlite and by our Costa) visualized live by the graphic evolutions of the Spanish Iglesias Heras. Tommy Boy, Antidote, Ninja Tune, Stones Throw, Sonar Kollectiv are just some of the basic labels with whom the artists involved in this project have recorded and this will also be the occasion to verify the creative path that begins in the end of the 70s and arrives to the next future, twining styles an sounds in between cymbals and samplers, laptops and videomixers. From the Hip Hop Old School to the Abstract Hip.

PROGRAM::

THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER - cured by Andrea Mi/Videominuto
23.30-00.15 - Costa (Ita) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
00-30-01.15 - Dimlite (Svi) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)
01.30-03.00 - Steinski (USA) + Pintaycolorea (Spa)

SATURDAY 27 OCTOBER - cured by Marco Mancuso/Digicult
00-30-01.30 - Mylicon/En (Ita)
23.30-00.30 - Loud Objects (Usa)
01.30-03.00 - Franko B (UK) + Sanch Tv (Fra)

SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER - cured by Marco Mancuso/Digicult
00.30-01.30 - Pierre Bastien (Fra)
23.30-00.30 - Mikomikona (Ger)
01.30-03.00 - 8 Bit Peoples: Bit Shifter & Nullsleep (Usa) + Otro (Fra)

PIERRE BASTIEN - Composer and multi-instrumentalist with transalpine origins, Pierre Bastien creates electro-acoustic sounds using mechanical toy-musicians in strange conglomerations of pulleys and BONGOLETTI, rough spring-loaded gears and little motors, near to the tradition of surrealist bricolage. The final results lead back to improvisation music and to ethnic traditional musicality: click and bass drum, electronic melodies and mutant trumpets as contour to the many micro-percussions, elaborations quite free and released from the usual stylistic standards at the point to thrill also Squarepusher and Aphex Twin that wanted Pierre Bastien with them in the respective English and Italian tours. It is a unique combination of experimentalism, melody and sound-art that even though keeps a happy and suggestive pleasantness in listening. With the new project the cinema-verité of Pierre Bastien is characterized by paper drums, paper organ and by sheets of paper that alternate with the usual Meccano pieces and circuits, for the audiovisual portrayal exalted by the sweet and romantic intervention of the jazz trumpet played live by the same musician.

MIKOMIKONA is a Berlinese duo composed of Andreas Eberlein and Birgit Schneider. Their audiovisual performances, imprinted towards a strict minimalist aesthetic harshness, are real sessions of experimental laboratory during which the duo concentrates on the physical transformations of sound to image and vice versa. Driven experimentalism, liveness and strong scene impact are the uprising characteristics of their works, designed in the balance between deepened theoretic consciousness and technologic research. The instruments that they use in live shows can be overhead projectors equipped with home-built analogical devices that read and transform into audio signals the bedding of optical layers of the slides, or strange machineries with the 16mm.

FRANKO B, born in Milan and living in London since 1979, has created projects using languages such as video, photography, performances, painting, installations, sculpture and mixed media since 1990. his performances have been hosted in spaces such as the Tate Modern, ICA, South London Gallery and Palais des Beaux-Artes, Brussels, while he held lessons at the St. Martins School of Art, DasArt, New York University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Already two biographies have been written on his artistic career: ‘Franko B’ (Black Dog Publishing 1998) e ‘Oh Lover Boy’ (2001). The most recent publications of the artist are a photographic book titled ‘Still Life’ (2003) and the monograph Blinded by Love while his latest projects are on the web: www.franko-b-mentoring.co.uk, www.de-mentored.blogspot.com. Since 2004 Franko B works as dj.

BIT SHIFTER explores the energy of low definition music composed and performed on a Nintendo Game Boy. The result is an enjoying and evocative sound performed on a platform that everyone thinks technically limited. Bit Shifter’s music, whose realization is allowed by software designed by Oliver Wittchow and Johan Kotlinski (nanoloop and Little Sound Dj), defines a low budget aesthetic where a minimal hardware equipment is pushed further to the limit of its expressive potentialities. Based in New York, Bit Shifter has produced music for 8bitpeoples, 555 Recordings, Mirex, Ketacore e Astralwerks, performing in many live sets around the world.

NULLSLEEP - Co-founder of the collective 8bitpeoples, Nullsleep creates a pop and romantic sound using old electronic devices trying to avoid their technical limits. Sweet melodies and intense rhythmic pulses are produced and lead through small plastic instruments in an evocative audiovisual research but never nostalgic. His recordings with 8bitpeoples, Astralwerks e Aniplex have made of him one of the most famous artists on the international stage. Based in New York, Nullsleep has performed in live shows between America, Europe and Asia, participating also to the dates of the International Chiptune Resistance World Tour in 2006.

OTRO - Otromatic is a vj that creates visuals using old amiga computers and mobile consoles. His artistic research moves in between the 8bit experimentation, science fiction of low cost kind and influences from the historical vanguards to create dynamic and evocative visual catalogue. Very active as a graphic designer, realizes musical covers and projects of coordinate image for many labels.

MYLICON/EN is a duo that rises from the collaboration between the videomaker Lino Greco and the musician Daniela Cattivelli. Since 2002 the duo has started a route leading to experimentation of new ways of interaction between live images and sounds inside a device in the balance between digital dematerialization (referring with it also to the whole experimentation of the last years around the phenomena of VJs and livemedia) and the return to action physicality. Live exhibitions characterizes itself for the use of “analogical” and mechanical sources and instruments of various kinds ad origin. A kind of work that touches different fields and subjects, Mylicon/EN finds space in festivals and reviews of various kinds: from contexts essentially tied up with electronic music to vjing festivals, from art galleries to performatory and theatrical arts. Moreover Mylicon/EN has realized various video that appeared in many international festivals and different video installations.

Sanch Tv is David Dessens a French freelance designer who creates software for meso.net: instruments for video synthesis in real time that use physicalinterfaces and full-developed instruments between motion graphics and audio scores. His live visuals surprisingly react to the music they visualize, and since it generate patterns and sequences of images that adapt themselves to the space and location. His scientific and mathematic studies produced performances that play with 3dabstraction in creating fluid and unexpected shapes.

LOUD OBJECTS - Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta e Katie Shima are Loud Objects, electronic noise group of musicians, artists and architects that build digital circuits on the stage with welding and microchips. The action takes place directly on an old projector, that makes the assembling smoky and transparent, that runs hand in hand with low level circuits that create the music. The first five minutes of their set are usually characterized by complete silence due to the building of the starting circuit, that explodes in the end in a dens a real sound. But don’t think that these small circuits create light sounds. noise is hard and heavy, modeled and modulated each time with the addition of new chips to the low-fi system.

DIGICULT is a cultural project involved in digital culture and electronic arts. DigiCult project is directed by Marco Mancuso and based on the active participation of 40 professional people about, who represent the first wide Italian network of journalists, curators, artists and critics in the field of electronic culture. And on a multitude of updated strategies around new media communication and networking activities. DigiCult is a web portal but is also the editor of the monthly magazine DigiMag, discussing with a critic and journalistic approach, about net art, hacktivism, video art, electronica, audio video, interaction design, artificial intelligence, new media, software art, performing art. DigiCult produce an electronic music and audiovisual podcast and the newsletter international service DigiNews. DigiCult is involved in side-activities like media partnerships and journalistic/critic reports, consultancy and curatorial activities and artists international promotion.

http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/index.asp
http://www.digicult.it/podcast/
http://www.digicult.it/en/Credits.asp

8bit sound and music is a distinctive feature of early videogames, and has become a seminal contemporary music style utilized by artists and DJs in engaging live audiovisual performances and remixes. This workshop will bring together creators from US and Spain who will work with young people to create music using Gameboys. The workshop will close with an evening of Chiptunes performances with sounds by the artists, the workshop participants and visuals by media artists Entter.

Workshop led by: HAEYOUNG KIM (BUBBLYFISH) (KO) is a sound artist and composer who explores the textures of sounds and their cultural representation. Her work has been presented in art venues, clubs and new media festivals around the world.

CHRIS BURKE (GLOMAG) (USA) has been making 8bit music since 2001. He has performed in many countries and his music has played in films, on television and on the Internet. The machinima series “This Spartan Life”, features his music as well as other 8bit artists and is featured in Gameworld.

RABATO(ESP) composes music with the famous software Littlesounddj created by Johan Kotlinski for a Nintendo Gameboy consoles. He is the co-founder of microBCN and has participated in festivals and concerts in various cities.

YES, ROBOT (ESP) mix Gameboy sounds with other instruments like synthesizes, samples and toys modified by themselves. They are founding members of the 8bit collective microBCN.

ENTTER(ESP) is formed by Razl Berrueco and Raquel Meyers. Entter was formed to create a collective space for the expression of the common restlessness felt by many creative people in the interactive media art field. Their fields of research include AVperformance, installations, non-linear narrative, videogames, interfaces, experimental music, VJing and net.art.

Concept of workshops: Daphne Dragona, independent new media arts curator, Athens Carl Goodman, Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media,Museum of the Moving Image, New York

Organised by: LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries Director: Rosina Gsmez - Baeza Universidad Laboral s/n, 33394 Gijsn, Asturias - Spain T. +34 985 185 577 F. +34 985 337 355 labworkshops@[at]aboralcentrodearte.org

{R}ake is a performance series of alternative and collaborative electro-acoustic music and video. Performances range from pure improvisation to more structured pieces, with video-artists and musicians working together in exploratory ways.

This month, {R}ake is pleased to feature performers who haven’t yet played the series and some alumni who haven’t played in a long time. Bubblyfish (Haeyoung Kim) explores the sounds of magnetic-fields and 8-bit Gameboys with video-artist Alessandro Imperato. Listen to Morph02:

Zach Layton presents a self-contained video-audio set, with 3D video interacting with and generating abstract laptop sounds; and Christian Pincock, Andrew Demirjian and Jane Rigler present a collaborative set of Demirjian’s video combined with laptop-manipulated electronics, flute and video-based found-sounds.

Monkey Town serves dinner during the show, so come hungry.