April ReSiDeNt Show: New Works, New Instruments, New Artists :: Featuring new works by Dafna Naphtali, Andrew Schneider and Simon Morris :: at LEMURplex, 461 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, between 9th & 10th Streets :: Friday, May 2nd :: 8 pm - 11 pm :: $5 at the door

Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist and improviser-composer from an eclectic musical background. As singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using custom sound processing of voice and other instruments. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (http://www.whatbat.org) and has collaborated/performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Continue reading

“We all love driving down a open road with music on the car radio, at times there seems to be an almost magical synchronization between the music playing and the passing landscape, the speed, the hum of the motor, sounds harmonize with the machine…” This was the impetus for Peter Sinclair’s AutoSync. With AutoSync, the music played on the car HiFi is generated entirely by the car itself: vibrations of the car on the road, recognizable movements (accelerations, gear changes, bends etc.) and the passing landscape. Continue reading

Diapason gallery for sound and intermedia presents David Galbraith: lgOpre, an audiovisual installation :: Saturdays in April: 4/5, 4/12, 4/19, 4/26; 2 - 8 pm :: Opening Reception: April 5, 6 - 8 pm :: 882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street), Brooklyn, NY.

lgOpre (luh - GOP - ruh) is an audiovisual installation of multichannel sound and projected digital animation created with real-time software that links vintage grid pattern algorithms with vinyl record lock-groove samples. Continue reading

I posted about some work of Rodrigo Derteano’s last week (here) but this third work I omitted as it didn’t quite seem suitable to include with the other two works.

Recomputing Space is a sound installation which employs field recordings as a psychogeographic study of urban sound. “Following the commands and rhythm imposed by an algorithm, two persons walk around in chosen locations in the city, recording a mix of noise, language, music and the sound of their own steps. The chosen locations are public places, such as public squares, parks, tram stations etc. Continue reading

Share Festival & 02l > Outside Standing Level @ Transmediale Festival Berlin 2008 presents: The Special Player, augmented environment in algorithmic contextualized music and The Shaidon Effect DJ Set Event Session at C-Base Berlin, Rungestrasse 20 - 2. HH - 10179 Berlin.

The Special Player is an interactive performance in the context of transmediale 08 - conspire. Involving a sophisticated responsive motion tracking environment, four contemporary dancers and its visitors, The Special Player explores a massively disquieting conspirative narration. Continue reading

On January 31, ABSOLUT is launching The ABSOLUT Machines, two artificially creative and highly interactive music-making machines, as visually stunning as they are technologically pioneering. Users from around the world will be able to interact with the machines over the Internet. The musical input from online users will be processed by the machines, which will respond with a unique musical composition – co-created by man and machine. The machines will immediately perform the songs, and their performances will be live-streamed to a global audience at absolutmachines.com.

Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman have created the ABSOLUT QUARTET, a large-scale electromechanical sculpture consisting of three instruments and thousands of parts, working together to create one piece of music. Continue reading

Unidentified Sound Object (U.S.O.) is an experimental electroacoustic evolving organism. It builds on cinematic scale to create an abstract theatrical experience in which electronic floes replace the traditional performer.

Born from the fusion of works by two experimental electronic musicians — Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi — U.S.O.’s sound spans highly abstract digital music, to electroacoustic music. U.S.O. develops through the exploration of elementary particles arranged and organized in clouds of discrete and punctiform events, until they compose structures of extensive polymorphic and spatial complexity. Continue reading

“Andrew Sorensen is an Australian musician and programmer, author of the Impromptu live coding environment as well as a live coding musician of note. I recently caught up with his latest work, documented as screencasts on his site. In A Study in Keith Sorensen builds a Keith Jarrett machine that juxtaposes two linked layers of performance - qwerty and (phantom) piano keyboard. Stained (left) is a striking twist on the “transparent” aesthetics of live coding, as Sorensen uses Impromptu to draw in, and manipulate, the code window, hooking the graphics into the musical algorithms. Continue reading

Born in 1944, John Lifton studied architecture at University College London. He was one of the first people to become interested in the impact of information technologies on architecture. In 1968, the year he graduated, Lifton was involved in the creation of the international Computer Arts Society, and he exhibited in the landmark Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London. The following year he was a founder of the London New Arts Lab and the Institute for Research in Art and Technology, a base for experimental performance and mixed media work, where he set up the first free computer facility specifically for artists. Continue reading

BliK an interactive installation and networked musical composition method based on collaborative “Web 2.0″ principles. The composer / participant types directives / keywords - referencing one of the LEMUR ModBots - into a blog post to create a musical score. The LEMUR ModBots are a set of single-function percussive bots that work as a percussion ensemble. They reside at LEMURplex in Brooklyn, New York. Some are scrapers, some are shakers, some strike different surfaces. They each have their own name, for instance, “bucket” and “shake.” By typing “bucket shake shake shake,” into a blog post, the user causes both bots to improvise algorithmically, with the shake being 3 times more present in the section than the bucket. The user controls the tempo by typing keywords such as ‘fast’, ’slow’, and ‘medium’. Continue reading